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Showing posts from March, 2023

Ballistic Missile Defences (BMD)

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Ballistic missile defence systems often work by using a kinetic kill vehicle to smash into its target. Let’s consider an attacking country launching an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile, or ICBM, against a defending country. There are 4 different phases of a ballistic missile flight that we will consider: boost, post-boost, mid-course, and terminal. The boost phase lasts between 3 and 5 minutes depending on whether the ICBM is solid, or liquid fuelled. This is technically the easiest time to shoot the missile down however this is usually impractical due to the location of the missile from interceptors at the time. The post boost phase can last between 5 and 10 minutes where the post boost vehicle, or bus, manoeuvres into predesignated locations to release warheads and decoys. Intercepting the bus is more difficult than intercepting the entire missile, but far easier than intercepting each object released by the bus. The midcourse phase can last 20 minutes, when the warhea...

MIRVs (Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles)

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MIRVs refer to when a ballistic missile carries Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles, which are arranged on a bus. The warheads are released shortly after the boost phase of the missile, decoys are also carried to enable the warheads to penetrate enemy missile defences. The purpose of MIRVs is to deploy a greater number of warheads for a given number of missiles, as it is far easier to deploy multiple warheads on a single missile than to deploy another missile for each warhead. This is especially important when considering practical limits on the number of missiles available, such as on a ballistic missile submarine, a mobile missile regiment, or a limited number of missile silos. For a given number of warheads, whether or not they are deployed on MIRVed missiles may only affect the timings of the warheads reaching their targets. MIRVs are often described as a way to overcome missile defence systems, however this is only the case when using MIRVs allows a greate...

The Nuclear Triad

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The nuclear triad consists of three parts: air, land, and sea. The air leg consists of long-range strategic bombers which are the most flexible part of the triad as they can be recalled after take-off. Bombers are at risk during flight as they can be shot down by air defences systems and fighters, especially when armed with gravity bombs requiring them to go deep inside enemy airspace.   They can also be armed with air launched cruise missiles which can be launched from thousands of kilometres away, so the bombers don’t need to enter enemy airspace. Under normal circumstances bombers are very vulnerable to a surprise attack as they can easily be destroyed on the ground before take-off. Even when on high alert, it would be difficult for bombers to become airborne and escape an attack before warheads arrive. The only way to guarantee the survival of any bombers is to have a proportion armed and airborne at all times. The land leg is the most responsive part of the tri...