tim (11/27/82)
The idea is not that all the other incoming missiles will be blown up, but that the various accompaniments of the first blast (EMP, dust cloud, shock waves, etc.) will knock those following off course. Since the MX's will be in ultra-dense silos, it will be difficult to take them out without direct hits, which will be virtually impossible. The idea is that one shot is all you get. The big hole in this seems to be that if the Soviets simply explode one moderate-sized bomb over the site every half-hour to forty-five minutes, none of the MX's will ever have a clear time for launch; their launch will suffer from the fratricide effect no less than hypothetical incoming missiles will. Of course, this represents a significant drain on the Soviet nuclear arsenal, but having our MX's paralyzed is an even bigger drain on ours. Let's have some more discussion on this topic. Tim Maroney unc!tim
mark (11/27/82)
Can someone please explain why, when the first Soviet missle explodes near the dense pack, destroying some of the MX'es, this won't set off a chain reaction that would destroy the remainder of the MX'es?
woods@sri-unix (11/28/82)
To me it seems a waste under any circumstances to spend millions of
dollars on weapons which even those who are for them claim will never be
used! I think that whole concept belongs in net.jokes as an Oxymoron..
"We have to have more so that we can have less..."
GREG
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decvax!brl-bmd!hao!woodsmichaelk@sri-unix (11/29/82)
The dense pack is also supposed to be a whole lot easier to protect ABM wise. You need only one ABM system at one place, rather than multiple ones spread all over the place. Mike Kersenbrock Aloha, OR
soreff (11/29/82)
If the MX missiles are to be close together, what is to stop the USSR from simply using a single, huge blast to knock them out, thus avoiding the fratricide problem? The USSR has built and tested a 60 megaton bomb. Is there any particular problem in building and delivering a bomb large enough to destroy the entire MX system? Remember that we have to assume that this is in the context of a soviet first strike, so presumably they don't have to harden the launch site for this weapon, and its size would limited by the biggest thing their liquid fueled boosters could lift (presumably several hundred tons). -Jeffrey Soreff
mcewan (11/30/82)
#R:unc:-432000:uiucdcs:29200001:000:328 uiucdcs!mcewan Nov 29 23:52:00 1982 Can someone please explain why, when the first Soviet missle explodes near the dense pack, destroying some of the MX'es, this won't set off a chain reaction that would destroy the remainder of the MX'es? Nuclear weapons are not firecrackers. A nuclear device will not explode just because another one blew up on top of it.
leichter (12/01/82)
RE: Destroying the whole dense-pack site with one VERY large bomb. This would be very difficult, probably impossible. The "destructiveness" of a bomb against hardened targets goes up relatively slowly. I gather that the problem is that destructive effects fall of as the square of the distance from the detonation point - since they are evenly spread over a circle of doubled radius. This argument comes up in deciding whether to build larger or more accurate weapons. If you double your accuracy, you double the chance of killing a given target; doubling explosive yield only (only!) multiplies by the square root of 2. I believe the Russians have built 100 megaton bombs; since we are more accurate, we have built only 60 megatons max. In fact, the bombs in the MX are quite small - hundreds of kilotons, at most. At 200 ft or so, which is something like the accuracy of the things, that's a hell of a lot of power. There is no theoretical limit to the size of a hydrogen bomb (there is for a straight fission bomb), but you don't gain much by getting larger. At some point, you are talking about a single bomb that will destroy the sender as well as the "receiver" - and you probably don't need too many doublings beyond 100 megatons to get to that level. -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter leichter@yale
shauns (12/03/82)
The Dense Pack system is 3 miles wide by 14 miles long. A 60 Megaton bomb would
not be 60 times as damaging as a 1 Megaton bomb - more like 7-8 times as
damaging, mainly because of the fact that the damage footprint
increases with, I think, only the square root of the tonnage. (No flames,
please-I know this is somewhat sloppy) The surface structure destruction
radius is about a mile for a 1 Megaton bomb, much less for a hardened silo.
A 60 Megaton bomb exploded over the dense pack installation would take out only
10 - 20% of the sites while throwing most of its blast energy into the air.
A salvo of 60 accurately targeted 1 Megaton bombs would cause much more
damage at less risk. All of your eggs in one basket, you know...
Frankly, I find this whole concept of Dense Pack as a $26 billion bargaining
chip a bit absurd. Wot da Ruskies is really scared of is da cruise missiles.
The sneaky solution always works in World Politics.
Shaun Simpkins
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