[HN Gopher] Minuteman III test showcases readiness of U.S. nucle...
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Minuteman III test showcases readiness of U.S. nuclear force's
deterrent
Author : ChrisArchitect
Score : 28 points
Date : 2025-02-19 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.stratcom.mil)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.stratcom.mil)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Title was: Minuteman III test launch showcases readiness of U.S.
| nuclear force's safe, effective deterrent
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| In light of the one that failed in November 2023, I'm glad this
| one worked.
| echelon wrote:
| > In light of the one that failed in November 2023,
|
| That's concerning. If we rely on MAD for survival, we shouldn't
| signal weakness or unpreparedness with our nuclear arsenal.
|
| Nukes are such a double-edged sword. If nuclear proliferation
| continues, I wonder if the MAD doctrine will even work. All it
| would take is one suicidal despot or slip up to destroy the
| world.
|
| The fragile world hypothesis as an answer to the Fermi Paradox
| seems uncomfortably likely to me. (A "fragile universe" where
| the first aliens to initiate vacuum collapse to restart the
| universe also seems plausible.)
| arrowsmith wrote:
| If you feel like you sleep too peacefully, try the book
| "Nuclear War" by Annie Jacobsen. It presents a very well-
| researched and plausible account of how nuclear war could
| unfold.
|
| It scared the shit out of me.
| andbberger wrote:
| I found it to be a poorly researched and implausible bit of
| hysteria. It's a sophomoric reddit post.
|
| The entire thing hedges on
|
| 1. US launching only a handful of mid course interceptors
| and they all fail, Aegis/SM-3, the most mature ABM system
| is not even mentioned. If I were the US DOD I would keep an
| Arleigh-Burke parked outside of North Korea at all times.
| 2. A North Korean submarine makes it to the coast of
| California without being tailed and isn't immediately
| destroyed by a sub after the initial salvo. 3. Russia keeps
| their phone on silent while nuclear war breaks out
|
| I don't lose sleep over this
| OgsyedIE wrote:
| It also has a gigantic pile of obvious errors about how
| the operational principles and communication chains
| differ for solid fuel rockets compared to liquid fuel
| rockets in launching and observing countries. You don't
| even need to go through coercive diplomacy papers or arms
| control books for this stuff, there are detailed primers
| for it on the likes of Globalsecurity.
| a3w wrote:
| MAD is needed if two sides have an offensive first strike
| doctrine. USSR did not have one. China has an unclear one.
|
| NATO has an offensive one.
|
| After reading the official statements of nuclear use, with
| the US having "sink an airship carrier and find out", I
| thought: Are we the baddies? Rules as written, NATO is not
| interested in the survival of the human race, but in winning
| every war.
| bluGill wrote:
| Is survival of the human race worth it if some of the
| "baddies" get into power? USSR was not a great place to
| live. There is a lot about China I don't like. (there is
| also a lot about the US I don't like, but in theory at
| least I have some voice in changing it unlike the other
| two)
| mmustapic wrote:
| That's not a choice to be made by superpower heads of
| state, but by individual people.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I think nuclear winter is probably worse than the
| soviets, yes?? the USSR eventually fell. you can't really
| recover from enough nukes.
| tiagod wrote:
| Are you being sarcastic or do you seriously believe
| nuking the entire earth would be better than living in
| China??
| bluGill wrote:
| I think that is a question that everyone needs to ask
| themselves.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Yes, 100%.
|
| In a nuclear world you need to believe this (and your
| rivals need to know you 100% believe) or you won't
| survive to the next round of the game.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Just because some nuclear armed countries pinky swear they
| won't strike first doesn't mean MAD is suddenly not
| needed...
|
| Even if every known nuclear weapon in the world was
| decommissioned it'd likely still be needed, in today's
| dollars the Manhattan project was $30 billion. And you
| gotta assume modern technology and knowledge would make it
| quite a bit cheaper.
| wat10000 wrote:
| MAD helps make sure they keep that doctrine, and make sure
| they're not lying about it.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I'm not sure any public statements on nuclear doctrine
| should be taken literally. After reading
| the official statements of nuclear use,
|
| Like the latest one from Russia (Dec. 2024) which pretty
| much amounts to "whenever the fuck we feel like it?"
|
| https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-12/news/russia-
| revises-... It says that Russia may use
| nuclear weapons in the event of "aggression
| against the Russian Federation and/or the Republic
| of Belarus...with the use of conventional weapons,
| creating a critical threat to their sovereignty and/or
| territorial integrity."
|
| Of course, they don't define what "critical threat" means.
| Ukraine has occupied Kursk for half a year now. Is that...
| a threat? A critical one?
| bpfrh wrote:
| Depends on the nato country, but most only use if attacked,
| which makes perfect sense as these where times where the
| most dangerous country was the udssr for them.
|
| If you where a nato country you had the problem that by the
| time reinforcment from the usa could arrive, the udssr
| could potentially be in control of most if not all of
| europe.
|
| While the udssr didn't really had that concern, as they had
| more than enough room to retreat, reform and defend.
|
| In such a scenario it's very easy for the udssr to have a
| no first strike policy when there was simply no way for any
| european country to invade them, while smaller countries
| would have had a real concern that they either use their
| weapons to the full effect or have no chance to do so.
|
| IMHO there is also the substantial benefit that the udssr
| now knew that any attack meant that they would trigger a
| war without winners, e.g. they couldn't fight and then
| retreat to safe bases deep in their territory
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| NATO's policy makes sense, the winners of the last war are
| always the good guys, so even if you have to be bad to win
| it, history will absolve you.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| > _Nukes are such a double-edged sword. If nuclear
| proliferation continues, I wonder if the MAD doctrine will
| even work._
|
| Now that the USA has thrown up a giant middle finger to
| Europe & NATO, it sure seems like more countries are going to
| have to make their own nuclear weapons. No one is coming to
| help you Poland; that's the new American stance. So everyone
| start proliferating!
|
| It absolutely makes the situation much much much harder to
| manage. Now, and in a longer term as nations go through their
| own fits & tantrums over time. As, we see, happens.
| drysine wrote:
| >No one is coming to help you Poland; that's the new
| American stance.
|
| That's how the rest of the world lives praying that the US
| doesn't bomb them because they are not "democratic" enough.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| France is in Europe and NATO no? They might not have enough
| nukes to end the world, but they have more than enough to
| kill 90% of the population.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| The UK also has nukes.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Will France nuke Russia to retaliate for Russia nuking
| Poland? If I were a Pole, I'd be very hesitant to rely on
| that. (The US too, even before the current
| administration, but at least I'd know the US could trash
| the Russian military by conventional means.)
| toast0 wrote:
| It's not the same France, but 1938 France, along with
| England came to the Munich Agreement with Italy and
| Germany to let Germany annex part of Czechoslovakia,
| despite France and Czechoslovakia having a mutual
| assistance pact.
|
| Ukraine's Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances
| doesn't seem to have gotten them much in the way of
| territorial integrity either.
|
| If I were bordering Russia or any other state that seems
| interested in expanding its borders, I'd be concerned
| that international agreements might not deter such
| expansion and wonder what could be done. Obtaining the
| means for MAD seems reasonable, although the costs are
| high and perhaps unjustifiable.
| bluGill wrote:
| England And France have long had nuclear bombs of their
| own. Other countries have made them. Iran and Israel
| officially don't have them, but everyone knows that at
| minimum they can have them in months if they want them (and
| they may have them). It is a big engineering task, but not
| something impossible for nearly any country if they really
| want to (but in general it costs more than they are worth
| and so isn't worth it)
|
| Even today, the vast majority of your military spending
| should be in something else. Precision targeted small
| explosives generally get the job you need done much better
| that destroy the whole earth.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Precision targeted small explosives generally get the
| job you need done much better that destroy the whole
| earth.
|
| Right, but if your foe can afford more precision targeted
| small explosives, then nukes start looking attractive to
| the North Koreas of the world.
| NikkiA wrote:
| We (UK) long gave up our nuclear sovereignty, we've
| relied entirely upon warheads we rent from the US since
| the 90s, since 1970 if you consider our Polaris subs and
| WE177 bombs to have been the same deal - we claimed to
| have autonomy over the warheads, but it's questionable;
| Blue Steel was the last, true, british nuclear weapon -
| and even that used a modified W28 warhead, but they were
| at least 'home built'.
| openasocket wrote:
| > That's extremely concerning. If we rely on MAD for
| survival, we should never signal weakness or unpreparedness
| with our nuclear arsenal.
|
| Not as much as you would think. Ballistic missiles are not
| the most reliable things in the world, you expect some degree
| of failures, especially at longer ranges. When Iran launched
| its massive ballistic missile barrage at Israel last year, I
| saw estimates that as many as half failed, either during
| boost phase or during the midcourse phase. And while that
| isn't great, it's not entirely unexpected. American ICBMs are
| expected to be more reliable than that, but we're probably
| talking about 70-80% in realistic conditions (My source is
| the "Iran and Israel's Missile War" episode of the Arms
| Control Wonk Podcast, where Dr. Lewis makes those statements.
| A quick google didn't give a written source). The reason this
| doesn't matter overly much is because the US (and other
| nuclear powers) have a lot of missiles. Even if your missiles
| have 50% reliability, if you just make twice as many missiles
| as you need there isn't really an issue. You still want your
| missiles as reliable as possible, of course, and you want
| your tests to be especially reliable for signaling purposes.
| But a failed test every now and then is not going to
| fundamentally alter the risk calculus.
| TransAtlToonz wrote:
| one thing I never got was: if MAD is so necessary for peace,
| wouldn't the world be at its most peaceful when everyone had
| a nuke? And if you're worried about irrational actors, well,
| let me tell you about the last 80 years of american history!
| The US _continually_ acts in completely stupid ways against
| its own self interest.
|
| I say: give Iran and the DRC some nukes and we can _finally_
| enjoy the peace dividend we 've been promised since WWII. Not
| comfortable with that? Well, that's about how I feel about
| the DoD.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The past 80 years have been the most peaceful in history.
| Nukes work to bring peace.
|
| The problem is that you trade the virtual certainty of
| periodic destructive wars for a small but non-zero chance
| of an utterly apocalyptic war. The big question I don't see
| people asking is, what probability makes this tradeoff
| worthwhile? One in a hundred per year? One in a thousand?
| One in a million? Based on what I know about how these
| systems work, and the history of near misses, I suspect the
| probability is closer to one in a hundred than one in a
| million.
| OgsyedIE wrote:
| Regardless of whether limited exchanges are possible (and
| how the views on their relative impossibility differ
| across the relevant bodies), there's a very clear
| downside to being the weaker party in an lopsided
| distribution of arsenals, as has famously been exhibited
| twice already.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Hey if you want to sell them id like to try them
| robotnikman wrote:
| That's why there is a Nuclear Triad, giving multiple ways to
| deploy them in case one method fails.
| gedy wrote:
| They've been testing launching these since the 60s, and they
| are honestly quite reliable given their complexity
| mikewarot wrote:
| So, where's the footage from the target area? Someone should have
| been there with a camera. Just how close was it?
|
| Throwing stuff up into space looks great but so would a bolt of
| thunder from out of the blue where the missile hit the target.
|
| If we don't see it land, it's not a demonstration.
| dboreham wrote:
| Russians and Chinese saw it land.
| msisk6 wrote:
| There's poor quality videos of older tests on YouTube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a1acYZ93yc
|
| These inert reentry vehicles are impacting at hypersonic
| speeds; I wouldn't want to be anywhere near there.
| gedy wrote:
| These mostly end up in the Kwajalein Atoll lagoon, and they are
| quite monitored, lol.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Good old Kwaj...
| ge96 wrote:
| (on the topic of defense vs. offense above)
|
| I think one of the coolest missiles is the sprint missile, turns
| 90 degrees goes fast af and glows orange almost immediately
|
| Another tangent the kill vehicles which I'm not sure if they
| still use
|
| Payload delivery is interesting (the multiple cones in the head
| separate and spin on re-entry)
|
| And finally last tangent, a study on the effects of clouds/air
| particles hitting the faces of hypersonic glide vehicles, I
| remember a picture it looked like a #2 pencil tip but it was
| partially ablated
|
| edit: I found that image I was thinking of sorry it's on X was
| just on Google Images
|
| https://x.com/masao_dahlgren/status/1488632918465470467
|
| (Reentry vehicle nosetip after flying through rain at Mach 10)
| dboreham wrote:
| Sprint is long out of service.
|
| Fun fact: when I drove out to see what was left of the launch
| complex, probably 20 years ago now, I was surprised to find a
| guy mowing the lawn and the lights still on! I assumed this was
| for some ABM treaty reasons. Wondering if it's still kept in
| that state.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Sprint never went into service. An Army Colonel I am friends
| with got to watch the final experimental launch at White
| Sands.
| wat10000 wrote:
| ICBM interceptors have an insurmountable economic problem
| when facing a peer adversary. They cost as much as an ICBM
| does, so immediately you need to spend as much on defense
| as they spend on offense. Then consider that your
| interceptors might miss, and defend a limited area while
| the enemy's ICBMs can target anywhere, and you need to
| spend quite a bit more than they do. Add in MIRVs and
| suddenly you need to spend an order of magnitude more money
| to defend. If they want to, they can always outmatch your
| defenses.
| hammock wrote:
| Can offensive ICBMs turn 90 degrees in air?
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| Yes, but non-peer threats like North Korea are a growing
| concern.
|
| I've seen powerpoint slides about GMD / Aegis / THAAD and
| press releases about successful tests. I'd imagine that's
| the threat profile they hope to cover and I imagine they
| have less internet hype than SPRINT simply because the
| good videos are all still classified.
| robotnikman wrote:
| The British Swingfire missile does this too, hence the name.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swingfire
| ge96 wrote:
| I think Russia has one too (missile that can turn 90 deg), a
| big one that comes out of the ground
|
| edit: probably not that big of a deal to be able to do that
| but it looks cool
| lawlessone wrote:
| Some Russian missiles have even been seen turning 180
| degrees!
| yread wrote:
| Onyx coastal defense
| woodrow wrote:
| Especially notable is the Sprint accelerated at 100g! That's
| Mach 10 in < 4s.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Soviet/Russian ICBM interceptor looks cool too
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8W1L6TDG7w
| ge96 wrote:
| Oh yeah the anti-ship ones turn 90 degrees, probably what I
| was thinking of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOPZd49W5I
| throw0101c wrote:
| Hopefully they manage to not-fire / re-hire the folks that
| maintain the actual weapon systems:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43076137
| m000 wrote:
| And from our internal newsletter: Sysadmin team test showcases
| readiness to restore files from backups in case of ransomware
| attack.
| piker wrote:
| No, this is a deterrent device.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| "The ICBM test and evaluation program helps validate the
| reliability the nuclear umbrella our allies and partners rely on,
| eliminating the need to obtain their own nuclear weapons to
| counter potential adversaries."
|
| Yeah, about that. For how long?
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| about two more weeks ...
| rl3 wrote:
| This is an old gem dating back to the MX system, which was
| actually much newer than the Minuteman III system at the time.
| [0]
|
| MX was deactivated in 2005 per SALT II. [1]
|
| They moved the enhanced RVs from MX over to Minuteman. [2]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a1acYZ93yc
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-118_Peacekeeper#Retirement...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=LGM-30_Minuteman&...
| gedy wrote:
| Not my post but used to work on these test launches years ago. I
| can answer some not-classified questions.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| This probably veers well into classified territory, but how
| closely do test launches simulate actual nuclear exchange
| situations?
| gedy wrote:
| I think that's fine, have seen this published publicly
| before. A major part of the test is the operational testing,
| so the crews who actually do the test fire treat it exactly
| like they would in the field, and are isolated from the more
| test side of things. This includes the maintenance crews from
| the field who work on that particular missile. Sometimes the
| Airborne Launch Control System aircraft is involved, but
| infrequently afaik.
|
| The test side in parallel treats it like a normal-ish space
| launch with countdown, tracking, telemetry, etc and the
| ability to destruct if it goes off course. None of that is
| possible with an unmodified weapon.
|
| I am not aware of tests ever being a part of broader war game
| type simulations as that is probably too hair-trigger for the
| Russians, etc.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| > as that is probably too hair-trigger for the Russians
|
| See "Able Archer 83" for why realistic testing can be
| dangerous!
| floatrock wrote:
| > the crews who actually do the test fire treat it exactly
| like they would in the field, and are isolated from the
| more test side of thing
|
| Is anyone kept blind about it being a test? Like, does the
| crew wake up in the morning knowing "we're gonna launch a
| fake nuke today", or are they drinking their morning coffee
| like any other day in the bunker and suddenly the glaxon
| starts glaxoning?
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Gwar certainly is not for everybody But posts like this always
| takes me back to this gem of a song
|
| ""
|
| Bring!
|
| Bring back the bomb
|
| Bring! Bring! Bring!
|
| Bring back the bomb
|
| Bring back the bomb, it's been far too long
|
| Summon the brazen war chariot
|
| Bring back the bomb, what makes it so wrong?
|
| Release the beast, you can't bury it
|
| Who gives a fuck about a nuclear war?
|
| Let bombs explode, 'cause that's what they're for
|
| ""
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWPCGoO4620
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(page generated 2025-02-19 23:00 UTC)