Pentagon seeks quick hit missile

[Ned]

Originally posted by PLATO


And finally...a really good economic reason to through this idea away...Trident missles cost $29.1 million each.

You can get 30 cruise missles for that cost.

Speed.

You can land a trident w/i an hour anywhere in the world.

[mactbone]

When has that capability ever been desired and not available?

You'd think the US could just spend that money on better intelligence so that strike forces could be in the right position to respond.

[SlowwHand]

Your enemey is as close as you are to him. You get that?

[MRT144]

and hour isnt soon enough. lazor sattelites!

[Barnabas]

With 29 billions you could buy bolivia 3 times

[Dis]

I love war as much as the next guy , but this is a bad idea. Even though I'd like to see our boomer subs do something useful for a change. . And I generally like anything that makes the navy more significant over the airforce .

you certainly can't be calling the Russians and Chinese in this kind of time frame. What if their president is on the ****ter? He isn't going to get the message.

And then there's the case of notifying the country you are attacking. At present, we can only really get away with not notifying 2 countries. Iraq and Afghanistan- since we are essentually in control of those countries. Although there is talk of striking Iran, we have not done so yet. Yeah I know we struck at countries such as Libya without notifying them. But either way, our list of countries we can strike is limited. We usually have ships in those areas anyways. The ships can just fire cruise missiles.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Sava
Something like this would be useful in dealing with an Iran scenario... should diplomatic options fail.

I'm not advocating any use of such weapons against Iran... I happen to feel that diplomacy should be used with Iran. But in the event things turn bad and the world needs to act against Iran (not just the US mind you, but the world), a weapon like this would be more than helpful in taking out a variety of conventional targets.

no because we already have a huge cruise missile capability in the middle east region. We don't need intercontinental missiles to hit Iran.

[MRT144]

1. where can we possibly attack that we dont have the capability already and require this?
2. is this cheaper than that capability?
3. is it diplomatically feasible?
4. is it diplomatically responsible?

this just seems like an excuse to use missiles we already have.

[Dis]

actually there are places that we can't attack quickly. Mainly places in Africa. And Africa could become a place in the future to train terrorists.

In fact, Africa is really the only use I could see for intercontinental missiles such as these. We wouldn't have to worry about retaliation. It's not like there's much those countries could do to us (don't mention Mogadishu ). Almost no risk of major countries interpreting this as a nuclear strike.

hmmm, I'm kind of changing my own mind here. But it just worries me to put these weapons in the hands of politicians. You know they won't use it appropiately.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride
With 29 billions you could buy bolivia 3 times

And you'd have...what?

[MRT144]

tons and tons of tios in the mountains!

[SlowwHand]

First thing I think of with Bolivia is Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Newman & Redford.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
I thought this was what cruise missiles did

Cruise missles are slow and have much shorter range and a smaller payload.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


Trident missles are MIRVed. I believe they launch about a dozen warheads, but I think that the nuclear warheads are not that high power as far as nules go. I believe that they're less than 1 megaton. My guess is that in order for these missles to be able to launch that many warheads the individual warheads can't be very heavy. We don't know if the Trident missles armed with conventional warheads will be MIRVed or not. Accuracy of the MIRVed warheads somehwere in the order of 100 yards I believe. If you're using a nuke that's fine, but if you're using a 500 lb conventional warhead that's not good enough. Of course, if the conventionally armed missle doesn't use MIRVed warheads the bomb would be much larger and could even use Geosats to make the aim even better. OTOH a dozen smaller MIRVed conventional warheads targetted to detonate within a 100 yard circle might be even more effective.

Could this have something to do with the 700 ton bunker buster bomb recently tested? I doubt that Trident missles have a 700 ton lift capacity.

IIRC they are no longer MIRVed, after our agreements with the Russians to do away with MIRVed missles in order to better verify our arms limitation treaties at the end of the cold war.

Nuclear warheads are heavy, while conventional high explosives are not so heavy. So in terms of weight they should be able to equip these with a decent warhead. Hooked up with satellite guidance these should be able to hit within 15 meters or so of their target almost anywhere on the globe.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by PLATO

And finally...a really good economic reason to through this idea away...Trident missles cost $29.1 million each.

You can get 30 cruise missles for that cost.

This is a limited weapon for use in situations where cruise missles aren't appropriate or capable for the mission at hand. They will indeed be expensive, which is another great reason why they should be used sparingly. But I can't quibble with making some greater portion of our nuclear retaliation force do something for us in a less than worst case scenario as well.