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Open source military analysis, strategic thinking, and imagery interpretation. To locate Google Earth placemark files for download, select the label "Google Earth Placemark" from the keywords menu. Comments are welcome and encouraged.
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- Sean O'Connor
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19 comments:
Great job!
"Note that Omsk stands out as the sole location to have only been home to pad-launched ICBMs":
this needs correction - separate regiment with three R-9 in a group silo deployment were thirty km west of Omsk, location Stepnoe
Excellent article Sean, many thanks!
Great post!
However, I think the Korolev's OKB site at Moscow is in fact Khrunichev's.
Good morning (or day:)!
Excuse me, but I've noted a little inexactitude concerning russian abbrevation - not RSVN but RVSN (Raketnye Voyska Strategicheskogo Naznacheniya).
Thanks for excellent job! Greetings from Siberia
Hi Sean,
great Article and Job, but ive got a question.
What would happen to the Airforce if a decapitating strike happens? Would it be possible for the Tu-22 / Tu-95 / Tu-160 to fly away and do their job? And would it be possible to shot down the Nuclear Warheaded Cruise Missiles used by this Planes, would it maybe be even possible to shot the planes down with own fighters like F-15 or F-22, before they can launch their Payload?
I never understood, why the Airforce carrys Nuclear Weapons, the Planes seem very vulnerable to decapicating strikes and other Fighters to me.
Greeting
The first line of defence against a "bolt from the blue" attack is foreign intelligence. This (among other reasons) is why the KGB never went away. It is extremely difficult to prepare and execute an effective pre-emptive nuclear attack without alerting the intel apparatus.
This leaves either an escalating crisis situation (in which case the air assets have time to disperse and get airborne) or a surprise attack that is no longer a surprise - with the same practical result.
So the air leg of the nuclear triad will likely be either on high alert or already airborne by the time a nuclear attack is executed.
Detecting and shooting down cruise missiles launched by bombers is possible, but not easy. Shooting down the bombers themselves is a bit easier, but still no picnic (particularly if they use cruise missiles exclusively and thus do not have to penetrate air defences).
To add:
Ever since ICBMs/SLBMs started complementing bombers in the nuclear delivery role from the early 60s onwards, a portion of the ballistic missile force has been directed to the task of supporting the bomber penetration mission. This has been confirmed for USAF ops and is assumed to also be true for the VVS.
Back when gravity bombs were far more accurately delivered than either ballistic or cruise/stand-off missiles, it was a common scenario to support a precision bomber attack with a few ICBMs/SLBMs "clearing the path" (destroying interceptor or SAM bases in the bomber's way) while the bomber delivered the actual killing blow to the specified hard target.
This scenario became less common when missiles started becoming increasingly accurate (an ALCM or ACM will impact just as precisely as a B-83 laydown) and the airforces started considering "limited nuclear war" scenarios in which most ballistic missiles were kept in reserve while limited, selective strikes were carried out by a few missiles plus bombers. In such a case the bombers again should be able to handle the penetration mission alone, without ICBM assistance. (This was the rationale for the B-1, the B-2 and the Tu-160; all of them designed to "go in alone").
There are also special cases where stand-off weapons cannot handle the job and you still need a bomber overflight of the target; for example hitting underground targets with earth-penetrating nukes.
Why isnt the air leg of the nuclear triade not completely replaced with rocket forces? Is it just more cost effektive to let the planes do the job?
I mean you dont need >100 strategic Bombers for delivering earth penetrating nukes, there just arent so many bunkers.
You write
" ICBMs/SLBMs started complementing bombers in the nuclear delivery role from the early 60s onwards,",
but why isnt the opposite the case? The air force complementing ICBMs in nuclear delivery?
Greetings
Why isnt the air leg of the nuclear triade not completely replaced with rocket forces? Is it just more cost effektive to let the planes do the job?
No, missiles are much cheaper on a per-unit basis (one of the reasons the Russians love them). There are other factors at work:
1) Crisis-time flexibility. You can launch a bomber during a crisis, move it closer to enemy territory for saber-rattling and then recall it. You can also use it for conventional missions. You can't do either with ICBMs. (If ICBMs were the only option in Cuba '62, we'd all be dead by now).
2) Treaty limitations. Some of the early treaties (SALT-1 for example) put limits on delivery vehicles rather than warheads; hence a bomber able to carry 20+ weapons appeared more cost-effective than an ICBM with 10 warheads. These treaties are no longer valid but they influenced the force ratios in use today.
3) Manned platform = more positive control. An important consideration for nuclear weapons.
4) Until the late 70s, bombers were the most accurate means of delivering a nuclear device (backpack/suitcase nukes aside), an important consideration for hard targets. Nowadays both ballistic and cruise missiles can get you a CEP of less than 100m but you still have the headache of buried targets.
5) Ability to hunt down, independently locate and destroy mobile targets. This became a must-have option when mobile command centers and mobile ICBMs became a reality.
6) Ability to immediately assess attack damage and re-engage if necessary. In theory you can do it with satellites and ICBMs but the whole cycle takes much, much longer; a bomber can do it in minutes/seconds.
7) Intra-war flexibility. With ICBMs your attack plan is set in stone the moment the birds leave the silos. (This is actually better than it used to be; in the 60s most missiles had their targets hardwired and changing it was a protracted process. In the 70/80s this improved to a few hours; nowadays it is reasonable to assume it takes minutes or less). If some of the weapons miss or malfunction or your targeting priorities change midway you have to start all over again. With bombers you can adjust the plan from take-off all the way prior to weapons drop.
8) Better survivability against nuclear attack, because of the mobility.
9) Re-usability. A missile gets you one shot and that's it. A bomber may get "lucky" enough to do several attacks and survive the war (this begging the question "and then...?").
I mean you dont need >100 strategic Bombers for delivering earth penetrating nukes, there just arent so many bunkers.
Actually there are. The Soviets had dug an ungodly number of deep bunkers under most of their major cities for protection of military and civilian personnel. Then you have all the branch-specific underground command centers (separate ones for army, navy, air force, air-defence troops and strategic rocket forces), themselves duplicated all over the country, some impossibly tough "shadow government" resorts at Yamandau or Kosvinsky(sp) or Zhigouli (literally a mountain of granite - you need multiple high-precision nukes on top of each other to start cracking this), underground sub pens, undergound storage facilities, underground weapon bunkers on pretty much any non-trivial Russian airbase... the list goes on. Similar for the US.
You also need to take predicted attrition into account. 100 bombers with penetrating nukes may sound like overkill, but what if you estimate that only 20% of them will reach the targets? Suddenly you start worrying about having many more targets than assets and weapons. This BTW is one of the reasons that warhead counts are unlikely to fall (by treaty) under a certain hard level; once you cross a threshold your entire attack plan starts hinging excessively on the other guy not messing with your inventory too much, an unacceptable proposition to the people responsible for this stuff.
You write
"ICBMs/SLBMs started complementing bombers in the nuclear delivery role from the early 60s onwards,",
but why isnt the opposite the case? The air force complementing ICBMs in nuclear delivery?
In the US triad, the bomber force used to be the primary carrier, with ICBMs complementing the capability and SLBMs providing the strategic reserve. This is gradually changing as the SLBM force is now capable enough to be used in a first strike; also bomber numbers are shrinking.
The Russians almost always relied on ICBMs more than bombers for the delivery of weapons, for a number of reasons. They, too, regard SLBMs mostly as a reserve option (the ability for depressed-trajectory sneak attacks notwithstanding).
Thank you for your answer.
In the summary of the advantages the Bombers have compared to ICBMs it seems to be the case for me, that a lot of the advantages will fade away with progress of technology.
"Manned platform = more positive control." will fade away with Arificial Intelligence becoming more reliable
Treaty limitations can be renegotiated.
Accuracy of the ICBMs will probably further Increase and burried targets wont be a problem anymore.
With more automatism the ICBMs ability to immediately assess attack damage and re-engage if necessary will most probably become better.
Furthermore with more and more mobile ICBMs like that one
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/ff/5228-769639.jpg
the planes will lose their mobility advantage.
Out of that considerations i have a few question left:
Will the air arc of the nuclear triade probably loose it`s significance with progress in technology?
SLBMs dont replace the Rocket Forces cause the Submarine Fleet is the most expensive arc of the Nuclear Triade isnt it?
Your write : " 5) Ability to hunt down, independently locate and destroy mobile targets. This became a must-have option when mobile command centers and mobile ICBMs became a reality."
When hostile strategic Bombers enter your Airspace and start nuclear delivery, won`t the mobile ICBMs immediatly start their delivery? I just see a time-dependent problem for locating and engaging the mobile ICBMs with the bombers.
Furthermore ive got a question concerning Bombers development.
You wrote the rocket forces will destroy all air to surface and naval components of air-defense, in conclusion the bombers will most likely get a clear path toward their targets. Where is than the point in building a stealth bomber like the B-2 for 2 billion each? In Conclusion from your point 1) - 9) advantages of air compared to rocket forces, that the speed maters most.
Greetings
Got some really bad misspelling sorry. The last question is:
Furthermore ive got a question concerning Bombers development.
You wrote the rocket forces will destroy all surface to air and naval components of air-defense, in conclusion the bombers will most likely get a clear path toward their targets. Where is than the point in building a stealth bomber like the B-2 Spirit for 2 billion each? In Conclusion from your point 1) - 9) review of the advantages of air compared to rocket forces, it seems to me, that the speed of the bombers has to be most important.Stealth on the other hand, seems negligible because the bombers get all hostile, dangerous assets destroyed for them.
Greetings
You are welcome. It's been a while since I had the chance to brush up on this subject.
"Manned platform = more positive control." will fade away with Arificial Intelligence becoming more reliable
IMHO it will be a long, long time before autonomous AI systems are entrusted with custody and indepedent employment of nuclear weapons. Generals watch movies like everyone else - so they've seen "Terminator" and they know Skynet :)
Accuracy of the ICBMs will probably further Increase and burried targets wont be a problem anymore.
With underground targets it's not so much a question of accuracy but the need to drive a nuclear warhead deep in the ground *and then* detonate it. (You could drop a megaton nuke on top of Zhigouli and it wouldn't even notice).
ICBMs can't do it because the terminal speed is so great that the warhead breaks apart on impact. Cruise missiles don't (yet) have the kinetic energy to dig as deep as required. Currently only gravity bombs fit the bill. Maybe this will change in the future, maybe not.
With more automatism the ICBMs ability to immediately assess attack damage and re-engage if necessary will most probably become better.
No, because by the time the RVs come down on the targets (and hit or miss), what is left of the missile (the warhead bus) is also re-entering the atmosphere and has neither the ability to assess the strike damage nor any remaining weapons to re-engage (all RVs have long been assigned and kicked on their way).
Now *in theory* you could have overhead satellites asses the damage and trasnmit new targetting orders to ICBMs about to release their RVs. However this is extremely difficult to work because:
1) You must guarrantee the overflight of the original target area by a suitable satellite just at the moment of RV impact, a tricky thing at the best of conditions (aircraft are much more flexible recon assets than satellites) and during a nuclear exchange you are likely to have most of your sats knocked out early anyway.
2) By the time an ICBM rises to its burnout point and releases the warhead bus, it has pretty much aligned itself to a fairly tight target geographical area whereupon it will disperse its payload. It's not easy to fetch a warhead bus that was originally aligned to, say, shower Murmansk with RVs and retarget it to strike the Crimea. Sub-orbital mechanics are difficult enough as they are.
3) You have an extremely tight time window in which to perform the assess-decide-command cycle.
Furthermore with more and more mobile ICBMs like that one
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/ff/5228-769639.jpg
the planes will lose their mobility advantage.
Quite the contrary, the proliferation of mobile ICBMs makes bombers all the more necessary, precisely because they are the only assets that can actually hunt down such targets, instead of simply firing at pre-set coordinates like ICBMs/SLBMs do. (That's an SS-25 [Topol] BTW).
SLBMs dont replace the Rocket Forces cause the Submarine Fleet is the most expensive arc of the Nuclear Triade isnt it?
Cost is undeniably a factor. Another is that communications with the submarine force are inherently more unreliable. With ICBMs and bombers you typically have a pretty fair idea of what you have at hand and where your assets are. With subs you often have to gamble. Military planners hate gambling (on the job).
Your write : " 5) Ability to hunt down, independently locate and destroy mobile targets. This became a must-have option when mobile command centers and mobile ICBMs became a reality."
When hostile strategic Bombers enter your Airspace and start nuclear delivery, won`t the mobile ICBMs immediatly start their delivery? I just see a time-dependent problem for locating and engaging the mobile ICBMs with the bombers.
Mobile ICBMs (and countervalue SLBMs) are inherently second-strike weapons, an ace in the hole that you will want to keep unused as long as possible. They are your negotiating card for when things get *really* bad - use them early and you are left with nothing to bargain with. Not every nuclear war scenario assumes that every missile in the world is fired in the span of a few hours. There are plans for protracted nuclear conflict lasting weeks, even months. (The plausibility of such scenarios is a separate concern).
You wrote the rocket forces will destroy all air to surface and naval components of air-defense, in conclusion the bombers will most likely get a clear path toward their targets. Where is than the point in building a stealth bomber like the B-2 for 2 billion each?
1) Because not all war plans call for nuking everything in the bomber's path. What if the bomber in question is going to deliver the very first nuke of the war, perhaps in a surprise attack? In such cases you have the enemy IADS being intact - hence you need to plan for such a contingency and design an aircraft capable of operating under this condition. Hence the B-1 and later the B-2.
2) Even if your plans do call for a cooperative missile strike on IADS elements, this doesn't mean the enemy will oblige. Mobile radars, mobile SAMs and fighters operating from road strips may mean that your ICBMs/SLBMs fall on empty bases. What then? Again, the bomber must run the gauntlet of a fully functional (though degraded) IADS.
a. why don't you guys switch to one of soc's forums to discuss probles unrelated to topic?
b. don't you think that a single shot of an obsolete sam ten years ago put an end to the whole stealth conception?
1. A dicsussion about ICBMs vs bombers is unrelated to the RVSN? I think not.
2. Not anymore than the sinking of the Eilat (or the Sheffield) invalidated surface ships as the primary means of sea control. The F-117 shootdown (and the write-off of another due to AAA in the same theater) was the sole black mark to the rather impressive service record of this aircraft.
I have thought that if an Nuclear War started between the US and the Russian, It would not matter if these Nuke War Heads delivered by Bombers or Missiles (ICBM)... Everything that we know will end, right?
Yes and no.
Two short articles by Stuart Slade help describe "the day after":
http://homepage.mac.com/msb/163x/faqs/nuclear_warfare_103.html
http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/showthread.php?t=10912
is all that buildings and military places abandoned ?? looks like there is no pople and cars , from air....
why russia dropped all previous forces and knowledge?
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