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| What Weapons Will The US Build After The INF Treaty? |
| 2018-10-23 |
| [InMilitary] The Air Force’s BGM-109G Ground-Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) was a Navy BGM-109A Tomahawk modified to fire from a Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL) truck. WASHINGTON: If President Trump withdraws from Reagan’s INF accord, it could jump-start fielding of new technologies that would have skirted the letter of the treaty, like ground-launched hypersonics. But it could also lead to less exotic solutions that the INF pact now bans outright, like mid-ranged ballistic missiles. As the product of a very particular moment in the Cold War, the misleadingly named Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces accord actually bans all cruise and ballistic missiles ‐ . It doesn’t matter whether they carry nuclear warheads or conventional ones ‐ that have a range between 500 to 5,500 kilometers, about 310 to 3,417 miles....but if and only they’re launched from the land. The exact same weapon, launched from a ship, submarine, or aircraft is completely legitimate. So what could the US military do without the treaty that it can’t do already? A congressionally mandated Pentagon report from 2013, unpublished but obtained by Breaking Defense, says that withdrawing from the treaty would create four possibilities: "1. Modifications to existing short range or tactical weapon systems to extend range." While the US has plenty of sea- and air-launched weapons that were never covered by the treaty, the only existing ground-launched system that comes close to the banned ranges is the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). But the Army’s already decided it’s not worth upgrading the 1980s-vintage ATACMS for a significantly longer range. Instead, the Army’s developing an all-new Precision Strike Missile (PRSM) to hit targets out to 499 km ‐ but officers acknowledge that’s an arbitrary limit imposed by the INF treaty, not the available technology. So, practically speaking, the end of INF would remove this restriction on the new PRSM, but not magically enable a radical enhancement of the aging ATACMS. "2. Forward-based, ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs)." This is the easiest option. In fact, the Air Force’s BGM-109G Ground-Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) ‐ whose deployment helped force the Soviets to the negotiating table and whose destruction the INF treaty explicitly ordered ‐ was simply a truck-borne variant of the Navy’s standard BGM-109A Tomahawk, whose non-nuclear version is on almost every cruiser, destroyer and submarine today. Repackaging the Tomahawk for ground launch would be even easier now than in the Cold War. That’s because the US is already installing compatible missile tubes in Poland and Romania as part of the Aegis Ashore missile defense system. While the US has repeatedly and emphatically denied Aegis Ashore has any offensive capability, Russia has repeatedly and anxiously noted that the original naval version of Aegis uses the same multi-purpose Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) to fire both defensive (surface to air) and offensive (surface to surface) missiles. Adding offensive capabilities to Aegis Ashore would probably be as simple as loading different missiles, different software, and different targeting data. It would be ironic if the Russians’ own violations of the INF drove the US to realize one of their worst fears. "3. Forward-based, ground-launched intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs)." The US would have to build a new IRBM, replacing the Cold War Pershing II that was destroyed under the INF accords, since nothing similar is currently in service. (The Air Force Minuteman III and Navy Polaris D5 are much longer-ranged "strategic" missiles never covered by INF). But the basic technology of ballistic missiles is old, shared not only with Minuteman and Polaris but with Werner von Braun’s 76-year-old V-2. Rocket boosters shoot a "reentry vehicle" (housing the warhead) into space at blistering speed, at which point it coasts back to earth on a parabolic trajectory so predictable Sir Isaac Newton could have calculated it with a quill pen. (The study of ballistics began with gunpowder cannons in the Renaissance). In fact, one of the military’s main motivations for pursuing newer technologies such as hypersonics is that they allow less predictable, more maneuverable missiles ‐ ones that could bypass today’s anti-ballistic missile defenses. One of the military’s main misgivings about the new technologies, however, is that they’re significantly more complicated than proven ballistic and cruise missile tech. So what’s the happy medium between new and proven? That brings us to the last category, the one about which the 2013 report seems most enthused: "4. Forward-based, ground-launched intermediate-range missiles with trajectory shaping vehicles (TSVs)." What on earth ‐ or rather, in space ‐ is a TSV? It’s an advanced type of a reentry vehicle, i.e. the part of a ballistic missile that reenters the atmosphere from space, as opposed to the rocket boosters, which burn out and fall away. Specifically, a TSV is launched on a ballistic missile but has "maneuvering and glide capacities," at least enough to hone in precisely on a target and to avoid a simple Newtonian calculation predicting its exact flight path. It combines a ballistic rocket launch ‐ a venerable, proven technology ‐ with a maneuvering reentry vehicle ‐ like the one allegedly built into the Chinese DF-21 "carrier killer." It would be more capable than a pure ballistic missile, yet technologically simpler and less risky than hypersonics. This might be the golden mean for the mid-term, after deploying a land-based Tomahawk but before developing combat-ready hypersonics. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #4 Hopefully ones that work and don't take 20 years to field |
| Posted by: Cheaderhead 2018-10-23 19:25 |
| #3 I like Musk launched Rods_from_God. Less pollution than nukes. Green. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2018-10-23 16:21 |
| #2 *bleep* the details. As long as there is an Earth-shattering Kaboom, I'm in. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2018-10-23 15:42 |
| #1 Just bringing back the sub launched TLAM-N's will disrupt Russian defense planning. Opens up the whole Siberian perimiter. |
| Posted by: Spereger Chereling2242 2018-10-23 13:04 |