USSR: PREPARING FOR NUCLEAR WAR

 

 ICBM R-7 / P-7A (SS-6 Sapwood). USSR. Was in service in the 1961-1968.
1. The head part
2. The instrument compartment
3. Tanks oxidant
4. Tunnel pipe pipeline oxidant
5. Marching engine central unit
6. Aerodynamic wheel
7. Marching side engine block
8. The central unit
9. Side block

Above are pictures of the warhead for the first Soviet ICBM, the SS-6 "Sapwood" (official Soviet designation "R-7" or "8-K-3"). The "Sapwood" carried a heavy 10,000 lb. three-megaton warhead and on its 21 August 1957 test flight flew 4,000 miles from Kazakhstan into the western Pacific Ocean. The SS-6 was deployed in 1958 and had a range of 8,500 kilometers (5,270 statute miles).

The "Sapwood" warhead was probably first tested in Soviet test No. 47, on 6 October 1957. This test conducted at the Novaya Zemlya Test Range was a 2.9 megaton airburst. This was the largest Soviet test up to that time, and only the third Soviet test in the megaton range. Additional tests in 1958 with yields of 2.9 and 2.8 Mt (18 October 1958 and 22 October 1958 respectively) may also have been tests of this design.

Another possible escape route would have been to find a plausible way to fight a nuclear war. This became harder rather than easier with the growth of the nuclear stockpiles. So long as the numbers were small, nuclear use would result in catastrophe but not necessarily a condition from which recovery was impossible. Even up to the late 1950s Soviet leaders were suggesting that the vast size of its territory and dispersal of its population gave it a strategic advantage vis-á-vis the United States in any nuclear exchange. Soon, however, they were reminding the Chinese that nuclear weapons do not 'obey the class principle'. Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung was said to have observed that even if 300,000 Chinese were killed, there would be another 300,000 ready to continue the fight. In his memoirs Khrushchev recalled a conversation with Mao by the side of a swimming pool, in which he warned that 'with the atomic bomb, the number of troops on each side makes practically no difference to the alignment of real power and to the outcome of a war. The more troops on a side, the more bomb fodder.'

Equally important for Moscow was the reduced relevance of distance. The routes into Russia were well trodden, but invaders had always been thwarted, albeit at great cost. Long-range bombers and missiles could, however, leap over Russia's vast hinterlands. During the 1950s a network of Western air bases began to be established close to the Soviet borders from which nuclear bombs and then medium-range missiles might be delivered. Soviet leaders began to complain of encirclement. Soon it was clear that even eliminating those hostile bases could not eliminate the threat. Long-range ballistic missiles could deliver a lethal punch in minutes over many miles. It was hard to see how this punch could be resisted.

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For the rest of the 1950s, encouraged by exaggerated claims from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and some worst-case analysis from the US Air Force, there were regular claims that the Soviet Union was racing ahead in ICBM production so that a 'missile gap' was developing that would leave the United States too weak to cope with Soviet threats. Those urging a crash US effort in all areas of high technology warned of the consequences of inferiority: 'What would the Americans find if they reached the moon?' a scientist was asked during congressional hearings. 'The Russians!' he replied.

Meanwhile, in their dash to be the first with an ICBM, the Russians had built an unwieldy system that could not be deployed in numbers.

Rods from God

by John Macneill Space-based weapons have exceptionally disparate advantages and disadvantages: They are extremely powerful and difficult to defend against, but they’re also expensive to launch and maintain and they’re in constant motion above the Earth. John Macneill

Space-launched darts that strike like meteors

 

By Eric Adams
This technology is very far out—in miles and years. A pair of satellites orbiting several hundred miles above the Earth would serve as a weapons system. One functions as the targeting and communications platform while the other carries numerous tungsten rods—up to 20 feet in length and a foot in diameter—that it can drop on targets with less than 15 minutes’ notice. When instructed from the ground, the targeting satellite commands its partner to drop one of its darts. The guided rods enter the atmosphere, protected by a thermal coating, traveling at 36,000 feet per second—comparable to the speed of a meteor. The result: complete devastation of the target, even if it’s buried deep underground. (The two-platform configuration permits the weapon to be “reloaded” by just launching a new set of rods, rather than replacing the entire system.)

The concept of kinetic-energy weapons has been around ever since the RAND Corporation proposed placing rods on the tips of ICBMs in the 1950s; the satellite twist was popularized by sci-fi writer Jerry Pournelle. Though the Pentagon won’t say how far along the research is, or even confirm that any efforts are underway, the concept persists. The “U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan,” published by the Air Force in November 2003, references “hypervelocity rod bundles” in its outline of future space-based weapons, and in 2002, another report from RAND, “Space Weapons, Earth Wars,” dedicated entire sections to the technology’s usefulness.

If so-called “Rods from God”—an informal nickname of untraceable origin—ever do materialize, it won’t be for at least 15 years. Launching heavy tungsten rods into space will require substantially cheaper rocket technology than we have today. But there are numerous other obstacles to making such a system work. Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org, argues that the rods’ speed would be so high that they would vaporize on impact, before the rods could penetrate the surface. Furthermore, the “absentee ratio”—the fact that orbiting satellites circle the Earth every 100 minutes and so at any given time might be far from the desired target—would be prohibitive. A better solution, Pike argues, is to pursue the original concept: Place the rods atop intercontinental ballistic missiles, which would slow down enough during the downward part of their trajectory to avoid vaporizing on impact. ICBMs would also be less expensive and, since they’re stationed on Earth, would take less time to reach their targets. “The space-basing people seem to understand the downside of space weapons,” Pike says—among them, high costs and the difficulty of maintaining weapon platforms in orbit. “But I’ll still bet you there’s a lot of classified work on this going on right now.”

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But there is a HUGE flaw in this whole scenario, and that is that you cannot simply "drop" something from an orbital platform. The platform and everything attached to it is all traveling at the same orbital velocity, so if the rod is "dropped" it will simply continue to drift along in the same orbit. The only way to get it to 'fall' to earth is to reduce its velocity. This adds a second problem - recoil. If you propel it with a firing mechanism, similar to a bullet, the momentum taken from the projectile will be added to the platform, changing its orbital characteristics - and not by an insignificant amount. In order for such a system to function it would require the rods to have their own self contained firing mechanism AND to have any degree of accuracy the mechanism would have to be ultra-precise - in essence making our simple kinetic energy/mass weapon a complex guided missile.

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January 3, 1999 - Mars Polar Lander lifts off on its ill-fated mission to Mars. This NASA probe is to land within about 600 miles of the Martian South Pole, along with dropping two surface-penetrating darts. Contact with the probe is lost on December 3, 1999 as it is descending through the Martian atmosphere and it is never heard from again, the first failure of a U.S. planetary soft landing in 30 years.