Ballistic nuclear missiles have made news headlines lately, but little is known about how they work or why it is nearly impossible to defend against them. The general attitude in the United States is that North Korea is not really a threat despite having ballistic missiles. Just look at the stock market, it is at all time high.
In this article you'll learn all about how ballistic missiles work, how they differ from cruise missiles, and why you should be terrified of them.
First let's establish that in fact, the political situation is really bad. Earlier this week, Trump announced at the UN summit that he will “totally destroy“ North Korea. To which the Mr. Kim today called Mr. Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” who had “denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world.”In this article you'll learn all about how ballistic missiles work, how they differ from cruise missiles, and why you should be terrified of them.
Mr. Trump vs Mr. Kim
Mr. Kim vowed to take the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.” Note that Mr. Kim to the eyes of the North Koreans is closer to a God than a politician, so his words have real resonance. This situation is really bad. They are actually having a very serious conversation about nuclear war.
Cruise Missile vs Ballistic Missile
To appreciate the awesome power of a ballistic missile, we must start with a brief cruise missile 101. A cruise missile is a very early drone. It was invented in 1930s, long before the word drone ever existed. It is an unmanned airplane that can take off, navigate to a target using a GPS, and detonate either on impact or just before. It has usual airplane parts: wings, rudder, ailerons, tail, turbofan engine. It does not have: landing gear, windows, in-flight entertainment.
ABOVE AGM-86B CRUISE MISSILE
It comes with similar limitations of an airplane. It cruises at 550mph (not terribly fast), has good range, and can’t fly terribly high. In fact it’s designed to fly really low. You can see it and hear it coming, and even have a pretty good chance shooting it down with machine guns, rockets, explosives, `or other airplanes.
Meet the Ballistic Missile
A ballistic missile is a completely different animal. It has only 2 primary features in common with the cruise missile: 1. both (confusingly) are named 'missile' and 2. both blow things up.The ballistic missile was invented by a german student named Wernher von Braun in 1940s. His idea was really simple:
What if we put so much fuel on a rocket, it can fly all the way to space? It could hang out there for a little while, then arc back towards earth. On its way down, it will pick up so much speed, it will travel much faster than sound, so impossible to hear it. And it can be fired at night, so impossible to see it, since it does not need to burn fuel or use engines for return to earth.
It sounds more like a spaceship than a missile, doesn't it? That's because it is. In fact, the first NASA space program was a derivatives of ballistic war missile the Americans stole from Nazi Germany after WW2. They even look strikingly similar.
ABOVE (left) North Korea’s ballistic missile (right) NASA space launch
This very simple idea has some interesting properties. And by interesting, I mean absolutely terrifying.
Launch from anywhere
Since it’s going to make the trip to space, it can be launched from anywhere. Which makes it really hard for the target country to detect and counter measure. Or to even know they are the target country. Other weapons are generally launched inside the target country, or close to it.
Tiny footprint
It only needs fuel, fuel tanks, and rocket engines to get into space. To return to earth it uses gravity. So like the space rockets, it can shed the large booster rockets and be small and nimble on the way down. Just a small, silent, supersonic, precise GPS-guided warhead.Higher than any jet and faster than the speed of sound
During the launch phase, the ballistic missile reaches an awesome altitude of 1200 miles above the earth. For comparison, modern jet fighters are limited to 10 miles above the surface. On its way down the missile has a lot of time to accelerate, By the time it reaches the surface it’s traveling about 11,000mph, or 14x the speed of sound (sound travels is a measly 787 mph).Completely silent
SInce it’s traveling 14x the speed of sound, you can’t hear it coming. Sound arrives long after the payload. During WW2, London was ht with over 3000 ballistic missiles launched from Nazi Germany, always at night. London survivors speak of only seeing a flash and feeling the shock, but not hearing any sound all. None of the ballistic missiles were detected before impact, it was the most effective weapon ever built. 1000s of civilians died. It was the first true terror weapon.Vertical dive trajectory
Since it’s dropping in from space, the trajectory is mostly straight down, It’s not overflying other countries, making it even more difficult to counter measure and detect.Great, so we're actually dealing with an invisible, silent, supersonic space glider with a fricken nuke attached to it.
1 ballistic missile becomes 24
On the way to space, the ballistic missile is a single unit. But on the way down the rules don't apply. In 2009 the latest Russian ICBM design (cleverly named "SATAN 2") releases up to 24 individual hypersonic nuclear armed gliders on the way down in addition to.. well read for yourself: "Its large payload would allow for up to 10 heavy warheadsor 15 lighter ones or up to 24 hypersonic glide vehicles Yu-74,[22][23] or a combination of warheads and massive amounts of countermeasures designed to defeat anti-missile systems;[24][25] "
How to shoot down a ballistic missile
There are 3 possible opportunities to shoot it down: on its way up to space, in space, or on its way back down to earth.Shoot it down in space
Satellites will detect the launch using thermal cameras, we can intercept it and shoot it in space. There are exactly 2 government funded organizations in the US that have the ability to fly to space. NASA and SpaceX. I don’t know if you’ve watched their launches, but they’re not exactly speedy operations. Weeks of planning, waiting for good weather, and then, maybe a launch. From launch to impact, a ballistic missile’s flight takes only 30 minutes. Furthermore, it hangs out in space for only a few minutes. And NASAs rockets aren’t any faster than the ballistic missile, so it would have to launch just minutes after the ballistic missile to have any chance of intercepting it in space. FAIL
Shoot it down before impact
Brilliant, we can wait until it’s returning from space back to earth. Buys us more time, and we don’t have to fly as high. But how do you shoot down a tiny nuclear warhead traveling at 14X THE FRICKEN SPEED OF SOUND straight down from space? Our most advanced fighter the F-22 Raptor has a cruise speed of a measly 1500mph. It has no chance against a 11000mph warhead in a vertical dive. If you could somehow get close to it and fire a bullet, you’re out of luck. A bullet’s top speed is about 1700mph. FAIL
Shoot it just after it launches
I hope it’s clear to see that the only real chance of shooting it down is just after it launches. The problem is we don’t know where or when it will launch from. If you’re the proud owner of a ballistic nuclear missile, you’re going to pick a launch site as far away from enemy bases as possible. If you’re being watched, you probably won’t even launch it from your own country. What’s worse, ballistic missiles don’t need to be launched from a fixed base. They can be launched from boats, submarines, tanks, even trucks. MAYBE FAIL.Shooting it down with a satellite
I purposely omitted the "armed satellite" scenario because it's so ridiculous it's not even an option. Satellites are in a delicate high speed orbit at a specific altitude above the earth's surface, reconfiguring its orbit quickly to be exactly at the right place at the right time to intercept a missile is totally impractical. Space is really big that far from the surface and satellites move 18000 miles per hour so even if they could be at the right place at the right time they would probably miss and fly right by. TOTALLY FAIL
#InterceptingProblems
Ok, so we’ve established we need to shoot it right after it launches. It’s traveling mostly straight up, and we’re launching after it and have to fly an intercept course, so we need to fly a lot faster. Fuel is heavy, and we need the extra speed, so we’re taking less fuel than the ballistic missile. Which causes a problem - our countermeasure missile won’t make it all the way to space. If will run out of fuel well before then. So our missile better intercept their missile before it's out of fuel, and disable it, or we pay the dire consequences. The stakes are very high.(No) Safety in numbers
There is another problem. The enemy launching ballistic weapons knows that counter measure will be used so if they launch one missile there is a good chance it will be shot down. But what if they launch 10, or 100, or 500? Only one needs to break out of the atmosphere to deliver a devastating nuclear payload to a city like New York. And by the way -the missile does not explode on impact, it explodes above the target, to do the most damage. This tactic was proven with nuclear attacks against Japan. This is exactly the strategy they would use.But.. North Korean ballistic missiles cannot reach the US
This may be the case today. However, the only fundamental difference between a 1000 mile range ballistic missile, and a 5000 mile range is larger fuel tanks so it can fly longer to achieve a higher altitude before arcing back to earth. Bigger fuel tanks are a very achievable short term milestone.But.. North Korea cannot stand up against the mighty USA
The technology to defend against ballistic missiles is orders of magnitude more expensive and complicated than the ballistic missile itself.
It works like this: getting a gun and firing a bullet is easy ($300 buys you a gun, $1 for ammo). But building something that can catch up to a speeding bullet and disable it is really really hard and expensive, and probably won't work. anyway "One component, the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system (GMD), demonstrated a success rate just above 55 percent. A second component, the Aegis system deployed aboard U.S. Navy ships and on land, had about an 83 percent success rate, according to the agency...." source
But.. while North Korea demonstrated nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, they must still be years from putting nuclear bombs on their ballistic missiles
30 years ago Chinese was separately testing nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. In response to these tests, US president Lyndon Johnson underplayed them and announced there is no need for concern, that the Chinese are still very far from being able to put a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile. So for the very next test, which was supposed to be nuclear warhead blowing up underground, the Chinese put it on a ballistic missile instead, launched it and detonated the nuclear warhead in the desert. After that, the US President STFU (shut the fuck up). Let's hope history doesn't repeat itself.
Are you scared yet?
I am. When Trump says he will Totally Destroy North Korea and Mr. Kim responds about the highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history we should be paying really close attention. These guys are actually having a serious discussion about nuclear fricken war. They need to stop fucking around. I don't have a nuclear shelter, and if a single warhead gets through and detonates over New York, I am certainly going to die, as well 10 million other civilians. This is the tragic reality of nuclear war. I am not being alarmist, this is the simple science of payload delivery on a low-tech ballistic launch vehicle.
About the author
Tom is a pilot and an engineer at Google. pilot_adventures on instagram.
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