Since the end of the Cold War the threat of nuclear war has rapidly faded from public
perception.
Fears of a nuclear armageddon don't belong in our interconnected, digital world of facebook
and instagram.
Nuclear war is extinct, a dark legacy of the 20th century that we've put well and firmly
in our past.
Yet in just the last two years the United States has invested billions into upgrading
its nuclear arsenal, in direct response to Russia doing the same.
With the threat of nuclear war looming once more, the US military has a plan to come out
the victor in that conflict.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Infographics Show- today we're taking a look
at why the US military wants space-based lasers and particle beams.
First, how serious is the threat of nuclear war today?
Sadly, it's our duty to tell you that the threat is quite a bit more critical then you
may be aware of.
In February of this year it became official that President Trump was withdrawing the United
States from a key nuclear weapons treaty that banned the development of mid-range nuclear
weapons.
The treaty specifically included non-intercontinental nuclear weapons, and was generally meant to
prevent the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, or weapons who's primary purpose
was to be used on the battlefield and not against cities.
The purpose of the ban was to limit and then slowly eliminate these intermediary range
weapons so that the threat of nuclear war was diminished, as it was feared that these
lower yield weapons would prove far more tempting to use in war than high-yield 'city-busters'.
A low-yield exchange against military targets was likely only to prompt a similar response
from the other side, thus were militarily attractive options that presented very little
risk for escalation to full-blown nuclear war.
Yet the risk was always present, as one could never predict if an enemy would see the use
of a tactical nuclear weapon as a preemptive strike for the use of higher yield weapons,
or if an enemy might see the act of killing thousands of it's troops in one attack as
worth a full nuclear response.
Tactical nuclear weapons lack the assurances of MAD- or mutual assured destruction- that
high-yield weapons have always operated under, and thus have for decades been seen as the
likeliest provocation for nuclear war.
With President Trump's withdrawal from the INF treaty, the possibility for full-scale
nuclear war is at levels that hasn't existed since the Cold War, specially as Trump's withdrawal
was immediately followed by the announcement that the US was re-starting development of
intermediary nuclear weapons.
Yet President Trump isn't solely to blame for his withdrawal, and while withdrawal is
extremely dangerous, it might actually end up helping to keep the nuclear peace.
That's because the United States has largely retired its arsenal of intermediate range
nuclear weapons, and has not developed any tactical nukes for decades.
While it does possess the capability to upgrade some of its cruise missile inventory for nuclear
use, the process would be very time consuming, and thus the US very much lacks an intermediate
range nuclear deterrent.
Instead, America relies almost completely on its intercontinental ballistic missile,
each filled with up to twelve variable yield independently targeting warheads.
While these warheads could be 'dialed down' to be used as tactical nuclear weapons, the
launching of an ICBM would without a doubt trigger an immediate retaliatory response
from an adversary- with no time to explain to the enemy that the yield is purposefully
low.
Russia on the other hand relies heavily on its intermediate range nuclear weapons.
Faced with a very strong NATO fielding superior military forces, Russia's tactical reality
is that it cannot hope to win any conflict against a determined NATO unless it makes
free use of its tactical nuclear inventory.
In fact Russian defense officials have repeatedly and very publicly warned that Russia would
100% use their tactical nuclear weapons against NATO troops- whether they would use these
weapons as part of offensive operations, or only in defensive response if NATO decided
to push into Russia itself to seek a total military victory, is left purposefully vague.
Russia cannot win a conventional war against NATO, but if it can keep NATO scared of its
tactical nuclear arsenal, it might intimidate the alliance enough to allow Russia to seize
back some of its Cold War holdings in eastern europe- as has long been its objectives.
In case of war, NATO would have to seriously consider if defending eastern europe is worth
a nuclear exchange.
This is why President Trump wanted to leave the INF treaty, in order to give the US the
room to develop tactical nuclear weapons again and thus offer a realistic deterrent against
Russia's use of tactical nukes.
Currently Russia is banking that neither the US nor NATO is going to respond against the
use of tactical nukes with a conventional nuclear response, knowing that doing so would
trigger global nuclear war.
Yet if the United States develops new tactical nuclear weapons, it can respond to Russian
use of tactical nukes with its own, giving both sides a reason not to use them in the
first place.
Yet the nuclear cat has been let out of the bag, and already Germany is debating if it
should develop its own nuclear weapons- an astonishingly shocking turn of events for
a nation that has for a long time been vehemently against the development of its own nuclear
arsenal.
Others in Europe have proposed that the continent develop its own independent nuclear capability,
focusing on intermediate range nuclear weapons, to be operated by a joint European force.
With nuclear rearmament ramping up in Europe, Russia, and the US, other nations who have
for a long time had nuclear ambitions, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, are now mulling
the possibility of launching their own nuclear programs despite non-proliferation treaties.
The US's withdrawal from the INF treaty was a tactical necessity given Russia's public
nuclear threats, and seen by Pentagon officials as the only way to deter the use of tactical
nuclear weapons and thus prevent the escalation to full-scale nuclear war.
Yet the dominoes have already begun to fall, and the world has became a more dangerous
place than it has been in decades.
To combat the growing threats, the United States has made ballistic missile defense
a top priority, and new technologies such as lasers and particle beams might at last
give a glimmer of hope for the United States' very troubled ballistic missile defense programs.
Though President Ronald Reagan's 'Star Wars' was a fantastical concept with little basis
in technological reality, the fact remained that Reagan was very adamant about providing
the United States with a valid ballistic missile defense.
Thus for three decades the United States has poured billions into a program many have considered
the most expensive boondoggle in history, and after all that time, energy, and money
spent, the nation has very little to show for it.
At the start of 2019 the US had spent $67 billion dollars on its Ground Based Midcourse
Defense system, the nation's primary defense against incoming nuclear ballistic missiles.
Currently there are 44 interceptors spread around the West Coast, and the Trump administration
plans to add another 20 by 2021.
The interceptors are designed to accelerate a kinetic kill vehicle towards an incoming
ballistic missile and smash into it, therefore destroying the entire missile.
However, to date only 10 out of 18 tests have been rated as successful, and since 2008 only
2 out of 5 tests were successful.
The vast majority of these tests were conducted against ICBM targets that did not use countermeasures,
with only one test against an ICBM that used only simple countermeasures being successful.
In a real attack, each incoming ICBM would be deploying extensive and very advanced countermeasures,
a scenario which the GMD system has not been tested to deal with, and one that nobody in
the Pentagon thinks the system could protect us from.
Not to mention that in a full-scale nuclear exchange, the system of 44 interceptors would
have to stop about three times that number of missiles in the first wave of attacks-
yet the system assigns at minimum three interceptors per missile to ensure a kill.
Clearly the US needs a better solution to the long-desired goal of effective ballistic
missile defense, and it might at last have finally found it.
Directed energy weapons offer the ability to knock enemy missiles out at, or close to,
light speed, which makes it possible to destroy an enemy missile during its most vulnerable
phase- it's initial ascent or boost phase.
The earliest a kinetic kill vehicle can hit an incoming missile is during its midcourse
phase, while it is preparing to re-enter the earth's atmosphere and when it will already
have deployed extensive countermeasures- or already released its multiple independently
targeting warheads.
During boost phase though a ballistic missile cannot deploy countermeasures and is extremely
vulnerable to disturbances given the extreme aerodynamic stresses on the missile body itself.
To destroy missiles in this phase the US is exploring the possibility of mounting laser
and particle beam weapons either in space, or on very high altitude aerial platforms.
A particle beam weapon would consist of a beam made up of particles accelerated to extreme
velocities approaching the speed of light.
Thus the individual atom-sized particles would normally do very little on their own, but
a steady stream of relativistic particles smashing into a missile's body would act like
a chainsaw, ripping through metal and either outright destroying or destabilizing the weapon.
A laser weapon on the other hand would use nothing more than photons, shooting an extremely
high intensity laser at the speed of light towards enemy missiles lifting from their
launch pads.
Both weapons have advantages and disadvantages.
Particle beams would be less prone to 'scattering' over distance, the way a laser would scatter
over extremely long ranges until it loses its effectiveness.
However the particle beam weapon could only realistically be used from space, and orbital
debris could interfere with the fired beam.
The weapon would also have a much slower rate of fire than a laser, allowing each particle
beam to target fewer missiles.
A laser on the other hand wouldn't necessarily have to be used from space, and could instead
be fired from an extremely high flying aircraft through the upper layers of the very thin
atmosphere.
As mentioned though its range would be far more limited than a particle beam, and the
simple problem that a high flying laser weapon poses is that it would take time to get the
airborne platform into position- making such a weapon completely useless in the case of
nuclear war which would no doubt arrive without any warning.
The weapon could be mounted in space, as a particle beam, yet it would lose effectiveness
against targets still deep in the earth's atmosphere as the beam is scattered with distance
and by the effects of the denser parts of the atmosphere itself.
As the US invests billions into particle beams and laser weapons for ballistic missile defense,
what is clear is that the aim of both these weapons will be to destroy enemy missiles
during their boost phase.
Not only are the missiles most vulnerable during this phase, but destroying an enemy
missile as it lifts into the air presents the enemy with the very real possibility of
having their own nuclear weapons rain back down upon them.
This adds a layer of deterrence that may in the end be more effective than the actual
particle beams or laser cannons the US hopes to add to its arsenal.
Of course some defense experts also warn that the development and deployment of these weapons
might in fact prompt a nuclear war, specially when nations such as Russia are already so
outclassed conventionally that they know their only real hope at victory of any kind relies
on their use of nuclear weapons.
Such a nation may decide that with the deployment of an impenetrable American ballistic missile
defense shield, the time to strike is now before it is fully operational, or they will
never be able to again.