I’ve just been reading a very long transcirpt of a DOD press briefing entitled “Gen. Kernan And Maj. Gen. Cash Discuss Millennium Challenge’s Lessons Learned“. It’s about the recent experiments in future warfighting methods, techniques, procedures, C-cubed and so forth. It’s a very long transcript. I woke abruptly from a deep alpha state when I read this comment by Cash:
And the big idea is, I want to be able to, as a concept developer, strike any target on the globe within 45 minutes from the time the president says, “Strike”. Forty-five minutes. That’s the big idea. Then I want to follow up that strike in 20 hours with a ground force. That’s the big idea.
Hands up for everyone who recognizes the significance of “45 mimutes”.
Objects in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) do one full orbit every 90 minutes. The exact time varies with the orbital parameters, but this has been a rough number for human operations from the time of John Glenn to the time of the International Space Station. 45 minutes is one half an orbit, the time required to reach the antipodes from where you sit.
Maj General Chases’ requirement can only be fulfilled by a suborbital spacecraft or a space based weapon. Since these experiments were aimed at studying future warfighting capabilities and requirements, I would suggest he is thinking about a manned suborbital bomber. It is technically feasible in the near term and I personally know of at least one USAF guy who was pushing for the idea a decade ago. He left the service but that does not mean his ideas died.
It’s not that far out and there are those of us who think it might already exist in the very deep black world. More because it could and because it would be rather useful than because we “know” anything.
It just seems like such a bloody good idea.
[Perry puts his hand up]… yes, that is rather startling! Here comes the future.
It’s already possible to strike any target within 45 minutes using ICBMs and SLBMs. The technology is mature, the infrastructure is built. Just put conventional loads in them.
While your statement is true, I have strong doubts he is considering that. ICBM’s make a lot of people very nervous whereas a manned suborbital spacecraft would be far less worrisome.
I would also add that an ICBM is a bloody expensive way to deliver one rather small bomb. And MIRV’ing is going to make a lot of people even more upset. It really is a good idea to phase out offenisve nuclear weeapons. Putting conventionals on top is going to make it that much harder to verify.
It’s also not very reuseable, and while RV accuracies have improved a great deal, I do not think they are that good.
A real near-spaceplane lets you get to the target quickly; it can verifiably not be a nuclear weapons capable system; it can easily carry a mix of munitions and once approaching the target it might use standard smart weapons. Once “very precise holes” have been made at the target site (as my ex-USAF friend put it) you need only enough fuel to get yourself out of theatre. You don’t have to come home in one go.
How about a permanently manned space station, instead? Jerry Pournelle postulates smart weaponry consisting of an iron bar with a guidance package, sort of a guided meteor, using kinetic energy.
Or if you have a couple days, like Mycroft Holmes in ‘The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress’,
“We’ll throw rocks at ’em!”
A LEO station only sees a fraction of the Earths surface. To guarantee full coverage you have to go polar orbit; you are then talking perhaps a day to cover the entire surface. There are other orbits but all have their problems and none of them give you the “45 minutes to anywhere” he suggested. Even space based weapons would require that you have something like an Iridium system of 70 or so… which is why I think the manned bomber is more feasible given the threat model.
http://msnbc.com/news/613369.asp?cp1=1
Excerpt:
An experimental NASA spacecraft could well be the harbinger for a small armada of billion-dollar space bombers — “space operations vehicles” that could be launched from a U.S. base and fire weapons at almost any target on Earth, all within 90 minutes of a presidential order.
Sounds like they’ve improved the speed since last year.
Hrm….
I think manned is a dumb, dumb choice for this kind of a job – the sheer size and complexity of life support, the additional hassles of having low-g tolerence components in the system (humans are squishy at 20g!) – why send a human being to do a machine’s job?
That said, a reusable craft with semi-standard ordanance might make a lot of sense from a cost point of view, particularly if we start thinking about smart bombs and ultra-high altitude delivery. Something like a space-base B52 – fly (is that the right word?) space-robo-BUFF over the target, drop the ordinance, and fly it home again.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Ugly, but it might work rather well…..
They’ll just have to make sure the weapon system doesn’t fly over Berkeley. That would be illegal (they just made space over the Blithering Moron Capital of the World a space-weapons free zone, although enforcement capabilities were not dicussed in the legislation).
I wouldn’t count on anything NASA is doing to show up in the DOD. They just don’t have the right mindset and I am not holding my breath for them to learn how to keep track of money, even with a person of Sesn O’Keefe’s background beating on it.
Far more likely is a deep black program. It will be manned because the USAF are pilots. If you think they will get behind a spiffy new spaceplane that leaves them on the ground, you simply haven’t ever been around them. That’s part of the politics of it. Another issue is a robotic bomber will be a very hard sell for more reasons than I care to go into here.
Another reason is the life support is not really that much of an issue. We’re talking about a suborbital craft. From a pilots perspective the life support for 70K MSL in an SR71 or U2 might as well be for space. There just ain’t a lot to breath outside the cockpit at that altitude.
And remember, remember, remember. I am not talking orbital. Orbital is a much harder design problem. Suborbital. Lower heat loads, lower re-entry speed. It’s a winged re-entry, probably of a “low” wing load vehicle so we’re not talking spectacular G’s. Re-entry’s are rather hard to hide, so stealth doesn’t matter much. And at the speeds and altitudes of attack, there really isn’t any credible threat, but I’m sure we’d stick in all the latest anyway. Electronics aren’t as big a deal in the mass budget these days.
It will happen. It may already have happened as a spyplane.
The Jerry Pournelle system referred to above is called “Thor” and consists of many packages, each with several, what Pournelle terms as, ‘smart crowbars’. Each of these crowbars would be tipped with an ablative shield and fitted with a small guidance package/thruster unit sufficient to get the thing moving in the correct direction. From there, gravity does all the work, and you get extreme velocity kinetic energy weapons, striking at near orbital velocity.
The beauty of the system is in its simplicity, and low cost relative to the “manned bomber” concept. With off-the-shelf technology, this could be operational in a very short time, if not already. Pournelle wrote about this in 1977, and I have read other sources referring to orbital kinetic energy weapons in the years since.
Could you imagine, “Call in an orbital strike on grid coordinates…”
I know the system and I knew the entire “Gang of Four” who pushed SDI at the start: Pournelle, Graham, Woodcock and Hunter. With all due respect, a Thor system would take a very long time to get through Congress.
I also have serious, serious doubts about getting a bunker buster level CEP from an orbital system. Don’t tell me we can do X and we can do Y: we can’t do the system yet. We can’t. No one has ever developed sensors and controls for terminal correctoins from inside a plasma sheath heading for the ground at 20km/sec.
A manned suborbital bomber is politically do-able; the price is no worse than the B2; the technology for a suborbital skip bomber is just not that far out.
Thor is technically very nice. But it will take you 30 years to get it deployed. Maybe longer. Most of the effort will be political.
This sub-orbital bomber, if built, will be manned for political control reasons.
ICBMs have too many political hotbuttons attached to their use for it to be otherwise.
The half way house might be continental ranged (3,000-6,000 miles) hypersonic (mach 6+) cruise missiles launched from manned strategic bombers. This would also imply strategic bombers based in places like Diego Garcia, Guam and Accension Island for the quick reaction times wanted.
Yep. Can you imagine trying to explain to a russian “Cheyenne Mountain” commander of Cold War vintage that the 5 ICBM’s coming his direction aren’t nuclear and really, honestly are just passing by?
Somehow, I doubt that NASA and the DOD will give a second thought to complying with Berkeley’s piddling little municipal laws. They can ban all the coffee and pizza ovens they want, but don’t fuck with our Orbital Death Platforms.
With the THOR, I don’t think we’re talking bunker buster, I think we’re talking about a reasonably accurate small-area saturation bombardment system. Used in conjunction with real-time satellite or remote aircraft surveillance assets, it would be a powerful system. Consider it as a cost saver vs. not a manned skip-orbital bomber, but the Crusader Artillery system. Which would be more effective and cost efficient?
Of course, we’re talking Washington here, and anything run through there will come out with a significantly expanded price-tag. I doubt that a system like this would ever be proposed, as the Army would have a cow! But it would be effective.
I h ave no disagreements with the effectiveness, once you have solved the terminal guidance problem (remember, you are trying to sense from inside a plasma all the way to the ground).
But the cold war is gone and I just don’t think a space based weapons system will make it over the political hurdles. Approval will go to weapons that can be stored in a hanger or crate, out of sight and out of mind, until they are needed.
The only way I would see such a system getting through to deployment would be if it were a ground-stored munition with quick orbital deployment when needed… and de-orbited after the crisis so as not to cause too much trouble with various sensitivities.
I also rather prefer this myself. I don’t really want the USA to be globally and spatially deployed in peace time. We should basically stay home and have systems that can deploy from home bases, only when needed, only for as long as needed.
I don’t really want the USA to be globally and spatially deployed in peace time.
Quite so, Dale! How is the rest of the world going to react to the USA having a permanent deployed Sword of Damocles hanging over them in ‘peacetime’? ICBM’s are bad enough.
Also, it is not so hard to think of many ways to mess with an orbital weapon system that you don’t like that is up there all the time if you are, say, China… i.e. you have an indigenous booster industry quite capable of putting a few bucket fulls of ‘pebbles’ in orbit on an inconvenient trajectory.
Let’s see if I can puncture some innacurate notions.
First, the distinction between using “ICBMs” and a new vehicle is completely academic. Any vehicle which flies a sub-orbital trajectory from one continent to another is by definition an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, regardless of whether it’s an MX or a newly built piloted rocketplane. Rockets of all kinds have the same types of signatures to orbital infrared early warning satellites. The same applies to radar signatures (sans radar stealth techniques, but I think we don’t want to make countries like China and Russia jumpy by introducing radar stealthy sub-orbital warheads). Any nation which detects a rocket launch correlated with a sub-orbital radar track with an expected touchdown point near their territory will necessarily assume that it is a potential nuclear attack against their country. This applies no matter what vehicle you use for launch and no matter what the true payload is.
Second, the plasma sheath does not stay around the reentering object all the way to the ground. This is a simple and easily verifiable fact. Terminal guidance after reentry would actually be not that difficult using JDAM based (GPS targeted, aerodynamically guided) systems.
Third, the cost of weapons deliverd in this manner will be high. About a factor of 10 greater than delivery by cruise missiles (roughly $1,000/lb (of warhead) for Tomohawks, and $10,000/lb for MX missiles). So these weapons would only be used to strike a small number of the most high value targets.
Nevertheless, such a system could have battlefield utility. A Peacekeeper MX missile could deliver a “bunker buster” JDAM/BLU-113 warhead to anywhere in the world on short notice (circa 8,000 lbs). Using the “DAMASK” upgraded JDAM guidance systems they would have an accuracy of 3 meters. Thus, they could be able to destroy hardened targets on nearly any point on the globe within one or two hours notice (assuming a bit of overhead for C^3 decision making and authorization et al). That, I think, is an impressive and potentially useful capability. Other payloads are also possible, such as autonomous UAV intelligence gathering drones, cluster bombs, fuel air explosives, incendiaries, mines, etc. However, at $70 million per warhead the target would have to be very valuable militarily. Though arguably the cost is alternatively negligable because we already paid for the missiles and a fiar number of them could be consider “surplus” at this point.
Newer launch vehicles could potentially have higher payloads. Conceivably a sub-orbital missile capable of delivering >20,000 pounds could be developed at fairly low cost and have a unit cost of less than the MX missile (i.e. cost only about 2x-3x as much as cruise missiles per lb delivered to the target). Though the military in these times is not well known for cost effective development so those figures are questionable.
The perception of nuclear attack is the biggest hurdle in terms of actually using this kind of weapon system. The way to fix that is to make agreements with nuclear armed nations to set up a “hotline” whereby we can notify them a short time before the launch of a non-nuclear ICBM, so that they will not perceive it as a potential threat against them and launch a nuclear counter attack on warning.
It’s a feasible idea with some merit, but it has some major hurdles to get over before it could be considered for use.
Quick addendum:
Basing weapons designed to strike the ground in orbit is a bad idea. Firstly it takes more energy to boost an object into orbit than to hit a target anywhere on Earth with a surface-to-surface trajectory (plus, there is the added overhead of reentry propulsive needs). Secondly orbital weaponry has a much increased “lead time” before it can be used to strike a ground target due to its orbital track and small horizon. Without vastly expensive massive orbital manouvering capability any particular orbital weapons platform will have to wait as much as an entire day before it is properly aligned with a ground target to be able to hit it. Thirdly, putting weapons in orbit puts them farther from maintenance and inspection facilities and capabilities, you will have less opportunity to verify their functionality and to keep them operational. In short, it’s a bad idea all around and land/sea based missiles are a better choice in terms of cost, maintainability, and timely availability.
As it is quite late here, I can’t discuss all of your points right now. However you seem to have one misunderstanding about the discussion. When we are speaking of plasma, we are not talking about RV’s, we are talking about the smart crowbars of Pournelle’s THOR system. They carry no explosives; they are a kinetic energy weapon that rather than decelerating on re-entry, are designed to impact at velocities in the 10-20km/s range. Believe me, an object piercing through the lower atmostphere (assuming the bloody thing can be built to even survive it) at those speed is going to have a very brightly glowing plasma around it.
THOR is cute, but it … needs a bit of work.
As to the second comment: I haven’t exactly been arguing in favour of orbital now have I?
I will, however, argue in favour of the skip bomber. But no more this AM.
Oh, what the hell…
First of all, you seem to mostly be violently agreeing with the points I’ve been making in response to others here. I disagree with very little of what you say, and if you read carefully you will see that much of it has been covered, albiet not with the part numbers.
One point of disagreement though: a suborbital intercontinental skip bomber willnot fly the same track as an ICBM. Not even close. The idea has been around since WWII when Sanger suggested it as a way of attacking New York from Germany. I’m sure you must be familiar with it. Very, very different flight profile from an ICBM.
The reason for suborbital strike-bombers, hypersonic cruise missiles, or Thor is that they address a certain target set in a desired time no other existing capability can match.
There are cheaper and quicker way to address deep hard targets.
A B2 stealth bomber with two 40,000 lb depleted uranium, long rod shaped, smart fuzed, smart bombs can eliminate all but the most deeply buried (30 meters of stone or more) targets.
This bomb is also a fine candidate for a sub-kiloton micro-nuke or conventional thermobaric warhead.
I have heard this weapon referred to as the “DU telephone pole from 40,000 feet.”
The key here is “target service rate per unit time.” With only a dozen B2 available at any one time, The US is in a bind facing someone like China, Russia or North Korea who has a large number of the heaviest and most deeply buried bunkers.
The B2 force is sufficient for everyone else.
Going to hypersonic cruise missiles, suborbital bombers, or orbital kinetic energy weapons will happen after the B2s are gone, AKA 20 plus years from now.
Their real competition is going to be high persistence UAVs dropping micro-bots that crawl and fly on the entrances to these places.
In the 20 year time frame, microbot delivered warheads could be a real possibility and one I had not considered. Cute.
However, we’re still back to skip bombers to service Maj Gen. Cash’s response time of “45 minutes”. Although I agree with others that an ICBM delivered conventional would work (although I would expect a substantial development program. These bits don’t just bolt together and work off the shelf), I don’t think they are politicallly feasible.
If we carry out regular global pilot training operations with USAF skip bombers bouncing along the upper edge of the atmosphere all the time, we neatly bypass the ICBM problem. They’re above territorial limits, they are distinctive, they are manned.
20 years is probably the right time frame for such a craft if we started today; I’d still say there is at least a chance such already exists in black. If Dr Sanger thought he could do it in WWII, I’m quite sure the USA could have done it by now – if it wanted to.
Dale,
High persistance stealth UAVs that are parked on top of the “targets of interest” beat sub-orbital skip bombers hands down in terms of response time and cost.
You would only go for suborbital skip bombers with an enemy that has a real air defense, AKA China.
Several comments:
1) Half of a 90-minute orbit has no real significance, considering that once you get near to overflying the target it’s too late to do anything. Unless you have some means to overcome the 7km/s orbital velocity and turn around and go back. If you can do that, zero-gee ballistics are no longer a limitation and the 90-minute orbit goes out the window.
2) Never heard of this 40,000 lb bomb you’re talking about, Trent. And since the B-2 has a total payload capacity of 40,000 lb, two of them are out of the question. Right now the GBU-28 is more than sufficient for most bunker-busting tasks, and it weighs about a ninth of what you described, has no DU and actually exists. Dunno if a B-2 has ever dumped one off, though. I’m pretty sure a B-2 can only carry two internally, because it can only carry two GBU-27s.
3) Re: guided smart “crowbars”, depends on how small you want to make them. Like it or not, you’ve got to have an IMU and the GPS software and antenna take up space. Additionally, you might be in for some GPS corruption or even outage if plasma effects are bad enough. A GPS-guided “crowbar” is insufficiently accurate to destroy individual armored vehicles and may do minimal damage to bunkers. What you need is an explosive warhead, if you want to do extensive damage. And now you’re talking about bombs rather than simple armor penetrators. And a solid rod has rather limited maneuver capability, unless you put some large control surfaces on it. And actuators, batteries to power the actuators, control electronics…pretty soon you’ve got a very bomb-like object. Throw an accurate LD in there with terminal guidance, and you remove most of the impact error. You still need the GPS to get in a position to acquire and put yourself close to an intercept trajectory at acquisition.
Good ideas here. I don’t discount any of it, but there are some realistic limitations on what you can do. OTOH, if you start doing R&D now, you might have something in a few years.
The “45 Minutes” is for a suborbital flight from one side of the Earth to the other. I don’t want to get pedantic or into a lot of physics… but think of the suborbital flight as being part of an orbit that intersects the Earth’s surface at the halfway point. It’s approximate, but close enough.
And to be truthful, the Sanger style craft I am discussing will take longer than 45 minutes because it is doing multiple bounces off the upper atmosphere. It still gets there pretty quickly: I am not certain how quickly though as it depends on too many design factors. How many G’s you want to pull and max heat load and wing loading among other things. If it really came down to an urgent need for numbers I’ve got friends who could do it, but I think they are busy building things.
Just for the fun of devil’s advoca cy I’ll defend THOR this time. 😉
If your iron rod is 10 kilos and we take the inpact velocity at 10 km/s, then in SI units:
KE = .5 * 10 * (10000 ^ 2) = 500,000,000 joules
which is rather healthy… or unhealthy depending on where you sit.
Addendum: I think there are about 4.5MJ/kg of TNT, so the above would be equivalent to about 100 kilos (220lb) TNT. Just make it a little heavier (linear increase) or faster (square law) until it’s “enough” to blow through your bunker.
Just playing with numbers though. The current weapons are probably better for the job.
Well, Dale, you assume that all that energy goes into heat, all concentrated at one spot. And it doesn’t. One problem they had with early AT rounds is they just lanced right through the tank turret, one side to the other. The tank was still operational, and a crew kill wasn’t even guaranteed.
And still, you’re left with the problem of actually hitting what you want with it.
I’m not saying it can never work. I’m saying it’s a hard enough task that armchair rocket science is not enough.
David. Were you reading the same text I wrote and just re-read? “Just playing with numbers” it says. I haven’t ever even considered the possibility of hitting a mobile target, ie a tank, from orbit. To my mind that’s just plain silly for any decade this side of the 5th one.
It’s also a bit off the wall to expect anything more than arm chair rocket science, ie basic physical reality checks, in this discussion format.
The 40K bomb was mooted in International Defense Review a few years ago as a “Black program” that “didn’t make the cut.” The latest I had heard was the bomb had been produced in small “silver bullet” numbers.
The general outlines was a smart bomb with a depleted uranium casing, a length to diameter ratio of between 20-to-1 and 30-to-1, with a 40,000 lb system weight.
The B2’s “official” carrying capacity is 50,000 lbs to 5,000 miles unrefueled. Carrying two of these bombs requires a shorter range or lots of air to air refueling.
The same kind of trade off is made with the C5 transport. It can carry two Abrams tanks, but its range is closer to 2,000 miles than the 5,000 it can make with one Abrams.
Seems like a much simpler way to deal with Saddam’s bunkers than anything we’re discussing here. At least for this decade anyway.
I presume it blows as soon as it hits a void?
The name you are looking for is “Hard Target Smart Fuse.”
The USAF built this fuse a few years ago to both sense and count the number of voids the bomb passes through before detonating.
It has been used operationally in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
I knew about the use in Afghanistan. Are you talking about back in the Gulf War in Iraq? I know there were some pretty tricky things done to bunkers but I don’t remember hearing of that sort of fuse that far back. I simply don’t remember it, but then that’s a decade ago.
On the other hand, if they’ve been hitting really hard targets there recently, that is news to me also.
Interesting, Trent. Wonder if it could be modified to hold bombracks capable of releasing a 40000 lb bomb? Or what would happen when you dropped one and still had the other hanging? Guess it’s been mooted, though.