Russia Answers Biden

MAD. It’s not just a magazine, but for decades has been the cornerstone of nuclear policy. Mutually Assured Destruction – you hit us, we will hit you back, and however hard you hit us, we will hit you hard enough that at the end of it we won’t be leveling targets, we will be bouncing the rubble from where the targets used to be. As long as that retaliation is probable, no idiot wants to be the one who provokes it, right?

One of the key weapons in the scenario are MIRV missiles – Multiple Independently targeted Re-entry Vehicles, multiple individually and discretely targeted warheads.  One missile, a dozen warheads, some a few aimed here, a few there, some decoys to fool the anti-missile defenses – very clever, and very hard to deal with. Only way to make they scarier? Make them faster and harder to hit. We have been basking in the glory of Western anti-missile defenses for years – Patriots, Iron Dome, the rest – look at Iran’s last strike on Israel; between aircraft and ground based defenses Iran landed about 1% of what they launched.  How will they do against hypersonic missiles traveling ten times the speed of sound? No one really knows.

Now, Putin drew a line in the sand and warned Western allies of Ukraine not to cooperate in strikes in Russia. Up till a week ago, we placed limits on what Ukraine could, and could not, do with what we gave them.  Then Biden authorized Ukraine leader Zelensky to fire  ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles into Russia. Since then, we have been waiting to see what Putin would do. Now we know.

The new ballistic missile fired by Russia struck a military-industrial facility in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, but its real mission was delivering a deadly new message to NATO.

Hours after Thursday’s strike touched off a debate over whether the Ukrainian plant was hit by an intercontinental ballistic missile, President Vladimir Putin made a rare and surprise appearance on Russian television to clear up the mystery.

He described it as a new, intermediate-range ballistic missile that raced to its target at 10 times the speed of sound.

“Modern air defense systems that exist in the world and anti-missile defenses created by the Americans in Europe can’t intercept such missiles,” Putin declared in an icy and menacing tone.  AP

Videos of Thursday’s Russian strike showed the multiple warheads falling at different angles on the target, and each warhead would need to be defeated with an anti-missile rocket, a daunting prospect even for the best air defense systems.

And while the warheads dropped on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday were not nuclear, their use in conventional combat operations is certain to raise new uncertainty in a world already on edge.  CNN

It must be said that Russia notified all concerned before the missile launched, and clarified that it was non-nuclear, a rarity. Most MIRV missiles are nuclear, and seen as the most significant of  both targets and weapons. Think of it like this – if you are attacked, you have more retaliation launched per missile with MIRVs, but also, such launching sites are prime targets – much easier to hit a single launch site that multiple warheads.Despite that, this is the first time a MIRV missile has been used in combat, much less a hypersonic MIRV.

MIRV technology has been around for decades, but it is surprising  how widespread it has become.

It is not only Russia and the United States that have MIRV technology. China has it on its intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation, and the United Kingdom and France, along with Russia and the US, have long had MIRV technology on their submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

And there are new players in the MIRV game, too. Pakistan reportedly tested a missile with multiple warheads in 2017, and earlier this year India said it had successfully tested a MIRVed ICBM. CNN

And while we are at it, the Norks are reputedly working on it too.

Sounds a lot like Mr. Biden has opened up Pandora’s box, doesn’t it?

Category: Biden, Russia, Ukraine