An action thriller I read some time ago was based on terrorists’ taking over a US ICBM site and gaining control to launch it at Russia to provoke a massive response.*

Without getting into why the site couldn’t be assaulted directly, the question I kept asking myself was why the launch couldn’t have been prevented as it was happening. The story was set in the 1990s as I recall and therefore today’s most advanced weapons weren’t available, but what do you think about these responses?

Some sort of “smart” bombs of the era being dropped from altitude directly onto the silo door(s) or immediately after they open?

A helicopter-launched guided munition that targets the silo when the doors open, but before the missile is launched?

A helicopter-launched guided munition that targets the missile as it just starts to rise from the silo? Would there be enough time to react and for the munition to strike?

Tanks or something like a Bradley or even an M2 MG positioned in the area that would fire at the missile just as it starts to be visible as it rises from the silo? Would there be enough time to react and for the shells to strike if there was advance warning from surveillance aircraft that the doors were opening?

Some large rocket launches seem to be pretty slow getting started. A silo would of course protect it at the beginning, but ....

This is something I’ve wondered about since I read the tale, and am curious what the authorities say, and thanks for the comments.

* Assume all that would have been possible for whatever reason(s): Remember that the entire genre, just like sci-fi and fantasy, requires the “willing suspension of disbelief.”

That's an interesting question. How fast do the silo doors open? And how tough (i.e., hardened) is the skin of the missile (not just the warhead). I would think that some grenades on tripwires, a Claymore, even a LAW, as soon as the doors start to open might work.

I actually worked on a system I think you're describing. Tacit Rainbow involved cruise missile/UAV hybrids that would loiter over large enemy areas waiting for launch signals.

This was a response to the Soviet strategy of putting ICBM missiles on railway flatbeds, and moving them around often enough to make surveillance photos obsolete before they could be targeted. The missile would wait until the enemy fire-control radars were activated just prior to launch, and then deploy.

The project was cancelled before any units were actually produced, but the technology existed in the 80s.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: kkina,

Twilights Last Gleaming? A 1977 movie? Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark? I’ve got it on a DVD.

Not to be confused with a book with the same title printed about 10 years ago.
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341st Missile Security Force - USAF.

I'm no expert, but my kids and I are "Junior Missileers" from Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota and we walked around the launch site there and toured the Peacekeeper Missile museum in Wyoming. The door opens pretty quickly and the Minuteman hot launches from the tube unlike Russians, which I believe are blown out like a submarine before igniting.

Here is a video of a test of the door, looks like they parked the Minuteman semi over the tube to make sure there was no accidental launch or Russia freaking out.



Here a video about Quebec 1 that shows the door coming open at the beginning. The Peacekeeper was our only ICBM that cold launched. You can see the slight delay but its still moving pretty good when it ignites.

Depending on payload it would be more advisable to let it go feet wet, assuming the target was another country.

Short answer to your question is two fold:

1. Do we know the silo is taken over?
2. I'm going to assume you would in real life, maybe not in the fictional scenario, but given we know 100% our operational I&W, YES, we could easily have the launch site hit with a kenetic strike based on any number of telemetry or even frequencies hitting the threshold for launch.

Again, big question is, would you want to hit it there or once collateral damage wasn't an issue. Becomes harder after it launches for sure.

quote:

And how tough (i.e., hardened) is the skin of the missile

It's not very tough, at least the skin of the earlier Titan II wasn't. The silo disaster in Arkansas was caused by a big socket being dropped during maintenance, which pierced the missile's skin and fuel tank.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...an_missile_explosion

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

Some large rocket launches seem to be pretty slow getting started...

Those are liquid fueled missiles, early ICBMs. Our last liquid fueled ICBM was the Titan II, which went out of service around 1987. I've never seen an ICBM launch (just the first Space Shuttle), but I understand the solid fuels (like the current Minuteman) are more like bottle rockets.

By any chance was the book Stephen Hunter's "The Day Before Midnight?"

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmund:
By any chance was the book Stephen Hunter's "The Day Before Midnight?"

Ha: no putting anything over on you.

And thanks for the videos and other information.

@92fstech

Apples and oranges.

Titan was a liquid fuel/oxidizer rocket, and the Minuteman III is three stage solid fuel.

The solid fuels are much harder initiate ignition.

(Once) Airborne is not much difference with regard to "interception", and destruction.

The issues with trying to "take one out" before it is airborne would be very significant. An anti-ballistic method would be the most likely to be successful.

I will speak to knowledge from the 80s and early 90s, in that there are such things in place that could be deployed against a threat in pretty short order.

When I was researching ballistic missiles for a prior assignment, I was amazed at how far we have come.

Accuracy as an example. Some adversaries may be in the neighborhood of a 1km CEP. I believe the Minuteman III were in the area if 20 meters, maybe 200 but you still see the difference.

It is 200 meters, just looked it up, but that's still pretty good given the range.

Just fyi, cool museum in Arizona thats worth a visit. https://titanmissilemuseum.org/

Why not just land a helicoptor on top of each set of silo doors, take the keys and walk away?

Depending on the date and proximaty for friendly forces to the silo, patriot, hawk, stinger or M163 AA system.

If you could get to the roof of the silo, you could park a pile of heavy equipment of on top of silo so that when the hatch slides open and the missile hot launches, it crashes into the equipment damaging the missile.

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Perry:
Why not just land a helicoptor on top of each set of silo doors, take the keys and walk away?

Under the conditions described in the book that was not an option. And maybe not even some of the possibilities I mentioned above. The area around the site was controlled by bad guys with weaponry that would have made that impossible.

As I say, “the willing suspension of disbelief,” but the book goes into great detail as to why a massive effective military response wasn’t possible. If it had just been a matter of walking up to the silo lid, I can readily imagine the judicious use of high explosives would have been a good starting point to prevent an effective launch. And to reiterate, the book was set in the 1990s as I recall. Post-911 and in the twenty-first century I imagine (hope, anyway) that such a threat could be handled differently.

But I didn’t want to get into all that when I posed the specific scenario questions.

I like most of Stephen Hunter’s books and that was an entertaining read.

In my uneducated opinion, if the attacker is relatively nearby, launch a IR-guided (heat seeker) missile at the ICBM, being a hot-launch the missile will home-in and detonate if not on the missile close enough to destroy it or, create a mission kill.

Can’t recall which one it was, but we disposed of ICBM’s in the 90’s. C4 can ignite it then they burn in place. Used to have a piece of glass formed from the heat on the sand in the sandbags holding the motor, wish I still had that.

MMIII MCCM from the 90s. Winner of the cold war no less

I have typed out a long response twice, yet it does not appear?