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| Science & Technology |
| What would you do for a Trident? |
| 2006-06-19 |
| The U.S. Department of Defense is trying, without much success, to get Congress to put half a billion dollars to build several dozen conventional warheads for its Trident, submarine launched ballistic missiles. The twelve American ballistic missile subs (SSBNs) would have two of their 24 missiles equipped with conventional, rather than nuclear, warheads. That would enable your $31 million Trident missile, equipped with its new, $14 million conventional warhead, to deliver the equivalent of a 2,000 pound JDAM anywhere on the planet, within 60 minutes. There are two problems with this. First, is there really enough potential need to justify spending that kind of money? Second, you have to set up a "hot line" to nations that have ballistic missiles aimed at us (Russia, definitely, probably China, and maybe France) to quickly warn them that the SSBN missile launch, their early warning systems just picked up, is not the beginning of a attack on them. Without this hot-line treatment, those other nuclear powers might let their paranoia get the best of them, and fire their own nukes at us. The U.S. Navy is touting the non-nuclear Trident warhead as a useful tool in the war on terror. So far, they have not made an interesting case. Note that hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on SSBNs over the last half century, and none of these ships has ever fired any kind of shot in anger. For that we can all be grateful, but it does appear that the SSBN guys are getting a bit antsy. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #12 Its not just one warhead per missile. Heck this article here says 96 warheads on 24 missiles The key part also pointed out and this is what DARPA has definitely been looking at is the re-entry bus. If they can slow it down correctly on re-entry they can put approximately 5 tons worth of payload or so on the sucker. More if they redo most of the missile and give it a higher payload by offsetting the booster for smaller range. Imagine 5 tons of SDBs or 5 tons of the 500lb JDAM units each guided to a separate target from near re-entry heights of 200,000+ ft. |
| Posted by: Valentine 2006-06-19 21:35 |
| #11 I always thought they should have kept around a few of the old Pershing II landbased ballastic missles for this kind of mission. They had a 2000 mile range and 7 minute flight time. They had very good accuracy pre-GPS and could have been made a lot better now. |
| Posted by: Hyperfine 2006-06-19 21:04 |
| #10 First, is there really enough potential need to justify spending that kind of money? First, I'd say this is stretching it, even for strategypage. A half-billion? That's peanuts in the world of the DoD. Look at it this way, we got the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska defeated ($300-something million), just use that money, add another $100+ million and call it a day. |
| Posted by: BA 2006-06-19 20:50 |
| #9 There is nothing one of these can do that we cannot do with a B1, a lobbed delivery, and a JDAM kit on a 2000 pound penetrator bomb. Do the math: nearly Mach1 at 40,000 ft and with a max trajectory flight path, and a lob release - that buys you a LOT of miles. Also, with regards to the target set, there is little of Iran's nuc and leadership facilities that we cant put at risk that way. |
| Posted by: Oldspook 2006-06-19 19:48 |
| #8 Yep, an Iranian bunker buster. Don't need to tell Russkies. It'll be there before they know or see it. |
| Posted by: SOP35/Rat 2006-06-19 18:15 |
| #7 (from the Wiki) "Interest in the potential exploitation of polymetallic nodules generated a great deal of activity among prospective mining consortia in the 1960s and 1970s. Almost half a billion dollars was invested in identifying potential deposits and in research and development of technology for mining and processing nodules. These initial undertakings were carried out primarily by four multinational consortia composed of companies from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan and two groups of private companies and agencies from France and Japan. There were also three publicly sponsored entities from the Soviet Union, India and China. In the mid-seventies, a $70-million international joint venture succeeded in collecting multi-ton quantities of manganese nodules from the abyssal plains (18,000+ depth) of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Significant quantities of nickel (the primary target) as well as copper and cobalt were subsequently extracted from this "ore" using both pyro and hydro methods. In the course of this 8-year project, a number of ancillary developments evolved, including the use of near-bottom towed side-scan sonar array to assay the nodule population density on the abyssal silt whilst simultaneously performing a sub-bottom profile with a derived, vertically-oriented, low-frequency acoustic beam. The technology and art developed during the course of this project were never commercialized because the last two decades of the 20th century saw a glut of nickel production (mined in Ontario, Canada). The estimated $3.5-billion (1978 US dollars) investment to implement commercialization was an additional factor. Sumitomo Metal Mining continues to maintain a small (place-keeping) organization in this field." However, this is what I would call "easy technology", like picking up the fruit that has fallen from a tree. It's a lot harder when you have to make a ladder to get up in the branches to pick the fruit. How *would* a mining company mine ore from the ocean floor? Most likely using explosives to shatter the rock, then using conveyor belts to take the rock to the surface. But the bottom line is that, if the mining companies just know where to mine, they will figure out a way to mine. Miners are very good that way. (As an aside, 18th Century Spanish silver mines in Mexico had only minimal steel for tools, yet developed advanced mining operations using mostly what was commonly available: manpower, wood and rawhide.) |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-06-19 16:28 |
| #6 What would you do for a Trident? si, we should use it to flood |
| Posted by: MEChA 2006-06-19 15:58 |
| #5 isn't that why they built the "Glomar Explorer" in the first place? Heh. Funny how the idea of hoovering up untold riches from the sea floor seemed to evaporate after a certain rooski sub was recovered. Almost makes you think it was a cover story or something. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2006-06-19 15:30 |
| #4 If they're only talking about putting a glorified JDAM on top of the thing, then IMO forget it. I thought they wanted to convert it to carry some super-heavy burrowing bunker buster. |
| Posted by: Chinter Flarong9283 2006-06-19 15:19 |
| #3 I think the Trident is a perfect solution for the Iranian problem! Al |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2006-06-19 15:07 |
| #2 Mmm...resources...such as magnesium nodules on the ocean floor? They already tried that idea...isn't that why they built the "Glomar Explorer" in the first place? ;) The conventional Trident is a solution looking for a problem. |
| Posted by: gromky 2006-06-19 14:54 |
| #1 I think that one of our older Tridents should be converted into a "Sea-View"-style scientific ship. Not only would such a ship be incredibly useful for US Navy purposes, but it would actually make a profit. That is, one of its biggest missions would be to scout out undersea ore deposits literally worth trillions of dollars. Mining companies are already used to very high degree-of-difficulty just to mine low-grade ores. They would do whatever is necessary to mine oceanic medium and high-grade ores, and consider themselves lucky. Invest a few billion, make tens of billions. On the pure science side of things, it could play host to as many as 100-150 scientists at a time. "Running loud", so that everyone would know where it is, it could have free reign to all international and coastal waters, and even some major rivers. Because the boat carries a large amount of lead bars for ballast, they could be arranged as a protective wall, so the the boat could recover dangerous radioactive waste that was intentionally dumped at sea, representing a major contamination hazard. This could be a grand solution, looking for hundreds of problems to solve. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-06-19 14:35 |