Are reusable rockets going to completely change the geopolitical landscape?

evidently the answer to the question is "no, he has never thought of why ballistic missiles aren't used with conventional warheads"

or possibly just "no, he has never thought."

Yeah, so? It's not like the US government has to care about other nations opinion.

All fields boys

It's definetely the cost calculation of it. A minuteman 3 costs 7 million and can only carry a few hundred kg worth of payload.

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It is when that other nation's opinion is that a nuclear launch is warrented.

You know nukes can be dropped from planes?
Cost is likely a huge factor. If this delivery system was cheaper than sending the Navy, they’d use it instead.

>US launches conventional cruise missile carrying ballistic missile - basically an ICBM with MIRV conventional smart munitions at this point, towards some middle eastern shithole

>Russia see's missile incoming, calls US president on the hot line, he's saying it's something so fucking retarded that it must be an absolute bluff - who the fuck would launch a conventional ICBM
>Russia activates defense systems and attempts an intercept after it crosses the threshold anyway, conventional and nuke tipped ICBM interceptor missiles fire from St. Petersburg/Moscow's air defense network.
>Russia scrambles the ICBM fleet, including road mobiles, and takes step 1 in modern nuclear war - downing the satellites, launching strikes on Navy battle goups, etc
>Worst case scenario - Nuclear War - WW3
>Best case scenario - Russia destroys the GPS system and a bunch of spy, or communications, etc satellites and the US backs the fuck down

>You know nukes can be dropped from planes?
And did you know that flying a military plane into a position where that's remotely possible generally starts an international incident?

Russia would never, ever in a million years allow ICBM launch normalization like this. Frequent conventional ICBM strikes, all headed eastwards (towards Russia) it would be absolute suicide for them to ignore it or "let it happen" when the US is launching them weekly, because it would be easy as fuck to slip a nuclear first strike in with all that ICBM traffic, and now Russia loses 90% of its response time.

You launch an ICBM heading east, once it passes a threshold Russia activates its defense network and launches back, a bullshit excuse like "Conventional ICBM" heading eastbound isn't going to cut it, esp considering even though an ICBM may be physically headed towards, say, the middle east, a MIRV from it can strike Rostov

There is no way to tell if the warheads are conventional or nuclear, so any of our enemies would have to assume they are nuclear warheads and respond in kind out of self preservation. Look up Mutually Assured Destruction Doctrine you fucking brainlet. ICBMs are built regardless of the cost, but I fail to see how shipping a much smaller, cheaper missile around the world and then firing it from a ship is more expensive than a "reusable" rocket. If you want to get into details, the Naval ships that the Tomahawks are fired from are the "reusable" part of that system.

>Blue Origin New Glenn
What a pathetic name. Sounds like something a basedhipster would come up with.

>From the desk of the sensor tech whose job it is to monitor ICBM launches

You are aware that you can tell the target area from a ballistic launch within the first 5 minutes, right, and firm that up to actual strike location within 15, right?

>best case is that Russia using asat weapons it doesn't have to create a cloud of debris that ruins hundreds of other satellites while simultaneously making all of their own sats viable military targets

lmao you fucking retards

>instead of having a huge Navy and countless military bases around the world, you would have a few hundred New Glenns at home, who could theoretically do the same job that giant military apparatus is doing

Just so we're clear, what percentage of the Navy are you envisioning being replaced here?

Look at that big slow target, the thrust values BO have published suggest it'll have a terrible thrust to weight ratio. It has about a 1/3rd less thrust than a Falcon Heavy but is about twice as large. You could easily shoot it out of the sky with a tank gun because it's so sluggish, let alone a missile. The only proposed rocket concept currently with any potential military use would be SpaceX's BFR, which could be used as a cargo hauler/crew transport in the place of a C-5, AC-130.etc It would make a cool dropship as well...

>And did you know that flying a military plane into a position where that's remotely possible generally starts an international incident?
Are you retarded? We're talking about bombing the place. Flying a plane over the place you are going to bomb means nothing.

>Russia would never, ever in a million years allow ICBM launch normalization like this. Frequent conventional ICBM strikes, all headed eastwards (towards Russia) it would be absolute suicide for them to ignore it or "let it happen" when the US is launching them weekly, because it would be easy as fuck to slip a nuclear first strike in with all that ICBM traffic, and now Russia loses 90% of its response time.

It's important to point out here that the likely consequence of something like this would be Russia immediately doing exactly the same thing back to us...which is why it behooves us to not do it to them.

Basedboys are everywhere

>No, only SpaceX's rockets can be weaponized

Well, it probably wouldn't take very long until Russia would develop their own reusable launching systems. Also, a real first strike that is aimed at taking out all of the retaliation capacities of Russia would be much bigger than a few rockets flying eastwards.

I mean, I don't think it's a coincidence that the Airforce is so eager to help SpaceX and BO in their development. They definetely have concepts of the possibilities a cheap launching system would offer. Space might very well become the most important military theater of this century.

>Also, a real first strike that is aimed at taking out all of the retaliation capacities of Russia would be much bigger than a few rockets flying eastwards.
Even a single missile heading in your general direction is enough to risk a major incident, Russia has nearly counterlaunched at undeclared scientific rockets in Europe before.
Scale is irrelevant, any ICBM is treated as a nuclear threat.
The reason SpaceX and others get so much thought is that it makes the launch of recon satellites much cheaper as they de-orbit due to gravity losses frequently

>Flying a plane over the place you are going to bomb means nothing.
Deep invasion of a nation's airspace by combat aircraft doesn't cause a major diplomatic incident, regardless of if weapons are fired....Go home and rethink your life

First off this is not necessarily accurate, especially accounting for decoys and satellite positions.
Second, who the hell is going to accept throwing away half their response time like that? Are we just go tell them "nah, if it were real, you could say goodbye to anything other than what gets off the ground in 5 minutes"?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident

>It can carry 45 tons to LEO. A cruise missile including the engine and the fuel weighs roughly 1,5 tons, so it could deliever 30 cruise missile to any destination on earth
1st no, cruise missiles like tomahawks aren't designed for orbital dive speeds and also run air breathing engines
2nd, The reason we have in theater assets is response times, this is flat out retarded and means that there is no capacity for quick reaction

> So to carry that kind of warheads you probably would have delievery costs of >150 millions today, which is why they are only being used for nuclear warheads, and you maintain a Navy/bases/other delievery system for everything else.
No They are only used for nukes because any enemy will respond to an ICBM launch as a nuclear attack, thus making conventional payloads a complete irrelevance

>Well, it probably wouldn't take very long until Russia would develop their own reusable launching systems

I hope you're joking, their space program is heavily dependent on old Soviet tech, that to be fair a lot of people still use. However they lack the funds to develop new systems.

Well, I don't think we would go straight to doing everything via ICBMs.

First of all, the US is probably not going to hold the monopoly over such a technology for very long. It would be so significant that every big nation would have its own reusable rockets withing a few years. In such a new setting, a new "defensive arms race" might well emerge, or there might even be formal agreements that building up space-based defensive structures is allowed to a certain degree, as long as it is coordinated with the other powers and no power feels threatened. Once the defensive capabilities are in space, it is only a matter of time until you would also move the offensive capabilities there (e.g. reusable ICBM-based warfare).

>Well, I don't think we would go straight to doing everything via ICBMs.
How would you go towards it when using a single one is a nuclear provocation?

>It would be so significant that every big nation would have its own reusable rockets withing a few years
1st No, there are limited resources and even more limited launch sites

> In such a new setting, a new "defensive arms race" might well emerge, or there might even be formal agreements that building up space-based defensive structures is allowed to a certain degree, as long as it is coordinated with the other powers and no power feels threatened. Once the defensive capabilities are in space, it is only a matter of time until you would also move the offensive capabilities there (e.g. reusable ICBM-based warfare).
Other than the treaties already in place to prevent that, large weapons in space where taken off the table in the 2nd Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.
For what you are describing to be plausible all nuclear arms treaties would have to be re-agreed and all sides entering into a freefor all space race

That’s kind of a fallacy because MIRV’s, esp those that seperate exoatmospherically, unless you know something I don’t about the flight radius of a MIRV upon separating from its ICBM vehicle - from the path of the ICBM itself
Pro tip: it’s hundreds upon hundreds of miles

You can launch an ICBM towards the Horn of Africa and hit Crimea with a MIRV from it

Russia has had ASAT capability since the Cold War, the fuck are you smoking - stop confusing recent air launched ASAT’s, which Russia also has, with ASAT platforms as a whole

>New Glenn
nice try jeff call me when you actually LAUNCH something to space instead of just testing random shit up

ICBM's are brute force 1 way rockets, A reusable system has dozens of factors that limit launch windows, launch sites, speeds, recovery along with many more

Yes but not the way you think.With reusable rocket satellites will become the new planes.Future war will fight mostly by drones. Almost every drone weapon on earth need satellites to work.Satellites with laser or plasma weapon to fight each other will coming soon.

Have you considered the reason we don't use ICBMs for just about anything is that the launch looks the same, be it conventional or nuclear?
Europeans have almost kicked off global nuclear annihilation with unannounced scientific rocket launches before, what the fuck do you think launching actual ICBMs is going to do?

If ICBM use like this became normalized, nuclear response and readiness for all nuclear powers would fucking plummet, in this situation a nuclear first strike becomes not only attractive but desirable, and the first power to capitalize on that wins- ICBM and conventional MIRV saturation will so drastically lower readiness and response that a first strike total incapacitation and victory will become possible

>dude, why don't we just replace the military with
>it's not like we'll ever need boots on the ground for anything

The fifties called, they want their strategic assumptions back.

The problem with old nuclear treaties is the new generation of shit leaders with no intention of upholding them, the US abandoned the ABM treaty, causing Russia to abandon de-MIRV’ing from START II, and the current NewSTART just limits ICBM/SLBM launch vehicles.

Dude why don’t we just replace the boots with hover shoes?

Problem solved

John Bolton I hope you catch on fire in your bed.

>Other than the treaties already in place to prevent that, large weapons in space where taken off the table in the 2nd Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.
For what you are describing to be plausible all nuclear arms treaties would have to be re-agreed and all sides entering into a freefor all space race

Which I definetely could see happening, because "mutual assured destruction" has a big flaw, and that is that a nation that is falling behind could use the total destruction to level the playing field. Think about the soviet union facing economic collapse, and ultimately the loss of its zone of influence. With a much more aggressive leader than Gorbachov, maybe he would have decided that they are going to nuke the US, they nuke the Russians back, which is bad, but since power is relative, they would still remain a relevant power, and not face the end of their empire. Basically, if we are going to face death anyways, we take you with us. A defense system, that can actually stop other powers from nuking you, is surely much more preferable for any nation, however all nations need to be able to put one in place pretty much simultaneously, or else you will have troubles because of inbalances in a potential nuclear war.