Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military From: mark@jarthur.Claremont.edu (Mark Anderson) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Ballistic missiles Keywords: Ballistic missiles iraq Message-ID: <1990Aug5.042309.27779@cbnews.att.com> Date: 5 Aug 90 04:23:09 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA Lines: 52 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Mark Anderson What with the developing situation with Iraq, I have begun to wonder about their potential for acquiring ballistic missile capability and nukes. How hard is it to take a booster capable of putting something in low earth orbit (LEO) (say about ~90 minutes period) and turn it into a IBCM, or at least something capable of delivering payloads intra regionally? I have done some back of the envelope calculation with regard to delta vee needs and such, but I get results all over the place. To put something into orbit, there is (as I understand it) a boost phase and then a substantial secondary burn to go from the transfer orbit to the more circular desired one. As I understand IBCMs, they have a very rapid initial burn, and then free fall in a ellipse which re-enters near the target. A final burn by the payload bus puts the warhead on target. Now the delta vee requirements seem roughly equivalent from my calculations, but I have to make way too many assumptions, and my numbers come out wierd. Theoretical Mechanics was not my favorite class. :-) The other, and probably more important consideration is how hard is it to build the control system for the BM. The LEO final burn would apparently be much less 'picky' than the sets of burns to put a warhead near it's target. If all you needed was to have a terror weapon rather than real hard target kill, it doesn't seem as if the guidance would be anywhere near as hard. Could you steal the inertial guidance from say an Exocet, and hack it up (kludge is probably more accurate) to work well enough? Given the technologies available these days, how hard is that kind of system to acquire? This brings up the converse. How hard would it be to hack an IBCM to deliver a satellite to LEO? Take the bus out from a MIRV and replace with say a final stage and a satellite? Could you take a SSNB and turn it into a launch site for small photorecon type satellites? (Not a KH14!) Aside from the reaction of the USSR of a US sub doing satellite launches, would it work? A mobile, hardened, hard to kill (hopefully) satellite launcher would be useful in a conventional warfare scenario with ASAT enagements. If I made any mistakes, I'm sure someone will be kind enough to tell me :-) Of course this is all speculation, and those on the net who know probably can't tell. But with aggressive nations demonstrating satellite capability, and several going after nuclear capability, one wonders how real the threat is. Mark A. Anderson mark@jarthur.claremont.edu Platt Campus Center manderson@hmcvax.bitnet Harvey Mudd College uunet!jarthur!mark Claremont, CA 91711