There are a couple things working in the defender’s favor. The payload isn’t nearly as heavy or large, so the rocket actually is quite a bit cheaper. This means putting multiples up for each ICBM isn’t impossible. Also countermeasures deploy after re-entry. The SM-3 taking out a satellite was a big deal because it means it can hit stuff before re-entry and the protective covers come off. This also significantly cuts down on the number of intercepts required because Russian missiles actually carry a whole bunch of warheads and decoys.
So yeah it’s still pretty hard to stop every warhead, but it’s not the same situation as the 1980’s where we’d be living in a post nuclear wasteland with every major city obliterated. Which is the point. We can go on as a country with a few craters. We cannot go on if we eat a thousand warheads.
To add really quick, it is a lot less missiles than people think. For example the Russians have 5,500 warheads. If all of them were slated for ICBMs then that would be around 500 missiles. Less because their smaller yields fit 15 per missile. And they aren’t all slated for ICBMs either. Their current idea of ICBM defense is actually to send up short range nukes and nuke their own sky. They also have submarine and plane warheads which are dealt with by other missile defense systems. I don’t want to make it sound like nukes are no big deal. I just don’t want people thinking we’re in the same situation we were 40 years ago. It would be a lot less devastating today.
There are a couple things working in the defender’s favor. The payload isn’t nearly as heavy or large, so the rocket actually is quite a bit cheaper. This means putting multiples up for each ICBM isn’t impossible. Also countermeasures deploy after re-entry. The SM-3 taking out a satellite was a big deal because it means it can hit stuff before re-entry and the protective covers come off. This also significantly cuts down on the number of intercepts required because Russian missiles actually carry a whole bunch of warheads and decoys.
So yeah it’s still pretty hard to stop every warhead, but it’s not the same situation as the 1980’s where we’d be living in a post nuclear wasteland with every major city obliterated. Which is the point. We can go on as a country with a few craters. We cannot go on if we eat a thousand warheads.
To add really quick, it is a lot less missiles than people think. For example the Russians have 5,500 warheads. If all of them were slated for ICBMs then that would be around 500 missiles. Less because their smaller yields fit 15 per missile. And they aren’t all slated for ICBMs either. Their current idea of ICBM defense is actually to send up short range nukes and nuke their own sky. They also have submarine and plane warheads which are dealt with by other missile defense systems. I don’t want to make it sound like nukes are no big deal. I just don’t want people thinking we’re in the same situation we were 40 years ago. It would be a lot less devastating today.