Should Japan have nuclear ICBMs to protect itself?

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eric76
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19 Nov 2016, 11:10 pm

No. ICBMs have very limited usefulness in defense.

Strategic nuclear weapons (which includes SLBMs as well as ICBMs) are useful for defending a country from an attack by strategic nuclear weapons, but they are pretty much useless for anything else.

If Japan were to have ICBMs for the purpose of protecting themselves from a general attack, whoever was attacking Japan would have little option but to use their own nuclear missiles against Japan at the start of hostilities to try to destroy Japan's ability to launch its own ICBMs.

Strategic nuclear weapons are not a panacea. They are relatively cheap compared to real defense, but they wouldn't get much for their money.



BTDT
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20 Nov 2016, 7:35 am

Fogman wrote:
Japan would have no physical problems with building a THOR system, but the problem lies with the fact that if they did so, it would seriously impede anybody else sending up non-weaponised sattelite systems.


While height is normally an advantage in warfare, going all the way to geostationary orbit makes little sense--they could make an effective ring of satellites at a much lower altitude and save the geostationary spots for non-military purposes. If the satellites were constantly moving, like butterflies or bees, they would be less vulnerable to attack.



eric76
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25 Nov 2016, 5:50 pm

BTDT wrote:
Fogman wrote:
Japan would have no physical problems with building a THOR system, but the problem lies with the fact that if they did so, it would seriously impede anybody else sending up non-weaponised sattelite systems.


While height is normally an advantage in warfare, going all the way to geostationary orbit makes little sense--they could make an effective ring of satellites at a much lower altitude and save the geostationary spots for non-military purposes. If the satellites were constantly moving, like butterflies or bees, they would be less vulnerable to attack.


I don't think the movement would make it any harder to hit them. After all, it's not like they are making frequent sudden changes in speed and direction -- they are following orbital paths. Of course, there may be times when they fire a thruster to correct an orbit, for example to move a spy satellite over something they want to take a good look at, but the fuel needed would be in short supply.

While not on topic, are you familiar with Maneuverable Reentry Vehicles? The idea behind them was to deliver a nuclear weapon on an ICBM in such a way that it would not be approaching the target on an easily predictable path. As I understand it, the reason they never became widely used was that when slowed down enough to be able to maneuverable, they were far more vulnerable than if they quickly reentered and went directly to the target.