As If We Don't Have Enough Things to Worry About...

Today, Thursday December 27, 2018, CNN was running news, video and interviews about Russia's new Avangard Hypervelocity "system", repeating Vladimir Putin's boasts that the new Yu-74 Avangard hypervelocity glider, designed to be MIRV'ed atop Russia's R36M2 (NATO SS-18 Satan) and/or RS-28 Sarmat (NATO SS-X-30) ICBMs. CNN was quick to interview several security experts who warned that 1. Yes, Putin was right that we had no defenses for it, and 2. Yes, we needed to spend a bunch of money to defeat it and/or field the technology ourselves.

I am not a security expert (at least not in CNN's employ and not formally trained or experienced). But I have read a few (or many, as my wife would say) books in the subject area. Before jumping to the subject at hand, I would like to point out that, in general, we are living in one of, if not the, safest periods in history, and, here in the U.S. at least, one of the safest countries in the world. Unfortunately, scaring people is one good way of getting them to cough up money to save themselves, and I am afraid that this is one particular area this is a prime example. As for my claim about this being the safest times to live, just several points:

1. Air travel: Only one person died traveling in a U.S. certified airliner since 2009, and that was the woman who was partially sucked out of the window of the Southwest Airlines flight in 2017 after a turbine fan blade failure. Compare that with the period when jet airliners were first rolled out: there were no years between 1958 and 1970 were there were no deaths due to crashes. The safety rate of commercial airline travel in the U.S. has improved dramatically. And U.S. practices have been exported around the world. Take a look at the chart following; commercial air travel fatalities peaked in 1972 and has been falling ever since. The rate of fatalities jumped up in the early 1960's and 1970's as first, the introduction of jets after 1958 and then second, jumbo jets in 1968 allowed more and more people to travel at ever cheaper prices. These peaks stimulated better engineering, usability improvements in the cockpit, pilot/copilot team training, automation, navigation, flame retardent materials, and many other safety improvements.

2. Terrorism: The words of our president to the contrary, we have little to fear from terrorism. Like dying in an airline crash, the thought of dying due to a terrorist attack scares us because we have no control over the situation. When we decide to get in our cars and drive to grandma's house for Christmas, we do so after deciding that the risk of being injured or killed while on the road is low. When a skydiver takes that leap from the plane, they believe that parachutes work, most of the time, and that they will enjoy all of the experience, including the landing. But terrorism is one of those things that we can't make a risk evaluation ourselves (so we are told) and need to leave that up to the "experts". Those experts have convinced us that the expenditures we make in our tax dollars are needed (and continue to be needed) to keep us safe. And how safe are we?

In 2017, the British Royal Statistical Society (RSS) chose the International Statistic of 2017 to the number 69. That is the number of people that are killed in the United States (annually) due to lawnmowers. By contrast, the number of Americans killed (on average) to immigrant Jihadist terrorists is 2. Terrorist attacks fall into the category of events that are episodic and volatile. The blog article cited above discusses whether it is "fair" or good science to make decisions using statistics about such volatile events. When you look at the chart of causes of death in 2016, terrorism is next to the bottom. When you look at the number of deaths due to terrorism for the years between 1970 and 2017, 1995 and 2001 contribute heavily, being outliers. Nevertheless, I would argue the point that in America, we have little to worry about Jihadi terrorists sneaking across our southern border and attacking us as we shop for groceries. (And I live in South-central Texas, less than 4 hours from Laredo, our nearest border crossing).

Getting back to today's news reports about Russia's Avangarde hypervelocity "system", actually a hypervelocity vehicle. We call the warheads on top of an ICBM vehicles, as in MIRV: Multiple, Independent targetable, Rentry, Vehicles. Towards the end of the 1960's the Soviet Union was working to develop and deploy an Anti- Ballistic Missile (ABM) defense system to protect Moscow, primarily from our Minuteman land-based missiles. The U.S. developed the Minuteman III missile, armed with 3 170 Kt W62 warheads each, replacing the Minuteman II, which was armed with a single 1.2Mt W56 warhead. Each of the Minuteman III's MIRV warheads could be targeted independently. In addition, the Minuteman III's warheads were much more accurate; this allowed the reduction of the warhead yield from 1.2Mt to 170 Kt. Being able to use a warhead just 1/6th the size of the previous model is a big improvement, especially if you are in the same neighborhood of a megaton size hydrogen bomb.

As a side note, much of the Chinese nuclear weapons spying has reportedly been to gain MIRV technology. While the US/USSR arms race was one of numbers, the Chinese have, until recently, relied on a relatively small number of big warheads. The U.S. phased out the Titan II ICBM in 1987, leaving only the Minuteman III missiles with 170Kt warheads. The W53 warhead yield, as carried by the Titan II missile, was classified, but the B53 bomb, which uses the same physics package, was known to have a yield of 9 Mt. Such as large bomb has two purposes: 1. a "bunker buster" to destroy deeply buried hardened (military) targets; and 2. City killing. China was thought to have obtained, by spying, the designs of the Titan II missile and to have reverse engineered and deployed about 100 similar missiles with similar yield warheads to act in what as known as a counter-value role, i.e. holding non-military targets such as cities in hostage. It has been reported that they sought to develop MIRV technology to target U.S. missile silos and aircraft carriers, which require larger numbers of more precise warheads.

Hypervelocity vehicles are those that travel at speeds faster than Mach 8, or about 6,700 miles per hour/11,000 kilometers per hour/10,000 ft/s. US and Russian ICBM warheads reenter the atmosphere at about Mach 20-22. They enter the atmosphere at an altitude of about 100 kilometers. They slow about 3-5 Mach numbers over their 20-25 seconds (~125 kilometers traveled) of reentry. Traveling their terminal 100 kilometers in ~25 seconds, they average about Mach 18.

Both the R36M2 and RS-28 boosters have the throw weight to boost ~24 MIRV warheads. Current strategic missile agreements between the US and Russia allow for a single warhead per missile. The deployed R36M2 and Minuteman III missiles have only a single (by agreement) warhead. The excess throw weight is presumed to be used for warhead decoys. The RS-28 booster has been developed with the intent of up to 24 MIRV'ed Avangard hypervelocity vehicles which would be able to maneuver during the short ~25 second period in the atmosphere, in order to defeat U.S. ABM defenses. However, this despite the fact that the 44 currently deployed ABM interceptors at Ft. Greely (AK) and Vandenburg AFB (CA) were designed more with North Korea in mind that Russia (or China, for that matter). Russia should be able to launch a single R36M2 with a single warhead and its 40 decoys to soak up 41 of the 44 deployed ground based interceptors, leaving only 3 left to handle the remaining 699 ICBM/SLBMs left, as allowed by the NEW START agreement. But Russia has been worried by the U.S. ABM systems; the RS-28 is not only designed for the Avangard vehicle, it is also said to have a shorter first stage burn time to limit the time period during which a launch would be detected by U.S. satellites. (The question is: Is this aim realistic? The U.S. has had geosynchronous satellites staring at the known Soviet/Russian missile fields for many decades now.)

CNN interviewed several security experts who agreed that the deployment (not merely the announcement) of hypervelocity vehicles atop ICBMs would be serious, and would require the U.S. to invest considerable new monies in research to deploy a similar system. This is despite the fact that Russia claims that Avangard is a response to the U.S. Prompt Global Strike (PGS), a system that would allow the attack of any target in the world within one hour. Considering that the ICBMs of the U.S. and the USSR/Russia require ~30 minutes to travel across the Arctic Circle, it would require an ICBM to launch a hypervelocity missile to target the other side of the globe. The U.S. doesn't seem likely to target Canada or Mexico.

But once a country is thinking of using an ICBM to launch a warhead of any type, such a system begins to appear destabilizing. The cold war was reasonably stable because the threat of nuclear missiles and warheads were of such risk that their use was considered very rarely. We should remember the introduction of nuclear missiles into Cuba was one of the one or two times where the Cold War very nearly became hot.

Recently, the U.S. and Russia have been talking past each other about another agreement, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The INF was signed by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev and resulted in the withdrawal and scrapping of the Pershing II and SS-20 IRBMs in Europe. The Soviet Union deployed the SS-20, and then was extremely frightened by the U.S. plans to deploy Pershing II missiles in Europe. The flight times of the SS-20 and Pershing IIs was less than 15 minutes. The Pershing II missiles were designed to replace the Pershing Ia missiles. The Ia had a W50 400Kt warhead, much larger than needed for a "tactical" missile. The Pershing II missiles featured a W85 5 - 80 Kt variable yield warhead; they were much more accurate than the Ia missiles to allow the use of lower yield warheads. One feature that has been forgotten about the Pershing II missiles: the Reentry Vehicle (RV) was maneuverable and used radar to scan for the target, which controlled pitch-up and pitch-down maneuvers to maneuver the RV to the target. With a RV speed of at least Mach 8, the Pershing II RV was a hypervelocity vehicle.

President Trump has talked of pulling out of the INF agreement, over the stationing of Russian 9K720 Ikander (NATO SS-26 Stone) Short range ICDMs in Crimea and/or Kaliningrad. The U.S. has retired all of its Lance missiles, and has no corresponding short range missile.

Perhaps it is time that we start rebuilding those soft assets that Generals Kelly and Mattis and Secretary Tillerson talked about, such as diplomats, instead of hardware and hypervelocity vehicles. We want to continue making this time the safest of all.

Not long after finishing this, I read an interesting quote:

Our grandfathers stormed the beaches of Normandy to protect our freedoms. And now, because we are afraid and not willing to accept personal risk, we're giving up those same freedoms that they fought and dies for. We're giving away our freedoms because we're scared.

Cyberstorm Matthew Mather, 2013.

I fully agree. The next time someone tells you that you need to be scared of immigrants crossing our borders, or terrorists sneaking across the borders, or Russian hypervelocity vehicles making our defenses totally useless, ask yourself who benefits from your fears. Take a look into the real risks involved. Or as CNN says, ask yourself if the banana is really a banana. Maybe it's really an apple.