Defense

>>33604580
A lot.

>>33604580
silly russian/chinese trying to get our launch codes

>>33604604
Lmfao... American here with real concerns

>>33604638
>real concerns
Stop going to /pol/ for starters.

>>33604580
Mostly the fact that whichever country launched the first attack would cease to exist

>>33604580
>In the event of a nuclear attack, what kind of defense capabilities does the US realistically have?
Lol
Defending against aerial or ICBM bombardment is an exercise in futility, whether you're American, Russian or Chinese.

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>>33604580
>Active: Not much.
US active defense against ICBM/SLBM is based around the Ground Based Interceptor. Due to being expensive as fuck it was not tested much, resulting in an estimated 50% pk, and not many where purchased, only 30 in total. Current plans are to make up for the low probability of kill by salvo firing five interceptors at each incoming target and hoping the failure modes are independent. This system was designed to intercept a North Korean or Iranian attack in the Bush years and that is about all it can do (if they actually had ICBMs).

>Passive: More but you are getting nuked.
The best passive defense is the ICBM fields acting as warhead sinks, or to use the USAF line "complicate enemy attack planning". The idea is that in order to prevent retaliation an enemy needs to destroy all the US nukes. The US stores 400 ICBM,s each with one warhead, in hardened silos that statistically take more then one warhead to destroy, effectively trading up against an attacking force even if destroyed on the ground.This forces an attacking enemy to waste huge amounts of warheads hitting individual ICBM silos. Arms control enforces (near) parity in nuclear forces and low (compared to the Cold War) warhead numbers, making the warhead sink strategy effective.

Dispersion was the idea to physically move targets away in order to prevent an attacker from hitting multiple targets with single warheads. This idea was popular in theory in the 50s and 60s but died due to costing lots of money and making it more difficult to do day-to-day governmental operations.
In short there is some hypothetical defense against a small scale attack and defense against large attacks is moving megatonnage away from populated areas and into most empty ICBM fields.

>>33607323
You seem somewhat knowledgeable. I've also heard that the placement of the missile fields were also done in several manners of strategic importance. For example, placing missiles in the middle of the country allowed for a few extra minutes of time to launch a retaliation strike in the case of shallow SLBM launches.

In addition, I've heard that the fields were grouped tightly for two reasons. One reason was because any nuclear attack on a silo field would have to be staggered slightly to prevent nuclear warheads and blasts from destroying other incoming warheads. Another reason the silo fields were selected in their locations was because of the soil composition -- apparently the planners believed that an initial nuclear explosion would kick up abrasive dust that would strip and destroy any other incoming warheads to a silo field.

Is this bullshit, or is there some truth to this?

>>33605723
you mean like saudi arabia ceases to exsist?

>>33604580
MAD, in the form of the hardened and dispersed missile silos discussed by this>>33607323
anon, as well as SLBMs. Additionally, there's all the short and mid-range delivery platforms that can mount our extra warheads in storage.

You don't need to stop the incoming warheads, you just need to guarantee that anyone stupid enough to play nuclear checkers with the US becomes economically and demographically crippled for the next century or two.

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>>33607353
>Field location.
More due to cheap land and congressmen wanting pork then any strategy. Remember that Russian SLBMs are going to hit before any launch order can be received and the ICBMs are coming in over the north pole. If we really wanted to lengthen timeframes the fields would be further south.

The launch frame for ICBMs getting of the ground is absurdly short. Even best case there is two to four minutes (going from Russian and US documents) for complication in the entire process of detecting an attack, telling the president and having him order a retaliation, transmitting the retaliation order, and receiving the launch order. With that sort of time frame it is clear why the US stripped its ICBMs of MIRVs and kept them as a warhead sink, leaving the actual strike capability to the more survivable SLBMs.

>Tight pack basing mode.
That is a type of ICBM basing and it was selected for the MX program (which became Peacekeeper). Due to questions over its effectiveness, increased costs and the larger problems with the MX program it was decided to stay with the traditional Minuteman widely dispersed, hardened concrete silos.

Other ideas included putting the missile on barges all along the Mississippi River. Then someone remembered that ships sometime hit each other. And someone else realized that the Soviets could have just nuked the entire river.

The MX basing debate was somewhat silly at times.