Talk:UGM-133 Trident D5

Wording change

I think 8-12 warheads is more accurate than up to 12. This involves some informed guesswork on my part, and, while I've had no classified access to Trident data, some thoughts from earlier MIRVed missiles. My reading of 8-12 is the reentry bus, the thing that holds and aims the warheads, is really designed for the weight balance of 8-12 warheads. Decoys are almost always lighter.

There are scenarios in which it would be the national intention to deliver a single warhead. I believe the way that would have to be done is to fire a MIRVed missile, but not arm 7-11 of the warheads. Still, a country with ballistic missile defense radar would see the warheads, with no way to know, at first, they were not armed. They might see more, if their radar can't discriminate decoys.

This would be a situation where hotlines, etc., would urgently be needed.

There is active research into a non-nuclear warhead for Trident and other missiles, and I believe it's well understood that Russia, etc., would have to be informed were such a weapon used for an anti-terrorist or anti-WMD strike. Such a kinetic energy warhead, however, would look quite different than nuclear warheads -- it would either be a single solid mass (concrete with guidance units is likely) or a bundle of small guided steel rods, etc.

I suppose this article should be updated for the discussion of kinetic nonnuclear warheads. When last I looked, there was some serious discussion among experts, and for a change, Congress, if this was a good or bad idea. One of the arguments is that for a worldwide contingency where there are no local aircraft, it will take many hours to get a non-nuclear response to what could be a time-critical situation. ICBMs and SLBMs are fast, even with the need to retarget. Howard C. Berkowitz 11:33, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

The obvious question then becomes why is it necessary to include guesswork, informed or otherwise, in an encyclopedia. Isn't that unencyclopedic? I would suggest including just the parts you can verify. David Finn 15:15, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

What is guesswork here? I think expert interpretation of ongoing projects is definitely encyclopedic, at least in the spirit of CZ. With the real names policy, it's much easier to have original synthesis and contextualization. It's not guesswork, for example, to say that non-nuclear, non-high-explosive kinetic warheads are either unitary (e.g., guided concrete) or submunition (e.g., guided rods).

There's very real funding and development in this area, which is easy to verify. I've also spent a reasonable amount of time with Naval weapons technology, going back to 1970 or so.

This not being a general article on non-nuclear long-range strike, it's not necessary to put the full discussion and background in this article, although it certainly could link to one. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:21, 24 August 2010 (UTC)