GMD is hit-to-kill. Though I should point out that it’s broadly useless.

GMD is only capable of taking out 10-20 missiles at once. Russia and China both have hundreds of missiles, and if the DPRK isn’t there yet they will be soon. GMD is essentially useless at preventing a first strike. It was ostensibly meant for if a rogue state managed to launch a handful of ICBMs at the US, a scenario that really isn’t likely. What it would be useful for, is if the US were to strike first and take out the majority of the enemy’s missiles on the ground. To be clear, I don’t think that is why the US built it, and that isn’t part of the strategic thinking. But that possibility is exactly what Russia and China suspect about GMD. Hence their expansion of new weapons.

Nuclear armed anti-balistic missiles have been made, but they're not in use as far as we know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_program Spartan missiles were set to be armed with 5 MT warheads!

It could have, something like this, just more modern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile) <- Tip glowing white hot while ascending with 100Gs. Whee!

Combine this with facilities like these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_Program and have modular mini nuke breeders on site, powering atmospheric capture of CO² to turn them into synthetic fuels. Pharaonic Profits!1!!

Ugh, I really hate that term. “Hypersonic” just means traveling faster than 5 times the speed of sound. We’ve had ballistic missiles capable of exceeding that speed since the 1950s. ICBMs are hypersonic. So, yes, GMD has been tested against hypersonic missiles.

The latest hype is around “hypersonic glide body” type weapons. Where instead of traveling a straight ballistic trajectory they have small control surfaces and are capable of maneuvering. Ironically, though, having to maneuver like that makes such missiles slower, not faster, than an equivalent ballistic missile. And their maneuverability isn’t exactly huge, because at those speeds even small turns will impose significant g forces. So there’s this weird tradeoff between speed and maneuverability.

If they didn't, people would be talking about how their red lines are bluffs. The Russians are being given two options by the US - surrender or escalate. They aren't going to surrender. I'm not sure what people expect to happen but given the strategic madness out of the west we're probably doing well if we get all the way through this without London being targeted.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to try and turn Iraq 2 into WW3 really should be relieved of their power to make decisions. Russia was behaving well within international norms established by the US's actions until the west got involved in Ukraine. Now we've seen orders of magnitude more casualties for nothing, and the risk of nuclear war are off the hitherto plotted charts.

Why does it matter if it is "nuclear-class"? Were there any actual nukes? No. Then who cares?

It can indeed be considered propaganda when you listen to what they themselves are saying.

If they end up doing it and to what extent is an open question though.

Ah, anon downvotes but no vocal support. Aka: that sentiment looks awful and I won’t put my name to it, but also fuck you, you aren’t toeing the liberal party line if you question it.

Disgusting.

It’s a missile that has been developed in secret, for years. With a conventional payload, so that it could actually be used in a demonstration strike like this. That was apparently completed just in time to be used here. Makes sense that it is a reaction to the Aegis Ashore base in Poland, since that has been under way for years, the completion date could be predicted and planned for well in advance, and is of grave concern to the Russian state. Putin himself has constantly expressed concern about those missile defense bases, he’s very concerned that they could secretly loaded with nuclear-tipped tomahawk missiles and used for a sudden first strike.

It’s a bit academic, of course, why Russia decided to reveal the existence of this missile now, and employ it in Ukraine. It’s not like there’s only one reason why Russia did this.

we've seen aircrafts drop out of the sky and also vanish

So let's say the US could shoot down everything Russia throws at them, could tell apart all of the decoys, intercept every single MIRV warhead and take out every other secret weapon Russia may have deployed. It doesn't take many hits to take out a big chunk of the US population and wipe out its economy, so that would have to be done at 100% success rate over large parts of the country.

Europe cannot do anything remotely like that, so close to everything west of the Ural would burn and pretty much everyone there would die, hundreds of millions of dead and God knows how many more further to the east. The soot from burning cities and forests would darken the whole northern hemisphere for several growing seasons, large parts of the US population would probably just freeze or starve, more so if the US has been hit as well. And that leaves out fallout dispersal, especially from the inventories of nuclear power plants hit with nukes and so on.

There simply is no winning an all-out nuclear war.

> Given how well Russian technology has performed in Ukraine versus American technology, I'd put money on American tech

Capable of carrying 1,185 warheads. Plus decoys.

The “T” in THAAD stands for terminal. That means the warheads and decoys must be targeted separately. We’d need thousands of THAAD interceptors to even begin to feel comfortable about surviving, as a republic, a Russian nuclear exchange. (To say nothing of such an exchange immediately leaving us intensely vulnerable to China.)

Our missile defences protect against rogue nuclear states. North Korea. Some day, Iran. They are not intended to defeat MAD.

THAAD cannot intercept ICBMs…