What if?…🎈Across the Great Plains, from northern Colorado and throughout Wyoming, North Dakota, and Montana, are the missile fields of the United States nuclear program. Each of the three Strategic Missile Wings at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, F. E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming
(plainshumanities.unl.edu)
🤔💭 Theory 😲💡
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Million dollar question. Foreign adversary flying spy balloons over some of our largest nuclear missile silos and no one in power seems terribly alarmed. From what I’ve read, an EMP detonated overhead would not cause immediate problems for nukes but I’d imagine it would cause big problems for the systems associated with operating/launching them.
The Question is do countries still use spy balloons ? I'm giving it 72 hours because you gotta watch the other hand regardless if Trump said shoot it down.. 👀
The theory is that they are really dry runs for an atomic EMP attack.
No way a balloon is holding the weight of an atomic weapon
How heavy do you think an atomic weapon has to be? The W82-1 device (designed to fit into a 155mm artillery shell) weighed 95 pounds for a yield under 2 kilotons. Don't go rushing off making statements without checking the numbers.
I wouldn't bet on that being true. Forty years ago we were carrying them in UH-1 helicopters and it only took four of us to lift them in and out.
As the adequately named person below stated, warheads aren't actually all that heavy relatively speaking. The technology at this stage of miniaturization is likely smaller than even normal people know.
Most of a rocket is its fuel, center of mass corrections, guidance systems, etc.
Most nuclear weapons are likely fairly small and light (relatively) at this point.
The launch complexes would be hardened. That's their purpose.
If anything, this would not be an attack but rather reconnaissance.
yeah but why, don’t they have sattelites?
They do, but low-altitude satellites cannot pick up every kind of signature, and their presence overhead is limited to only a few minutes at best.
I wondered about that. I can’t imagine detonation of an EMP overhead would have zero impact on the silos or their functionality.
They were designed at the beginning to be able to take a near hit by a nuclear weapon. Why do you suppose they were all underground? Same thing with Cheyenne Mountain.
So what if the lame spy balloon was to get devolution leaders to communicate? I would suppose most "secrets" aren't all that secret so the faux recon balloon was to trace strategic communications amongst the real leaders. The MT explosion happened because the balloon failed to achieve the desired intel and (they) were so bold to take the next step. Somewhere a high ranking representative of our nations defense scrambled an interception then probably formally told the pResident afterwards.
From what I understand our missile silos and components have intentionally been left “low tech” 1950’s technology for such eventualities.
Maybe so. It's a fact they haven't been updated since their construction. There is a new program under way (2020) for a Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) system to replace the entire Minuteman system. This will doubtless incorporate EMP hardening.