Fate of Italian Polaris Missiles

Fevric J. Glandules wrote:
Pat Flannery wrote:


If Italy had decided to deploy Polaris (or been allowed to) would the
warheads have been under "dual-key" US/Italian control like with the
Thors in Britain, and the Jupiters in Turkey? Or was the intention to go
the French route, and develop a missile system that was entirely under
Italian control?


The UK's Polaris missiles carried independently-developed warheads
under (theoretically) independent control, even if there was bugger-all
chance of them being used without the White House saying so:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassau_agreement


IIRC, in the case of the Thor IRBMs deployed in Britain, it was
literally a "Dual Key" set-up; they couldn't be launched unless a
authorized US military officer entered a part of the launch sequence
unknown to the British. A US officer was stationed at the Thor bases in
case the need arose.
It would have been more difficult with a SLBM; you would have had to
carry a US officer on each sub (one sees the concept of a wild flip-side
of Dr. Strangelove here, where a lone US officer is trying to talk the
insane commander of a British sub out of nuking Paris because they have
insulted British beer as the first step in replacing it with cheap wine.)

According to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear...United_Kingdom
"Currently, British Trident commanders are able to launch their missiles
without authorisation, whereas their American colleagues cannot."


Oh, that makes me feel comfortable...just like the bicycle locks used to
arm British nuclear weapons:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...ht/7097101.stm
Our bombs, I'll have you know, took both a PAL...and a big screwdriver. :-D

Pat

On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:04:15 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote:



dott.Piergiorgio wrote:

The basic fact is that if Tito tried something, will be considered NOT
funny here.

Still today we have serious issues with the successor states, mainly
kroatia.

Which brings up a interesting point...would there have been any reason
to put the missiles at sea?
Ground-based Polaris or Alfa missiles deployed along Italy's Adriatic
coast should have been able to reach pretty much anywhere in Yugoslavia
without the need for surface ships or submarines to carry them, and at
considerably lower cost to deploy.
You could even develop a version where the missile rode around in a
launch tube on the back of a large truck, and could be driven around
between any one of hundreds of pre-surveyed sites in time of threat to
vastly complicate an enemy's task in trying to destroy them.

Pat

But then the missiles belong to the Army or the Airforce not the Navy.
And the US Navy might also have had a problem with Polaris missiles
that didn't need ships.

Pat Flannery wrote:

IIRC, in the case of the Thor IRBMs deployed in Britain, it was
literally a "Dual Key" set-up; they couldn't be launched unless a
authorized US military officer entered a part of the launch sequence
unknown to the British. A US officer was stationed at the Thor bases
in case the need arose.

It would have been more difficult with a SLBM; you would have had to
carry a US officer on each sub (one sees the concept of a wild
flip-side of Dr. Strangelove here, where a lone US officer is trying
to talk the insane commander of a British sub out of nuking Paris
because they have insulted British beer as the first step in replacing
it with cheap wine.)

How about the recent Frenco-British SSBN collision?

According to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear...United_Kingdom
"Currently, British Trident commanders are able to launch their
missiles
without authorisation, whereas their American colleagues cannot."


Oh, that makes me feel comfortable...just like the bicycle locks used
to arm British nuclear weapons:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...ht/7097101.stm
Our bombs, I'll have you know, took both a PAL...and a big
screwdriver. :-D

Sounds like a Thor subject to me...

Dennis

dott.Piergiorgio wrote:

eh.... that was once a nuclear race between us and *switzerland* was
really a surprise to me, when I read for the first time this very
webpage a pair of years ago, i was so --- O_O ,

WTF??? Details? This sounds interesting!!!

Dennis

On Jun 29, 9:07*pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
David E. Powell wrote:

Oh - And what would be REALLY brilliant, would be to have a ship, with
lots of press pictures and video, going to sea with missiles, exercise
rockets, or even dummy ones, while the real ones were going about in
trucks made to look just like standard eighteen-wheelers from the air,
cruising the highways, parked at areas along the coast made to look
like rest stops for truckers, construction sites, shipping terminals
for goods, etc.

Trucks with "Stella Del Nord Vino" painted on the sides heading into the
vineyards, where there are strange small clearings...

Pat

I like your style, that's perfect!

We serve no wine before it's time....

Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer) wrote:
The US was going to do that, only with railroad cars, for some
proposed missile system. I don't remember which missile it was, but I
remember the artists's renditions, lifted right from the viewgraphs to
the pages of AvLeak.


Two of them... both Minuteman and MX (Peacekeeper) were considered for
deployment on trains.
Here's the Minuteman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mo...Conception.png
....and in a gross violation of national security, here's the finned
version of the rail-based Minuteman for your Lionel model train set,
from the early 1960s:
http://www.bodnarchuk.com/vintagetoy..._LAUNCHING.JPG
http://www.bodnarchuk.com/vintagetoy...E _CLOSED.JPG
I actually know someone who worked on the MX "Rail Garrison" plan, which
would have used the concept of pre-surveyed launch sites on the American
railway system for the disguised trains to launch from.
Although hard to detect, the ramifications of what was going to happen
if one of these trains derailed someday...particularly if the solid fuel
in the MX ignited...were enough to make the idea a non-starter.
Here's a image of a MX rising out of its rail car:
http://www.talkingproud.us/ImagesMil...ayLauncher.jpg
And the actual thing:
http://www.tech*******.com/missile/p...er/railcar.php
A dead-ringer for the ones used up here in North Dakota for grain
shipment, which would attract no attention as it went by.
Due to the flatness of North Dakota we have trains of 130 cars length
moving around on occasion, so if you had a disguised train car or two
for control, you could have moved the entire Peacekeeper force around on
one train via this method.
I was always surprised that if they wanted to go the rail mobile route,
they just didn't stick Trident D-5s in disguised rail cars.
With GPS, the train could know where it was 24/7 and fire from just
about anywhere.


Pat

Dennis wrote:
Sounds like a Thor subject to me...


The widget's called a "Strike Enabling Plug" and each one is set to work
only with a specific nuclear bomb. Once it's installed, you take a big
screwdriver and turn the thing on the side of the bomb ninety degrees
till the little green "safe" labels behind the window rotate to the
little red "ready" position.
What's really missing is the red LEDs on the side of the bomb in best
James Bond tradition.
Also, the sound of rotating gears like the atomic bomb in "Goldfinger" had.
I think real nuclear bombs should have _both_ of those, so that the crew
who arm them don't feel a sense of disappointment with their jobs when
the balloon goes up.
In fact, the voice of the "Mother" - the computer from "Alien" - should
then speak from the bomb itself and say: "The Nuclear Weapon Is Now
Fully Armed" combined with a oscillating siren sound and flashing strobe
lights.
I mean, the poor *******s are probably going to be nuked into
superheated vapor within a hour of doing this, so we should make their
last minutes really impressive for them as a way of saying "Thanks!" for
their service.

But that's just one patriot's opinion.

Pat

David E. Powell wrote:

I like your style, that's perfect!

We serve no wine before it's time....


It was cunning names on the side of trucks like that got me my job with
The Impossible Mission Force. ;-)

Pat

OM wrote:
...Original plan for the LGM-118A Peacekeeper or MX Missile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MX_missile

...I remember the big exposes "60 Minutes" had on this one, with
_Time_ and _Newsweek_ publishing their own articles at the time,
showing how each missile would have its own train track with several
hardened silos that were miles apart.


That's not the train one, that's "Shell Game" - where the missiles were
carried around on giant trucks that drove around between
blast-resistant surface shelters on a random basis, possibly using
full-weight decoy trucks with no missile aboard also.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

Derek Lyons wrote:

You could even develop a version where the missile rode around in a
launch tube on the back of a large truck, and could be driven around
between any one of hundreds of pre-surveyed sites in time of threat to
vastly complicate an enemy's task in trying to destroy them.

Which doesn't work nearly as well IRL as does it does in the
imagination of armchair admirals.

Specifically, why not? You will need to find a way to support the base
of the tube once it's elevated into launch position to take up the
recoil of the cold-launch system on firing, but other than that, your
firing solution is a lot easier to figure out, as you know your position
down to a matter of a few feet.

There's more to it than just range and bearing to target Pat - you
also need to be able to erect and align your guidance systems before
launching. Among other things you need very exact information about
your heading in order to do this, which turns out not to be very
simple.

There's reasons why this keep being proposed and keeps not being
implemented.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL