First Ever Recorded Use of ICBM in War | Hacker News Reader

First Ever Recorded Use of ICBM in War

funker530.com

12 pointsseanw44417 comments

Probably not actually ICBM:

"Two U.S. officials also told CBS News that Russia had fired a ballistic missile, not an ICBM on Thursday, with one saying it appeared to have been an intermediate range ballistic missile launched from just east of Volgograd, Russia, to target Dnipro. If accurate, that would be a flight path of about 500 miles."

You're right. That's a minor nitpick though. The only major difference is the range. They're functionally similar, and they both typically deliver nuclear warheads.

I would have put IRBM in the title, but I wanted to keep the title from TFA (or TFV in this case I guess).

I think it is little bit arrogant from Russians to send relatively modern ballistic missile into enemy territory as remains of missile and MIRVs will be thoroughly studied by NATO and its allies. This can lead to better anti-missile technology.

There's nothing left to analyze after an object slams into the ground at 15,000 MPH. Beyond that, I guarantee the US already has the complete set of blueprints for it given our ability to expatriate sensitive information from other countries.

Here is a link of what I imagine is the war heads falling after the ICBM was destroyed over the skies of Dnipro, Ukraine

https://imgur.com/a/KKvne6F

I knew ICBM's were very very fast at terminal velocity but this really puts it into context.

Destroyed how? Are you saying it was shot down? Did you see the speed of reentry here? What kind of AA has the capability to destroy a projectile this fast? This looks like MIRV, not remains of a destroyed missile.

It's being claimed it was an RS-26, which is indeed a MIRV.

Putin himself declared today that it was this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreshnik_(missile)

In a sane world, there would be horror and condemnation that our politicians allowed a genocidal dictator to escalate to this level: launching an ICBM on a civilian target, against a country resisting his invasion.

The US and European policy of appeasement and non-escalation does not work. We've had enough precedents to know better. What's going on with our leaders?

What's going on with our leaders?

They know what side their bread is buttered on, so to speak. For example, we just elected a POTUS who failed at selling steak, booze, gambling, and football to Americans, yet who was strangely successful at selling real estate to Russians.

I can only hope there are some discussions going on behind closed doors about how to proceed, I did find it interesting Biden went to meet Xi only a few days before giving Ukraine permission to strike.

Uh… is it though? Cause it kind of looks like, well, the first ever recorded premature ejaculation of an ICBM in war.

It used a warhead with MIRV technology (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles), which splits up before impact.

Yeah, I know what it’s purported to be, I just don’t see multiple warheads detonating in an obviously intentional and targeted way that causes meaningful military objectives… instead I see a bunch of what looks like randomly arriving debris hitting the ground really fast and doing very little.

I'm sure our military knows, but the idea is that it doesn't matter what it destroyed. What matters is that a volley of MIRVs seems to have been delivered in Ukraine. Honestly though, this is just another weak move from Putin. He's a an absolute clown who's foolishly taken his neighbor's house hostage, is surrounded by police and is now waving his gun in the air, repeatedly screaming "I'm gonna do it!". That's where we are. His chances of coming out of this unscathed are now zero. It's just how he's going to go out that we have to figure out.

Given who and what is about to once more penetrate the oval orifice, Putin isn’t just going to come out unscathed, he’s going to come out with a significant part of Ukraine, ready and willing to take more, and entirely capable of streamrolling through Europe.

And that’s despite the fact that, were this actually an ICBM+MIRVs (as opposed to one or more IRBMs or MRBMs) then it appears to have gone limp.

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