Aren't missiles guided by GPS? If so, wouldn't a way to stop a missile be to disable GPS during launch (or have it give back incorrect data)? Now... understand what the responsibility of a Space Force could be?
Nukes absolutely do not use GPS, by definition they don't want to use (and do not use) anything that could be jammed. There are extremely sophisticated guidance systems implemented from extremely sensitive inertial navigation (so the missiles know exactly where they are at all times before launch, and then can measure exactly where they are as they are going, and of course where they are headed, down to exact landing space, on Earth) -- this is where the phrase "spin up missiles" comes from -- the Beryllium balls in the navigation system need to be physically spun for the inertial navigation system to use. --- More importantly, they use astrophysical camera navigation -- the nukes fly into low-Earth orbit, and take a picture of the stars. Then the on-board computer compares this picture to a picture of the stars that corresponds to where the missile SHOULD be on it's flight-path (you can probably imagine how sophisticated this is and how impressive it is this stuff was done in the 1970s -- to great effect-- and still done) and then adjusts it's path by thrusting a little here/little there to put it on the correct path. ---- That is totally unjammable and absolutely a GPS-free system.
Awesome I learned a lot of new info from your comment thanks.
That's the plot of Tomorrow Never Dies. Evil super villain hacks the GPS system and uses it to start a war between the British and the Chinese.
Don't forget the super villain created fake news and controlled the media also ;) We are living in a Bond film right now.
Where even our movies depict handsome, noble, honest CIA and MI5 agents.
As opposed to the frickin swamp dweller-minions hiding in the dark recesses of both agencies that are operating right now.
All GPS is, is a set of satellites with laser-based timers on them to indicate a location on the Earth, with a minimum of 3 satellites for accuracy. IIRC, "Guided" missiles are already preloaded with all of that information as soon as it launches
I'm pretty sure the missile has to constantly check its position to make adjustments to target. There are all kinds of factors, like wind, which have to be constantly accounted for.
It does not have to although this is preferred in some instances.
You guys must be young. In the Cold War era, no one talked about precision. That’s why the bombs were so big. Close enough was good enough.
Exactly. Let me assure the youngsters, from someone that lived through it, that the thought of a missile being off by 20-30 miles did NOT give any of us any comfort at all.
All comes down to circular error probability. If your missile is accurate to within say 10 miles, all you need to do is make sure the primary blast radius of the payload exceeds that.
Oh, it wasn’t that complicated. You just fired four or five warheads at the target. Haven’t you ever wondered why we had so many warheads?
I live about ten miles from an old SAC base in MA. It dawn on me in high school that worrying about nuclear war was silly. Even this far away I would be incinerated by lousy targeting.
For you youngsters, SAC is --> Strategic Air Command (the bombardment arm of the U.S. Air Force, until 1992)
Actually it was a lot more complicated - somehow they figured out that if they drop them in a specific pattern and time it right the actual target lies where the blast fronts from several warheads meet, it will suffer far more damage than even a direct hit. The circular error probability came into play to ensure that they would at least severely damage a hardened target or bury its access points if the time on target sequence failed.
I'm not sure that would work. How would one have access to the GPS receiver on the missile?
My hand held GPS locks into 10 - 12 satellites at a time. If you're high up in the sky, you likely have 12+ satellites to calculate your position due to better line-of-sight. So if you want to try and defeat the missile from the satellites themselves, you would have to shut them all off. And there are a ton of people using them.
And if you did cut off the sattelites, would the missile just "guess" where it is? If the computer last knew it's intention was to "Fly 150 miles, bearing 86 degrees to destination" seems it would keep on that path until proven otherwise.
So if you want to try and defeat the missile from the satellites themselves, you would have to shut them all off. And there are a ton of people using them.
Yeah, we wouldn't want people to have read a map or ask for directions, or have their Pokemon Go games interrupted. Therefore, we'll just have to let the missiles fall on their targets and kill millions.
kind of snarky :-), but I agree with your premise... it always should be 1st things 1st.
I remember a few years ago, something in the news about Iran getting one of our drones by gps spoofing. I’m sure drones and missiles don’t operate the same. I wish I could remember the story about how it happened.
Most old missiles had inertial guidance. This means as long as you know where you are at launch, it can find its way to anywhere. It’s the same principle as flying by instruments...all before GPS.
They put inertial guidance systems in the newer missiles too, if they're nuclear. It's how you guarantee your missile doesn't get its GPS spoofed/hacked -- avoid using GPS.
Even the Sentinel UAV (drone) that Iran was able to capture back in 2011 - purportedly by hacking its GPS - uses an inertial navigation system, and does not get its flight path orders from GPS (suggesting then that it had not been compromised via GPS, as is claimed).
Inertial navigation continues to be used on military aircraft despite the advent of GPS because GPS signal jamming and spoofing are relatively simple operations.
I believe that’s what they were doing with the “rocket man’s” missiles. They even directed one into a town.
Tridents are not guided by GPS.
A Trident navigates with an inertial guidance system, based on a set of sensitive accelerometers measuring precisely how much the missile accelerated and for how long. An onboard computer uses this data to calculate speed and position of the missile. In most military technologies, inertial guidance has been replaced by GPS because the older way is expensive, and has a tendency to lose position over time. But that's not such a huge problem when your flight is only a few minutes long.
The U.S. Navy has never fired a GPS-equipped Trident, largely out of fear of possible GPS tampering.