Peacekeeper ICBM Re-Entry Vehicle Impacts at Kwajalein Atoll (Transfer from original film)

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[@wodinloki9504]

Damn that second impacts accuracy on top of the first one.

[@sosigakaweinerman869]

Imagine this being the last thing you see.. Glowing darts shooting across the sky and suddenly.. Bright flashes. Mushroom clouds. Shockwaves rushing towards you.

[@MeetTheZonan]

Cannot imagine due to human just vanished in a snap..

[@allen2879]

This is what the end of humanity will look like

[@stephandiehl3893]

the thought of 5 nukes going off in such a small area is insane

[@journeystarr]

Holy fuck that is fast and accurate

[@dukenukem8381]

Looks really peaceful

[@joelhemphill8005]

Mmm... yes. Thermonuclear war, just as Ghandi prescribed.

[@misanthrope2112]

Dumb question - why do they glow - I thought they were ballistic. Or are the reentry vehicles powered for course adjustments. Or are they glowing from atmospheric heating.

[@hkguitar1984]

They are glowing from atmospheric heating. They are designed with heat shielding to survive re-entry to the target.

[@misanthrope2112]

@@hkguitar1984 thanks

[@thomasbell7033]

I'm an old aviation/space writer. I always appreciate it if people care enough to ask questions, and consider none of them dumb.

[@hkguitar1984]

@@thomasbell7033 Thank You for your comment. I 100% agree with you, the only dumb question is the one not asked. 👍😉

[@misanthrope2112]

@@thomasbell7033 Thanks. I'm a former airline employee myself, but never knew the reentry vehicles would glow. I think it makes them more ominous.

[@KoaBohdi]

Warheads on foreheads!

[@BluntedBaboon]

Absurdity of nuclear warfare planning, double tapping the same spot with a 300kt bomb. I now kinda wonder how that would work and look with the shock wave and mushroom cloud.

[@hydra70]

You wouldn't hit the same spot twice in a row that quickly with live warheads. The second warhead would be destroyed by the detonation of the first once. They have a fairly small target in testing here so they don't have proper spacing.

[@chrisjohnson4666]

There was investigation into also using the peacekeeper as a conventional attacks weapon subbing the warheads for Tungsten rods... It would be called Rods from God a kinetic weapon very accurate very powerful BUT the program never got too far the worry being the other guy doesn't know if the missile carrys nukes or not... The risk of misunderstanding was too great...

[@TomSmith-ls5rn]

This was a test. Believe me, with America's Nuclear missile technology, there is NO need for the double tap.

[@pxatm]

The simple concept is that reentry vehicles could be intercepted. Redundancy is the majority of nuclear war planning. The major reason for why nuclear stockpiles were so large was that many weapons were expected to be destroyed in the first strike, or intercepted by Anti-Ballistic Missile systems that were being developed throughout the Cold War, but never really came to prominence like they were expected to. In any case. If I have to hit the politburo, or an airbase, or a nuclear command and control center, those targets all have capable air defenses that might hit the incoming RV. I'm not expecting to need two nuclear blasts to destroy the site, I'm just not willing to let the strike fail if the enemy gets lucky enough to destroy one warhead. EDIT: I completely forgot about the other major factor in strike planning, *Dud rate.* Nuclear warheads are very complex objects that we have only had the opportunity to test a fairly small number of. There's no 100% guarantee that if the weapon gets through its very complicated electronic triggers will go off and initiate a nuclear detonation. Not successfully destroying a nuclear silo because one of 200,000 bombs produced wasn't made perfectly right would be a really bad excuse to tell the millions of civilians that died because you messed up your strike.

[@pxatm]

​​@@chrisjohnson4666Project THOR wouldn't have used the Trident vehicles as the rod payloads would be either too heavy to be lifted by an SLBM, or too light to cause significant damage if they could be lifted. Project THOR expected to use heavy lift rockets to establish a network of delivery platforms in permanent orbit. What you're probably thinking of is the Prompt Conventional Strike program which would have used high yield conventional explosives on SLBM's to strike targets around the world. The problem wasn't so much the fear of a nuclear misunderstanding, since the US isn't going to start a nuclear war by launching one nuke, it was the absurd cost of the program for relatively little benefit and the fact that the process for getting a not nuke launched from a submarine would probably take just as long as using existing forces to destroy the target.