Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile Research Articles

The Role of the Cyprus Issue in the Greek-Soviet Relations (1956-1960)

The article examines the role of the Cyprus issue in the bilateral relations between Greece and the USSR in 1956-1960. It is based on primal archival research realised at the Constantine Karamanlis Archive (AKK) and at the Diplomatic and Historical Archive of the Greek Foreign Ministry (DIAYE) in Athens. The analysis of the recently declassified documents relate to the events which took place in 1954, when the Soviet Union supported the Greek claims for self-determination of the Cypriot people in the United Nations on the basis of the anti-colonial principles. This contributed to the impressive increase in trade between Greece and the USSR, especially after the unofficial visit of the Soviet Foreign Minister D.T. Shepilov to Athens in 1956. Against the backdrop of the deterioration of the international situation in 1957, Kremlin heavily criticized NATOs decision to deploy the US Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) in Europe and applied diplomatic pressures to NATO member-states including Greece. The shift from tensions to a peaceful offensive strategy, characteristic of the Soviet diplomacy towards Greece, proved to be a double-edged sword for Moscow in the long term. The author concludes that both countries exploited the Cyprus issue for their benefit. Thus, Moscow managed to take advantage of the Greek discontent with the NATO allies as a means of increasing its own prestige in the region, while the Greek governments capitalized on the Soviet tactics in order to increase its political leverage in confronting NATO on Cyprus.

60 years of space era: some details

The paper describes preparation and launching of the first artificial satellites of the Earth in the USSR and USA. Statistical data of successful and unsuccessful launches in 1957–2016 are provided. Brief information about the families of launchers created on the basis of the R-7 (USSR) and also Atlas and Titan (USA) ballistic missiles is given. The longtime evolution of rocket launchers is traced by an example of the 50 years of the Delta family (USA) based on the Thor intermediate range ballistic missile.

Seeking a path toward missile nonproliferation

KEYWORDS: Ballistic missilesIntermediate-Range Nuclear Forces TreatyJapanmissile proliferationmissilesMissile Technology Control RegimeNorth Koreanuclear weaponsSouth KoreaTerminal High Altitude Area Defense

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF LATERAL CONTROL JETS OF AN INTERCEPTOR MISSILE

The interceptor missile is an anti-ballistic missile designed to counter the ballistic missiles like Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles launched from any country. These missiles use side jets from their surface in order to target towards the ballistic missiles. The analysis of this side jet in the presence of free stream flow and its impact on the missile itself is of great importance. Since the jet comprises of chemically reactive species, it is essential to know the amount of attenuation of the radio signals passing through them. In the past few years many experiments and theoretical studies have been carried out to characterize the jet-atmosphere interaction in wind tunnel but it is difficult to scale these results to flight conditions because of free stream/plume chemistry, Reynolds number, surface, and wall interference effects. Therefore, it is necessary for computational studies to supplement the experimental efforts and explore the physics involved to obtain the performance characteristics and flow field structure of jet/atmospheric interaction. The objective of the present study is to simulate this lateral control jet and its effect due to presence of main free stream flow. The spherically blunted ogive shaped cylindrical body is used here as a typical shape representing the interceptor missile. The simulation is done using the CFD software package AnsysFluent (V15) at the given conditions of altitude 30 km and Mach 3, with and without jet & finally the results are compared.

China’s Development of a More Secure Nuclear Second-Strike Capability: Implications for Chinese Behavior and U.S. Extended Deterrence

China’s Development of a More Secure Nuclear Second-Strike Capability:Implications for Chinese Behavior and U.S. Extended Deterrence Benjamin Schreer (bio) The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is in the midst of improving its nuclear arsenal, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Since the details of this nuclear modernization process remain clouded in secrecy, estimates of the numbers of China’s nuclear warheads vary significantly. Pessimists believe that Beijing could possess well over 1,000 warheads, most of which are assumed to be hidden in a complex system of underground tunnels.1 In contrast, this essay agrees with conservative assessments that the total size of China’s nuclear arsenal is approximately 250 warheads, delivered by land-based ballistic missiles, aircraft, and an emerging ballistic submarine fleet. The U.S. intelligence community expects that the number of these nuclear warheads capable of threatening the U.S. homeland will more than double to over 100 by the mid-2020s.2 China is on a long-term path of replacing its old liquid-fuel, moveable DF-3A intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM) with solid-fuel, road-mobile DF-21 medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM). The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s Jin-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) was also expected to conduct its first patrol by the end of 2014 while armed with the JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile. The PLA Navy is estimated to have three Jin-class boats, which could increase to four to five SSBNs by 2020. China is also reportedly developing a next-generation SSBN, called the Type 096. It is therefore gradually making progress toward a credible sea-based nuclear deterrent.3 [End Page 14] Therefore, as one scholar wrote in the pages of this journal, “after decades of reliance on a small and potentially strategic deterrent, China is finally achieving the ‘lean and effective’ nuclear force” that its leaders believe to be essential to protect the nation’s security interests.4 The PRC’s incremental development of this more secure second-strike nuclear capability began more than two decades ago. The rapid advances in U.S. conventional precision-strike capabilities observed in military operations during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s was a key driver behind those efforts. However, while Beijing’s reasons for wanting to enhance mutual nuclear vulnerability with the United States are clear, the implications for China’s strategic behavior, U.S.-Sino crisis stability, and Asian security in general are less certain. Optimists argue that China’s development of a more secure second-strike capability that enhances mutual vulnerability will strengthen U.S.-Sino crisis stability. One proponent of this view is Robert Ross, who argues that such a capability would minimize the risk of the United States launching a disarming first strike, while leaving intact Washington’s ability to respond with its dominant conventional forces to any attempt by Beijing to alter the regional status quo.5 Yet given the changing strategic context underlying the U.S.-Sino relationship, there are reasons to caution against such a positive reading. The Changing Strategic Context and U.S.-China Strategic Stability China’s nuclear modernization occurs in the midst of Asia-Pacific power shifts. Beijing is increasingly willing to contest U.S. leadership in the region, which has long been based on the United States’ unrivaled military power. To do so, China is not only modernizing its nuclear forces but also significantly upgrading its conventional capabilities. By investing in anti-access/area-denial capabilities, China is raising the costs for a third-party intervention (for example, by the United States) in a dispute in its “near seas”—that is, the Yellow Sea, the Philippine Sea, and the South China Sea. The goal of this strategy seems to be to displace the United States as the dominant power in the western Pacific.6 [End Page 15] In this context, the assumption that the United States’ conventional superiority will guarantee U.S.-Sino strategic stability in contemporary Asia could be problematic. To be sure, in absolute terms U.S. conventional forces will still outweigh China’s by a wide margin for years to come. However, as China is...

Russia and the US in the Cold War arms race

Russia and the US in the Cold War arms race

The Threat from European Missile Defence System to Russian National Security

The article analyses the political and military aspects of progress in the dialogue between Russia and the U.S./NATO on cooperation in missile defense; investigates the past experiences and current state of cooperation between Russia and the Alliance on missile defense issues; examines the technical features of American missile defence systems today; finds a solution to question whether or not the European Missile Defence Program actually threatens Russia's nuclear deterrent and strategic stability in general; identifies both potential benefits and possible losses for Russia stemming from the development of cooperation with the United States and NATO in countering ballistic missile threats, or from refusal to have such cooperation. Evidently, the initiative of creation of a missile defense in Europe surely belongs to the USA. Washington has enormous technological, financial, economic, military and institutional capabilities in the field of a missile defense, exceeding by far other NATO member-states. In February 2010, the President of the United States B. Obama adopted a project "European Phased Adaptive Approach" (EPAA) as an alternative to G. Bush's global strategic missile defense plan. The first two stages of the Phased Adaptive Approach are focused on creating a system capable of intercepting small, medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The possibility of intercepting long-range missiles is postponed to the third (2018) and forth phases (2020). Moscow finds especially troublesome the third and the fourth phases of Washington's project of creating a European segment of the global antiballistic missile system, considering prospective capabilities of the U.S. interceptor missiles 61 and the envisioned areas of their deployment. The U.S. counter-evidence is that phase four interceptors do not exist yet. Russia insists on getting the political and legal guarantees from the U.S. and NATO that their missile defense systems will not slash the efficiency of Russian nuclear deterrence forces.

Cover for Thor: Divine Deception Planning for Cold War Missiles

In the late 1950s, as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) replaced bombers, the development of Soviet ICBMs prompted fears of strategic vulnerability in the West. The Eisenhower administration's decision to deploy Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) on the territory of NATO allies sought to redress the perceived vulnerability until American ICBMs were ready. British deception planners considered how to enhance the threat posed by the IRBMs. An outline plan codenamed ‘Celestial’ was intended to persuade the Soviets that the otherwise vulnerable missiles could not be readily neutralised. This article explores this deception and how such planning also sought to convey accurate information alongside disinformation. It also suggests that deception planners appear to have given little heed to the potentially counterproductive consequences of such an operation.

Critical Masses: Augmented Virtual Experiences and the Xenoplastic at Australia’s Cold War and Nuclear Heritage Sites

Critical Masses is a multidisciplinary pilot project that aims to graphically represent and mediate the histories, spaces and narratives concerning former nuclear installations within central Australia. These include the abandoned British atomic test sites at Emu Field and Maralinga, the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM)/Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) rocket launchers at Woomera, and the decommissioned US National Security Agency early warning satellite base at Nurrungar. Significantly, each of these Cold War sites are situated in either hazardous, remote, secure and/or culturally sensitive areas and require sophisticated analysis and negotiation in order to best render their complexity for both online access and on-site tourism. In association with the Maralinga-Pilling Trust and traditional indigenous landowners a multi-tiered approach (re)creating these locations is being modelled across platforms for diverse audiences. Digital materials are being authored and designed for stand-alone DVD, online interactive sites and archives, an immersive/simulated space for interpretation centres, and augmented/enhanced reality interfaces via GPS and mobile/handheld devices used in situ at key sites.

Britain and the Missile Gap: British Estimates on the Soviet Ballistic Missile Threat, 1957–61

Between 1957 and 1961, American National Intelligence Estimates overestimated the Soviets’ capabilities to produce and deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles, creating the ‘missile gap’ controversy. This article examines the contemporaneous estimates of British intelligence on the Soviet ballistic missile program, which were based upon very similar, if not the same, raw intelligence. It demonstrates that British estimates of the Soviet ICBM program were more accurate. However, this success did not continue in the analysis of the medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missile (M/IRBM) threat, which was relatively poor for most of the period. It concludes that the reasons for this lie in the different assumptions held by intelligence analysts on both sides of the Atlantic, and a degree of conservatism in both intelligence establishments.

The Geostrategic Implications of India's Space Program

In August 1999, India announced a draft nuclear doctrine that declared that its nuclear forces would be based on “a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles, and sea-based assets,” and that “spacebased and other assets shall be created to provide early warning, communications, [and] damage/detonation assessment” for this force.1 The draft doctrine was not official government policy; it primarily represented the thinking of technical and political elites who influence Delhi’s nuclear decision making to varying degrees. Nevertheless, although the government of India ultimately distanced itself from the document, Delhi has still been pursuing many of the doctrine’s technical parameters. And while it may take India several years to build and deploy a robust nuclear arsenal, many of the technologies required for such a force are already becoming available through the country’s space program. India’s space program undertakes two major activities–it builds satellites used for remote-sensing, meteorology, and communications and constructs the rockets to launch its satellites. These space assets have found both civilian and military applications. In the 1970s and 1980s, India’s first satellite launch vehicle, the SLV-3, was powerful enough only to launch a light payload (typically, a scientific satellite) to 300–450-km altitude low earth orbit (LEO). Such light-weight low-orbit satellites did not have significant military or commercial capabilities. However, the SLV-3 could still be used as an intermediate range ballistic missile.

JAPAN'S ENGAGEMENT DILEMMAS WITH NORTH KOREA

Research Article| August 18 2001 JAPAN'S ENGAGEMENT DILEMMAS WITH NORTH KOREA Victor D. Cha Victor D. Cha Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Asian Survey (2001) 41 (4): 549–563. https://doi.org/10.1525/as.2001.41.4.549 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Victor D. Cha; JAPAN'S ENGAGEMENT DILEMMAS WITH NORTH KOREA. Asian Survey 18 August 2001; 41 (4): 549–563. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/as.2001.41.4.549 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAsian Survey Search This content is only available via PDF. © Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

India's Space Program: Cause for Concern?

India's space program has become a matter of interest only recently. Prior to the 1980 launching of the Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-3), a three-stage rocket with the potential to be converted into an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM), the program had attracted interest because it represented remarkable technological development for a Third World nation. The security concerns that arise with such a rapidly growing level of sophistication in space technology have been largely overlooked, with two noteworthy exceptions. 1 Recent developments suggest a need for a reassessment of the rationale that underlies the program. This article attempts to evaluate the Indian space program. The first section presents the evolution of the program; the second is a record of the program and discusses specific achievements and ongoing plans. The third section examines the constraints under which the program functions, and the final section is a discussion of those aspects of the program that have military applications and concomitant security implications. There is no detailed attempt to discuss the long-term implications of these activities, since this would be beyond the purview of the present article. The time frame on which the article concentrates is 1972 onward.

Seapower and Arms Control: Problems and Prospects

Since 1975 there has been a steady deterioration in politicaldiplomatic and military-strategic relations between the East and the West. The euphoria of May 1972, when Presidents Nixon and Brezhnev signed the Statement of Principles of Detente, has long since dissipated in the West, as a result of Soviet involvement in Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia, the Soviet brigade in Cuba, and finally the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This pattern of interventionist behaviour has been coupled with a steady build-up in Soviet military capabilities especially in the European theatre with the Backfire bomber and the ss-20 intermediate-range ballistic missile (irbm). Western estimates suggest that up to 15 per cent of the Soviet gross national product is now allocated to defence. Indeed, the assessments of some Western analysts suggest that the West faces a 'window of vulnerability* until the mid-1980s when current military imbalances are expected to have been partially redressed.

The Redstone, Jupiter, and Juno

REDSTONE WAS THE first large ballistic missile developed in the United States. From the Redstone came Jupiter, the nation's first intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM). Redstone and Jupiter compiled a noteworthy list of firsts in the early years of free man's effort to explore and understand the newly accessible environment of space. The measure of their technological success, still largely to be reckoned, is a tribute to the collective dedication and skill of the people who brought Redstone and Jupiter into being. This team of technicians and scientists first served the U. S. Army and then the U. S. civilian space agency. Our first assignment on Alabama soil was in 1950 with the Ordnance Guided Missile Center (OGMC) at Redstone Arsenal, then in charge of the entire Army missile program. While remaining at the same Huntsville facility, our development team became, in turn, the Guided Missile Development Division of the Ordnance Missile Laboratories (GMDD) until 1956, and then the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) from 1956 to 1960. In July 1960, this group, many of whom had been active in rocketry since the early 1930's, became the nucleus of the new George C. Marshall Space Flight Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.' The basic Redstone and Jupiter missiles carried names appropriate to their different configurations and missions. The Redstone with modifications became the Jupiter A, Jupiter C, Juno I, and the Mercury-Redstone. Jupiter assumed the name Juno II when three upper stages were added and it became a space booster. Among the contributions of these rocket systems were the following milestones of rocketry and space exploration:2

Instrumentation and Range Safety System for Vandenberg Air Force Base

This paper is a survey of the Instrumentation and Range Safety System (IRSS) now under design for installation at Vandenberg Air Force Base (see Fig. 1). The Vandenberg Air Force Base will be used for launching intercontinental and intermediate range ballistic missiles, such as the Atlas, Titan, and Thor. These missiles, their launching pads and other associated information, are identified throughout the rest of the paper by the Air Force designation number. The number 65 identifies the Atlas; 68, the Titan; and 75, the Thor. The Vandenberg Air Force Base has been established in order to train Air Force crews in the launching of ballistic-type missiles and to establish an initial operating capability. Research and development will be provided only to the extent necessary to achieve the program. The range area is limited to the Vandenberg Air Force Base and the immediate launching facility, and does not include the area normally referred to as ``downrange''. The instrumentation System's basic function is to provide data substantiating the proper operation and reliability of the missile. The Range Safety System's basic function is to protect the life and property on and near Vandenberg Air Force Base.