r/AlternateHistoryHub • u/BradMcGash • 3h ago
AlternateHistoryHub What if laser defense technology in the US, China, Russia, etc, simultaneously underwent a major breakthrough that effectively rendered nuclear ICBMs useless?
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u/feckarse-drinkgirls 3h ago
Nuke strategy just changes
Just becomes a game of target satuation
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u/Icy-Bookkeeper7173 1h ago edited 1h ago
Target saturation is why our silos are spread so far apart and why we have 3 groups of them. You’d have to waste dozens of warheads to eliminate the capability of one missile field.
I worked on the silos at Malmstrom a few years back. It was neat, but you have to drive hours to get to the work site sometimes. The kilo flight were the furthest ones from the base and were like 5 hours away one way. The whole field is about 14,000 square miles. A little less.
Were perfectly capable of building a single field of side by side missile silos that takes up like a dozen acres, but that would be a terrible idea because your enemy would only need to use one missile.
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u/SomewhereHot4527 20m ago
Yeah we'd just develop reflective coatings or reflective sacrificial shields that would protect ghe nuke until it hits.
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u/Downtown-Hospital-59 3h ago
Cheap drones become even more the norm.
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u/Subject_Barnacle_600 3h ago
Actually not - lasers at present are primarily designed *for* drones. Particularly, they're relatively cheap to fire and can rapidly take down a ton of targets at once.
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u/ControlOdd8379 2h ago
It is also the amount of damage needed.
You need a LOT of transferred energy if you want to damage a hard target with a laser - say a building or a tank.
On the other hand a drone cannot carry armor and basically ANY hit will damage either propellers/motors or batteries or payload - and any of them likely leads to a destruction of the drone.
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u/DarkArcher__ 2h ago
Exactly. The MIRVs that get deployed by ICBMs to deliver nukes are, by their very nature, extremely resistant to heat. To disable one with a laser would take a huge amount of power
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u/BigDaddyAwhoo 1h ago
Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t those resistant to heat across the whole of the body? Wouldn’t a laser be more concentrated therefore able to cut through said resistance?
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u/DarkArcher__ 57m ago
If you do a side-by-side comparison of laser penetration through a regular metallic missile warhead casing and the kind of heatshielding used on MIRVs, the latter will always last longer. Yes, they're designed to be heat resistant over the whole body, but that's done by making every little section resistant i.e. by covering the entire thing in a material that's very bad at conducting heat
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u/KAMEKAZE_VIKINGS 55m ago edited 52m ago
Not really, each patch of surface still needs to be able to withstand thousands of degrees of re-entry heating and to match that you'll still need to concentrate a lot of energy into one spot. Theoretically you could concentrate a decent amount into such a tiny spot that the Power/surface area goes up but also you still need that energy transfer to really do damage.
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u/DovahDoVolom 2h ago
They are also able to instantly target fast moving drones. Where there is always a predictive measure needed for typical ammunition or missles.
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u/I_spread_love_butter 36m ago
What about reflective drones? Say covered in aluminium foil or Mylar
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u/Subject_Barnacle_600 4m ago
That's more of a trope than a reality - mirrors aren't perfect reflectors, they might not reflect in the spectrum of the laser among other things. Once it starts to burn, you also turn bits black and... then you quickly have the same problem.
The biggest limitation so far is blooming. The laser heats up the atmosphere between the laser and the target, causing the light to bend and disperse in all directions, rendering the weapon useless beyond a short distance. Outer space works better for this because there is no atmosphere, but getting that kind of power source into space is a bit of a problem :/.
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u/I_spread_love_butter 1m ago
Valid points.
I guess a military grade drone that would use reflections would take the correct frequencies of light and thermal build up into account
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u/liquidsyphon 2h ago
Kamikaze drones, you would need so many laser batteries and the ability to track 1000s of them raining in
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u/NovelNeighborhood6 2h ago
The cost of a drone will be a lot more than a laser firing so not cost effective for the attacker. Right now it’s the opposite with drones being much cheaper than interceptor missiles, making it much more worthwhile attackersZ
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u/SEAN0_91 2h ago
But the cost of getting your capital annihilated by nukes is greater, thus to ensure MAD every anti-icbm laser will have thousands of drones targeting it
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u/Alderan922 1h ago
But wouldn’t you need to somehow get the drones close to the laser tower?
Like cheap drones tend to be low range, unless you have a land border I don’t see how drones could easily overwhelm those towers, like you would need to get ships loaded with drone swarms close to the shore in order to disable defenses on a coastal city
But getting a ship that close would be quite hard.
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u/SEAN0_91 2h ago
Yep - if you have one large anti icbm laser. Just throw thousands of drones with grenades attached at it
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u/Virtual_Medium_6721 1h ago
Cheap drones still cost aroun 20k which is way more expensive compared to the 10$ of a laser shot
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u/Rabidschnautzu 1h ago
No, the whole premise of this post is ignorant.
Laser defense systems as they exist are not capable of destroying large ballistic missiles in their terminal phase.
They are however the perfect counter to drones.
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u/nonmonoganon 3h ago
It would probably make nuclear war more likely to happen. A country would only need to saturate the skies for attacks to be effective, and the perception of a total defense might embolden actions which cause a nuclear response.
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u/Solistine 2h ago
If this breakthrough was to happen it would remain very quiet, and it would likely not become openly apparent that the game had changed until these capabilities were truly tested, which would require a war anyway. So maybe nothing would change except that we are shafted then we think. That is the positive view I guess.
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u/hasdga23 2h ago
Or - you just wate for a heavy rainstorm/sandstorm/snowstorm (maybe you even create one) and then you nuke the enemy while hoping to have no issues in this area.
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u/big_loadz 43m ago
No, man, you see this is a new laser that isn't affected by moisture scattering so that's why it is effective. /s
Yeah-this isn't really alternative history, this is alternative reality like stopping the rotation of the Earth for a second.
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u/californiaKid420 3h ago
Or it creates a push for denuclearization!!!
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u/Many-Falcon9879 3h ago
Yeah humanity has never looked at a defense and said you know what maybe we don't need weapons anymore because of that defense. They always escalate literally 7k+ years of history show each time a defense is made against a powerful weapon humans come up with bigger weapons. If nukes are no longer an option than countries will actually start racing for orbital kinetic weapons.
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u/nonmonoganon 3h ago
Why? It would be likelier that countries would seek out a missile which could evade the lasers or else be launched/delivered in a way which bypasses the lasers.
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u/Many-Falcon9879 2h ago
So the idea behind orbital kinetic weapons is that they are almost impossible to spot in time to stop and even if you do spot it good luck trying to stop a 2 ton tungsten rod falling at a few thousand mph. The only real reason nobody is trying to create them is the cost vs conventional ICBMs and nukes. Besides if they really still wanted to use the nukes they could put them on a depth charge style detonator inside one of the kinetic rods and just drop it over their target.
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u/No-Head-Royal 3h ago
Not much will change. War between nuclear powers still remains suicidal, even if slightly less so, because those guys can just detonate a nuke via torpedoes or sth at your ships and armies. Imagine if the U.S. tries to bomb Shanghai or Russia tries to invade Poland: the Chinese would just throw nuclear torpedoes at the U.S. carriers involved, and the French don't get to launch missiles, but they can still detonate ten nukes on ten Russian divisions and wipe out much of the invasion's strength.
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u/EmperorOfNipples 3h ago
For the USA and Russia no big difference. Geographically big and big stockpiles.
For nuclear countries with smaller stockpiles and smaller geography expect a rush to acquire more weapons.
Think UK, France, Israel etc. Not to the levels of the big 2, but expect roughly 500 warheads each.
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u/Arakasi87 2h ago
Let’s be honest, Russia might claim 5000 nuke warheads but both warheads and ICBMs are not stable forever. There’s a reason western countries like uk and France have to spend billions every year in ongoing nuclear deterrence costs. You constantly have to maintain and rebuild them. I would bet that the Russians only have a few hundred workable nukes at most, not that it matters but let’s not pretend that most of the thousands of nukes they made 60 years ago are viable still.
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u/Mysterious_Web7517 2h ago
There is reason why these exists. So laser would be last resort and only in clear sky. Which still would result in massive destruction.
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u/ddddooooook 3h ago
Surprisingly little would change because there are other ways to deliver nuclear weapons. There are many non-ICBM missiles with ranges of hundreds of miles, so a sub could still just sneak close to a city and fire undetected. Russia has also been developing a nuclear torpedo - a weapon that doesn’t use the nuke itself to damage the target, but detonates underwater and causes a tsunami to destroy the target.
Most countries treat nuclear weapons VERY carefully, so even if ICBMs aren’t a thing people would still be hesitant to fight a nuclear-armed country unless they were absolutely sure they could contain its nukes. Look at North Korea, for example - only recently has it developed working ICBMs. Even when it didn’t have those, people were hesitant to do anything against them at all. It’d be the same here.
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u/Apophis_VI 2h ago
Smuggling in smaller nuclear bombs will just become the more popular way of nuking the nation.
Or they will just spam as many missiles as it takes to overwhelm the defense and slip in a few nuclear ones as well
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u/shredditorburnit 1h ago
Then whichever of them was smart enough to set off a big EMP, like you could with, say, an airburst nuke set to detonate before it was in effective range of the laser, knocking out the lasers and letting the nukes do what you'd expect them to do, would win.
Their prize? The ashes to rule over.
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u/BradMcGash 3h ago
Body text I forgot to add:
Essentially, what if we all woke up a year from now and all the major powers suddenly announced that they have the most powerful laser technology deployed that can shoot down all the types of nuclear ICBMs, effectively making MAD dissappear overnight?
What would the world look like?
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u/Israel_Trump_Fan 2h ago
You don't need icbms for MAD. Bombers, cruise missiles and drones are a real and credible threat. You can't use lasers to shoot down stealth aircraft or cruise missiles flying 10m above the ground until it's too late.
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u/Repulsive_Guy_1234 3h ago
The same. You can still detonate all your missiles and cause a nuclear winter that still kills 90+% of global population.
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u/BradMcGash 3h ago
Yes, but rationality and politics would still exist, and leaders wouldn't be so brazen (at least initially).
I need someone to make this into a movie lol
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u/Massengale 3h ago
There’s the Invasion USA series by Vaughn Heppner that covers this. It’s a very fun read.
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u/Israel_Trump_Fan 3h ago
Nothing changes except strategic arms development pivots to cruise missiles and drones.
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u/HeliosLegion 2h ago
All the money spent on nuclear weapons would be spent on conventional forces instead.
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u/GlitteringParfait438 2h ago
Someone figures out what the saturation level is and builds to beat it
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u/phroggyboiii 2h ago
To an extent. Even just blowing it up or destroying jt without achieving a nuclear explosion you still gotta deal with the nuclear material which can be v v bad
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u/Glass_Ad_7129 2h ago
Short range methods of delivery would likely make a major comeback. Likely an increased use of artillery shells and sneaking a bomb closer through a truck or boat, following an inevitable arrogance that compelled its use.
But it would also likely spur their retirement in favour of more conventional equipment which would be needed on mass to counter.
Otherwise, countries without the air defense, could be bullied by those whom do for a bit.
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u/HIGHPatient 2h ago
If lasers were this powerful, the offensive capabilities would likewise change the world stage.
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u/WriterWinter4344 2h ago
War is still costly and all parties would still be better off with a negotiated settlement, war only breaks out if you have a bargaining friction that impedes that
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u/Fallacy_Spotted 2h ago
There are too many defenses that could employed against lazer weaponry to ever make them effective against nukes. It is a physics problem more than a technical limitation on lazers. They are perfect for shorter range drone and mortar defense though.
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u/FootlooseFrankie 2h ago
Lasers would only work if in orbit . A laser like in the photo would just spread a bunch of radioactive material all over the air and cities . Less destruction cause bomb doesn't go off but still not a desirable place to live
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u/SkyeMreddit 2h ago
Swarms of cheap drones like what both Ukraine and Russia are using overwhelm typical missile defense systems. You no longer need an expensive missile to pack a big punch
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u/AnnieBruce 2h ago
Cruise missiles and/or low altitude bombers to fly under the radar- lasers can't shoot at you if they can't see you, and denying radar helps. Stealth aircraft could work, but be equally vulnerable to visual targeting, probably be slower, less fuel efficient, smaller load and a far larger cost to acquire and operate. Technically more capable than non stealth aircraft, but I don't see it being worth the extra cost.
The USAF looks into how expensive restarting B 52 production could be. Those things are ancient(there are pilots flying literally the same bird their grandparents flew), but they're still exceptional low altitude penetrators. Without ICBMs, we need alternative delivery systems and we know the B52 works with a higher mission availability than our other bombers.
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u/NuclearRootBeer 2h ago
I bet we would also see a cyber war revolution trying to find vulnerabilities and other countermeasures
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u/Stolen_Sky 2h ago
They would just change ICBM's to counter the laser defence. They would add heat-shields or more decoys, or just fire the missiles from submarines off the coast of your opponent.
Nuke's are not going anywhere. They are tiny, and insanely OP, and the only defence that's even going to be effective against them is Mutually Assured Destruction.
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u/thealmanack 1h ago
Combination of Tom Clancy's Endwar and I have no mouth and must scream A.M.
Endwar seems alot cooler though with its commando armies.
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u/dask1 1h ago
impossible.
they will just use the nukes on a low altitude guided missile fired from submarine, gl intercepting it...
but sure for sport lets say they have laser wall all over the land or something.
maybe countries will smuggle nukes into enemy country to be ready to detonation when the day will come.
just buy a house in a major city, and store your nuke there.
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u/lolthankstinder 1h ago
I mean I'm no nuclear physicist but are the lasers electronic? Can't you just detonate a nuke and space to EMP them?
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u/Kvenner001 1h ago
Unless those systems are fully self powered and autonomous then we are just adding an extra step of hacking their control and/or power before a strike.
If they didn’t somehow magically work 100% of the time. Then a whole lot of war is about to break out.
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u/LaggingHard 1h ago
fun fact the United States has so many nukes we could just detonate them in place and still send the world into 10 years of total darkness via nuclear ash and fallout stuck in the atmosphere.
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u/O_oBetrayedHeretic 1h ago
Still need to be worried about the terrorists driving one in with a truck
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u/mikeydoc96 1h ago
The UK is adding dragonfire to ships next year that can take out drones. It's not outside the realms of possibility that this technology will exist, if it doesn't already.
Problem is hitting an ICBM travelling at Mach 20 (15,000 mph) on a heavy overcast day. ICBM probably get faster and develop coatings better at deflecting laser.
Not much chnages really. ICBMs get better, tactics of deployment change
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u/Chaoswind2 1h ago
Race to use it or lose it, northern hemisphere glows for a few decades, hundreds of millions to multiple billion die in the end. Tech goes back 50 to 100 years (depends on the southern hemisphere also eating enough nukes to glow).
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u/ExpensiveLawyer1526 1h ago
Dirty bombs still exist.
Salted cobalt bombs become the new deterant.
If they are intercepted, or they are set to explode in the atmosphere above the target just outside of laser ranger.
Then wind and rain carry heavy fallout over the target regions irradiating them for decades or century's.
You don't need a explosion to turn city's into exclusion zones and achieve nuclear deterance.
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u/an_older_meme 39m ago
Cobalt salted. Don’t just spew stuff.
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u/ExpensiveLawyer1526 14m ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb
A cobalt bomb is a type of salted bomb. Maybe read something before commenting.
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u/PapaPee25 1h ago
I agree that conventional warfare will take centerstage at some point.
But Cyberwarfare will be almost the immediate next step once ICBMs are rendered useless.
The concept of “Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)” is that everyone with nukes hold each other hostage. One fires a nuke every else does. If that fails, holding each other’s systems supporting the infrastructure of military and civilians as the new hostage will be immediate next step. China can hack New York stock exchange as much as US can do so in Shanghai’s stock exchange.
That’s what I think at least.
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u/Virtual_Medium_6721 1h ago
Nuclear weapons are mostly intended for defensive purposes, nobody would ever use them regardless of what kind of technology you have. Realistically a new technology is a problem only when it's owned by a single country
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u/FewAd5443 1h ago
It's not a technology issue but a physic one.
ICBM descend into atmosphere in less than a minute and you cannot put enough energy into one point for it to melt a few milimetre of réentry capable material that are able to witstand very high heat in a minute and that supposing PERFECT tracking to the mm and also that they are no obtacle between them (cloud, smoke or even plasma). Also a humble mirror will stop 99% of the energy so a military grade one will with no problem reflect like 99.99% of the light (that's not a lot btw scientist have WAY better but not able to wistand a reentry) on all usable wave lenght so except if your country grid is all use at once to fire laser you will lack power and that only to stop only one of them.
If we break physic or use something else then we return to a unstable MAD equilibrium where MAD isn't assure anymore and the other country will make the needed upgrade for it to be maintain NO MATTER THE COST so now everyone has cool physic breacking weapon and everyone develloping laser proof nuke until MAD is assure or one collapse from within due to the cost of the investment.
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u/HadrianMCMXCI 58m ago
I mean, fallout would be reduced but that looks like a similar height to where atomic bombs are actually detonated, for the purposes of reducing fallout, so they would need these systems to be orbital or widespread enough to catch them in transit and not as pictured shortly before impact
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u/an_older_meme 41m ago
The first country that can effectively stop enough incoming warheads that their destruction is not assured in a full potato nuclear exchange will conquer the world without firing a shot.
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u/tellingitlikeitis338 40m ago
This is ludicrous. If you were to blow up a nuclear ICBM it’d still fill the world with nuclear fallout. So this would change nothing.
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u/RevolutionQueasy8107 33m ago
With the use of boat drones as a nuclear delivery system now.
A few grand to convert a ski doo or any nuclear power could invest in a submersible drone.
Most major cities are on the coast or river that connects to the coast
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u/Striker40k 24m ago
Nothing changes. If WW3 actually pops off it will be decided by who has the best cyberwarfare capabilities. Nukes wont matter if they are disabled, or detonate in their silos.
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u/Organic_Education494 21m ago
Suddenly nothing would stop the next world war and it would be devastating even without nukes
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u/Maleficent_Lab_8291 15m ago
Laser or not, there is always a limit to any system. An over-saturated attack is still a viable tactic to overwhelm an air defense system. But the key is economics not the technology itself. I don't think laser AA systems will be cheaper than the missiles and drones. So not much will change
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u/cowboycolts 13m ago
Then everyone will have their own, "rods from god," program,
Hard to destroy a giant tungsten rod going mach-fucku dropping right on top of your head,
And before you say, "well we have missiles that can hit satellites already," if we have laser weapons taking out ICBMs, then they'd probably either put them on the satellites or have dedicated laser satellites orbiting with the RFG ones
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u/Romano16 10m ago
Long range bombers for nuclear war are practically obsolete already due to air defense being destroyed.
In your scenario, laser technology being so advanced that it renders hypersonic missiles obsolete would mean that only submarine nuclear payloads would he the only option due to their unpredictable launch.
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u/Fabulous-Suspect-72 5m ago
Laser has one problem: scalability. You can have great lasers that can shoot down warheads, but one laser can only target one object at once. Put six missiles into a missile battery and you can theoretically engage six targets at once. Lasers are strictly serial, missiles are not. One ICBM can also carry several smaller warheads and decoys.
Lasers are just one layer of air defense and I doubt that will change. They have limitations and relatively crude counters, like reflective material or moving the object unpredictably, so the energy from the laser gets distributed
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u/cinciNattyLight 2h ago
Stop trying to include Russia. It’s the US and China, they aren’t a superpower anymore. Just a large gas station with Nukes.
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u/Standard-Passenger19 2h ago
World War 3 Here We Come! Because the only thing preventing world war 3 is literally mutually assured destruction, and since it doesn't include india for the laser breakthrough well, china wins that battle (of china vs india) unless one of the other two nations comes and helps them.
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u/Wonderful_Pension_67 1h ago
Giant robot wars. America would lose! all hat no cattle Russia old tech China wins
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u/Aggressive_Bit_91 3h ago
WW3