Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pjmorris 2978 days ago
How do you tell the difference between commercial scheduled rocket flights and incoming ICBM's?
7 comments

The same way you tell the difference between commercial scheduled airline flights incoming kamikaze pilots?
Assume that there aren't commercial scheduled airline flights going straight through a warzone?
Assume there aren't commercial scheduled spaceline flights taking off from nuclear missile silos.
I haven't heard of missile defense systems that are capable of determining the origin of an ICBM while deciding if it should try and take it out.
Infrared boost phase detectors on satellites have been around since the 60s. The US and Russian detection systems, at least, certainly know the origin of any ICBMs. There's not many parties that don't have that data and also have counter-measures.
Heavy regulation and requiring all flights to be registered with NORAD with high precision, probably.
We'd also know where the launch comes from, and how many got launched.

Russia can already stick a nuke in a commercial airliner and set it off over NYC, if they want.

Presumably you see where they take off and where they are headed for its pretty straight forward. Current ICBM's seem to have "relatively" minor down range maneuverability so once you're ballistic you can plot a big circle of where you can land. Is that near a spaceport? cool. Is it near a missile silo? better check into it.

Bombers are the same way, there is nothing that prevents building a nuclear bomber in the shell of a 747 and calling it a cargo plane on its transponder.

Same way you differentiate between an airplane and an alien spaceship. One is common, the other is so absurdly rare its not even worth considering.
You just build second strike capabilities and call it a day. If {Russia, U.S.} gets off a first strike, then {U.S., Russia} can still get off a second strike, therefore neither will strike first.

Well, that's one option. Russia will need an early warning network to rival the American one either way, and given that and proper flight path registration... maybe there would be no confusion. Maybe.

Something like a rocket version of ADS-B that feeds to a central data collection point, from which nation-states that are nuclear powers (permanent UN security council members, for the most part) can receive a read-only data stream of rocket traffic.

Would require rockets with speed/altitude limit uncrippled GPS.

The ICBMs are usually not 9m wide, made of carbon fiber, carrying transponders, and making a gliding reentry.