[simonh]

>Hypothetically a battery of missiles on the moon could be launched without being noticed by anyone on earth.

If your opponent puts missiles on the moon, put observation satellites in lunar orbit.

Surely stealth nuke satellites in earth orbit would be better than fixed positions on the moon? But even nuke satellites are way worse than land based missiles.

A co-ordinated satelite strike from ow orbit means all you satellites need to go over your target at the same time. In an emergency unless you happen to have a bunch of sates by chance over your target, on average it actually takes longer to wait until a given satelite is over a target before you can launch, compared to using ground based missiles. You can compensate by having about 20x as many missile sats as you actually need, so there's always enough over your targets. In theory that gives a small advantage over land based missiles, but that's hugely wasteful.

Putting any of that on the moon just means your enemy has 3 days to figure out what you're doing, or means if you need an emergency response it will arrive in 3 days time.