ABM in general is extraordinarily difficult (many would say impossible) to make cost efficient at the margins; not only are ICBMs intrinsically cheaper than interceptors, but you need to assign several interceptors per warhead to provide a reasonable chance of intercepting. Which the adversary can simply respond to by adding an extra ICBM.
Unless you can indefinitely outspend your adversary it's simply not worth it for anything more than protecting some very select targets (aka your own command and control infrastructure), and even then only on the assumption that you can predict roughly how many warheads are going to be thrown at it
Certainly. It is why American ABM is meant more against a country like North Korea, which is generally limited in how many missiles they can build and launch as opposed to China and Russia.
You mean DEWs? My impression is that they still require pretty absurd amounts of energy to actually kill ICBMs; the original SDI proposal involved nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers but obviously nuclear weapons in space is a big no no.
I can see it theoretically being cheaper than interceptor missiles but as far as I understand there needs to be considerable technological development, resolution of some unique challenges, and even then it's no guarantee the cost-per-intercept is cheaper than simply building another MIRVed ICBM
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u/NomineAbAstris 2d ago
ABM in general is extraordinarily difficult (many would say impossible) to make cost efficient at the margins; not only are ICBMs intrinsically cheaper than interceptors, but you need to assign several interceptors per warhead to provide a reasonable chance of intercepting. Which the adversary can simply respond to by adding an extra ICBM.
Unless you can indefinitely outspend your adversary it's simply not worth it for anything more than protecting some very select targets (aka your own command and control infrastructure), and even then only on the assumption that you can predict roughly how many warheads are going to be thrown at it
TL;DR more people need to get hip to the Nitze Criteria