There is similar recent technological development in missile accuracy that has changed the balance between the US and Russia to favor the US. It's completely missing the discussion when there is fret about Russian doomsday weapons. Russia needs more doomsday weapons and movable missile launchers just to match the US.<p>The Bulletin has great detailed article: How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-is-undermining-strategic-stability-the-burst-height-compensating-super-fuze/" rel="nofollow">https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-moderni...</a><p>>Our conclusions. Under the veil of an otherwise-legitimate warhead life-extension program, the US military has quietly engaged in a vast expansion of the killing power of the most numerous warhead in the US nuclear arsenal: the W76, deployed on the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines. This improvement in kill power means that all US sea-based warheads now have the capability to destroy hardened targets such as Russian missile silos, a capability previously reserved for only the highest-yield warheads in the US arsenal.<p>>The result is a nuclear arsenal that is being transformed into a force that has the unambiguous characteristics of being optimized for surprise attacks against Russia and for fighting and winning nuclear wars. While the lethality and firepower of the US force has been greatly increased, the numbers of weapons in both US and Russian forces have decreased, resulting in a dramatic increase in the vulnerability of Russian nuclear forces to a US first strike.
> Today, ring-laser gyro INS systems with embedded GPS come in tiny packages and can sustain massive G forces allowing them to be packed into everything from missiles to artillery shells...Before GPS was available to correct for drift, it's amazing the lengths engineers went through to make inertial navigation systems as accurate as possible.<p>Having your nuclear deterrence depend on GPS staying operational seems...questionable.
If anyone likes this kind of thing then there is more on the (remarkable) site of Tatjana J. van Vark:<p><a href="http://www.tatjavanvark.nl/tvv5/platfrm.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.tatjavanvark.nl/tvv5/platfrm.html</a><p>Edit: A different, simpler, INS!
What's the point of 40 meters CEP in a high yield nuclear missile ? what's wrong with 400 meters ? 1 Km ?<p>[edit]<p>> Very little of the precision of this guidance system is even exploited during a ballistic missile flight, it is mostly used simply to maintain guidance system alignment on the ground during missile alert without needing an external reference through precision gyrocompassing. Most ICBMs require an external alignment system to keep the INS in synch with the outside world prior to launch
>during missile alert without needing an external reference through precision gyrocompassing. Most ICBMs require an external alignment system to keep the INS in synch with the outside world prior to launch.<p>I don't fully grasp this.
Nowadays you can buy a toy quadcopter, and get a single chip gyro with on-package computer and performance of mid-cold war ICBM INS.<p>Microelectronics is a tough industry. Fear of communism can not match the fear of loosing to a commercial competitor in a half trillion dollar industry.