Recently, Russian president Vladimir Putin was heard bitching about the proposed U.S. missle defense shield that is slated to be built in the former Czech Republic. He is quoted as saying, “Dood, srsly gtfo with ur missle shield thing or i’ll retarget my nukes at europe. kthxbye.”
The thing is….according to this entry from the Congressional Record, it only takes 10 seconds to retarget a Russian ICBM.
Mr. Chairman, in testimony before my subcommittee, Bruce Blair, a former targeting officer, said that one can retarget a Russian missile in 10 seconds. Ed Bradley on CBS News, `60 Minutes’ interviewed General Sergev who in fact headed up strategic command and space for Russia and who now is the defense minister.
[Page: H4111]
[TIME: 1245]
In reality, the whole concept of launch on warning (i.e., if you launch your nukes, we will launch our nukes before yours arrive and blow us up) requires dynamic retargeting of ICBMs. The country that launches second would retarget their missles to strike the enemy’s missles that are still in their silos and weren’t launched in the initial strike. That’s part of the reason we haven’t had a nuclear war yet — the country who launches second has the advantage of wiping out all the remaining silos of nukes that weren’t fired the first time because they can retarget their missles to not strike empty silos.
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting bit of rhetoric on Putin’s part, but it holds no water in reality. Targeting and retargeting ICBMs only takes a matter of seconds, so it really doens’t matter where they are aimed initially.