ICBMs: Enabling the End of the World

did you know that mega projects has a sister channel appropriately called side projects where we do things that aren't quite mega enough for mega projects i'm going to link to it below please do consider subscribing we cover fascinating things like soviet space weapons world war ii's greatest airplanes histories lost treasures and the movement of london bridge from london to a random town in america stuff like that like i said there's a link below please consider subscribing on the 6th of august 1945 the way we fight changed forever with the atomic bombing of hiroshima the world entered a new phase of warfare a fearsome terrifying phase where entire cities could be leveled in an instant for the first time in history global destruction of our own making appeared a distinct possibility but the bomb that fell on hiroshima on the sixth and the slightly larger bomb that hit nagasaki three days later were distinctly primitive compared to what would later appear they also needed to be dropped by an aircraft which wasn't much of an issue as the americans dominated the skies above japan but in terms of a global nuclear war it was far from ideal if warfare changed on the 6th of april 1945 it took an even darker turn with the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles icbms in the 1950s now before we crack on with the history of icbms perhaps a quick definition to be classified as an icbm a weapon needs to have a range of at least 5 500 kilometers that's 3400 miles which is in theory far enough to hit a different continent though depending on where you are that could be done with a much shorter distance indeed i could throw a rock onto another continent if i stood at the right boundary these missiles typically carry a nuclear warhead sometimes multiple nuclear warheads the strength of which varies depending on the model [Music] we've done several videos here on mega projects regarding the incredible level of ingenuity seen during world war ii there is something about war that seems to drive inventiveness to stratospheric levels and for us to make mega projects about them and in the case of nazi germany no doubt some of this was driven by the psychopathic tendencies of fuhrer adolf hitler it was in germany during world war ii that we saw the very early designs that would eventually lead to icbms the v2 rocket was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile and it could reach a range of roughly 320 kilometers where it typically disgorged its 1 000 kilogram worth of amatol a mixture of tnt and ammonium nitrate in a fiery explosion thankfully and i do mean that with a sense of perspective the v2 appeared fairly late in the war and apart from striking a degree of fear into the citizens of london antwerp and liege their impact was much smaller than traditional aerial bombing but still it's estimated that 9 000 people died as a result of b2 attacks had the germans managed to develop the weapon earlier in the war the outcome could have been really really different the v2 program was led by verna von braun a brilliant rocketry pioneer who would later be whisked away to america to become one of the leading figures in the development of the u.s space program however long before that he was involved in project america an expansive plan that explored the possibility of launching strikes against cities on the eastern seaboard of the united states either through conventional aircraft or long-range missiles the missile idea eventually focused on the a9 and a10 rocket designs the aggregate rocket series had begun back in 1933 and the v2 was an a4 rocket a6 through a12 were designs only and were never actually built the development of the a10 rocket began in 1940 with a projected first flight of 1946. if it had been built it would likely have carried a cluster of four engines that were used on the v2 rocket and stood at roughly 20 meters in height in theory it would have traveled at a top speed of over 10 000 kilometers per hour but thankfully hitler's intercontinental ballistic missile plan came crashing down with the rest of the third reich call it maybe opportunistic but the poaching of hundreds of german scientists by the uk and the usa in operation paperclip proved to be a bit of a master stroke apparently past affiliations could be easily forgotten if you could help your new employers gain the upper hand over your new enemy the soviet union no sooner had the ink dried on the former nazi surrender than former allies began eyeing each other suspiciously the suspicion soon developed into the greatest arms race that the world had ever seen and on several occasions we were pushed to the brink of nuclear war both the usa and ussr immediately began to work on missile designs based primarily on the v2 but also on other nazi designs that had been left in various degrees of production soviet union gained an early advantage because their efforts were centralized whereas each arm of the us armed forces began developing their own missiles which led to a considerable amount of duplication the first out of the gates was the soviet r7 which appeared in 1957. development of this rocket had begun in 1953 at okb-1 a soviet manufacturer of ballistic missiles spacecraft and space station components in calan and grad in moscow oblast with a reported 100 designs being rejected until its final approval the r7 was 34 meters long 10.3 meters in diameter and weighed 280 tons it had an effective firing range of 8 800 kilometers and was capable of carrying a single three to five megaton thermonuclear warhead despite 28 test launches between 1957 and 1961 the r7 was never deployed as a viable weapon and it is probably best known as the rocket that carried sputnik into space on the 4th of october 1957 while a heavily modified r7 named vostok took yuri gagarin into space on the 12th of april 1961. at this point the americans were well on their way to producing their own icbm but the news and visual sight of a soviet craft traveling above them certainly set alarm bells ringing american confidence had been booming through the late 40s and early 50s but the successful launch of sputnik and the operational success of the r7 put a bit of a check on that how much this knock had to do with the americans eventually overtaken the ussr in the space race is debatable but it certainly meant that their efforts were doubled [Applause] but the u.s weren't far behind the first test flight of the atlas rocket came in 1957 and it became operational two years later america's first icbm was also used for space launches as part of the mercury program and was included in the four manned orbital flights that took place between 1962 and 1963. the atlas rocket had 24 test launches in the build-up to its deployment 13 successes and 11 failures so by no means smooth sailing it has been said that every single component of the atlas failed at some point during testing which i guess is why testing is a thing but it was the balloon tanks carrying the fuel which caused the biggest headache these were built using thin stainless steel but carried next to no rigid support structure as a result the tanks had to be pressurized at all times and have five psi of nitrogen in the tanks even when not fueled another problem was the unstable engine boost which had a nasty habit of causing the entire missile to blow up while on the launch pad this was remedied with the introduction of baffled injectors which essentially dampened the shockwave from the combustion when used as a missile it stood 26 meters tall with a diameter of three meters atlas t the first operational model came with a single rocketdyne lr105 rocket engine and a booster engine composed of a rocketdyne xlr 89 rocket engine with two 150 000 pound-force thrust chambers the first atlas missiles carried the ge mark ii with a w49 thermonuclear weapon and a yield of 1.44 megatons this was later updated to mark iii and finally the mark iv with a w38 thermonuclear bomb and a yield of 3.75 megatons the final configuration seen on the atlas made it over 100 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on nagasaki september 1959 saw the deployment of the first atlas missiles to fe war and afb in wyoming where they were placed in above ground launches more followed and they were placed close by at offered air via nebraska bringing the total number of atlas icbms to 24. both the atlas and the r7 shared a similar problem both used cryogenic liquid oxygen which meant long preparation times for a launch which wasn't exactly ideal for a quick nuclear strike and the atlas icbm was decommissioned in 1965 because by that time newer technology had overtaken it it seems ludicrous to think about it now but back in the 1960s there was a doctrine of military strategy known as mutually assured destruction or mad as the acronym suggests this was a frankly absurd idea where both sides seemed to come to a consensus that a nuclear strike from one or the other would lead to global annihilation because the retaliation would trigger a stampede of missiles in all directions therefore the best way to prevent nuclear war was to stock up sufficient quantities of nuclear weapons point them at the other guy and then wait for the weirdest most destructive game of chicken that you're ever likely to see but strangely it actually worked and that's exactly how it played out both the usa and the ussr spent unimaginable amounts of money on icbms as well as other forms of potential nuclear strikes and then never used them i'm not saying that's a bad thing but it does seem like a bit of a waste of money time and resources at its peak in 1986 there were an estimated 70 000 nuclear weapons around the world but that kind of madness it couldn't go on as much as we'd like to think of nuclear disarmament as a great sign of peace it had actually quite a bit to do with the vast amounts of money both sides were spending each year maintaining their nuclear arsenals between 1940 and 1996 the u.s spent roughly 5.5 trillion dollars on nuclear weapons programs and in 2019 it announced that it would cost an estimated 50 billion dollars per year to maintain its slimmed down and modernized weapons over the next decade this is a costly game to play as other countries began developing icbms the number dotted around the globe began to grow steadily but if we're talking about the icbm game there were really only two participants the u.s and the ussr have from the very early days dwarfed other nations in terms of their nuclear capabilities but that's not to say that significant efforts to reduce the vast numbers weren't made by both sides the salt 1 strategic arms limitation talks began in 1969 in the finnish capital of helsinki three years later the anti-ballistic missile treaty was signed by both sides which essentially froze the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels it did allow for additional submarine launch ballistic missiles slbm launches but only if the equivalent number of icbms was scrapped at the same time if that was a big step for the two superpower enemies salt 2 which was signed in 1979 after seven years of negotiations went even further this was the first time that both nations formally agreed to begin reducing their nuclear capabilities although with the cap set at 2250 including all forms of nuclear delivery that was still enough for both nations to destroy the world many many times over salt 2 was never formally signed by the u.s senate in protest of the soviet invasion of afghanistan which came six months after the signing but both nations did abide by the terms of the treaty [Music] if the world was past the peak of icbms and other nuclear weapons the collapse of the soviet union in 1991 accelerated the process shortly before the u.s and ussr signed the start one treaty which proposed a massive reduction of nuclear warheads the treaty meant that the u.s could retain 8556 nuclear warheads while the soviet union approximately 6449 and overall when this was fully implemented it meant a reduction of roughly 80 percent in the number of strategic nuclear warheads around the world and well we all lived happily ever after well not quite the glorious internationalization that we saw during the 1990s has struggled in the last couple of decades with various nations coming to the nuclear table and those already at the table developing smaller more dangerous weapons france and the uk have long possessed icbms but the uk's arsenal is now restricted to trident nuclear submarines while france has both submarine varieties and their m51 land-based icbm china had begun developing its own nuclear arsenal in the early 1960s with its first test taking place in 1964. during the 1970s the first chinese icbm emerged that df-4 though not a lot of information is available on this missile and is estimated that only four were ever deployed we know much more about its follow-up the df-5 with a blast yield of 4-5 megatons and an operational range of between 12 000 and 15 000 kilometers the df5 was initially stored horizontally in tunnels beneath mountains and when the time came for the missiles to be fired they were rolled out into the open and fueled there a process that was believed to take two hours while the chinese don't give out exact numbers it's generally thought that there are between 20 and 25 df-5s deployed around china israel's jericho 3 icbm entered service sometime in 2008 while india joined the club in 2012 with the introduction of the agni 5. officially india classes it as an intermediate range missile with a range of 5 000 kilometers although other sources put the range at 8 000 kilometers making it an icbm and then we come to north korea the small asian nation that has taken fanaticism to an entirely different level introduced their own icbm sometime in 2012 but hit the headlines on the 28th of november 2017 when it fired one of their new hwasong-15 missiles around a thousand kilometers before it landed in the sea of japan during the parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the workers party of korea on the 10th of october 2020 a new icbm was spotted rolling through the streets of pyongyang believed to be the hasson 16. very little is known about it but experts believe it could have a range of 13 000 kilometers which is enough to well scare everybody [Music] it's now over 80 years since german scientists began developing their rockets that would eventually lead to icbms the peak in terms of numbers came in the early 1980s and since then there has been a general decrease and while this certainly has led to a huge reduction in warheads floating around the world modern icbms sometimes come with a strength that was unimaginable during their early development but immense power isn't always required today's icbms are incredibly accurate sometimes capable of hitting within 100 meters of a target after traveling thousands of miles some models might even have better accuracy than even that with that kind of accuracy you can rely on less powerful icbms that will still level absolutely anything in their path we've also seen the introduction of icbms that can carry multiple warheads the us lgm 118 peacekeeper which was in service between 1986 and 2005 could carry 12 separate warheads i don't know about you but that seems like way too many nuclear warheads for an object named peacekeeper the us minimum 3 the only u.s land-based icbm in operation today comes with three w-62 mark 12 warheads each with a yield of between 350 and 475 kilotons which is substantially less than previous models it also comes with the d37d flight computer and a 16-bit high-speed microprocessor chip that keeps the missile on course for its target there are an estimated 400 minimum threes currently deployed around three separate air force bases icbms around the world today are generally deployed in four forms in a purpose-built silo on board submarines known as submarine launch ballistic missiles and on the back of heavy trucks and purpose-built trains the final three methods come with the added advantage of being mobile and so they're harder to track and a massive missile on a truck does also look rather impressive at those military parades the exact number of icbms around the world is difficult to calculate but a reasonable estimate would be around 900 spread across eight countries if we include icbms and slbms together these are the usa russia china france uk india israel and north korea since the end of world war ii the most catastrophic global events we've ever seen instead of moving away from war we humans have been hell-bent on developing bigger and better ways to destroy ourselves icbms stand at the pinnacle of this mayhem weapons that can be fired from thousands of miles away that have the capability of hitting a target with terrifying accuracy and causing the kind of devastation we've only briefly glimpsed the fact that this power is held in the hands of a select few some considerably less stable than others makes this bizarre situation all the more astonishing while there are some on this earth who still hunt with bows and arrows others have the power to end humanity with the flick of a switch it's a scary peculiar world we live in and at this point you might tend to think about albert einstein's famous quote i know not with what weapons world war iii will be fought but world war iv will be fought with sticks and stones [Music] so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe if you've got a suggestion for a future mega projects video please do leave it in the comments below also as i mentioned at the start why not check out side projects this channel's sister channel also linking to that below thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

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Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021