this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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Russia's Invulnerable Weapon: Why the Golden Dome Won't Do the Job (aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org)
submitted 4 days ago by stln@lemmy.ml to c/world@lemmy.world
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, which studies the US nuclear arsenal, stated that none of the current US or other countries' missile defense systems are capable of countering Russian non-ballistic nuclear weapons.

According to him, the US initiative to create the Golden Dome system is technically unfeasible. Mello noted that Russia possesses weapons such as the Poseidon underwater drone, hypersonic missiles, and cruise missiles, which are specifically designed to overcome missile defense systems.

He emphasized that instead of fanciful projects like Golden Dome, real arms control measures are needed to ensure mutual security.

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[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 40 points 4 days ago (2 children)

the Iron Dome, which is what trump wants to install (and calls the Golden Dome) was never meant to stop ICCBM missiles. It's a system designed to catch the relatively short ranged rockets being used by Hamas and other missiles.

Trump is a moron.

To put the system into perspective, Israel has about 8,500 square miles of landmass. the US? 3.2 million.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's actually so much worse than that, as the article explains.

Iron Dome was the inspiration, but with Golden Dome what they're planning is space based interception. It's Reagan's Star Wars project back from the dead.

The problem with this is two fold; no known system in the world can reliably intercept ICBMs, and doing so from space is ludicrously expensive. It costs, in effect, about ten times as much to shoot down one ICBM as it does to build an launch one, meaning that a peer adversary can just build more missiles and flood the system. To stop even a Hundred ICBMs would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. China has six hundred.

Basically, like so much of what Trump spends money on, it will amount to a very expensive but completely useless toy.

[–] rainwall@piefed.social 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

600 known nuclear ICBMs. They can probably mass produce just the missiles to flood the system and let the actual nukes through.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

They probably* don’t even have launch vehicles for the warheads they do have. That particular branch of their military isnextremely corrupt, with people selling everything they could off on the black market. Including, apparently, launch fuel.

I would find it surprising if they could mass produce them in any meaningful quantity.

(*not something I’m willing to bet on, to be clear. This is one of those plan for the worst case. The worst case is probably they sold off a portion of warheads to the highest bidder a la Sum of All Fears but the rest are all operational.)

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Who's lobbing short range missiles at USA?

[–] jellygoose@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Those damn Canadians!

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Looks like we just found our new head of the CIA boys! Tell us more about these Canadians.

[–] blicky_blank@lemmy.today 1 points 3 days ago

The Mexicans obviously

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Who is lobbing nukes?

It’s the same people. (No one.)

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 days ago

New cartel smuggling idea? /s

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I swear to fucking god if they do this, actually name it "Golden Dome," so I have to think about this fascist piece of orange shit every time it is mentioned, for years to come, I'm going to lose it.

I just want nothing more than to never have to read about this piece of human detritus ever again.

[–] I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

Just wait until the ballroom is built. It's like half the size of the fucking white house and will forever taint the iconic view.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

Then make it fun and remember what is supposed to be taped.

[–] desmosthenes@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago

no shit - it’s all a scam to funnel more money to defense contractors

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 10 points 3 days ago

Hyper sonic missiles are interceptable. Drone interceptable. Cruise missle are interceptable.

That being said the US is way to large to cover since the batteries have to be right on site for the best chance of interception and its way to risky to rely on interception. Also any golden dome can be overwhelmed with a mix of real and fakes like we see happening in Ukraine and Isreal. Diplomacy + a non retarded leader + international trade + mutually assured destruction should be enough to prevent war.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, which studies the US nuclear arsenal, stated that none of the current US or other countries’ missile defense systems are capable of countering Russian non-ballistic nuclear weapons.

Interesting. Can we have a link to this? It's not in the article.

[–] MunkyNutts@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Maybe this is what you're looking for,

https://lasg.org/press/2025/press_release_22Sep2025.html

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Hmm, so that's a civilian think tank. The name had me thinking it might be somewhat official.

Historically, interception has been a pipe dream, but in the 21st century complexity is cheap. I do worry a little that it's not as far fetched as it sounds, and MAD might break down.

[–] decipher_jeanne@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Revive the Nike-X you cowards. I want to die from the sonic boom of a missile accelerating to mach 10 in 5s

[–] frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 4 days ago

Hypersonics, at least, are likely overrated. They reduce the window between detection and countermeasure deployment. They also can't maneuver very well without losing their hypersonic speed or generating too much heat, and therefore travel on a predictable course.

Drones have been the champion technology of the Ukraine war, and that's probably the future. Of course, those are also a reason why a Golden Dome plan wouldn't work.

[–] SoloCritical@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Could someone explain to me why this matters? If they have this amazing weaponry, why aren’t they deploying it against Ukraine? If it’s so great that war would have been over in 3 days as originally promised. Sounds to me like some stupid Boogeyman talk.

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

If they have this amazing weaponry, why aren’t they deploying it against Ukraine?

because they can beat the shit out of ukr civilians every night for cheap. hypersonic weapons are expensive.

the underwater drones: well ukraine basically sunk their navy in the black sea, so probably not there...

they did use some cruise missiles early in the conflict, but again, expensive compared to shaheeds and other shitty terror drone weapon platforms. when you're bombing apartments you don't need pinpoint accuracy.

I'd also wager they don't have very many of the fancy weapons ready at any given time, and reserve them for conflict against other nuclear powers.

remember, russia has always underestimated ukraine in this fight, at the very beginning the invaders brought their dress uniforms because they were told they'd be marching in victory parades in just a few days.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-planned-a-victory-parade-in-kyivbut-dumped-their-formal-attire-as-they-fled/

in short, I don't think these weapons would be all that useful against ukraine but poland and denmark might see some action if things continue to escalate. or if Ukraine starts landing significant hits against moscow itself.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

What's the point?

"You better believe we have weapons you can't defend from, like, at all! We could totally take on NATO, easily. So like, don't, like, even think about helping Ukraine any more!"

Russia (and/or the Soviet Union) has been doing variations of that to Finland since WWII.

That's basically why it took us so fucking long to join NATO, because the argument used to be "uuuh, we can't afford to piss off Russia!"

But since they obviously don't care about their own capacity for war and invaded Ukraine, we thought, "fuck it, why not".

So Russia used to have a bit of a buffer with Finland but since we joined, Putler is having even more heatenings.

Thus this sort of saber rattling.

Seeing as we're on .ml I wouldn't be surprised if Davel or Dessalines or one of the others just deletes this as some sort of anti-Russian discrimination and bans me.

Oh and just to remind Vanja. Don't try to come over our Eastern border. #(Unless you're alone and escaping Putlerism, but you should do that before the remining is done.)*

The Way is Shut!

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

The best hope if Russia decides to deploy nuclear weapons, is probably that those are expensive to maintain, and Russian corruption is likely to have made a portion of them unworkable.

[–] SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

Fear mongering about Russian wonder waffles? So far they do more damage to Russia than anyone else

[–] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 1 points 3 days ago

Hey, wasn't this supposed to be an actual dome? The demented, old dingbat described it as a literal dome.

[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Two things can both be true:

  1. There are classified programs that Greg Mello may or may not know about that are capable of countering all three of those weapons listed. There might also be classified Russian programs that are capable of countering those counters. And you can be sure we know at least something about those countering counters. Kill Chain analysis has been a huge focus area for the last few years, so the US military has developed ways to counter threats.

  2. Golden Dome is still a wildly expensive, fanciful, and technically infeasible program. Even if we know exactly how to detect and counter these threats, the US is a gigantic fucking country with TONS of border to enclose. It's one thing to have a way to detect, track, target, and shoot down one of those three things. It's another to do that for 40 at the same time in wildly different areas of the world (made up number since I have no idea how many weapons Russia is able to unleash). It's a lot easier to protect an area the size of New Jersey than it is to protect the entire US.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

40 at the same time

You're lowballing it just a little there. Current estimates put the number of Russian nukes at about 5,500.

[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's almost like I immediately said that was a completely made up number that had no basis in reality.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

No, I get that, wasn't trying to slap you down. I'm just adding emphasis to your (very good) argument by demonstrating just how far you were lowballing your estimate (ie, just how generous you were being).