If It’s In The Weekly Standard, They Are Either Liars of Incompetent

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Well, the good folks at Defense Tech flag an article by John Noonan at The Weekly Standard suggesting that Iran’s new solid fuel multi-stage missile represents a quantum leap in missile capabilities:

I’m a little late coming in on the latest Iranian missile salvo, but there a few salient points still worth mentioning. First, the Sajjil-2 is a solid fuel rocket. That’s the type of power source that we use in our own Minuteman III rockets, as solid fuel is stable in flight and requires no preparation time ahead of a launch. Liquid fuel, which powers the Iranian Shahab-3 fleet, is highly corrosive and sloshes around in a rocket’s downstage, destabilizing flight and degrading accuracy. It’s so toxic that the fuel eats away at a missile’s internal tanks, and thus needs to be inserted right before launch. That prep time is important, as it gives us a little extra warning prior to a hostile missile launch, which could be used to kill Iranian birds before they fly. With this new Sajjil-2 system, Iran has the ability to keep their missiles hot and ready for execution, killing any chance of an advanced warning or neutralization actions prior to a launch.

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(emphasis mine)

I understand that John Noonan, like most of the staff of The Weekly Standard, wants to bomb Iran, and wants Iran bombed, but this does not justify his not telling the truth, and in the two areas that I’ve highlighted, he’s not telling the truth:

  • The need to load the fuel immediately before launch.
    • Simply not true. The US and Russia started using storable liquid propellants, nitrogen tetroxide oxidiser and a hydrazine UDMH mix propellant in the both the Titan II, and SS-18, and had them in ready for immediate launch for years, perhaps 15 seconds from when the button is pushed until the missile exits the silo.
  • Fuel sloshing
    • Fuel tanks have baffles to prevent sloshing. The tanks are specifically designed to avoid this issues, and while it may be “rocket science”, it’s a problem that has been solved for years.
    • The numbers accuracy for both the Titan (900m), and the SS-18 (250m) show that these missiles accuracy, much like their solid fuel counterparts, is a function of the guidance system, not any fictional sloshing.

Let’s be clear, for ICBM’s, solid fuel is better. There are a whole bunch of problems, as exemplified by the Titan II silo explosion that resulted from a workman dropping a socket that punctured a tank.

Additionally, if you want to go with a mobile launcher, it’s somewhere between insane and impossible to transport a loaded liquid fueled rocket.

Additionally, the operational costs of a liquid fueled system are higher, with, for example routine replacement of seals and X-Rays of the tanks to verify fuel levels.

So, a solid fueled ICBM, or IRBM is marginally more capable, and much simpler to operate, but running around with your head on fire about it indicates that one is either incompetent, or dishonest.

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