How to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat
- 1). Determine the destructive capability possessed by each type of ICBM you are concerned about. This will be determined by the type of explosive material the missile uses and how much of it a single ICBM can carry.
- 2). Determine the effective range of each type of ICBM the country you are concerned about possesses. How far a missile can travel is dependent upon its weight, the amount of fuel it can carry, and the accuracy of its navigational computer.
- 3). Determine the launch locations of each type of ICBM the country you are concerned about maintains. This data, combined with the missile's effective range, will tell you the possible list of targets each missile could be launched against.
- 4). Calculate the total damage and loss of life a full ICBM launch could cause. Do this by pairing each missile's destructive capacity with the highest value target it could hit. This will tell you how many lives would be claimed in the case of such an attack, as well as which civil and defense infrastructural components would be lost.
- 5). Determine the time it would take for each type of missile you're concerned about to launch, travel into your airspace, and impact its target. This will tell you what warning you would have of an attack, and the time your country would have to organize a retaliation.
- 6). Compare the warning time you would have in the case of an attack to the time it would take your country to launch its own ballistic missiles. Additionally, determine which domestic ICBM launch facilities are within striking range of the ICBM of the country you're concerned about.
- 7). Analyze your country's capacity to respond to an ICBM launch by the country with which you are concerned. The premise of MAD is based on the ability of one country to respond to a full ICBM launch by an aggressor nation with a sufficient launch of its own ICBMs to effectively destroy the aggressor nation. This, of course, assumes that a response launch could occur before the aggressor's ICBMs could destroy the other nation's retaliatory capability. If the country you are concerned about could wipe out your ICBMs and related infrastructure with their own missiles before your country's missiles could get off the ground, then according to the dictates of MAD, there's nothing stopping that country from preemptively using its arsenal against your country if it had reason to do so.
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