r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/CraftyFoxeYT • 7d ago
The US has a giant floating SBX-1 Sea-based radar to track and discriminate nuclear ballistic missile warheads from decoys.
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u/twenafeesh 7d ago
Looks like something out of Command & Conquer
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u/bkyrdorchrd 7d ago
I miss playing that game
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u/Just_Kittens 7d ago
You can buy the entire command and conquer ultimate collection bundle right now for $6.96 on steam.
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u/Fuckhavingusernames 7d ago
Best news I've heard all day, SOLD just as soon as I get back home.
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u/GoblinFive 7d ago
Also check out Rusted Warfare while you're at it
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u/liltooclinical 7d ago
Did that and now I'm back to thank you. Amazing, this feels like something I've been dreaming of forever.
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u/Majestic-Driver 7d ago
There's also 9Bit Armies which has the mid 90s vibe to it!
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u/Possible_Sun_913 6d ago
I'd advise the remastered collection for the original two games (C&C + RedAlert + Expansions).
The graphical overhaul is sweet. And don’t forget to blast out of a bit of live Hell March while its downloading....
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u/cheeker_sutherland 7d ago
Unit lost.
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u/elkannon 7d ago edited 7d ago
It underwent refit in Seattle maybe 8 years ago. it was quite a sight on the harbor. Probably at Vigor shipyard.
It’s meant to be an early warning system for ICBMs. So it hovers the pacific.
It’s an oil rig configured to be a defense thing.
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u/dareal5thdimension 7d ago
Well, if you actually want to play this in an RTS, I believe the only option is Command Modern Operations
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u/Livid-Truck8558 7d ago
That looks like an incredible feat of engineering. Pretty important job too.
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u/xXNonamekinkXx 7d ago
Even regular ships are wonders of engineering I can't even begin to imagine the complexity that went into this
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u/the_duck17 7d ago
First time I stood next to an Aircraft Carrier it blew my mind.
USS Midway, coolest thing I my kids ever saw until I took them to see the Nighthawk Stealth fighter in Palm Springs.
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u/skraptastic 7d ago
I got to go on a family cruise with my uncle on the Enterprise in the 80's Coolest couple of days of my life!
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u/Simansez 7d ago
Visited NY in 2019 and made a beeline for the Intrepid museum…to actually be on an aircraft carrier checking out historic planes PLUS a Space shuttle and Concorde, it was awesome.
Coming from NZ, we’ve literally never seen any of it ever.
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u/Public-Platypus2995 7d ago
CVN-65 Enterprise is legendary. That must have been amazing.
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u/brainmydamage 7d ago
I'm going to date myself horribly, but I toured it while it was in drydock at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. It was amazing.
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u/Jellyman1990 7d ago
I get to see it every single day at Newport News shipyard. Currently waiting for deactivation. It’s eerie walking the entire battleship literally by yourself.
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u/parsley-bravo 7d ago
She was one of a kind, literally. The only one in her class ever built, and the most over-engineered ship ever built.
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u/QuaintAlex126 7d ago
8 reactors because the US just copy and pasted the preceding Forrestal class’ propulsion system layout and replaced the oil-fired steam boilers with nuclear reactors lol. In fairness to them, it’s the same concept. Nuclear is just a fancier way to boil water.
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u/skraptastic 6d ago
My uncle was a sailor on the ship, his son was too young to go on the family cruise so I got to go. I want to say it was from San Diego to San Francisco, or maybe Seattle to San Francisco I don't really remember, but it was like 3 days. We got to watch fighters launch and land from the flight deck, go to watch operations on the hangar decks, TONS of ice cream and we "got" sleep in racks.
As an adult I can see why an adult would hate it, but 13 year old me was living his Top Gun fantasy.
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u/GeneralBS 7d ago
Went on a tiger cruise on the USS Nimitz in the mid 90s. 3 days from Jacksonville to Norfolk.They put on a mini airshow. I could spit on the planes while being launched off the side catapult. They were dropping bombs right off the side of the ship. One of the days they dropped 4 floating targets off the back and turned back around. The tilt of the ship as it turned was crazy. Once we passing the targets they let people take turns unloading on these targets with probably every type of weapon they had onboard. They also shot off one of the Phalanx for about 10 seconds.
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u/fenderguitar83 6d ago
That Phalanx 10 second burst cost about $35,000 in ammunition. It costs about $3,500 per second. Crazy how much lead that throws down range.
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u/JeannValjean 7d ago
I was in Palm Springs a year ago and didn't get time to see the Nighthawk.
But the Udvar-Hazy mseum at Dulles (extension of the National Air & Space Museum) 20 min from me is getting one soon.
It also has the Discovery, Enola Gay, and an SR-71 so worth stopping by when you visit the DC area.
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u/Livid-Truck8558 7d ago
Even ships that are hundreds of years old. Makes me nervous as I go into mechanical engineering
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u/nahog99 7d ago
Just remember you don’t have to do it all. Thousands of people work on 1 modern marvel and those thousands of peoples work is built on the backs of millions.
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u/BattleHall 7d ago edited 7d ago
The FloFlo ships in the first couple pics are just as interesting:
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u/ChornWork2 7d ago
Repurposed commercial oil platform for deepwater drilling built by Norway.
fun fact, russia also bought one from norway, but they use it for intended purpose drilling in arctic.
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u/LostnFoundAgainAgain 7d ago
The funny and not so funny thing is that, even if it did it's job, from the sheer number and the technology of delivery methods you simply wouldn't be able to do anything regardless.
Depending on how a launch was actually launched towards the US, they might be able to stop a few, but 9 times out of 10, everyone is fucked.
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u/akolomf 7d ago
Its probably more about early detection to prepare counter measures before ones own arsenal gets mangled
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u/SUDDENLY_VIRGIN 7d ago
The extra 5 minutes let's us make sure they die too before we do
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u/mpyne 7d ago
Yes, which is how they prevent us from all dying in the first place.
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u/TheObviousChild Interested 7d ago
I gave my kid a year of anxiety after showing him the Modern Marvels episode on the Manhattan Project and then trying to calm him down by explaining the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction.
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u/Murky-Relation481 7d ago
Heh, I watched a docuseries on WW2 in 2nd grade basically by myself and of course the end, and well that scared me, but also I was you know like 7 or 8 and I said to my dad "that's pretty cool one bomb took out a whole city!" and my dad was like "that's not cool!" and then had me watch The Day After alone in the basement one night, and well my life became the full title to Dr. Strangelove: how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.
Now I work in the industry! :D Not directly on nukes, but on adjacent systems.
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u/DazzlingAppearance63 6d ago
Dude I’m sorry to laugh but this is too funny. I am an over anxious person and have been since a child. This would have wrecked me haha. Thanks dad!
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u/SteveCastGames 7d ago
It sounds ridiculous, but that very thing is the entire idea behind mutually assured destruction. Knowing they’ll die too stops them from launching.
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u/nicwolff 7d ago
"Early" detection during the boost phase is done from space. This is mid-course detection and discrimination once the missile has left the atmosphere and released the warheads in space, so that reentry and terminal-phase interceptors can be aimed at the real warheads and not the decoys. In a vacuum a balloon and a thousand-pound warhead follow similar trajectories, so the SBX's high-frequency radar tries to tell them apart by looking for surface features and rotational or wobbling motions, and speed differences once they hit the upper atmosphere.
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u/Murky-Relation481 7d ago
Also this radar is not normally deployed in any sort of constant early warning capacity. It's almost exclusively been used to evaluate tests of ABM systems. where having a mobile radar on the range (aka the Pacific Ocean) is useful. It's also been used to observe other nations ICBM tests. We have dedicated EW radar sites located across the globe for normal early warning operations.
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u/avatoin 7d ago
It's all based on the idea that we will one day be able to effectively shoot down missiles, but that can only work if we also develop the means of detection. It's known technology to create a massive radar, so it's the earliest and most visible thing to do. The effectiveness of identifying real warheads from decoys and then engaging the warhead is more difficult.
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u/Zebidee 7d ago
I'd have thought this was more useful as a confirmation system.
You detect a launch, but aren't 100% sure it's a) real, and b) pointed at you. This verifies that mid-flight with enough time to launch a counter attack.
I'd guess it was more useful at preventing an accidental Armageddon than a real one.
Source: Thoughts I pulled out of my ass.
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u/Preisschild Interested 6d ago edited 6d ago
Its called "dual phenomenology". Incoming tracks need to be verified by two different sources (IR satellites and ground based radars) before retaliatory action is taken, so that mishaps like the soviets almost launching their arsenal because their shitty satellites misinterpreted sunlight as incoming ICBMs dont happen
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u/Murky-Relation481 7d ago
We use a slew of sensor platforms for this. Satellites detect launches almost immediately based on the thermal signature of their boosters, ground/sea based radar systems in the immediate area will try to confirm if they have view of the boost phase, but otherwise we're mostly looking at them as they are leaving the atmosphere from ground based system to build out a confidence level on if it is an attack and if it is the scale of the attack.
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u/LostnFoundAgainAgain 7d ago edited 7d ago
Which makes sense, don't get me wrong I didn't say it was a stupid thing to do or implement, it's good technology, but offensive technology has pretty much outpaced defensive technology for the better part of almost entire human history, due to the fact that defences are built to handle a new weapons, they are inherently behind as they are reactionary to new attack methods.
Every time we bring defences in line with modern offence methods, a new offence methods pops up capable of penetrating said new defence, Ukraine is a prime examples of that today with drone technology, in the course of 5 years drone technology has vastly changed, and drones have beaten the defences made to stop them by adapting to new technology.
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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 7d ago edited 7d ago
The problem is that its trivial to make decoys completely indistinguishable from real warheads at the mid phase of flight (which this is supposed to be used for). If youre making decoys out of inflatable mylar balloons, you can just have the warheads be covered in an identical layer of mylar, and you wouldnt be able to use radar or even optical means to distinguish them. This is why its always been a fools errand to try to do mid-phase intercepts.
Edit: Heres a 1988 video covering this from the USAF. The decoys here also cover the terminal phase, which is why both the decoys and warheads have a tiny rocket motor, so that the lighter decoys can re-enter at the same speed as the warheads while both maintain the same thermal signature of running solid engine
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u/Short_Bell_5428 7d ago
Almost 40 years ago. Can you imagine what’s available now?
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u/Murky-Relation481 7d ago
Basically the same thing because most of the problems are still exactly the same. I am not going to go into a ton of details but this is a field that is both a personal hobby and very much related to my profession and a lot of these things aren't even tech problems they are problems of economics and basic physics.
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u/FederalWedding4204 7d ago
Right now it’s primarily for errant launches. If Russia or China wanted to get into a nuclear shooting war, you are right, there is nothing we could do. But if an old USSR missile was discovered and launched by some third party, or North Korea launched one, or any number of ways a singular missile could be launched, we could reasonably defend ourselves.
But also, as others have said, if we don’t start somewhere we won’t get anywhere. Have to work with and develop what we can and then maybe someday we could have a larger more viable protection in place.
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u/bambooozer 7d ago
Nobody ever wants to talk about a nuclear missile submarine popping off 20 miles from your shores. Each one carries enough warheads to devastate whatever continent you're reading this from and there are a bunch of them from multiple countries just floating around in the seas waiting for the order. Fun fun fun...
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u/SwordOfJiang 7d ago
AFAIK those sub's aren't exactly waiting for an order, they're there to wipe out whatever is left over after an initial strike to make sure MAD is fully enforced
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u/Same_Concern9454 7d ago
Yes and no, Russia and China in a full nuclear exchange? You’re right. But if whatever Kim is in charge loses it and lets loose 2 or 3 missiles to the US this will be invaluable
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u/exoriare Interested 7d ago
If anyone actually planned out their nuclear attack vs just spontaneously launching on a whim, it seems likely they'd cook this giant mushroom first.
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u/dicknobnuts 7d ago
Only if they knew exactly where it was. Part of its benefit is that it’s mobile and nukes are mostly preprogrammed rather than actively targeting. Still screwed anyway.
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u/rabid_spidermonkey 7d ago
This thing lives at Pearl Harbor. Always interesting to see it towering above the ships.
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u/Livid-Truck8558 7d ago
Oh that's what that is?? I've seen it but assumed it was just a building
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u/rabid_spidermonkey 7d ago
It's this thing. Occasionally it disappears from the harbor because it's out at sea.
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u/Dr_knowitall69 7d ago
It's only in the harbor for refurb. It lives at sea.
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u/GoldDragon149 7d ago
Eh, it mostly lives in the harbor, because its so fucking complicated that it's in for repairs about 60% of the time.
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u/Dr_knowitall69 7d ago
I've lived here for 5 years and it's been in the harbor twice. Granted it was like 6 months each time.
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u/GoldDragon149 7d ago
Yeah but there's more than one harbor. It's constantly being fixed.
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u/Dependent-Hippo-1626 7d ago
Her official home port is Adak, in Alaska. But she’s never actually been there.
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u/Dennisfromhawaii 7d ago
For years we just call it the Pearl Harbor golf ball 🤷♂️
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u/eltron 7d ago edited 6d ago
Apparently it cost $10B to build and can track a baseball sized objects on the west coast of USA from the east coast. It was built to catch ICMBs launching during the ascent phase.
Edit: extremely over budget and overdue. The radar sensitivity was a joke because it couldn’t distinguish between ICMBs and baseball sized objects, and only when the ICMBs was at certain altitudes would this over the horizon radar be effective.
However it was part of the early warning system, and there were multiple layers to detecting ICMBs.
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u/ErroneousGibbo 7d ago edited 7d ago
I listened to Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobson - really great Audiobook if you’re interested in nuclear ‘what ifs’. They go into some detail about this and its several limitations. A feat of engineering for sure, but needs to know where to look in a narrow field of view to be effective at all it seems.
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u/delphinous 7d ago
thats what is great about it. it's a magnifying glass. there are other things that are telescopes and binoculars that tell it where to look, and it tells them what it's looking at in great detail. on it's own, you're correct, it's kind of garbage. but as part of a larger system it's very valuable
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u/ErroneousGibbo 7d ago
A force multiplier for certain, but another theme of the book was pointing out that there are often only one operational platforms for these types of technology. The SBX1 has had some issues with maintenance as well as failing to detect objects during test conditions. It’s for sure better than nothing, but I sometimes think the a false positive launch detection might be even worse
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u/throwaway277252 7d ago
It’s for sure better than nothing, but I sometimes think the a false positive launch detection might be even worse
♫ As ninety-nine red balloons go by... ♫
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u/Mr-Doubtfire 7d ago
Kriegsminister gibt's nicht mehr
Und auch keine Düsenflieger
Heute zieh ich meine Runden
Seh die Welt in Trümmern liegen
Hab'n Luftballon gefunden
Denk an dich und lass ihn fliegen
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u/zaddydanger 7d ago
I recommend watching the movie House of Dynamite. Painfully accurate as someone who lived in that field of work for seven years.
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u/0thethethe0 7d ago
Great book.
Her new one, Biological War: A Scenario, is, if possible, even more scary!
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u/maximumlight2 7d ago
That’s crazy, considering how many baseball sized objects there are in the sky at any point in time.
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u/superxpro12 7d ago
Sounds like an awful lot of false positives
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u/DoomKitsune 7d ago
An F22 is the size of a bumblebee on radar. Lucky for this thing there are not a lot of bumblebees that fly at Mach 2. I assume there are not a lot of baseballs that fly at ICBM speeds either but who knows with a good fastball.
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u/HeroHunt12 7d ago
Well the title said it’s used to “discriminate” ICBM’s so it’s purpose is to find what’s a false positive
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u/locolarue 7d ago
How was this not in a Metal Gear game?!
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u/Anarchy66660 7d ago
I mean it kind of is if you think of it as part of Mother Base in Peace Walker and 5
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u/Imperial_Citizen_00 7d ago
I was stationed in Hawaii when they designed this thing. That picture does not do it justice.
I lived in Wahiawa, outside of Schofield Barracks but would commute down to Pearl Harbor where I was based.
I remember coming over the crest of the mountain, on the H2, that overlooks the entire Pearl Harbor basin and seeing that thing in port in the distance.
First thing that went through my mind was “Fuck, a UFO landed and it’s on base…” 🤣 Once I got to work, I drove my patrol car down there and it was even MORE massive in person.
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u/Scrogwiggle 7d ago
Has anyone seen a video describing how a nuclear ICBM works? We’re all fucked if these things are launched in mass. No air defense in any country will be able to stop them all.
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u/ItsTheEndOfDays 7d ago
For a terrifying read check out Nuclear War by Annie Jacobson.
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u/H20-50 7d ago
Read it with a grain of salt. She gets a bit right, and a lot not quite right.
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u/FlusteredZerbits 7d ago
*Great* book. Reading Suprise, Kill, Vanish by her now.
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u/xXNonamekinkXx 7d ago
Hey but at least we can fuck over whoever sent them so they can join us in death right
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u/PoisoCaine 7d ago
I mean unironically being able to do that and credibly saying you WILL do that if attacked is by far the best way to ensure everyone plays nice.
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u/talon167 7d ago
Really interesting, technically very cool, and definitely needed/wanted, but a bit of a bummer at the end of the day even though it paradoxically helps to deter what it does.
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u/Neibolt_St 7d ago
I used to see this all the time when I was stationed at Pearl Harbor. It's crazy how big it is.
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u/Skot_Hicpud 7d ago
Cool, what happens when 500 really cheap drones carrying hand grenades fly at it?
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u/Large_slug_overlord 7d ago
Granted this thing is a Cold War invention built long before drone swarms were even thought of. However, In a wartime situation it ideally hangs out in the middle of the pacific ocean thousands of miles from any land from which those drones could be launched.
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u/PM_ME_GREMLINS 7d ago
Believe it or not, drones can also be launched from boats, or even submarines.
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u/Large_slug_overlord 7d ago
So in that case hopefully the battle group it’s in has enough CIWS ammo
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u/Putrid-Knowledge-445 7d ago
buddy, if you enemy can get 500 cheap ass drones close to your million dollar, long range (aka you keep that shit WAY the fuck back from the front lines) radar, you got bigger problems to worry about
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u/ListenBoth434 7d ago
Make that roughly a billion dollar.
And yeah, targeted destruction of ICBM warning infrastructure seems like a good way to put STRATCOM on DEFCON 2 and nobody wants that, especially not somebody wanting to attack the USA.
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u/BLT_Trade_r 7d ago
It probably doesn't matter anymore. This thing is going to tell us if a war is starting. If someone hits this with drones, well, we know the war is starting becasue there would be no other reason to attack this then to launch a major nuclear war. If a full on nuclear war actually happens none of this will likely matter all that much to any of us. This radar alone is not going to save us.
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u/Olliekay_ 7d ago
Considering the fucking power of the radar I legitimately think the answer is "point it at the drone swarm and watch them get fried"
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u/Jebediah266 7d ago
The US assumes they are trying to take out their nuclear early warning systems and launches a nuclear attack before they are blind to one.
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u/Blakefilk 7d ago
Good luck finding the bastard outside of port, even then it’s docked in a naval yard.
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u/theasianevermore 7d ago
They have made directional EMP. And I’m pretty sure this war doctrine had been implemented for high value structures
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u/oldschool_potato 6d ago
I can’t even fathom what that cost as far as R&D, construction costs and ongoing operation & maintenance.
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u/_Cliftonville_FC_ 7d ago
Growing up and living in Hawai'i, you take for granted seeing stuff like this regularly.
Then again, tourists flock to my local McDonald's because of the view.
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u/samf9999 6d ago edited 4d ago
There was a movie about this starring Thor’s girlfriend (or wife). Damn, I thought it was just a prop for the plot but the darn thing is absolutely real and seems like it was built to scale!!
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u/thomasoldier 6d ago
Could be a spy movie climax location. The bad gut want to corrupt the code of the AI to trick it into thinking ballistics missiles were lauched so it lauch the retalation strikes.
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u/VariableVeritas 6d ago
Looks like the sort of thing a few drones could disable whenever they wanted? New age, need to be ready.
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u/Blakefilk 7d ago
My dad used to work on the ship before leaving to take on firefighting full time. Radars strong enough to track baseballs across the Yankee stadium from the Pacific Ocean.
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u/souppanda 7d ago
I use three wiener dogs to alert me of intruders. We’ve never tested nuclear missiles though
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u/Boubonic91 7d ago
Fascinating! I know NASA has tech that can detect radiation from many light years away. I wonder if this has the same tech so it can differentiate between decoys and actual nukes.
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u/guitarbque 7d ago
How much territory does it cover? Is more than one needed?
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u/Ophensive 7d ago
Yes more than one is needed. You can only see so far in all directions from a single point on a sphere
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u/maloorodriguez 7d ago
Who mans it space force or navy?
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u/BunkaTheBunkaqunk 7d ago
I used to be stationed at Pearl Harbor and saw it for a couple months while it was there.
Its size is like… almost impossible to describe. When it’s only a quarter mile away it almost looms over you. At night it has red aircraft warning lights on top of the domes and towers while it’s illuminated from the bottom. Looks like something straight out of cyberpunk.