AHC: Ballistic missile use common.

How can it be possible that ballistic missiles with non-WMD payloads become a commonly used weapon during the Cold War conflicts? Bonus points if US airbases in South East Asia get missiled by North Vietnam.
 
This will probably be pretty difficult because without a WMD warhead ballistic missles will probably be to expensive to be cost effective.
 
Well get the Cold war to last long enough and you could see TBM (tactical Ballistic Missile) use ala the SCUD. On a related note anyone know if the SCUD was used in the Iran-Iraq War?
 
Yes, the Iraqis used them to bomb Tehran during the latter half of the war.

Getting to the OP, another major stumbling block is accuracy; nuclear weapons can afford CEPs measured in hundreds of feet, but even the most powerful conventional ordnance known would be rendered ineffective over such long ranges by that relative degree of inaccuracy.
 
How about earlier development of advanced Thermobaric Weaponry?

As for the OP you have your answer, ballistic missiles were used in a conflict, during the Cold War OTL
 
This will probably be pretty difficult because without a WMD warhead ballistic missles will probably be to expensive to be cost effective.

That depends on the importance of the target, a couple of scuds or shysters would be worth it to destroy an AEW&C plane on the ground, especially when the alternative is losing a shitload of planes trying to fight your way to it in the air. Having sqadrons and wings of attack aircraft being shot down isn't cost effective either, and thats what happened IOTL whenever Soviet sponsored airforces came out to play with the west.

Also I think conventional warhead development for TBMs was a bit underdone. Perhaps conventional warheads could include incendiary material to add to the blast and frag damage, or cluster munitions could be developd earlier, you can get quite a lot of bomblets into a 1000kg payload.
 
If all you have...

If all you have for your ballistic missiles are conventional warheads you will find a way to make them more accurate.

Maybe terminal guidance by image matching... a kind of overhead DSMAC rather than terrain following. Stealth UAVs with laser designation capability... could a lower powered laser be used from orbit to designate a target?
 
That depends on the importance of the target, a couple of scuds or shysters would be worth it to destroy an AEW&C plane on the ground, especially when the alternative is losing a shitload of planes trying to fight your way to it in the air. Having sqadrons and wings of attack aircraft being shot down isn't cost effective either, and thats what happened IOTL whenever Soviet sponsored airforces came out to play with the west.

Also I think conventional warhead development for TBMs was a bit underdone. Perhaps conventional warheads could include incendiary material to add to the blast and frag damage, or cluster munitions could be developd earlier, you can get quite a lot of bomblets into a 1000kg payload.

There was discussion during the 1980's of using large SLBM's as a basis for a MRBM that could target air bases and other similar targets with cluster munitions IIRC. The conventional version of the Lance SRBM also featured a cluster war head IIRC.
 
I was thinking TBMs would be in use in the 60s, before laser guidence and stealth UAVs could make them accurate. There are several means of guidence for ballistic missiles and usually they are used in isolation, but if used in combination they can make missiles considerably more accuarate.

I was aware that Iran and Iraq conducted a Scud War in the 80s but I was thinking more use in the Mid East, India and Pakistan, South East Asia in the 60s and 70s as well.

Saudi Arabia purchased 36 Chinese CSS-2 TBMs in 1987, perhaps they could use these against Iraq in 1991 in retalliation for the Al Hussien/Scud attacks.
 
Also I think conventional warhead development for TBMs was a bit underdone. Perhaps conventional warheads could include incendiary material to add to the blast and frag damage, or cluster munitions could be developd earlier, you can get quite a lot of bomblets into a 1000kg payload.

IIRC several of the later Soviet SRBMs (SS-21 etc) had options for cluster or FASCAM warheads, and the Russians were less shy about using them in places like Chechnya and South Ossetia. They might well be willing to use them on high-value targets like AEW&C, tankers, and other aircraft.
 
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If all you have for your ballistic missiles are conventional warheads you will find a way to make them more accurate.

Maybe terminal guidance by image matching... a kind of overhead DSMAC rather than terrain following. Stealth UAVs with laser designation capability... could a lower powered laser be used from orbit to designate a target?

In the 80s, the Pershing II had a reentry vehicle with RADAR guidance and atmospheric control surfaces, supposedly giving it a 30 m CEP. That's not smart bomb good, but it's not bad.

In the 00s, the Pentagon proposed modifying Trident IIs for their Prompt Global Strike system to have tungsten rod kinetic-energy warheads, using GPS and control surfaces for terminal guidance. They claimed they could get 10 m CEP, although as far as I know they never built the thing.
 
In the 80s, the Pershing II had a reentry vehicle with RADAR guidance and atmospheric control surfaces, supposedly giving it a 30 m CEP. That's not smart bomb good, but it's not bad.

In the 00s, the Pentagon proposed modifying Trident IIs for their Prompt Global Strike system to have tungsten rod kinetic-energy warheads, using GPS and control surfaces for terminal guidance. They claimed they could get 10 m CEP, although as far as I know they never built the thing.

30m CEP is pretty good - for any warhead carried on a SRBM or IRBM, thats probably all you need for most purposes.
Although it does raise the issue that it can be very difficult to tell a conventional missile launch from a nuclear one, which is especially an issue for SLBM and ICBM/IRBM I'd guess. In any era where there's a major power worried that their opponents might try a sneak attack, a misidentified or misattributed launch could have serious consequences. Having some way of reducing that concern might make major powers more willing to use them.
 
The 30m CEP comes about because of the radar and guidence, all of which eat into warhead, which is fine if you have a penetrating nuke but no good if you have a blast/frag warhead. Id think that a salvo of 3-7 missiles with conventional warheads should be able to give a reasonable chance of hitting an airbase parking area, but the airbase should be packed with things like AWACS, Rivet Joints, JSTARS and tankers rather than fighter-bombers.

The Russians did use cluster warheads in the last few years, but they really need to be developed and deployed in the 60s to make TBMs a viable weapon. A cluster bomb warhead will drastically reduce the amount of TBMs needed to cover a soft target.

Nuke alerts is one of the things that would be very different if every Soviet client started throwing TBMs around from the 60s. Either NORAD and its Soviet counterpart would tune out certain parts of the world during crises or would become much better at detecting and tracking ballistic missile launches in order not to panic at every heat plume.
 
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