Plausibility check; Anti-Nuclear Balloon Array

Ok so the idea is this, arrays or matrices above cities or whole countries, of balloons at around 35 km up, the balloons are in a grid or other pattern or set distance away from each other. The point is to be a shield in a way by forcing incoming missiles to detonate higher up and thus protecting the stuff below from everything except the radiation.


Of course the balloons couldn’t cover the whole sky so can't rely on the missile just hitting them and even if the missile did hit it almost certainly would not detonate. Therefore there would have to some way of forcing the detonation, possibly with an explosion of its own.


According to my calculations, using the ridiculous assumption that each balloon has its own nuclear device on it to minimize the the wight and number of balloons in the array, between 25,000 and 2,000,000 nodes would be necessary to cover the whole uk. This is obviously stupid.


So is there anyway to make the basic concept work or no, would future technology make it work or make it pointless, and if it could work in some form what's the earliest it could be build?


p.s. I think with 60’s tech you could get the balloons up to height, and even at that height the trar bomba is big enough to burn the ground from 35 km up. is this a sily question?
 
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Ok so the idea is this, arrays or matrices above cities or whole countries, of balloons at around 35 km up, the balloons are in a grid or other pattern or set distance away from each other. The point is to be a shield in a way by forcing incoming missiles to detonate higher up and thus protecting the stuff below from everything except the radiation.


Of course the balloons couldn’t cover the whole sky so can't rely on the missile just hitting them and even if the missile did hit it almost certainly would not detonate. Therefore there would have to some way of forcing the detonation, possibly with an explosion of its own.


According to my calculations, using the ridiculous assumption that each balloon has its own nuclear device on it to minimize the the wight and number of balloons in the array, between 25,000 and 2,000,000 nodes would be necessary to cover the whole uk. This is obviously stupid.


So is there anyway to make the basic concept work or no, would future technology make it work or make it pointless, and if it could work in some form what's the earliest it could be build?


p.s. I think with 60’s tech you could get the balloons up to height, and even at that height the trar bomba is big enough to burn the ground from 35 km up. is this a sily question?

By staggering incoming nukes, the array can be eliminated by the 1st nukes, than the second nuke can hit the target. There were more than sufficient nukes during the Cold War to do so.
 
By staggering incoming nukes, the array can be eliminated by the 1st nukes, than the second nuke can hit the target. There were more than sufficient nukes during the Cold War to do so.
true depending on the size of the initial strike, and i suppose replacement baloons/nde would be needed, or descending layers or arrays.
 

nbcman

Donor
By staggering incoming nukes, the array can be eliminated by the 1st nukes, than the second nuke can hit the target. There were more than sufficient nukes during the Cold War to do so.
Or ICBMs without nukes can be fired first to cause the defender to detonate their balloon shield them follow up with nuke armed ICBMs. Or the attacker could use nuclear armed cruise missiles which would fly under the balloons.
 
Or ICBMs without nukes can be fired first to cause the defender to detonate their balloon shield them follow up with nuke armed ICBMs. Or the attacker could use nuclear armed cruise missiles which would fly under the balloons.
who knows could be arranged in a dome shape, defeating much of the point of the shield in the first place.
 

nbcman

Donor
who knows could be arranged in a dome shape, defeating much of the point of the shield in the first place.
So that would bring nuclear armed balloons almost to ground level since cruise missiles hug the earth at 100-150 feet above ground level? The dome balloons would do more damage than the cruise missile they were trying to stop. Not a great plan...
 
Surely you just detonate one nuke above to wipe out the shield and then the rest follow? In the event of a nuclear war, I'd imagine the actors launching the missiles would be aware of the balloon net thingy (you probably can't hide it) and opt for this strategy.
 
Balloons would not detonate the nukes, fuses are usually set for airburst, not impact. best way to get them out of the picture would be another nuke as you said as a nuclear explosion has a tendency to disable nearby nuclear bombs but again this is impractical. Maybe by setting up floating EMP generators of some sort would work but that gets into theoretical stuff.
 
Vylon Disigma wrote:
Ok so the idea is this, arrays or matrices above cities or whole countries, of balloons at around 35 km up, the balloons are in a grid or other pattern or set distance away from each other. The point is to be a shield in a way by forcing incoming missiles to detonate higher up and thus protecting the stuff below from everything except the radiation.

Of course the balloons couldn’t cover the whole sky so can't rely on the missile just hitting them and even if the missile did hit it almost certainly would not detonate. Therefore there would have to some way of forcing the detonation, possibly with an explosion of its own.

According to my calculations, using the ridiculous assumption that each balloon has its own nuclear device on it to minimize the the wight and number of balloons in the array, between 25,000 and 2,000,000 nodes would be necessary to cover the whole uk. This is obviously stupid.

So is there any way to make the basic concept work or no, would future technology make it work or make it pointless, and if it could work in some form what's the earliest it could be build?

p.s. I think with 60’s tech you could get the balloons up to height, and even at that height the trar bomba is big enough to burn the ground from 35 km up. is this a silly question?

A similar concept I’ve seen around:
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0801/0801.1694.pdf

Not really as effective as the author thinks it is. And as for a tethered balloon you need to keep in mind that the longer the tether is the more it weights which means you need a bigger balloon to lift that load and so on. Plus there are varying degrees, directions and speeds of the upper wind bands that have to dealt with by both the balloon and the cable. A good overview if a bit dated is here: https://publiclab.org/sites/default...h-Altitude Tethered Balloon Systems Study.pdf. I haven’t found any good evidence that any tethered balloon has been over 25km so 35km might not be plausible. Free-flight balloons have of course been higher, going up to over 50km but it doesn’t look like the more robust, (and thus heavier) types can get that high. I’d assume being extremely lucky to hit 30km and it will have to be pretty big to do so. Some ideas of how to do this can be found here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.06527.pdf, http://ldtprojects.stanford.edu/~ed...amic Response of a High-Altitude Tethered.pdf,

Like the ‘inflated’ dome above using balloons as a static defense isn’t really feasible because they would be, well static for one thing and too vulnerable to damage whereas the incoming warheads are rather tough.. As noted warheads are usually set to air burst though some are designed to penetrate the ground before detonating or to explode very near the surface to try and collapse and damage underground and hardened sites. But while they are tough and fast there are still some vulnerabilities.

But back to the balloons for a moment and assuming a “passive” balloon array. 35km still has a enough atmosphere to propagate a blast wave so a single nuclear burst will take out dozens if not hundreds due to the blast wave and there won’t be time to replace them before the next missile arrives. Having them as ‘mines’ just means they take themselves out since they would have to detonate on ANY incoming projectile which means just seeding a wave with decoys has them blow themselves up, damage other balloons and degrade the system..

Cruise or ground hugging super/hypersonic missiles are still a problem as noted and let’s face it having balloons at lower altitude only means the ones with bombs will do the enemies job for him and unless they are so closely spaced as to be impractical the missiles can probably avoid them. You may take out a couple but it’s pretty cheap to send dozens if not hundreds to do the job if you need to.

And that’s before we get into other counter-measures like ‘directional’ blast nuclear warheads which could still delivery damage from hundreds of miles up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_shaped_charge
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php, (“Nuclear Shape Charge”, “The Deadliest Catch” and “The Nuclear Spear: Casaba Howitzer” though I recommend the whole site for hours of fun… ie wasted time that’s thoroughly enjoyable :) )

How about making them less “defense-passive/destructive-active” to defensive active and a pretty good long term defense system?

Put some sensors on the balloon, such as radar, lidar and optical sensors and due to the high altitude those systems can “see” much further over the horizon than lower altitude and/or ground based systems. Giving you more warning and tracking time for incoming ‘targets’. You need vastly fewer balloons for this but you can still get good cover area for a decent price. More warning and tracking means more time and data to deal with the problem. Further “look down” and “surface scan” features defeat cruise missiles and you’ll see possible hypersonic missile launch platforms much further out as well. All great stuff but it’s actually pretty passive other than the fact you can easily use do the sensors to target the incoming projectiles for surface based assets during interception.

Note this also provides a VERY interesting platform for wide area communications at a far less cost than satellite services which is an area of current interest with high altitude tethered balloons.

You can put defensive weapons on the Balloon to take an active role in knocking down an incoming attack. Probably couldn’t mount actual interceptor missiles onboard, (maybe a couple but a ground based or mobile launch platform will tend to always beat the number an LTA platform can mount) but a few batteries of dozens of very high-speed “point defense” unguided rockets that could be fired in salvoes into the path of an incoming warhead are possible.

I think a better idea comes from the fact you’re likely powering those sensors and other equipment from the ground using the balloon tether cable. So how about we put a laser generator on each balloon. Sounds kind of silly but it’s a vastly better use of the system because it puts the laser above a large portion of the atmosphere which makes the laser more efficient. Put in a set of dorsal and ventral emitter ‘turrets’, (https://www.army-technology.com/fea...r-succeed-where-boeings-yal-1-failed-4376518/) we can track and attack airborne targets (cruise missiles, etc) as well as ballistic threats. The downside is the equipment mass but there’s always the possibility of using high power fiber optic cable or a ground based laser and a ‘deflection mirror’ on the aerostat. It’s unlikely you could mount a rail-gun, a maybe on a particle beam generator, (electrons are particles after all :) ) but one idea I’ve seen but can’t find a link to is a low-pressure, very rapid fire gun shooting rocket propelled projectiles like a super-sized Gyrojet! And one can always use beamed power from ground stations for short periods.

Using the balloons as active rather than passive defense systems is vastly superior since you get many of the basic advantages of an “orbital” defense network quite close to the ground so it’s in easy maintenance and operations range at all times. It’s also vastly cheaper than any orbital system and as politicians are wont to do that makes it more ‘efficient’ in their eyes and hence more likely to be funded and supported. The won’t pay for enough of them of course so their use in any actual conflict will be nil but they will greatly enhance the ability to deal with one or two ‘rouge’ attacks of various and sundry natures*.

It is also going to be a huge eye-sore and make someone unhappy about something, (whereas getting fried by a nuclear blast may vastly lower property values and hinder one’s ability to re-sell but then again who’s around to care really?) so NIMBY-ism and protests are guaranteed but like any good government contract we can pretty much ignore them as long as the politicians get re-elected.

In the end there’s not really anything one could call a ‘silly’ idea, some just are not as feasible or workable as others. “Balloon” defense platforms (officially “Battlestats” for Battle-Aerostat, or “Stratellite” for Stratosphereic Satellite) have been a concept for a while for various purposes:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2005/RAND_TR423.pdf
http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/final_reports/Airship_final_report.pdf

Randy
*= Yes it’s finally on-line! Go read “The First Cup of Coffee War” by James Cobb on WHY though useless in a general war scenario such ‘defense’ systems can and would be invaluable under the actually MORE likely scenarios of attack.
https://books.google.com/books?id=i...v=onepage&q="First Cup of Coffee War"&f=false

It’s often sobering to consider that the easier it is to put something high up it also makes it easier to drop said something on someone else’s head…
 
So first, I think you put the way I was thinking about really well, the balloons being mines but for incoming missiles.


I actually hadn’t thought about tethering so kinda assumed the balloons would be freeflying and not particularly robust or capable of carrying anything very heavy but I think tethering at a lower height makes far more sense. I had also assumed that some pre-detection would be necessary, instead of direct impact, would be necessary of it to work as mines but I much prefer you approach of balloons being sensors in an active defence system. You could for instance have the majority of them being essentially tethered super observation balloons, and a few larger and more robust freeflying which would be platforms for anti missile weapons like the unguided rocket salvos you mentioned. A benefit is as you atleast implied that number of baboons is vastly reduced per unit area covered.


It's also interesting you mention wide area communications as the initial idea was for a local gps equivalent system for a timeline where one could not send stuff into space and radio communications was extremely limited., I don't exactly know how it works out cost wise but I definitely thinks its possible to use balloons to the same effect otl.


Also I don’t know about NIMBYism as at 20-25 km up the thing which they might see is going to be very small and is painted to match the sky are going to be very difficult so see even on clear days. The tethers however are going be hard to miss if you live near one.
 
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