More compact? Irrelevant. Look at the SS-N-20. Why should Russia bother to undertake a complicated, lengthy, and expensive campaign to make the missile smaller when the Typhoon sub, due to the nature of under-ice operations, was going to be freaking enormous? Being shorter ranged wasn’t a disadvantage either, given that it was not being used as a counterforce weapon to strike hardened silos. They had the SS-18 to be used as a hard-target killer for counterforce strike. No need to make an SLBM for the same role, and if the SS-N-20 didn’t have to fill the job that doesn’t make it “inferior”. Truth be told the D5 was a different class of weapon system, and comparing it to Soviet and Russian SLBMs is a wasted effort as they were intended for different roles. Ergo, again, on the whole, the nuclear arsenals were technologically on par with each other, once you look at the overall capabilities each one possessed. The only advantage the USA had was when the B-2 came into being. The Soviets/Russians had nothing remotely capable of deep interdiction as they had no LO platforms. But remove the manned bombers from the equation, and you’re back to overall technical parity.
The fanboy asked a question and got the answer, he does not like it, well its tough luck. Trident-D5 is the better missile in answer to his question, if he asked the wrong question that is his problem but either way he has to accept the answer with good grace.
Sign In
