Talk:Intercontinental ballistic missile

To do. Please write a brief definition or description of this article at Intercontinental ballistic missile/Definition.

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Article mechanics

Please bear with me as a new editor, but can we address some structural things? First, even at Wikipedia, I dislike having the full citation in a bibliography section, and then the actual footnotes, with no hyperlink to the full citation, in a references section. Were I writing this article at Wikipedia, I'd have moved the text of the referenced items in the Bibliography into the article, as inline citations.

Since CZ has sections for Bibliography and External Links, I would think we'd want to make use of them. As I understand, there is still some discussion on just what should be in a bibliography, but my general understanding is that the items in it may not explicitly map to a footnote in the main article, but there should be enough annotation to tell me why I would want to track down the item and read it.

These do appear to be legitimate references, but I can't help be reminded of an annoyance at Wikipedia: things sometimes went into "additional reading" or "external links", and, if tracked down, turned out to be conspiracy theories or other fringe material that would have been edited out had their content been detailed in the main article.

At least some of the items in the bibliography appear as if they match to inline references, which show up in a terse form in the reflist. It may be a personal quirk, but I hate to follow a footnote, then discover it doesn't give me anything more than an author name for which I have to search a list of references. This is one case in which paper has a slight advantage over hyperdocuments: you can use ibid and op cit and loc cit and the like, without worrying if a dynamically inserted edit completely throws off the ibids.

Comments from Richard Jensen, the author of the additions, or anyone with insight on annotations would be much appreciated. Howard C. Berkowitz 13:35, 11 May 2008 (CDT)

first, all the cites are legit --no conspiracies--and, in my opinion, useful for people interested in ICBM's. (the one by Dupont is somewhat speculative, but it's a PhD thesis from a major university). I will be adding more bibliog.

Second, how should footnotes be handled? In this case, I gave a brief cite in the footnote with the full cite in the bibliography (which eventually will go on its own page when we're mostly finished.) It is also possible to give a full cite on both places. Either approach is OK with me--I takeit Howard wants the second approach. I strongly dislike ibid's and such in CZ. (because text gets moved or erased and we'll have orphans.) Richard Jensen 13:50, 11 May 2008 (CDT)

Direction of the article

Where do we go to fill out the article, and/or create related articles? For example, should there be a brief mention of ballistic missile defense, and a pointer to one or more BMD articles? What about penetration aids? How about MRV, MIRV and MARV? Superhardening, dense pack, mobile, and other survivability modes? Advanced articles might deal with targeting issues such as ladder-north and pindown (dense pack could go here).

I know a good deal about the command and control of the U.S. system, and, again, there might be justification to have some of the Minuteman-specific material here, with extension to a separate article; the separate article might address nuclear C3 in general. That article would need material on the Soviet/Russian controls; I do remember a decent Scientific American article, but I haven't done a literature search yet. My guess would be that there is very little in the open literature, and possibly not much in the classified, about Chinese strategic control.

Does another discussion concern the evolution of warheads, the Titan II being kept for longer than expected because it could lift the 9MT W53? More accurate reentry vehicles made the need for very large warheads to go away in counterforce as was understood in the open literature. What about the significance of much longer ranged SLBMs with highly accurate reentry vehicles; while SLBMs were often seen as the second-strike hedge, Trident D5 could be a first strike weapon. Howard C. Berkowitz 13:35, 11 May 2008 (CDT)

I like Howard's ideas and think the more the better. If needed we can divide into separate articles (eg one on warheads, another on C3). I added the Minuteman because it is the most important system. My own interest is the history of the Cold War -- more from diplomatic and strategic perspective. My daughter is a rocket scientist but I am pretty wobbly on how the V-2 worked. Richard Jensen 13:55, 11 May 2008 (CDT)