Post by Cerberus_0408 on May 10, 2020 4:19:48 GMT -5
IMFDB has said these things about the game's weapons...
- About reloading with a knife:
"I understand the tactics behind holding a knife in your reaction hand while you grip the weapon, but in reloading, that's just one extra thing you have to worry about not dropping. How would you get a good grasp of the spare mag while holding onto a knife. Snake seems to have no problems but it just occurred to me that trying this in real life can be very dangerous"
- The Shagohod
I'm fairly sure Sokolov was over-exaggerating how much of a threat it was, either to make sure Big Boss really took it out because of how serious Sokolov was meant to be, or just from misplaced pride. In real life, by no means whatsoever would the Shagohod's Phase 2 be feasible, ever. To fire a missile from a Shagohod-like launcher would have an utterly negligible impact on the overall velocity of the missile. Should it start from 300 miles per hour instead of 0, if we were to believe the game, that means very little when the weapon has to accelerate to around 14,000 miles per hour, and would certainly fail to have sufficient fuel to almost double the weapon's range. In addition, the guidance of ballistic missiles is inertial, based on a known starting location, and launching it at speed and at a non-vertical angle would be literally impossible with the missile's existing guidance system. Finally and most obviously there is an anachronistic error. Shagohod is said to fire the SS-20 "Sabre" IRBM, a weapon that would not be deployed until 1976. SS-20 appears to have been used because the equivalent period missiles, SS-4 Sandal and SS-5 Skean, used gantry launchers rather than a launch tube and were liquid-fuelled, and thus would probably look rather ridiculous on the Metal Gear.
There are also several other problems to take into account for the Shagohod itself. Firstly, fundamentally the vehicle would be detectable by satellites. The script either cannot or will not recognise how all weapon systems have a logistical footprint, no matter how small, and the more high-tech, the bigger or more evident it is. A Shagohod would demand specialised vehicles to fuel, maintain, tow and transport it, storage facilities for dangerous hypergolic rocket fuels, stockpiles of spare parts, workshops, support crew housing, communications to pass it targeting information...and the list goes on. In addition, the vehicle requires a three-mile runway pointing roughly towards its target, and since it pulls itself with augers it would probably need either a special surface or to re-surface the runway every single time a launch run is made.
Furthermore, military vehicles cannot possibly run 24-7 non-stop; as a general rule a significant percent of vehicles will be rendered essentially inoperable at any given time, for the simple reason that they are undergoing routine maintenance or being repaired. With something as sophisticated and cutting-edge as the Shagohod having 25% of vehicles operational would be pretty impressive, which would mean multiple vehicles would be needed. Assuming this availability level, an operational Shagohod battery would probably consist of four or more likely five vehicles to ensure there was one ready-to-go when a launch order came. Needless to say, this would require an entire purpose-built complex that any non-military person, hell even a fool, could find. These ludicrous requirements would also expose the impossibility to fulfil Volgin's plan to export the vehicle as a means of nuclear proliferation, since few client states would have the ability to maintain such a facility.
Crew training would also be an issue; with a normal ballistic missile a launch drill can be run without ever opening the silo doors, but a test run with a Shagohod would look exactly like a real launch to even an untrained observer. A satellite would be able to spot the rocket exhaust from the vehicle itself, and there would be no way of knowing whether or not it was going to launch a warhead on this run unless the entire launch tube had been removed.
Additionally, the US and Soviet Union had actual systems exactly like what the Shagohod is meant to represent already. These are, respectively the Polaris and SS-N-5 SLBMs, which had been around since 1960 and 1963. Ballistic missile submarines need no runways whatsoever, being able to hide in perhaps seventy percent of the Earth's surface and are much, much harder to detect. They fit into a role of nuclear deterrence called assured second strike, the principle that even if the enemy does manage a first strike, they will be powerless to prevent a large-scale nuclear retaliation. Shagohod would only be dangerous if nobody knew what they were looking for, and would really only be good for one launch, ever, before it was relegated to the second strike role.
The script even appears to be unaware that satellites and spyplanes were not the only system for detecting ICBM launches. In fact, the US had the RCA 474L Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS), a network of 12 radar sites built from 1960 to 1964 and designed to provide a 15-25 minute warning of approaching missiles. That would be more than enough time to order a counter-launch before impact. The Soviets must have been aware of this, since data on the system had been leaked in 1961, so Volgin would probably have ended up cancelling the first-strike focused Shagohod himself.
One possibly-intentional point of realism, though, is that the Shagohod's development (as a mobile land launch system) in 1964 is indeed in line with period Soviet missile doctrine: the R-9 missile (one of two ICBMs identified as SS-8 Sasin) was originally intended to be a mobile system to thwart a first strike against Soviet silo complexes by NATO (though using wheeled launcher trucks instead of a hovercraft-thing): this was changed to a dual project developing silo-launched and mobile versions, but the mobile version never achieved the desired mobility and that part of the project was ultimately scrapped.
- About reloading with a knife:
"I understand the tactics behind holding a knife in your reaction hand while you grip the weapon, but in reloading, that's just one extra thing you have to worry about not dropping. How would you get a good grasp of the spare mag while holding onto a knife. Snake seems to have no problems but it just occurred to me that trying this in real life can be very dangerous"
- The Shagohod
I'm fairly sure Sokolov was over-exaggerating how much of a threat it was, either to make sure Big Boss really took it out because of how serious Sokolov was meant to be, or just from misplaced pride. In real life, by no means whatsoever would the Shagohod's Phase 2 be feasible, ever. To fire a missile from a Shagohod-like launcher would have an utterly negligible impact on the overall velocity of the missile. Should it start from 300 miles per hour instead of 0, if we were to believe the game, that means very little when the weapon has to accelerate to around 14,000 miles per hour, and would certainly fail to have sufficient fuel to almost double the weapon's range. In addition, the guidance of ballistic missiles is inertial, based on a known starting location, and launching it at speed and at a non-vertical angle would be literally impossible with the missile's existing guidance system. Finally and most obviously there is an anachronistic error. Shagohod is said to fire the SS-20 "Sabre" IRBM, a weapon that would not be deployed until 1976. SS-20 appears to have been used because the equivalent period missiles, SS-4 Sandal and SS-5 Skean, used gantry launchers rather than a launch tube and were liquid-fuelled, and thus would probably look rather ridiculous on the Metal Gear.
There are also several other problems to take into account for the Shagohod itself. Firstly, fundamentally the vehicle would be detectable by satellites. The script either cannot or will not recognise how all weapon systems have a logistical footprint, no matter how small, and the more high-tech, the bigger or more evident it is. A Shagohod would demand specialised vehicles to fuel, maintain, tow and transport it, storage facilities for dangerous hypergolic rocket fuels, stockpiles of spare parts, workshops, support crew housing, communications to pass it targeting information...and the list goes on. In addition, the vehicle requires a three-mile runway pointing roughly towards its target, and since it pulls itself with augers it would probably need either a special surface or to re-surface the runway every single time a launch run is made.
Furthermore, military vehicles cannot possibly run 24-7 non-stop; as a general rule a significant percent of vehicles will be rendered essentially inoperable at any given time, for the simple reason that they are undergoing routine maintenance or being repaired. With something as sophisticated and cutting-edge as the Shagohod having 25% of vehicles operational would be pretty impressive, which would mean multiple vehicles would be needed. Assuming this availability level, an operational Shagohod battery would probably consist of four or more likely five vehicles to ensure there was one ready-to-go when a launch order came. Needless to say, this would require an entire purpose-built complex that any non-military person, hell even a fool, could find. These ludicrous requirements would also expose the impossibility to fulfil Volgin's plan to export the vehicle as a means of nuclear proliferation, since few client states would have the ability to maintain such a facility.
Crew training would also be an issue; with a normal ballistic missile a launch drill can be run without ever opening the silo doors, but a test run with a Shagohod would look exactly like a real launch to even an untrained observer. A satellite would be able to spot the rocket exhaust from the vehicle itself, and there would be no way of knowing whether or not it was going to launch a warhead on this run unless the entire launch tube had been removed.
Additionally, the US and Soviet Union had actual systems exactly like what the Shagohod is meant to represent already. These are, respectively the Polaris and SS-N-5 SLBMs, which had been around since 1960 and 1963. Ballistic missile submarines need no runways whatsoever, being able to hide in perhaps seventy percent of the Earth's surface and are much, much harder to detect. They fit into a role of nuclear deterrence called assured second strike, the principle that even if the enemy does manage a first strike, they will be powerless to prevent a large-scale nuclear retaliation. Shagohod would only be dangerous if nobody knew what they were looking for, and would really only be good for one launch, ever, before it was relegated to the second strike role.
The script even appears to be unaware that satellites and spyplanes were not the only system for detecting ICBM launches. In fact, the US had the RCA 474L Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS), a network of 12 radar sites built from 1960 to 1964 and designed to provide a 15-25 minute warning of approaching missiles. That would be more than enough time to order a counter-launch before impact. The Soviets must have been aware of this, since data on the system had been leaked in 1961, so Volgin would probably have ended up cancelling the first-strike focused Shagohod himself.
One possibly-intentional point of realism, though, is that the Shagohod's development (as a mobile land launch system) in 1964 is indeed in line with period Soviet missile doctrine: the R-9 missile (one of two ICBMs identified as SS-8 Sasin) was originally intended to be a mobile system to thwart a first strike against Soviet silo complexes by NATO (though using wheeled launcher trucks instead of a hovercraft-thing): this was changed to a dual project developing silo-launched and mobile versions, but the mobile version never achieved the desired mobility and that part of the project was ultimately scrapped.
