They don't dodge, they functionally cannot dodge. It would require either a rocket engine in the final stage that costs substantial reductions in warhead or increases in booster or some form of aerodynamic control. The missile interception takes place out of the atmosphere, so there is no use of aerodynamics. The only remaining method is a rocket burn which will both throw the warhead off target and be immediately detected by the ground tracking. The warhead dodges in one direction, the antimissile corrects the same as any missile corrects for an aircraft making an evasive maneuver, and the result is just a warhead off target unless it un-dodges or has routed itself to a new target. There is limited maneuverability beyond apogee.
"But you're hitting a dinner plate with an arrow in space"
No, you are hitting a dinner plate with a thermonuclear bomb, in space. And if you design that bomb correctly, you can readily turn your blast radius into a blast cone, throwing the cube law out the window for the destructive effects of x-rays and pushing you comfortably toward the square law.
An anti-missile with a nuclear warhead is a directed energy weapon of a power impossible to attain with a laser and immune from anti-satellite weapons and for far, far less launch weight and cost. You simply throw your x-ray emitter out of the atmosphere and in range of the target, then bang.
I am actually suspicious the current crop of American ABM/ASAT systems are kinetic-kill in as much as the Bismark was a Versailles-treaty compliant armored cruiser; the Germans had the illegal-to-mount battleship rated guns in a warehouse next to her moorings with the cranes all lined up to install them. Likewise we have to deal with SALT.
Impressive. Every bit of this is wrong.
RVs are entirely capable of dodging. This ability is key to the MIRV concept, and has been integrated in every ICBM since at least 1970.
A thermonuclear bomb has an extremely small kill radius against an RV. There are almost no blast effects outside the atmosphere, EMP is easily shielded against, and there isn't nearly enough neutron flux in a standard nuke to do the job.
"Focusing the blast into a cone" has no basis in science. Using the blast to generate a laser beam has been studied, and there was allegedly at least one successful test firing, but that's an entirely different thing, with a whole host of never-been-solved problems.
The Bismarck was never classified as a "Versailles-treaty compliant armored cruiser", not least because there is no such thing. The Versailles Treaty banned Germany from having any warships at all, and had been repudiated well before Bismarck was laid down. The only armament she ever carried were the eight 38 cm (15 in) SK C/34 she was designed with, and no treaty ever limited the class in any way, shape, or form.
Similarly, there is no treaty preventing the US from deploying nuclear-tipped ABMs - if any such treaty existed, it would be voided by the nuclear-tipped ABMs currently deployed to protect Moscow. The kinetic kill systems are in use because they have significant advantages in cost, accuracy, and deployability.
Ah, I made the mistake of the conversational style. A skilled pendant will pick you apart every time.
Should I just adopt the standard pattern of quipping along in platitudes that agree with everyone else then? Oh, I guess not.
Yes, they are -capable- of dodging. They are not, however, practically able to dodge for the reasons that I outlined. You are conflating MIRVs with IPBVs. MIRV design is not dodging, it is saturating an antimissile system with more targets than that system can destroy. American ABM systems from Nike-Zeus to Sprint to Sentinel all target the warheads post MIRV separation.
No blast effects outside the atmosphere? Really? That might be why they are killing with X-ray propagation
outside of the atmosphere. This radiation, the principle energy source of a properly tuned bomb, is the cause for the fireball as air readily absorbs it in an atmosphere. Outside of an atmosphere, that same amount of energy is still expended (where else would it go?) as steel-vaporizing x-rays. This is concept-proofed by America actually destroying satellites with nuclear warheads with their Nike-Zeus ASMs.
...and the basis of the Russian anti-missile system you just described yet apparently forgot that it works by the same mechanism you just discounted a few paragraphs earlier.
You can focus the blast of a nuclear bomb by changing what the bomb's detonates inside of. It is a fun little rabbit-hole of classified-since-the-60's aerospace technology that is all over the internet in speculative terms. Start with Project Orion and end up wondering what some fraction of 80% of a nuclear weapon's energy, in X-rays, could do if somehow
focused before said focal device vaporized from the other 20%.
As for the HMS Typographical Error, it was not the Versailles treaty but the Washington Naval Treaty which limited her size. Muh bad. You'd think you jump on people for little things.
The Moscow system was upgraded to kinetic-kill after being strategically negated by the Minute Man's MIRV upgrades. The US pulled out of the ABM treaties in 2002, at which point America started making new ABM systems of the kinetic kill type. It is likely that they are kinetic kill to prevent a lot of damage to satellites through the EM flux and coronas forming in the magnetosphere. But what I wouldn't be surprised of is the ability, at least in theory, to change the warhead should it not be one or two Iranian or North Korean missiles anticipated.
The question was if it is possible with modern technology, it was possible with 50's technology, and very possible with 60's technology.
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