The Best Version Of ...

 ... Erika, with a major purely instrumental segment. I mean it. It is great march and this version is the best. 

Now that I have your attention with this tender sentimental German music piece about the girl, flowers and bees--introduction to FOBS. That is Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. As you might expect, Russians had something to do with it, like in inventing it. Here is some historic background: 

Soviet interest in global or orbital attack options appeared early in the space age. The same rocket progress that made human spaceflight possible also made military planners think about routes that bypassed existing warning networks. By the early 1960s, Soviet design bureaus were studying systems that could exploit orbital mechanics for nuclear delivery. Sergei Korolev pursued the GR-1 concept, while other design teams advanced rival ideas. The system that moved toward deployment came from Mikhail Yangel ’s design bureau as the R-36O, also known by its GRAU designation 8K69. American intelligence tracked these efforts with rising concern. Declassified intelligence estimates from the 1960s tied Soviet tests to either a fractional orbital bombardment system, a depressed-trajectory ICBM, or both. Those estimates reflect a period when the United States still faced real uncertainty about Soviet technical direction. That uncertainty mattered in itself. A weapon that complicates warning can alter decisions even before it reaches maturity, because military planning has to account for possibility as well as established fact. 

So, I merely use available (and good) information here and here is a very decent explanation of what FOBS is. 

A useful definition has to separate FOBS from three related categories that are often mixed together. The first is the ordinary ICBM. An ICBM does not go into orbit. It climbs, coasts on a ballistic trajectory through space, then reenters. The second is a true orbital bombardment system, which would place a nuclear weapon into full orbit and potentially keep it there until commanded to attack. The third is the modern pairing of an orbital or near-orbital booster with a hypersonic glide vehicle . That pairing can look FOBS-like from the outside, yet the operational logic is not identical. The Soviet system sat between the first two categories. It used orbital flight as a partial path, but not a standing bomb-in-orbit posture.

Correct for highlighted in yellow. I also omit here any legal points because the US abrogated pretty much every single arms control treaty, so it is irrelevant for the Russian (and ONLY in the world) variant of FOBS. Enter RS-28 Sarmat, it is a 200 ton monster with a payload of 10 tons with Power-to-equipment ratio (энерговооруженность), aka PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) without rivals in nuclear delivery systems. 

In missile engineering, the power-to-equipment ratio refers to the relationship between the available propulsion power (thrust, specific impulse, or energy output) and the total mass of the missile’s propulsion system and other equipment. It is a key performance metric that influences range, speed, payload capacity, and overall mission effectiveness. 

There is no contest, Sarmat is a FOBS system and it can deliver the payload to ranges unheard of before--35,000 + kilometers. Here is illustration from WiKi:

It launches in any direction it wants and inserts up to ten Yu-71(74) Avangards into suborbital path, after that you know the story. Mach=27, violent maneuvers et al. And it is always cute how Early Warning Systems (radar and sats) are presented in graphics as if somehow they make a difference--they don't, because there is nothing out there capable of real intercepts of hypersonic systems of any kind anywhere in the West. In other words, FOBS doesn't even need to fly around the world and attack from the "behind" of early warning installation most of which are directed at the North Pole. It can fly towards them and they literally are useless in any role other than the tripwire. Kinetically the US, let alone Europe, are simply defenseless. No professional will take mentioning of GBI (Ground Based Interceptors) in such conversation seriously. They also are useless. Hey, don't blame Russians--they wanted to preserve ABM Treaty, but some neocons with degrees in political "science" thought that Russia is backward. Well ... 

As you might expect, there is a whole lotta coping going on in the Western media. Vladimir Putin was dead wrong in 2018 when he stated that the West (well, US) is 5-7 years behind Russia in hypersonic weapons and anti-hypersonic defense. Looks today more like 15-17 years, at best, in hypersonic weapons. In terms of something equaling S-500 (550), S-300V4 and A-325--maybe 20-25, if ever. After SMO and Iran, the US air and anti-missile defense cannot be taken seriously, especially in matters involving latest generations of intercontinental delivery systems with the US still deploying 1970s, granted updated, technology of Minuteman-III and 1980s technology of Trident II-D5. And that bring us to this:

Mozyr’s cancellation in 1991 was a victim of Soviet collapse, not failure of technology. Some histories claim that work was suspended to prevent triggering U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty a treaty which, as subsequent analysis reveals, limited deployment of systems that could defend ICBM fields. The United States investigated an analogous concept, “Swarmjet,” for its MX missile silos, employing thousands of unguided rockets, but it did not get beyond design studies.

What is Mozyr? Here:

Modern computational capabilities brought this system back and Sarmats' silos will be defended, apart from their hardened reinforced design, by this system starting this year. Mozyr creates an impenetrable projectile field at the elevation of the 6 kilometers which disables any MIRV. If MIRV detonates at this elevation it represents no danger to silos' functionality. Remember this BS about some super-duper "trigger" for MIRVs of Trident II D5? It was a desperate attempt to somehow detonate MIRVs at least closer to the target (silo) because of the low yield and very bad accuracy of Trident's MIRVs when launched on suppressed trajectories for faster delivery. Basic physics.

The CEP (Circular Error Probable) in this mode increases to many hundreds of meters as opposed claimed for Trident II D5 as 100 meters. FYI--Avangard's CEP is ... 10 meters. When I say that the United States lost the arms race--I mean it, it is not a hyperbole. Then, of course, consider the fact that the Avangard FOBS flies around the world at will, while the range of Trident II D5 is 11,500 km. 

Now, you may ask, especially after listening to fairy tales by some MIT professor, and how can Russians control Avangards during flight, especially when it flies around the world. Well, for those who still believe that Russian Early warning System is blind--a reminder. Russia operates a constellation (currently 6 satellites) of Kupol Early Warning System which flies at Tundra Orbits with a very long so called dwelling period. 

There are always multispectral satellites looking down at the Earth from the apogee of 36,000 kilometers. But those are not just Early Warning satellites for Russia's SPRN, Kupol controls Russia's nuclear forces providing constant communications for any element of Russia's strategic nuclear forces. As you may have already surmised, this also includes Avangards which are fully controlled no matter trajectory. In other words, this is the most advanced system of the strategic containment in history. Now back to my favorite version of Erika.