"We Have a Railroad Missile Launcher Gap" Topic

We have a railroad missile launcher gap, and imagine that is to a puny country like North Korea, which IS superceding the greatest military power on the planet in some categories:

- rail-car mounted missile launchers;
- brick-breaking, and topless, barechested military soldiers performing well choreographed, fake fights;
- a missile-mounted, hypersonic missile (my guess is this is really just a mockup, and not a real, operational weapon);
- and, a truck mounted, mobile ICBM.

We better get cracking, or we'll lose the new arms race (sarcasm intended, though it would be nice to have at least a couple of the above in our own military inventory, e.g. #1 and 4 above, as well as #3 too, instead of just an air-launched one).

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Rail-mounted ICBMs were investigated several times, but they just weren't useful. You have to remember just how huge and obvious ICBMs are. If your photo-recon interpreters only have to trace along the rail lines in satellite shots, it's pretty easy to find the cars.

Then there's the safety issue. Just how bad is it if an ICBM derails? Are you going to just run them back and forth in unoccupied areas, or are they going to pass through towns and cities? What about security? How do you keep saboteurs, terrorists, and even protesters away from them?

Well if we had gone with the Reagan idea of the MX missile on rail car launchers….

I'm not so sure, since they're mobile, so can be moved where and when needed, making targeting a lot more difficult.

Add in some mountain tunnels, and you've really made life difficult for the enemy.

My understanding was these railroad lines would mainly be laid out on restricted military reservations, in order to keep terrorists and saboteurs at bay. Of course, disguising them as ordinary railcars, if possible, would certainly make life interesting too.