Tracking mobile missiles

Nuclear-armed states have sought to secure their nuclear arsenals from preemptive attack by deploying mobile ground-launched missiles. However, recent developments in remote-sensing technologies have spurred a debate about the survivability of ground-mobile missiles. Current scholarship implicitly assumes that mobile missiles will be operated sub-optimally, underestimating the difficulty of tracking mobile missiles and hence their survivability. In this paper, I analyze how a set of remote sensing technologies, including space-based radar, could track mobile missiles. I find that, today, ground-mobile missiles could defeat tracking through evasive operation and that technological countermeasures could allow them to remain survivable into the near future.