Sam Laer
Sam Lair is a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) and a Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, specializing in open-source intelligence on nuclear and missile programs.
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APPEARANCES
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PODCASTS
Aug 26, 2026
Sam LairGUEST
Um, but so thankfully there's a bunch of data for the space launch vehicle, and, uh, Jeffrey was able to use that to kind of reverse engineer what that launch window looks like.
Sam LairGUEST
And I believe that was about 245 seconds, plus another 100 seconds of, uh, bus deployment.
Sam LairGUEST
The second missile was, uh, a 180-second burning, uh, solid propellant, uh, ICBM, and that was derived from the Topol, which was also, uh, a space launch vehicle.
Sam LairGUEST
Um, so the, the Russians gave us a bunch of, uh, of, of data on that, and, um, that's about 180 seconds.
15 MINS LATER
Jeffrey LewisHOST
And I, I- maybe there's some alternative universe where, you know, we're churning out all kinds of kill vehicles at a low cost, but that almost certainly means reduced performance.