Talk:Intercontinental ballistic missile

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The reference links to Encyclopedia Astronautica (deleted by @Ilenart626 in August 2022 as "unreliable") were restored because the RfC for the reliability of Encyclopedia Astronautica concluded that "there appears to be a consensus that this is a valuable resource". So far no specific errors were addressed for the items linked to this article. SchmiAlf (talk) 10:15, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@SchmiAlf has misrepresented the rfc, which concluded “There appears to be a consensus that this is a valuable resource, but which lacks editorial oversight, contains errors and is no longer updated…caution needs to taken in using the source.” The rfc found that no consensus, unclear, or additional considerations apply on the reliability of the site, which includes “It may be necessary to evaluate each use of the source on a case-by-case basis while accounting for specific factors unique to the source in question.” Given the issues with this source I am reverting SchmiAlf's change pending consensus for inclusion.Ilenart626 (talk) 12:04, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is Israel really “known” to have operational ICBMs? The lead contains a list of countries which are “known to possess operational ICBMs.” If so, I feel like there should be a citation next to Israel’s name on the list as Israel has repeatedly declined to comment on whether or not they possess any nuclear weapons and the whole program remains a secret. Jackvoeller (talk) 22:54, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Editing this as I have worked on it a bit and have a plan: Basically "Modern ICBMs" should be renamed to something along the lines of "Operation" or "function" or "How an ICBM works" and then it makes a lot more sense.

Currently the developments in ICBM tech between ~2012 when this article seems to have last been structurally changed. (judging by text in the post cold war section) have been scattered between "Post Cold War" "Modern ICBMs" and a text section in "Specific ICBMs" under the list.

All of these scattered snippets should be either collected into a specific area, or just removed completely unless 'historically relevant'. I would propose "Currently active systems" get some page space, and the rest get dumped. with sections for the first ICBMs each country that has ICBMs develops/deploys. Flipkick25 (talk) 04:35, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure it needs a huge amount of re-organization but a bit of moving content between sections would help. The History section is generally fine, though maybe some of the final paragraphs of the post-Cold War section could be moved into other places. Given the limited number of ICBMs, all such developments are historically relevant, but we don't need to cover each example in superb depth here, we can link to the "main" article for a given historical example and cover most of the detail there. The "Flight Phases" section needs to be rewritten for better clarity and sourcing, and if you were to rename it to "Operation" and give it subsections, we could also move coverage of the different types of ICBMs and their warheads here, e.g. this would be the appropriate section for covering the flight phases, covering warhead types (such as HGVs, MIRVs, MaRVs, decoys and countermeasures, etc.) and launch platforms in their own subsections. The "Specific ICBMs" section needs some minor cleanup -- the chart is above the text, and much of the detail here should be moved to sub-articles given that we already have those. And the "missile defense" section is fine as is. In general, the number of images in the article needs a serious trimming. But most of this is generic cleanup, rather than re-organization. I appreciate the effort you've been putting in thus far though, it's already in better shape than it was.⇒SWATJester Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 03:10, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply] I did the structural change, I got places to be so I can't finish it out tonight, but no data has been removed. Flipkick25 (talk) 19:50, 6 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]