I think your point is valid, but I'd like to point out that the phrase "Mutually Assured Destruction" was never "Mutually Assured Annihilation". If Russia manag

I think your point is valid, but I'd like to point out that the phrase "Mutually Assured Destruction" was never "Mutually Assured Annihilation". If Russia manages to land 1% of their nukes in the US, that can still count as the destruction of the US as a superpower, although most US people would survive. Rendering the MAD doctrine obsolete means providing at least 99.9% accuracy in the interception of the ballistic nukes. That still leaves the non-ballistic nukes as a threat, and maybe that's why the Russians are rumored to have created the Status-6 nuclear torpedo/drone of 100 MT TNT equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_torpedo#Status-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_torpedo#Status-6