4 ms·
The logic of "drawing fire" is kind of self-defeating. What enemy would spend munitions on an empty silo, while knowing that the you already shot all your arse
by baybal2 6y ago
The logic of "drawing fire" is kind of self-defeating.
What enemy would spend munitions on an empty silo, while knowing that the you already shot all your arsenal?
With radar, and infrared satellites everywhere, attacking a second strike weapon makes no sense.
Any attacker in sane mind will fully focus on offensive.
- typest 6y agoThe idea is that it is not an empty silo. The thinking is that if your opponent wants to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against you, they'll need to target all your nuclear missiles with theirs, to prevent you from retaliation. If you have lots of missiles spread out in otherwise non-strategic locations, you can make it harder for your opponent to preemptively strike you, as they'll have to destroy all these random missiles to prevent counter attack. In doing so, they would be failing to target densely populated areas, which would lower the efficacy of their attack. Not saying I agree or disagree with it. But, that's the logic, anyway.
- jandrese 6y agoI don't think even the US has harbored the insane notion that you could strike all of the missile silos and avoid retaliation. The operating principal for nuclear missiles is Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). This goes double if nuclear submarines exist (they do). Plus nuclear bunkers are supposed to be hardened against nuclear strike. So they could absorb the hit and still launch. Nuclear weapons are actually pretty poor at destroying protected underground facilities. You need something completely different: a heavy piercing bunker buster bomb full of conventional explosives. Plus, even if you were magically successful in destroying all of your opponent's nukes without retaliation you've still completely wrecked the environment. Fallout and nuclear winter are still going to ruin your victory.
- chipsa 6y agoMutually assured destruction is not a policy. The actual US policy is assured destruction: use WMDs on us and we will destroy you, and e will posture or things to be able to assure that we can.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pdonis 6y agoThe enemy doesn't know which silos are empty.
- faeyanpiraat 6y agoArent they all supposed to be empty? Like "getting all the missiles already launched by the time enemy missiles arrive" empty?
- kube-system 6y agoIf an enemy attacks the US, and the silos are empty by the time the missiles arrive, then the enemy is dead. The only way for the enemy to live is to destroy all of the silos without being detected. Having a large number of silos makes this basically impossible.
- baybal2 6y agoAll of them. US has early warning system better than anybody's else, and only 50 spare missiles stored in military bases which will already be taken out in any first strike scenario.