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You don't need a huge number of nuclear weapons to achieve this, you need nuclear weapons in secret and ideally changing locations (i.e. submarines)
by llamaimperative 2y ago
You don't need a huge number of nuclear weapons to achieve this, you need nuclear weapons in secret and ideally changing locations (i.e. submarines)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jncfhnb 2y agoWhich is a lot more fallible than just having a huge number
- golergka 2y agoSecurity through obscurity is fragile. Strength in numbers — less so.
- justin66 2y agoThe fixed missile silos out in the middle of nowhere (sorry Montana!) serve a lot of useful purposes. If you do not intend to be the one who pushes the button and destroys the entire world, it is nice having weapons like that precisely because the adversary can see whether or not you've fired them. If the enemy can see that your ICBMs haven't launched and your bombers aren't in range to fire their cruise missiles, they know you haven't gone all the way. Additionally, silos like that are something the adversary must target if they have any hope to survive, which is one less warhead they can drop somewhere else (an air base, fleet, city, or whatever). A submarine is inherently less predictable, yes, and in terms of ratcheting down tensions that is not always great.
- 542354234235 2y agoOne additional reason, that the enemy would have to destroy a large amount of American territory to realistically neutralize the threat. They can’t just target some military bases and subs in an attempt to cripple us while attempting to keep it limited. No half measures.
- SkyPuncher 2y agoThis doesn't work since you can't really prove that your opponent doesn't know the secret or changing locations - either out of sabotage or technical advancement.
- nradov 2y agoI can't imagine any sort of sabotage that would make SSBNs easier to locate without also being obvious to the crew. As for technical advancements, what are you thinking of there within the current laws of physics? No other country has the economic resources to blanket the ocean with detection platforms. Some researchers have proposed using satellites to detect submarine wakes but that would take a huge constellation and could only even potentially work if the sub was moving fast at a shallow depth.
- ls612 2y agoSSBN stealth could be at risk by mid-century if current technologies continue to advance in surveillance and information processing. That would be enormously destabilizing from a grand strategic perspective but is still very much a future worry not a contemporary problem yet.
- nradov 2y agoWhich technologies specifically?
- ls612 2y agoThe two which I’ve read are concerning are using the ferromagnetic material in a sub to detect tiny variations in the magnetic field using supercooled sensors and just better computers and acoustic sensors to extract more signal from well below the noise floor. There’s also some more science fiction level technologies proposed like using the nuclear signature of a sub’s reactor or using space based LIDAR to detect signs of the wake of a submerged submarine but I’ll defer judgment on those for now. But longer term I wouldn’t completely count them out.
- 2y ago
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> You don't need a huge number of nuclear weapons to achieve this, you need nuclear weapons in secret and ideally changing locations (i.e. submarines) No. Most fundamentally because secret deterrents are, by definition, unverifiable.