Why is the Nuclear Triad needed if nuclear subs can’t be realistically countered?
In: Technology
Submarines with nuclear missiles can be countered. Due to their small size the submarines can not carry many missiles and the missiles are smaller so have shorter range. Firstly this means that the submarine have to be rather close to its target. Places like Moscow and Chicago is therefore out of range of most realistic submarine attacks. The submarines generally stay in open water and may have to move inn closer to shore in order to reach the targets they want to. That makes them vulnerable to attack submarines and aircraft. Just the act of being hunted prevents the nuclear submarines from going close to the surface and slowing down in order to launch the missiles.
Even if the submarines gets within firing range of their targets and if they can get into position to fire their missiles the missiles have to cross land at a low altitude to get to their target. So they can be shot down by surface to air missiles and other anti aircraft weapons. You would normally fire lots of extra missiles so not all of them can be shot down but again submarines have limited space and therefore limited missiles. It does not help to have 25 missile tubes when you regularly hear about drone and cruise missile swarms in the hundreds of weapons fired at once all get shot down both in Ukraine and in Israel. A single submarine can not penetrate those defenses. Even all the submarines in the fleet would have a hard time getting even a single warhead through.
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