Why is the Nuclear Triad needed if nuclear subs can’t be realistically countered?
In: Technology
1) Whoops, we didn’t realize that the enemy’s sonar capabilities actually let them know where our subs were 100% of the time and they just sunk all of them before launching their own strike. This was a realization that the Soviet Union actually had in the 1980s and led to their shifting resources away from ballistic missile submarines and towards surface ships like the Kirov and Kuznetsov classes.
2) Whoops, our enemy launched a massive nuclear strike on us and, with knowledge that our own submarine launched missiles could only hit their major cities from a few points off their coast, positioned their entire navy there and then sunk our submarines when they surfaced to fire (or maybe they were just able to outright determine planned launch sites through some form of espionage).
3) It turns out that launching a ballistic missile from a submarine is an order of magnitude more expensive than launching it from a silo, and a further order of magnitude more expensive than dropping a bomb from a bomber. By only building ballistic missile submarines, we ended up with a tiny fraction of the retaliatory ability than we would have had with a diversified arsenal. So – Whoops, it turns out we didn’t have enough missiles to launch a credible retaliation and our enemy decided that the maximum possible damage that our submarine forces could inflict was, to them, an acceptable loss to wipe us out.
The point of the nuclear triad is that its a cost effective way to guarantee that there is no single defense that your enemy has, but which you aren’t aware exists, that prevents you from launching a credible counter-strike.
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