Why is the Nuclear Triad needed if nuclear subs can’t be realistically countered?
In: Technology
Most nations do not follow the Triad anymore. Arguably only the US does seriously, and it’s the one with the most money.
France and the UK have the primary deterrent on submarines. Israel has tactical platforms and missiles. China has missiles and is starting submarines. Russia has all three but hasn’t built a new bomber in 40 years and lacks the money and probably technical skill to do so.
India and Pakistan have no long range aircraft or ballistic subs.
There’s a few reasons. First off, you never know if an enemy might somehow stumble upon some sort of breakthrough that effectively neutralizes one of the legs of your triad. Much less likely that they come up with something that can neutralize all three.
Second, the different platforms do have somewhat different capabilities. Once a missile is launched, you can’t turn it around. Even if you could self-destruct it, if an adversary detects sub missiles and/or ICBM’s launched at it and thinks they might be nukes, there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to seriously consider launching their missiles in a retaliation attack before your missiles would have a chance of destroying theirs. Compare that to a bomber where you can have it in the air and making its way towards the target but still have much more time to call off the attack and/or change the target.
Third, land based ICBM’s are basically a ‘nuke sink’. Let’s imagine that Russia decided it wanted to launch a surprise all-out nuclear attack on the US. It’s likely that its initial targeting priorities for its nukes would be to destroy as much of the US’ nukes as possible, in order to minimize the counter attack against Russia. That means that Russia’s first strike is likely going to need to use up hundreds of their ICBMs and warheads attacking hardened missile silos that are generally in the middle of nowhere, instead of dropping them on more populated areas and/or other infrastructure. This makes it much harder to attempt to destroy the US’ ability to fight back, even if you could successfully pull off a surprise attack.
Subs are *very* expensive, you can’t have big fleets of them.
But, modern nukes are just big cluster bombs. And countries you’d need a nuke against are really big. Subs, even if you have many of them, can’t cover any significant area with their nukes.
Thus you get cheaper ways to doomsday.
Making a nuke at all: hard as shit
Making one that a plane can carry: a decent bit harder but not that much
Making one that fits on the tip of a rocket: WAY fucking harder
Making a rocket that can carry a nuke but is small enough that the whole rocket fits inside a submarine which is also nuclear so now you need a nuclear reactor small enough to fit inside that same submarine: Dude…
Basically every country that can field nuclear subs will have already made nuclear bomber planes and nuclear missiles before then, because those are way easier. But France used to have a complete triad and only later they got rid of their land-based missiles and kept only bomber and subs, so clearly they do share your line of thinking to some extent.
The only way MAD isn’t valid is with the use of tactical nukes, where we could theoretically still only retaliate with conventional weapons. If Russia used a tactical nuke in Ukraine or whatever, that probably wouldn’t cause an immediate, world-ending nuclear exchange, unless there was serious and rapid escalation from there.
But if they launched strategic weapons, it probably would. It would be all or nothing. There is no purpose anyone would have in launching one or two strategic nukes, since it would result in an overwhelming counterattack. They’d send hundreds up at once in a first volley. At that point, we’re launching in a counter attack immediately, maybe before their’s even land. At that point, there is no system or technology that has a 100% success rate against hundreds or thousands of nukes. Even if there’s a 90 or 95% success rate, that’s still dozens of nukes raining down on us, and likewise over there.
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