IN THIS ARTICLE, AMERICAN NUCLEAR STRATEGY EXPERTS ADAM LOWTHER AND DEREK WILLIAMS COMMENT ON THE CURRENT U.S. NUCLEAR STRATEGY. Their central argument is that the United States still needs to build up its nuclear arsenal to ensure that the United States still has sufficient (adequate) nuclear counterattack capability after the first round of Russian (or Chinese) nuclear strikes. When elaborating on the core argument, they refuted a view put forward by two other American scholars: "The United States should cancel the strategy of 'counterattack immediately after a nuclear strike' to avoid miscalculation."
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This balance of reciprocal acts as an effective deterrent, as it makes an attack on U.S. missile bases a high-risk option. Unfortunately, after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Russia decided to suspend the implementation of the treaty, which restricts Russia's deployment of strategic nuclear weapons, and the nuclear deterrence between the United States and Russia fell into a delicate and tense situation.
We believe that it will become increasingly unlikely that Russia will continue to comply with the restrictions of the Convention. The Russian president is likely to rely more on nuclear weapons to compensate for the disadvantages of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in conventional warfare. If Russia does so and chooses to preemptively strike the U.S. nuclear arsenal in a worst-case scenario, President Putin has multiple options for dealing with U.S. ICBM forces. For this and other reasons discussed below.
In a March 17 article in " " , " , and based on the results, it was suggested that the option in the U.S. nuclear strategy be eliminated. Unfortunately, Montoya and Kemp did not seriously consider how the United States should maintain a nuclear deterrent.
In our nuclear strategy, we focus on three areas: We believe that ideas like Montoya and Kemp are wrong about eliminating this nuclear strategy, because it could weaken America's nuclear deterrent.
ICBM tactics
Montoya and Kemp's article summarizes the findings of Montoya's bachelor's thesis, in which she used publicly available data to simulate a scenario of a "Russian nuclear strike on a U.S. ICBM base." Through simulation, they argued.
They believe that launching a nuclear counterattack immediately in the event of an attack is dangerous, provocative, and unnecessary because the United States has the ability to organize subsequent defenses and have the necessary retaliatory forces. In fact, they believe that by fending off the first attack, the advantage will shift to the side of the United States, because Russia will most likely have spent almost all of its nuclear forces to destroy the US land-based ICBM base.
Montoya and Kemp are correct in their thesis that "a large number of weapons are required to successfully destroy American land-based ICBMs." With 400 missiles spread across 450 silos and 45 launch control centers, and the ability to launch through an air-launched control system, it would be challenging for Russia to destroy an ICBM of this size. U.S. intercontinental missile silos provide considerable protection for single-warhead missiles, and ensuring their destruction is a daunting task, which helps boost U.S. nuclear deterrents.
What we disagree with is another point of view from Montoya and Kemp. The United States maintains a nuclear strategy known as 'strike and strike,' at the heart of which is that in the event of Russia's first attack, U.S. underground silo missiles can launch nuclear missiles before they are destroyed. Montoya and Kemp argue that this strategy needs to be adjusted – implying that the United States should not "strike back."
"The primary purpose is to enhance deterrence. Deterrence is a psychological effect that is created in the mind of an adversary. The United States strengthens deterrence by threatening to impose costs, reduce the benefits of action, and encourage restraint. Launch when under attack reduces the benefits of action by increasing uncertainty and perceived risk. President Putin could not be sure whether he would attack the unloaded silos.
If the United States does not adopt a "strike and strike" strategy, then Russia may take a very different tactical approach to striking these forces. After the initial attack, Russia can use its reconnaissance and surveillance satellites to conduct space-based combat damage assessments, identify targets that were not destroyed, and then re-attack surviving launch facilities. In this way, Russia can not dump its nuclear weapons in the first nuclear strike, but make full use of the passive counterattack time of the United States to carry out wave attacks and destroy all American nuclear facilities as much as possible.
However, it is almost certain that the likelihood of a first Russian attack on the United States before Russia's nuclear arsenal significantly surpasses that of the United States is extremely low.
Beyond that, Montoya and Kemp's article misses one important point — the threat of conventional attacks against U.S. land-based ballistic missile bases. Montoya wrote in a 2022 study: "Despite Russia's unsatisfactory performance in Ukraine, it still has long-range cruise missiles capable of precision strikes anywhere in the United States."
It is unlikely that Russia will use precision conventional weapons to hit missile silos. On the contrary, cruise or hypersonic missiles are more useful for radars, command and control facilities, moored bombers and submarines carrying ballistic missiles on Earth. This type of attack could prevent the United States from building a clear understanding of the attack, making the response more challenging. An attack on a fleet of bombers and nuclear submarines would greatly weaken the counterattack options available to the U.S. president.
By delivering precision conventional strikes on other "bits" of the nuclear triad, Russia's ICBMs could focus on destroying U.S. land-based launch facilities.
Putin's recent suspension of Russian participation in the book reinforces our view that any Russian attack on the United States will occur after Russia has more nuclear forces than the United States.
The fallacy of "accidental launches"
In addition to suggesting that most ICBM forces will survive a Russian nuclear strike, Montoya and Kemp argue that "there are many historical examples that show this." When these failures are combined with the activation of an early warning posture, a real risk of accidental war arises. ”
What they fail to mention is that in each case, redundant security measures ensured that the failure of any one of the systems did not lead to the actual failure of nuclear weapons. The U.S. military expects mistakes by those operating the nuclear arsenal and its command and control systems. Despite the military's efforts for perfection, everything from the weapons themselves to the people who maintain and operate them are repeatedly designed to reduce the possibility of mistakes.
Of the 32 accidents involving nuclear weapons, the United States has never had an accidental detonation or miscalculation that led to war. Those arguments that "if one part of the system fails, the whole system fails" deliberately ignore the fact that the system (compared to when the last accident occurred forty years ago) is much better today, specifically taking into account the inevitable mistakes.
The same is true for errors in the U.S. integrated tactical alert and attack assessment system. If one level fails, the other succeeds. The hierarchy of this system is sometimes referred to as the "Swiss cheese model". Each layer may have defects, but none of them completely run through the entire cheese block (system). If slices of Swiss cheese are like layers of redundancy, there may be different defects on each slice, but none of them are perfectly aligned on each slice. Thus, defects (errors) in one slice are compensated in another.
On nuclear bombers, crew resource management models incorporate redundancy into the system to prevent human error among bomber pilots carrying nuclear weapons. A similar approach was applied throughout the nuclear strategy to prevent the accidents that Montoya and Kemp feared. Nowhere in the system depends on a single point of failure. Before an accidental detonation or nuclear war occurs, multiple failures that may occur, including mechanical, technical, and man-made failures, must be considered.
In fact, every human or technical error that has occurred in the past has been carefully analyzed and used to make the system more secure. The U.S. has no record of four decades of accidents, and for good reason. To continue this safety record, the United States must invest in personnel, weapons systems, and nuclear warhead production infrastructure. to further enhance security and usage control, is the surest way to ensure that risk is minimized.
Technical requirements?
Proponents of eliminating "strike and fight back" mistakenly believe that technological developments pose no threat to the U.S. nuclear submarine fleet. Nuclear submarines have always been vulnerable in port and when they leave port. In 1974, the USS James Madison collided with a Soviet attack submarine near Holyrock Naval Base in Scotland. Similar incidents occurred when American submarines followed Soviet submarines out of submarine docks.
High-performance computing makes it easier to analyze spatial surveillance data that was previously unachievable in decades. Unmanned underwater vehicles, passive sonar, and other advanced technologies also make it more difficult to hide submarines in the ocean. While submarines are survivable once they enter the deep sea zone, we must continue to invest to ensure they remain survivable tomorrow and remain vigilant for technological breakthroughs in anti-submarine warfare.
It should be remembered that nuclear submarines at sea at a time are only a small part of the total, they are vulnerable to conventional torpedoes. Submarines inside the port could face attack from Russian low-detectability cruise missiles. Again, a nuclear strike is not needed to weaken the submarine part of the trinity, which is responsible for more than half of the nuclear warheads.
Since 1991, the bomber force has not maintained a daily nuclear alert. Both ICBMs and SLBMs are equipped and ready for launch. This is not an easy task. Without adequate warning, bomber forces faced considerable risk from conventional and nuclear strikes.
Therefore, we assess that any attack will begin with an attempt to weaken the U.S. integrated tactical alert and attack assessment capabilities in space, along with cyberattacks and sabotage in an attempt to weaken command and control systems. In our assessment, it is also possible that attacks on submarine and bomber bases preceded or simultaneously with missile bases.
Military planners must take into account the most dangerous means of action of the enemy, namely. This will not leave enough time for the United States to deploy a submarine fleet or load and deploy nuclear bombers. In this case, the moored submarines and most of the bomber unit will become early victims of the first Russian attack.
conclusion
We do agree with parts of Montoya and Kemp, who write: "To achieve this, strategic decisions need to be made, such as building mobile ICBMs, increasing the number of hardened and deep-buried facilities, and keeping strategic bombers on nuclear alert and dispersing deployment."
If the U.S. wants to curb Russia's consideration of a first strike on a national missile base, it is critical to maintain a missile force on alert capable of launching when attacked. Eliminating the "strike and strike back" option would not enhance the credibility of U.S. deterrence, nor would it reduce the risk of accidental detonation or war; it would only further weaken U.S. nuclear deterrence. With President Putin's suspension of Russia's participation in New START, the possibility of violating the treaty's restrictions is not ruled out. Such a decision would only make the "strike and fight back" option more important for maintaining deterrence.
Again: All the content and views of this article are owned by the American think tank WORs and the author of the article, and have nothing to do with this issue of 'Tianji Tea Mixing Bureau', except for slight changes in order to smooth writing and conform to Chinese expression habits, all the content of the original text of the US Think Tank is completely retained.