Dead Hand
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
From my understanding after Dead Hand is armed with the access codes it goes into a monitoring state.
Until all conditions are met nothing happens but upon losing its links to all nuclear commands -and- it detects that a nuclear strike has landed on Soviet soil only then does it provide nuclear arming codes to the staff of the Dead Hand control bunker.
These poor souls then make the decision to end humanity or not by launching the control missiles which will activate all automated nuclear weapons, transmit authorizations to bombers and submarines etc - which too will have humans that need to make the call if they want to take part in the apocalypse.
Though AFAICT Russia still has enough land based ICBMs to level every major city on earth and all of those are probably 100% automated so I don't think the poor airmen/seamen will have to worry too much about their conscience no matter which choice they make.
I learned the other day that there are two main strategies for targeting nuclear weapons, counter-force (nuking military targets) vs counter-value (nuking cities). The former requires a lot more warheads for an effective deterrent, and the large stockpile of nukes in the US and Russia implies that they're doing a lot of counter-force targeting (though I suppose that doesn't mean they won't also attack counter-value targets as well).
IIRC, according to this an exclusive counter-force nuclear attack against Russia would use far more warheads, but kill less people than an exclusive counter-value attack (~10 million vs 50 million deaths).
For me the counter-value strategy seems like a more effective deterrent though from a MAD/counter-attack perspective. It's meant to be a terrifying outcome and maximally terrifying is the best possible configuration to prevent nuclear war.
There is only ~500 cities in the world with over 1mil population, Russia has over 5k operational nukes. That is ~10 nukes for every large city on Earth. If they were only interested in nuking the US that is still ~100 nukes per US state.
Maintaining a nuclear arsenal and the infrastructure to deploy it is eye-wateringly expensive. I am sure many people are questioning the degree of threat posed by whatever remains of Soviet nuclear armaments.
The primary fissile material remains a threat but what about the ability to deliver it and actually trigger the intended explosion once it arrives? I would prefer not to put it to the test, even if 20% still works we are screwed.
Dead Hand is not a former soviet technology, it is actively maintained, staffed, and funded. as the CCCP invented the ICBM, i have full confidence in Russias ability to deliver it.
Sarmat is the latest ICBM in development with planned service this year. much like their American counterparts (minuteman) missiles and technology are regularly advanced and upgraded.
Then Ukraine happened and basically none of the predicted capacities and skills 'actively maintained' of russian military were displayed when facing actual equipped and trained army.
You disregard completely utter corruption, thievery and incompetence on all levels including top of power pyramid. I have 0 doubts that Russians have working nukes of various loads and range. I am very positive that number of usable ones is somewhere in 1-5% range and its often not immediately clear which are which.
If there was any maintenance to be done, rest assured it was skimmed and funds stolen. If any replacement should have happened, it was stolen too. Few nukes got probably stolen themselves. That's how state works for a long time, that's how Volodya keeps all bloodthirsty underlings happy, and these are side effects.
For instance, the thing with the tires: https://twitter.com/trenttelenko/status/1499164245250002944.
What do you suppose should have happened? Especially in regards to strategic arms which are discussed in the thread?
I think the implication is that some of the problems the Russian military has had in Ukraine could be indications of systemic issues (e.g. neglecting basic maintenance even before a planned war, like the tire thing I linked below). Maybe their nuclear forces don't have those issues, but maybe they do.
However, personally, I wouldn't bet on those issues continuing (even if they in fact do), because it's more risky to underestimate and become overconfident.
I've been thinking about this possibility for a while:
* Putin fires tactical atomic weapon at some empty plot of Ukrainian land, and announces it as a "demonstration" of Russian might.
* The weapon is a dud.
I'm not sure whether this outcome might not be worse in the long run, in terms of geopolitical stability, than if the weapon performs as expected!
Did an SU-25 write this?
At best, you are confusing Sukhoi with Mikoyan-Gurevich at least once here; the Su-25 definitely couldn't stalk a SR-71. (A MiG-35 or Su-35 doing so is a bit of stretch, too, but less implausible.)
The Su-37 had its first flight in early 2008 [3] about ten years after the SR-71 was retired [4]. If you mean the SU-27 that indeed flew in 1977 [5] but only has a service celling of 19km, much less than the SR-71's 26km.
Above top secret has an interesting thread on how you would actually go about such an interception [6]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-25
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunde...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-35
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
Apparently it's also mostly tactical warheads which don't have a long-range delivery system.
My best guess is that many of the bigger US and European cities would be wiped out, but neither continent would be turned into a sterilised desert - which is what would happen after a no-compromise exchange.
It used to be assumed an initial exchange would target first strike and retaliatory systems, and cities would only be targeted if there was anything left when that phase was over.
The Russian attacks on civilian targets suggests the opposite. Initial attacks would be on Western cities and populated areas, and the Russians wouldn't care about having their own cities wiped out in response.
No one cares about having second strike silos being wiped out in Nebraska or the Urals when big population centres are already on fire.
None of this is encouraging. Some cities and infrastructure might survive, but the aftermath would still be extremely unpleasant.
You don't know actual Russians IRL, do you?
The SRF is handled differently than, say, a random mechanized infantry unit. They get funding, better troops, better training and maintenance, etc. For example, you wouldn't see the tires failing on their missile transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) because they actually take them out for a spin now and then, unlike some of the vehicles in Ukraine.
The Russians have also gotten quite good at maintaining their deterrent at the lowest level of expenditure possible. Their submarines can "patrol" from the pier, as they are designed to be able to launch their rockets from port, only sortieing in times of tension. Their TELs can fire from within their storage barns.
That's difficult to ascertain. Russia (then the Soviet Union) stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1990. The US in 1992, the UK in 91 and France in 96[1]. Since then, their nuclear arsenals had to be maintained "by model". Is this difficult? Is it reliable? I don't know, and I suppose that 99.9% of the people who know are not allowed to talk.
But what we do know is that it's expensive. The latest US budget (2022) allocated $20 billion for "Nuclear Security" [2], $15 of which are for "weapons activities". I'm not an expert, but I think it roughly means the money needed to keep the nuclear weapons functional.
But maybe the US if very spendthrift. You know, the military-industrial complex, and all that. Well, it turns out France and the UK are not doing it on the cheap either. France spends a about $5.9 BN per year [3], and the UK about $6.2 BN/year on nuclear deterrence, and they have a much smaller arsenal compared to the US.
Well, Russia has a larger arsenal. And their total defense spending is less than $50 BN/year. I don't know if they spend $10 BN / year on their nuclear forces, but if they did, it would not surprise me if a lot were siphoned out. How would anyone know, if there is no actual nuclear test going on?
As a cute little tidbit of information. All current nuclear bombs are "boosted" [4]. Boosting requires Tritium (an unstable Hydrogen isotope). Tritium happens to be the most expensive substance on the planet, with a price of about $30k per gram. It has a half-life of 12 years, so there have been about 2 half-lives since the Soviet Union collapse. A nuclear bomb needs to have its Tritium replaced periodically if it is to remain effective. What is the probability that someone in Russia dipped a bit in the Tritium fund to buy a yacht or something?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing#/media...
[2] https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/doe-fy202...
[3] https://sldinfo.com/2020/10/an-update-on-the-french-nuclear-...
Excerpt: It was meant to be a backup communication system, in case the key components of the "Kazbek" command system and the link to the Strategic Missile Forces are destroyed by a decapitation first strike.
To ensure its functionality the system was designed as fully automatic, and with the ability to decide on the adequate retaliatory strike on its own with no (or minimal) human involvement in the event of an all-out attack.
According to Vladimir Yarynich, a developer of the system, this system also served as a buffer against hasty decisions based on unverified information by the country's leadership. Upon receiving warnings about a nuclear attack, the leader could activate the system, and then wait for further developments, assured by the fact that even the destruction of all key personnel with the authority to command the response to the attack could still not prevent a retaliatory strike. Thus, use of the system would theoretically reduce the likeliness of a false-alarm-triggered retaliation.
How does not preventing a retaliatory strike reduce the likeliness of a false-alarm-triggered retaliation? It seems like it increases it.
That probably doesn't clear it up. Let's try again.
1. Nuke incoming, maybe. 2. If it is incoming, it will hit me, and I will be unable to order a retaliation. 3. Therefor, I should order it now to be safe.
Instead you replace 3 with "I will arm the dead hand, and it WAS an actual strike, the dead hand will retaliate for me. If it was not, nothing will happen."
During the Cold War, MAD implied you had to be suicidal to launch a nuclear strike against another nuclear-armed adversary—the adversary fires everything in retaliation and kills you. So the mission in a first-strike shifted to taking out the adversary's leadership preventing them from launching a retaliatory strike. This created a situation where the US and the Soviets were incentivized to fire at the slightest provocation: if Moscow thinks Washington launched a nuclear strike, Moscow better fire before American nukes come down.
With the Dead Hand, Moscow could activate Perimeter which would listen for certain indications of nuclear strikes and if it was determined that a nuclear strike occurred, automatically launch Soviet nuclear weapons in retaliation.
> ...This created a situation where the US and the Soviets were incentivized to fire at the slightest provocation: if Moscow thinks Washington launched a nuclear strike, Moscow better fire before American nukes come down.
> With the Dead Hand, Moscow could activate Perimeter which would listen for certain indications of nuclear strikes and if it was determined that a nuclear strike occurred, automatically launch Soviet nuclear weapons in retaliation.
If the Russians developed Perimeter to address these concerns, what did the US do? I'd assume it built more resilient command and control infrastructure with more delegation, because Russia seems less comfortable with decentralization than the US, but I don't really know.
Nuclear war doesnt need crazy people on both sides ready to ride the bomb to end human civilization. It only needs sufficiently brainwashed bureaucrats who are stuck in the process of an apparatus that believes they have their hands forced to retaliate.
edit: And just in case somebody still has any delusions of efficiency left, most of those past cases of "almost ended the world" were down to one men who had the power and accompanying backbone to overrule and /or block a strike decision. With Vasily Arkhipov it was 2 to 1 for the "retaliatory" nuclear strike against depth charges aimed at getting them to surface.
Could you be more specific about the treaties?
It kind of sounds like you're talking about the INF treaty given the comment about reaction time, but IIRC that treaty never covered submarine-launched missiles and a treaty isn't any good if it's not actually complied with (e.g. the Wikipedia page lists a decade of alleged violations prior to withdrawal, and furthermore the treaty didn't bind all relevant powers).
Could you be more specific with treaty violations? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_For... Has the tests for missiles with a disputed range
On a side note, when searching for it google also told me that the last policy round apparently allowed the first strike use of nuclear weapons https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-04/news/biden-policy-al...
Did we though? https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/01/Ha...:
> a submarine-based missile could strike in as little as 10 to 15 minutes after launch
IIRC, INF treaty only banned US and Russian land-based intermediate-range missiles. It didn't ban similar sea-based missiles nor did it ban Chinese land or sea-based intermediate-range missiles.
We are stuck with people having an end of the species button and are left dealing with this somehow. There are two approaches, one is to do everything to prevent accidental triggering. You put a case over it and and agree to not make any sudden movements. Arms control is about giving both sides a clear picture that the other one isnt going to use theirs. In short deescalation, making sure nobody is getting nervous because we know that nuclear holocaust would be a bad thing.
The other is to use it as a threat. In short escalation.
It is quite clearly heavily escalating with the second approach in a time where the former is absolutely necessary.
Lets not sugarcoat it, such behavior is very much in villain territory. Its risking the end of the species for short term political power plays.
edit: Differently put, i am going to go out on a limb here and argue that increasing the risk for a nuclear holocaust is a bad thing. I havent seen many people disagree here outside of some posadist circles
Cheating isn't new with Russia: during the Late Unpleasantness, the SA-5 system was given an ABM capability in clear violation of applicable treaties.
Hopefully the modern US government would also know not to attack a nuclear submarine in international waters.
Their very reason of existence it to remove power from those _wanting_ to use the bomb.
It's a very scary equilibrium, but a possible one at the time when people were advocating for a preemptive strike as the only equilibrium.
Of course no bomb at all is a much nicier equilibrium, but much much harder to achieve at the time (even now).
A even better equilibrium would be uninventing the bomb, but this is pretty much impossible.
Activated only during a crisis? In late February Putin announced that "deterrence forces" were placed on high alert. Reporting on the topic was vague, with no answers about what this announcement meant. In a Reuters article after that announcement, an unnamed US official said this was "putting in play forces that, if there's a miscalculation, could make things much, much more dangerous" [0]. I wonder if Putin's announcement meant activating this dead hand system.
Finally I suggest watching Dan Ellsberg's "Doomsday Machine" talk [1].
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-strategic-missile-forc... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7cJG9j0NdY
Counterattack will likely not help anything other than further escalation and further losses on the counter-attacking side. It would be kinda irrational at that point.
This is a whole game theory thing that was developed in could war.
To be willing to kill millions even if it was pointless is part of the game: the enemy must be completely and absolutely convinced that a counter strike will happen. This is the only way to deter.
Absolute and complete certainty cannot be faked (given spies). It can only be provided if indeed the willingness to counter attack is real and enforced.
Simply by existing it rules out any kind of first strike at all.
No matter which targets you hit (you can't destroy all the nukes, that is essentially impossible), even if Moscow is a glass crater and you successfully hit every nuclear command bunker this thing is still going to wipe you out.
Yes, all this does is end humanity - but the threat needs to be there to avoid the first strike in the first place and the contract is if you hit us with a nuke you are going to burn with us.
Obviously, you cannot have this benevolent mindset in the first place, because your enemy will know he can destroy you without consequences and thus won’t be very much deterred from it.
Even the name MAD was a reminder to the other country that the US was indeed crazy enough to destroy and kill millions if USSR attacked.
If you decide now that you wouldn't counteract then, and your enemy knows this, your MAD deterrence plan has already failed.
Anyway I'm more interested in the rationality of the counterattack once the deterence fails, and nuclear conflict starts.
In short, it's rational on a macro level.
Well. The UK's "Letters of Last Resort" are kind of that. It intentionally keeps it ambiguous what will be the reaction of the British ballistic missile submarines in case of an unexpected decapitation attack.
The idea is that an incoming Prime Minister writes four identical, hand written letters to the commanders of the subs. They place these letters in safes on the submarines. Only the Prime Minister knows what the letters say.
In case the UK command structure is destroyed in a sudden decapitation strike, the submarine will detect this. For example by the fact that all naval broadcast cease to transmit. But nobody wants a single point of failure accidentally triggering a war, so they also check if the BBC 4 is still broadcasting, and they probably check other things too but the specifics are kept secret.
After the commander of the submarine, in agreement with a few other officers come to the conclusion that the UK is no more they open and read the letter. The letter gives them an instruction. It can tell them to retaliate with all they got. It can tell them to not retaliate, find a safe port and live the rest of their lives to the fullest. It can tell them to use their best judgement based on what they know. It can tell them to join the navy of a friendly country.
> Isn't both sides always full of informants?
The system assumes so yes. It is very hard to keep something secret once multiple people knows it. The idea here is that the secret is only known to one person, it is only distributed to a very limited set of very secure locations and everything is kept very low-tech to make it easier to manage the risk. Probably there are other undisclosed security arrangements too. (For example I wouldn't be surprised if the letter is carried by multiple trusted people, checking each other to prevent an enemy snooping or doing a switcheroo.)
As for rationality, don't assume everyone acts perfectly rationally -- or even partially.
I have to imagine there's a strong murderous urge to get back at whoever just burned your country down in nuclear fire, regardless of the greater good.
You say this is irrational, but that depends on your values. If you prioritize revenge over avoiding further losses, it is perfectly rationale.
For example, if someone killed my family, I may value killing them over my personal life. This doesn't make me irrational, but rather speaks to my value system and what I am optimizing for.
Rocket silos are incredibly difficult to destroy, even with nukes.
I actually think the most consequential recipients are actually the land based ICBMs as those are likely 100% automated installations.
Even if the submarines are already at launch depth I would assume there would still be final humans in the loop in all nuclear bombers and subs, making them unreliable launchers. (who really wants to press the "end the world" button?)
The problem: they're nearly a single point of failure. If you can hit the other side's command systems their missiles won't be going anywhere.
I'd assume both sides know this and contingencies and redundancies exist.
An airfield on the northern edge of Japan is close enough to Russian airspace that, at alert, the local airfield commander was going to have to make the call to sortie their bombers while the runways were still intact, and once deployed it wasn't unimaginable that a Dr. Strangelove-style scenario could go down.
It's been a few years, but I think this was mostly detailed in The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg.
FWIW, the US used to have launch code broadcast rockets. The early ones were housed in dedicated sounding rockets. Later, radio "warheads" were secretly dispersed among the Minuteman fields. We no longer use them because there are enough reliable nodes to get the word out even while under attack (e.g. Milstar).
Fun fact: missile command centers fitted to support the command rockets had a voice console where a crew member would read the current go codes into a microphone to be recorded on the "warhead" just before launch. Try not to stutter!
Your idea has the flaw that the leak would be damaging if done, and sometimes people are willing to take action at suicidal personal cost.