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Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't follow. For the US the most survivable part of the nuclear triad was always the submarines. For Russia it was the road-mobile nukes. The rest of the nuclear deterrent for both the US and Russia is quite optional, and serves mostly political reasons.

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Russia has 50 nuclear submarines, of which 14 are ballistic missile carriers. Every couple of years they produce a new one, think its clear where the bets are on

All of them are probably being monitored closely by US submarines, with them being ready to take them out should that be necessary.

It is a game you can play together

US attack subs are doing their best, but it's never 100%.

Nuclear missile subs are very good at hiding (they've been doing it for 60+ years) and the ocean is a big place.

1 Borei is what, 96 MIRVs?

Which is the point... even one missed is unacceptable.

I doubt it. The USSR / Russia concept of operations for nuclear missile submarines is way different from NATO countries. They don't typically conduct wide-ranging strategic deterrence patrols out in the open ocean. Instead they tend to stay in or near their own territorial waters, protected by surface warships and land-based aircraft. While US attack submarines have occasionally violated Russian territorial waters for special missions they don't do so on a regular basis because it's so dangerous.

And not a single strategist on either side actually believes that to nullify the threat. A single boomer launching might not be outright MAD, but it would be too many warheads to defend against, and several major cities would be hit.

Subs are very hard to track or to locate, which is why Washington has been deploying two thirds of their strategic warheads (the ones that are ready to use as opposed to being in cold storage or in disassembled state) on subs and why Russia, China, Britain, France and India all decided incur the substantial expense of deploying nukes on subs, too.

> The rest of the nuclear deterrent for both the US and Russia is quite optional

Do you have some basis for that? I've never heard it, I would be very surprised if either country allowed any part of their triad to be disabled, and both invest enormous resources in other parts of their triads.

It's woven through strategic thinking in the 50s and 60s -- a nuclear delivery triad ensures any adversary that's able to neutralize one leg will still be held under MAD and therefore unlikely to launch a first strike.

Because technology was rapidly advancing, it was unclear whether any breakthrough (e.g. high altitude SAMs, etc.) might suddenly nullify one leg.

If that were the only leg, the game theory response would be for the nullifier to immediately launch a first strike, to take advantage of their no-doubt temporary superiority.

That is the basic concept for the triad, which isn't the question. The GGP said that for Russia strategic nuclear weapon bombers and subs are 'quite optional, and serves mostly political reasons.".

Agreed. credit_guy doesn't understand what a multi-leg capability is for.

Now as to whether Russia's other triad legs are credible MAD components on their own... numbers do matter.

With their strategic airforce being degraded post-USSR without replacement and amidst recapitalization of the Deltas to Boreis, it's questionable is Russia can afford to maintain an effective three leg triad in the intermediate term.

And if the other legs atrophy, there's also an incentive for the US and China to invest more in nullifying the remaining leg(s).

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