Concept of deterrence

[Snarl]

I read or saw how under Obama we went from MIRV warheads down to one warhead per ICBM?? And, most of our stuff is 30 years old with a warranty of only 10 years!!

PLUS - you can only hit 1/10 of the targets, leaving a whole lot of real estate untouched and still ready for business.

Part of the MIRV concept involved fancy geometries.  Many of those ICMBs were only for a single target ... and that target was to be annihilated ... not just hit.  I've played around with those simulators you can find on-line.  They're nothing like real DoD's estimates.

A strategic (-vs- tactical) weapon will seriously fuck some shit up based on the where and how of their detonation.  Tac nukes are for mopping up.  We'd see the smaller stuff deployed to maximum effectiveness if Putin decided he wants to acquire European real estate with no serfs left to work the land.  And, we'd likely see tac nukes after they took DC (and the surrounding area) off the map.  Hard to have a rifle behind every blade of grass ... if there's no grass left.

Much like our two-front strategies as conventional deterrents, there were multi-front capabilities for strategic nuclear response as well.  The nuclear football can trigger/respond to one or several of those based on what is whispered to the President.  Scarier still is what our SSBNs are supposed to do, because (contrary to what Hollywood told us) those can go independent (like Putin's Dead Hand).  The SLBMs they sail with are still packing multiple warheads.

SSBNs and Tac Nukes both have the advantage of surprise.  Very very hard to get things going against a threat with such a short flight time.  We developed some cool tech to strip that advantage.  It worked on the same principal we hoped would take out a ('50s - '80s) Soviet strategic launch against the US mainland.  To my (limited) knowledge, that was the only system we've ever deployed that could launch a nuclear-tipped anything within ten seconds of an order being given.

When word got out we could take out in-flight tac nukes too, the OPFOR adopted a cheap and effective air-blanketing strategy to counter it.  And now they've got supersonic aircraft carrying hypersonic delivery systems which are just too fast to take out of sub-orbital controlled flight and we don't have a clue where the launch will come from.  

I better stop.

To the concept of deterrence: I don't see that. The leaders of the world are a weird group of megalomaniacs.  You threaten to topple the wrong one I'd expect there to be trouble.  Can you imagine a world with Chinese and Indian populations below a hundred million ... Indonesian and Brazilian populations below 10 million and decreasing?  There won't be any innocent bystander countries who belong to the nuclear club or who have invasion-ready number populations.  Mexico's probably not safe from us anymore either, but their name wasn't on a list back in my day.

We talk about Putin.  But, who is more at risk of being deposed ... Putin, or our drooling idiots?  No telling what will happen if the Great Resetters look like their plans are gonna get reset.