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Comment by jpm_sd | Hacker News Reader

The US having our own hypersonic missiles is not actually a defense against this scenario you have outlined?

No, hypersonics would be too fast and have too low of a flight profile for our early warning systems to work. Our second strike facilities would be destroyed before they could launch a counter-attack.

Game theory-wise, the winner would be whoever struck first, since they would get to use their full arsenal. Retaliation could only be done reliably with submarines. That's what frightens me the most about hypersonic development. Whoever cracks the secret and can field the most will potentially upend MAD.

only if you pretend nuclear submarines don't exist, and that russia knows where all second strike facilities are, and can target all of them with supersonic missiles.

I don't think so.

> only if you pretend nuclear submarines don't exist

Did you read my comment? I acknowledged that submarines would be the most reliable second strike option.

Those are a lot of "ifs" sure, but it's a numbers game. If deployed hypersonics were as numerous as ICBMs in the 80s, then it would be about who strikes first. If a first strike can reduce the enemy population by 90%, and reduce their second strike capability to kill only 70% of your own population, then striking first is in your best interest.

I am talking about the 21st century as a whole. Can we really be so sure that at some point MAD will cease to exist and someone pulls the trigger? I wouldn't be so complacent about it.

US boomers have enough firepower to wipe out everyone in Russia without the need for other weapons. That is the point. There is no 70%, it is 99.999%. At the end of the cold war a Soviet naval admiral said they had managed to track a US boomer twice for a few minutes.

The MAD balance is still there for the most part. The most part being it is unclear what % of Russian nukes still work given the shit show of maintenance and graft shown in the convention forces used in the Ukraine.

US has 14 Ohio class subs, ~90 warheads each. This is in addition to 400 MM3 ICBMs. Unlike the Russians the US knows their weapons system will work.

It wont just be the US who responds either I think that its highly likely that both France and the UK launch nukes if the US gets attacked.

My point is not that Russia is going to overpower us. My point is that without significant second-strike capabilities like submarines, hypersonic weapons could destabilize MAD at some point in the next 100 years. Early detection becomes moot meaning that bombers and possibly some silos become useless.

Also I don't know what a "boomer" is, do you mean submarine?

A "boomer" is slag for a nuclear missile submarine. Hypersonic missiles do not change the logic behind MAD which is "you can launch a first strike, but we can still respond with enough damage that it makes doing so untenable."

I am aware, but it renders a lot of our existing infrastructure useless which means we'll have to invest a lot in other second strike measures. Which is gonna cost a lot.

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