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Comment by theptip | Hacker News Reader

> Except that the use of nuclear bombs is predicated on the theory of strategic air bombing

Aren’t ICBMs and submarine-launched warheads the other two parts of the US’s triad?

Missiles are functionally the same things as bombs in this scenario, since the thesis of strategic air bombing is that destroying civilian infrastructure will demoralize the populace and press them to end war, and the various kinds of cruise missiles are essentially just different kinetic means of deploying that same big boom to civilians.

My understanding is that the existence of the nuclear triad is entirely about maximizing the likelihood of maintaining a second strike capability in the event of a preemptive nuclear attack, thus providing mutually assured destruction even if the first strike succeeds.

Dark stuff.

That's exactly it, but it's also why submarines are probably the true deterrent - you might hit the airfields and you might get the silos but it's almost impossible to even coordinate the sort of strike you'd need to guarantee you got all the subs.

I do wonder how hard/expensive it would be to accompany every adversarial nuclear sub with your own underwater drone (perhaps itself nuclear powered) to track locations. Assuming you stay nearby after they leave port could you keep up?

Is this true? Nobody has a counter to ICBMs as far as I know.

Defending against strategic bombers is a different game from submarine-launched cruise missiles / hypersonics too. If you don’t spot the submarine 50 miles off your coast you can’t defend against the hypersonic. Whereas you apply a completely different set of detection and response systems for long-range bombers.

Sure the net intention of these capabilities may the same, but we are talking about whether there are counters to these weapon systems.

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