Make submarines better.

Make the TEL look like an ordinary truck or railroad car, or a container on a container ship.

 

Build air droppable ballistic missiles that a fighter or bomber can lug aloft and launch on five minute alert.

 

Smuggle a nuclear demolition mine into the deterrent target to be used inn your blackmail.

 

Stud the ocean floor with missile silos.

 

Etc................as nauseum.

 

Plant hundreds of dummies to mask the presence of the real ones in the above examples.

 

Herald  

Making submarines better, would, obviosuly, have an impact, but some of the new detection methods, especially the ones not based on sound detection, might fundamentally alter the detection equation in the following decades and deterrent planning simply has to be conducted on this time-scale. No matter how silent you make your submarine, if it is not sound it is detected by... This is not to say that technologies will not be developed for submarines to defeat these new detection methods, which are after all still in their infancy, but it may prove difficult to do.

 

As a side note, it also illustrates the perils of reliance on only one leg of the triad, even if it was deemed secure in the past.

 

The delivery of nuclear weapons through shipping containers is certainly feasible (though I don't know what the TEL shortcut stands for) and likely would penetrate enemy defenses, but I am not completely certain that creation of nuclear weapons of a type that are highly suitable for terrorist use is very wise. Bear in mind that due to their very nature, container-nukes look like ordinary containers and might be mistaken for such not just by the enemy, but also your own people in a crisis. Imagine, if the container due to be loaded on a ship set to deliver it for a retaliatory strike on say China instead found its way to say a city of an allied country... I believe that a small but significant percentage (cca.1%) of containers are misdelivered. Besides, I can foresee the potential of the container being replaced by another like container and the real container-nuke being taken hold of by the terrorists. This is especially possible in states with less than rigorous control of their nuclear forces (such as Russia) or in states that decentralize their container-nukes in order to increase their survivability.

look, even if anti-sub forces get much better at finding and destroying submarines (I seriously doubt they will ever get THAT good at it) you have to remember that there is a difference in detecting attack subs who are in shipping lanes or other choke points looking for surface targets and finding ballistic missile subs with extreme long range missiles that could be anywhere.....it still is a big ass ocean out there!

Modern nuclear subs have a noise level equal or inferior to the background noise of ocean.When they go slowly they can be detected only by a high quality ennemy SSN if lucky.

With long range missiles SSBN can be anywhere.

How you can expect to locate 2 or 3 supersilent SSBN anywhere in the world?

They are far less vulnerable than any bomber or silo missiles to a preamptive strike.

And mobile missiles are politically difficult to disperse in peace time and are even vulnerable when your country is small to antimissiles based on sea.

I don't see magnetic detector, or IR detector to be more efficient than a sonar.

silos is probably the best idea. and lots of fakes as well. plenty of room in scotland

Silos are not a good idea.

 

It is easier to find a silo than it is to find a moving submarine.

 

Even if you know where the submarine is, you still have to destroy it - before it can launch.

 

 

The submarine, however, puts many (though I hesitate to say 'too many') eggs in one basket. It essentially has 12 or more missiles all in one place that can be destroyed in one blow - that is a quarter of the deterrent gone in a stroke and the remaining three submarines in ports would be even easier targets.  Suppose there were instead 4 x 12 ICBMs on mobile launchers that were moving around the country independently and making use of camouflage. I think this could be a viable alternative and be cheaper to boot.

cheaper for sure...

 

but who wants mobile missile launchers in their back yard. (greenham common comes to mind and trails of nutters following what they think are the missiles)........   they would be easily tracked by someone with determination and tech. they are subject to lower level tech strike at them.

 

how about subs and remote site static launch as well....  may as well have the ability to launch a few more and coordinating a strike at the land and subs at same time would be almost impossible...

 

Paul

There is no part of the UK that you could concievably hide a single mobile launcher in, much less several.  There isn't enough space to spread fixed silos out. 

Suppose there were instead 4 x 12 ICBMs on mobile launchers that were moving around the country independently and making use of camouflage. I think this could be a viable alternative and be cheaper to boot.

If it supplement a SSBN fleet especially if you have one SSBN at sea,  it can be a correct solution.

But if alone, a ground based mobile deterrent on a small democratic country like UK with dense population or barren land, is difficult to hide.Moreover some countries are investigating seabased or air launch antimissile to destroy missiles in the boost phase.

It is definitely not a reliable solution.

Moreover having only 48 ICBM, if 2/3 or 3/4 of them can be destroyed, your deterrent has less value vs a well armed nuclear country.You need at least 200/300 warheads to be credible.

In fact it is better to have a two leg deterrent.

Now as I said in my former post, modern SSBN are so silent that it is almost impossible to find 3 of them in a short period of time on the whole planet.

4 SSBN are the minimal deterrent.But instead of having 16*4 tubes for the whole fleet and 48 missiles , you could have 12*4  plus 12 missiles on mobile launchers and 36 carried by SSBN.It would be more robust and cost almost the same (the mobile launcher cost only few % of the whole price).

A derivative of Astute should work fine.The problem is the missile.

A lot of members of parlement in UK are agaisnt the SSBN based deterrent because they think it make UK a poodle of US as UK become dependant of US suppllies.

 

Well, I definitely agree that a deterrent with multiple legs and means of delivery is more secure than one relying solely on one leg.

You argue, however, that: "You need at least 200/300 warheads to be credible."

 

Why do you think this is the case? I would argue that you only need to have 1 warhead to be credible. That is sufficient to create uncertainty. Actually, I should probably revise that: In my opinion, you only need to have 1 warhead with guaranteed delivery (that means ability to survive the first strike or launch before it hits and the ability to reach and detonate at its intended destination). I suppose it also depends on the size of the said warhead - but 5kt to 20kt should be sufficient. That is sufficient to cause enough pain to deter most enemies, though I agree that some particularly large and resilient enemies with high pain thresholds and dictatorial governments (for example China) may not be detered by this. With such countries it is more difficult to arrive at a deterrent that would be sufficient to deter them.

 

How many warheads does one need to ensure that enough can survive a first strike that at least one will reach its target and explode without malfunction? That depends on the configuration of the deterrent. Submarine-based deterrents are difficult to find, but if found their destruction is very easy, as nuclear weapons are particularly good at destroying underwater targets, so you only need to hit the general area and submarines carry many warheads in one package, so destroying one destroys a large portion of the deterrent of a 4-submarine power (only 1 or 2 submarines are at sea at any one time and destroying those in port is not a problem at all).

 

Mobile launchers can also be camouflaged and allow for greater dispersal of nuclear warheads. Many people, however, have made good points on the difficulties of hiding mobile launchers in densely populated democracies where the majority of the population opposes nuclear weapons. I guess it is therefore not a solution either.

 

In practice, I think you could achieve 'guaranteed' delivery and explosion of one warhead with only 2 warheads (2 due to the possibility of malfunctions) on separate delivery systems surviving the first strike. For that, one either needs an excellent early warning system to launch before the first strike hits, thus needing only 2 delivery systems, or one needs to have multiple (I don't really know how many), survivable delivery systems with warheads. Of course, missile defenses may potentially alter this equation in the future.