"These Boreis are critical, because they carry SLBM (Sea Launched Ballistic Missiles) that provide a critical (they are much harder to destroy in a first strike than land based missiles)"

 

I'm not sure I agree with this statement.  Having 16 missiles in one place, and vulnerable destruction by a single torpedo seems like an easier target than 16 widely dispersed hardened silos. 

 

Do the Russians believe that the US is not capable of tracking all of their subs? 

"While nuclear subs are a much feared weapon, they have gone sixty years with only one instance of combat."

 

Hmm. I thought SSGNs launched strikes against Ghaddafi's Libya last year. Was I wrong? Or does beating up Libyans not count as an 'instance of combat'?

 

Query: If I were crew on a sub that launched a live missile with a live warhead against a live target, would I be able to distinguish that launch from an 'instance of combat'? 

 

Sarcasm mode: Toggle off.

16 hardened silos precisely located for a 200kt subsurface burst within 50m -- no way you can harden against that. They moved from dispersion to dense pack years ago because the dispersion just made it easier to take all the missiles out in the initial salvo. So instead they use dense pack so that the first warhead to detonate will take out the rest in the salvo, forcing an interval between warheads and maybe giving the defender a chance to launch some of the missiles before they are destroyed

 

 

Even if the US could track all their subs, there are a variety of countermeasures that the Russians can use to ‘break the tail’ and disappear for a couple days. An example would be to have a prearranged meeting with an attack sub, he sits still in the water so the US sub probably won’t see him till to late. The Russian attack sub pounds the US with its sonar and feigned attacks to deafen and force the US sub to evade. Meanwhile the Russian SSBN has taken evasive action and escaped.

^^ Yup 

 

The SLBM deterrent has reduced the need for the USSR then (or Russia now) to field multi-megatonne warheads, generally their MIRV delivery systems couldn't ensure the same degree of CEP accuracy as American designs and so the yields had to be far larger to guarantee effectiveness against hardened silos (blast effects do not scale linearly with yield so you have to use roughly 10x the yield to double the effective blast radius). 

 

Submarine deterrents are a good idea and significantly reduce overall warhead yields and numbers required. In some ways being able to track each others subs is a far worse situation that not being able to, as with missile defence systems it simply encourages the adversary to overbuild their deterrent to compensate. 

 

R 

China, for oil and mineral resources along with the need for lumber.  None of which they have.  Or very little even though they have a large land area.  Maybe has something to do with corruption creating a climate where it is pointless to do geological surveys.   China is also mostly dessert either the Gobi or the High Tibetan plateau.  

 

I've heard this many times and it seems just as ridiculous each and every time, how exactly do you invade a country that has several thousand nuclear warheads and whose exported/stolen tech forms the basis of your own forces?

 

Under existing arrangements China already controls enormous extraction operations in Russian territory, they can probably extract and import as cost-effectively than they can on their own soil.

 

R 

 

Query: If I were crew on a sub that launched a live missile with a live warhead against a live target, would I be able to distinguish that launch from an 'instance of combat'? 

 

Sarcasm mode: Toggle off.

Didn't think folks were this dumb.  If your nuclear deterrent is so decrepit that it vanishes because your missiles won't fire, because the tritium in the warheads for explosion have degraded to the point where they don't work, when you can't even field a submarine for more effective fire, then you are open to invasion as you DO NOT have a deterrent.  Ergo the whole damned point about Russia investing all of this money into their NUCLEAR detterrent capabilities because without said capabilities China/Japan would just be licking their chops at Siberia and all of its vast, easily available and known mineral resources.   Mongolia is already essentially a Chinese, not Russian, vasal state even if they have been too lazy to develop its mineral possibilities.

 

Just look at what the Chinese are currently doing to their neighbors and "allies" Uzbekistan, Krgystan, Turkmenistan. They are buying/pressuring up all the farmland and importing hundreds of thousands of migrant workers to get the resources.  In this case FOOD.  There is no way in Hell China would have done this if Russia still owned these countries.   None. 

 

Now Russia is investing as much money as possible into its nuclear abilities to keep its BIG STICK, a BIG STICK.  If it doesn't, Russia will cease to exist as the largest country in the world.  Japan still wants its Kuril islands back.  It is not much of a stretch to the imagination from wanting the Kuril islands back to wanting Kamchatka Penninsula and Vlad land.  

Russia has nothing to worry about, it remains a global for one reason alone and everyone knows it. It may become the predominant energy and agricultural exporter in due course but it's their fissile stockpile that matters, even ignoring their ICBM/SLBM capabilities they could rapidly re-arm to a stockpile of several thousand tactical weapons at the drop of a hat.

 

R