The US doctrine for many year was MAD because of the nuclear triad,
1. bombers, 2. nuke subs, 3. land based missiles. This is not first strike.
Nuclear Forces Could Be Vulnerable to Surprise Attack
Here again nuclear doctrine has transposed theorems of conventional to nuclear warfare. In conventional war surprise attacks that destroy a large fraction of an opponent's military capabilities can win a war. In nuclear war, a small fraction of a opponent's retaliatory capability can do so much damage, even pushing the opponent to the point of non-recovery, that a preemptive attack is likely to be a pyrrhic victory.
With the levels of forces maintained by the United States and Russia, and considering that both sides keep sizable numbers of weapons in submarines or mobile land-based missiles, either of which are very difficult to locate and destroy, unacceptable levels of retaliation to surprise attacks by either side are inevitable. We should also note that even fixed land-based missiles are not nearly as vulnerable as we have assumed. Because there is always friction in war, that is, nothing goes perfectly, an all-out attack on fixed missiles will never be 100 percent successful. Thus, the concern expressed as recently as a decade ago about a "window of vulnerability" was badly misplaced.
from:
For a full discussion of the logic or non logic of MAD
unc.edu
tom watson tosiwmee |
