Nuclear Strategy
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Nuclear Strategy
Nuclear strategy involves the development of military doctrine, doctrines and strategy, strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons. As a sub-branch of military strategy, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends. In addition to the actual use of nuclear weapons whether tactical nuclear weapon, in the battlefield or strategic nuclear weapon, strategically, a large part of nuclear strategy involves their use as a bargaining tool. Some of the issues considered within nuclear strategy include: *Conditions which serve a nation's interest to develop nuclear weapons *Types of nuclear weapons to be developed *How and when weapons are to be used Many strategists argue that nuclear strategy differs from other forms of military strategy. The immense and terrifying power of the weapons makes their use, in seeking victory in a traditional military sense, impossible. Perhaps counterintuitively, an important focus of nuclear strategy has be ...
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Military Doctrine
Military doctrine is the expression of how military forces contribute to campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements. A military doctrine outlines what military means should be used, how forces should be structured, where forces should be deployed, and the modes of cooperation between types of forces. "Joint doctrine" refers to the doctrines shared and aligned by multinational forces or joint service operations. There are three broad categories of military doctrines: (1) Offensive doctrines aim to ''punish'' an adversary, (2) Defensive doctrines aim to ''deny'' an adversary, and (3) Deterrent doctrines aim to ''disarm'' an adversary. Different military doctrines have different implications for world politics. For example, offensive doctrines tend to lead to arms races and conflicts. Defining doctrine NATO's definition of doctrine, used unaltered by many member nations, is: In 1998 the Canadian Army stated: A U.S. Air Force Air University staff study in 1948 d ...
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Ballistic Missile Submarines
A ballistic missile submarine is a submarine capable of deploying submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with nuclear warheads. These submarines became a major weapon system in the Cold War because of their deterrence theory, nuclear deterrence capability. They can fire missiles thousands of kilometers from their targets, and acoustic quieting makes them difficult to detect (see acoustic signature), thus making them a survivable deterrent in the event of a Pre-emptive nuclear strike, first strike and a key element of the mutual assured destruction policy of nuclear deterrence. The deployment of ballistic missile submarines is dominated by the United States, Russia (following the collapse of the Soviet Union) and China. In fact, 70% of nuclear warheads in the USA are carried by ballistic missile submarines.Rafal, A. S. (2021). THE FUTURE OF SUBMARINE WARFARE: NUCLEAR POWERED SUBMARINES ARE THE BEDROCK OF NAVAL WARFARE, OR MAYBE NOT. MS Thesis. Joint Forces Staff College ...
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Fail-deadly
Fail-deadly is a concept in nuclear military strategy that encourages deterrence by guaranteeing an immediate, automatic, and overwhelming response to an attack, even if there is no one left to trigger such retaliation. The term ''fail-deadly'' was coined as a contrast to ''fail-safe''. Fail-deadly can refer to specific technology components, or the controls system as a whole. The United Kingdom's fail-deadly policies delegate strike authority to submarine commanders in the event of a loss of command (using letters of last resort), ensuring that even when uncoordinated, nuclear retaliation can be carried out. See also * AN/DRC-8 Emergency Rocket Communications System * * * '' Dr. Strangelove'' * * * Mutual assured destruction (MAD) * * * Two Generals' Problem * Dead Hand Dead Hand, also known as Perimeter (, with the GRAU Index 15E601, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic: 15Э601), is a Cold War–era automatic or semi-automatic nuclear weapons control system (similar in co ...
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Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American filmmaker and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Stanley Kubrick filmography, his films were nearly all adaptations of novels or short stories, spanning a number of genres and gaining recognition for their intense attention to detail, innovative cinematography, extensive set design, and Black comedy, dark humor. Born in New York City, Kubrick taught himself film producing and directing after graduating from high school. After working as a photographer for ''Look (American magazine), Look'' magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he began making low-budget short films and made his first major Hollywood film, ''The Killing (film), The Killing'', for United Artists in 1956. This was followed by two collaborations with Kirk Douglas: the List of anti-war films, anti-war film ''Paths of Glory'' (1957) and the Epic film, historical epic film ''Spartacus (film), Spartacus' ...
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Doctrine For Joint Nuclear Operations
The Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations is a U.S. Department of Defense document publicly discovered in 2005 on the circumstances under which commanders of U.S. forces could request the use of nuclear weapons. The document was a draft being revised to be consistent with the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. The label "Joint" refers to the fact that it was endorsed by the five service branches of the American military as well as the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Doctrine The doctrine cites eight reasons under which field commanders can ask for permission to use nuclear weapons: *An enemy using or threatening to use WMD against the U.S., multinational, or alliance forces or civilian populations. *To prevent an imminent biological attack. *To attack enemy WMD launch facilities or its underground hardened CIC & storage bunkers containing deployable WMD, launch and delivery vehicles which could be used to target the U.S. or its allies. *To stop potentially overwhelming conventiona ...
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Decapitation Strike
Decapitation is a military strategy aimed at removing the leadership or command and control of a hostile government or group. In nuclear warfare In nuclear warfare theory, a decapitation strike is a pre-emptive first strike attack that aims to destabilize an opponent's military and civil leadership structure in the hope that it will severely degrade or destroy its capacity for nuclear retaliation. It is essentially a subset of a counterforce strike but whereas a counterforce strike seeks to destroy weapons directly, a decapitation strike is designed to remove an enemy's ability to use its weapons. Strategies against decapitation strikes include the following: * Distributed command and control structures. * Dispersal of political leadership and military leadership in times of tension. * Delegation of ICBM/SLBM launch capability to local commanders in the event of a decapitation strike. * Distributed and diverse launch mechanisms. A failed decapitation strike carries the ris ...
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Countervalue
In nuclear strategy, countervalue is the targeting of an opponent's assets that are of value but not actually a military threat, such as cities and civilian populations. Counterforce is the targeting of an opponent's military forces and facilities. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'', 2nd ed., records the first use of the word in 1660 and the first use in the modern sense in 1965 in which it is described as a " euphemism for attacking cities". Theory In warfare, particularly nuclear warfare, enemy targets can be divided into two general types: counterforce military targets and countervalue civilian targets. Those terms were not used during the Second World War bombing of civilian populations and other targets that were not directly military. The rationale behind countervalue targeting is that if two sides have both achieved assured destruction capability, and the nuclear arsenals of both sides have the apparent ability to survive a wide range of counterforce attacks and carry ...
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Counterforce
In nuclear strategy, a counterforce target is one that has a military value, such as a launch silo for intercontinental ballistic missiles, an airbase at which nuclear-armed bombers are stationed, a homeport for ballistic missile submarines, or a command and control installation. The intent of a counterforce strategy (attacking counterforce targets with nuclear weapons) is to conduct a preemptive nuclear strike which has as its aim to disarm an adversary by destroying its nuclear weapons before they can be launched. That would minimize the impact of a retaliatory second strike. However, counterforce attacks are possible in a second strike as well, especially with weapons like UGM-133 Trident II. A counterforce target is distinguished from a countervalue target, which includes an adversary's population, knowledge, economic, or political resources. In short, a counterforce strike is directed against an adversary's military capabilities, while a countervalue strike is directed against ...
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Bernard Brodie (military Strategist)
Bernard Brodie (May 20, 1910 – November 24, 1978) was an American military strategist well known for establishing the basics of nuclear strategy. Known as "the American Clausewitz," and "the original nuclear strategist," he was an initial architect of nuclear deterrence strategy and tried to ascertain the role and value of nuclear weapons after their creation. Brodie was initially a strong supporter of the concept of escalating responses; he promoted the view that a war in Europe would be started with conventional forces and escalate to nuclear only if and when necessary. After a meeting with French counterparts in 1960, he came to espouse a very different policy, one based purely on nuclear deterrence with the stated position that the US would use nuclear arms at the first instance of hostilities of any sort. Brodie felt that anything short of this seriously eroded the concept of deterrence and might lead to situations where one side might enter hostilities believing i ...
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Assured Destruction
Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would result in the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of rational deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm. The result may be a nuclear peace, in which the presence of nuclear weapons decreases the risk of crisis escalation, since parties will seek to avoid situations that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. Proponents of nuclear peace theory therefore believe that controlled nuclear proliferation may be beneficial for global stability. Critics argue that nuclear proliferation i ...
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Neutron Bomb
A neutron bomb, officially defined as a type of enhanced radiation weapon (ERW), is a low-yield thermonuclear weapon designed to maximize lethal neutron radiation in the immediate vicinity of the blast while minimizing the physical power of the blast itself. The neutron release generated by a nuclear fusion reaction is intentionally allowed to escape the weapon, rather than being absorbed by its other components. The neutron burst, which is used as the primary destructive action of the warhead, is able to penetrate enemy armor more effectively than a conventional warhead, thus making it more lethal as a tactical weapon. The concept was originally developed by the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was seen as a "cleaner" bomb for use against massed Soviet armored divisions. As these would be used over allied nations, notably West Germany, the reduced blast damage was seen as an important advantage. During the Cold War, China also developed a neutron bomb but refra ...
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NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member states—30 European and 2 North American. Established in the aftermath of World War II, the organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington, D.C., on 4 April 1949. NATO is a collective security system: its independent member states agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. During the Cold War, NATO operated as a check on the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The alliance remained in place after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, and has been involved in military operations in the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. The organization's motto is . The organization's strategic concepts include Deterrence theory, deterrence. NATO headquarters, NATO's main headquarter ...
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