AHC: A totally different Nuclear Triad

Edwin Moore

In OTL, the nuclear triad includes land based missile silos, strategic bombers, and SLBMs.
Is this necessarily set in stone? Could a world with different treaties, superpowers, or technologies have a drastically different set of weapon delivery systems?
 
juanml82

juanml82

If there are multiple countries across the OTL USA and other massive countries like Russia don't come into existence, then a different nuclear triad may exist. But in a MAD scenario between a large North American power and an Eurasian one, the triad makes sense.

Still, it's a bit hard to figure a different triad. Nearby powers might rely on fighter jets and mobile cruise missiles, with SLBMs depending on the size of their coasts (if any). Small countries like the UK and Israel don't use silos at all. Less wealthy nations may skip on SLBMs, or wealthy nations with limited access to the open seas (as in, a more powerful Persia/Iran). Or they may skip intercontinental strategic bombers, which is something most nuclear powers skip.
 

Edwin Moore

Food for thought
800px-RT-23_ICBM_complex_in_Saint_Petersburg_museum.jpg
1.jpg
7375415800_c4b18cd539_b.jpg
17rods.jpg
 

Edwin Moore

Could a nuclear power, which wins a conventional war, impose the placement of nuclear landmines on it's enemy in the peace agreement?
They would be able to hold that over the defeated power's head for a time, then probably remove them later.
 

RamscoopRaider

Donor
Physics pretty much dictates the Triad as it sits for an intercontinental Cold War. The bombers because they are the easiest element, the lowest tech way to deliver an early atom bomb long distances. After that ballistic missiles are the easiest as long range cruise missile guidance is a pain. And for ballistic missiles early on they need a lot of supporting infrastructure for long range, which means a fixed location so a silo, and later on improvements in accuracy for use against hard targets often require extensively surveyed sites, which mean again a silo. The submarine part is the only one that can really be replaced, and that by a mobile land based ballistic missile, train or truck based, in the survivable but less accurate missile role, but then you have the security issue of these nukes driving around your country, hence only really likely for a landlocked or nearly so nation

Other techs are too expensive (space based), too limited (nuclear torpedoes), too short ranged (guns, free flight rockets), impossible to do en masse for deterrent (mines, demolition charges), too crazy (Orion, Pluto etc.) or simply too late to be practical (cruise missiles)

If you have a short ranged situation, two European powers staring at each other, you can use cruise missiles to sub for ballistic missiles in various capacities and tactical aircraft to replace strategic bombers and such
 

Nick P

Donor
There was the far-fetched thriller I read years back where the Russians had planted a nuke somewhere under London and the British SAS had to sneak into Moscow to plant one in return - some sort of MAD scenario.
Airport throwaway rubbish, one of those Andy McNab or Chris Ryan nonsense.

Or the Fourth Protocol idea - again hiding nukes on enemy territory.
 
Workable Goblin

Workable Goblin

RamscoopRaider said:
And for ballistic missiles early on they need a lot of supporting infrastructure for long range, which means a fixed location so a silo, and later on improvements in accuracy for use against hard targets often require extensively surveyed sites, which mean again a silo.
Click to expand...
Eh...not exactly. From what I recall, Midgetman proposals would have used pre-surveyed points on highways as launch points. There's no reason in principle that you couldn't survey, say, every rest stop on the Interstate system as well as the missile fields in Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota. Probably the bigger reason to keep using silos instead of going totally to road/rail mobile is that you can station bigger missiles in a silo, since moving a missile to a silo lets you avoid loading gauge and axle weight limits to a certain extent--since you're not launching the missile from the transport vehicle, for instance, you can partially disassemble it or transport it in a car or on a truck lacking launch equipment, etc. And, of course, you probably already have the silos.
 

BlueTrousers

There's nothing inherently magical about a triad; justification for it as a policy was basically driven by a combination of the US treasury not wanting to develop still more nuclear delivery systems, and the US military not wanting to give up any of the ones it already had.

Seriously proposed alternative delivery systems include:
  • Land-based intercontinental cruise missiles. These were actually deployed (the SM-62 Snark) but weren't very effective. It's arguable whether cruise vs ballistic missiles is a significant change to the 'triad' model, though.
  • Continuously-airborne missile carriers - the concept known as CAMAL/Dromedary in the US, and Pofflers in the UK. Very expensive to run, but gets you most of the survivability of submarines, the flexibility of bombers, and the accuracy and reaction time of land-based missiles. To make it truly effective, you want nuclear powered aircraft, at which point it goes from very expensive to ludicrously expensive and dangerous.
  • Rail-mobile and road-mobile missiles were of course deployed by the USSR; arguably, they're distinct from fixed-base missiles.
  • Fixed sea-based missiles were studied both as a Polaris and as a Peacekeeper basing mode. Major problems with the concept once you start studying it - security is almost impossible to guarantee, and missile maintenance becomes a serious headache - but superficially quite attractive.
  • Ship-launched missiles, not a particularly good option because of the difficulty of hiding the ship, but a relatively cheap way to get a mobile deterrent. Especially if you're a densely-populated European country. Proposals for a Polaris installation on Liberty-type ships were reasonably well developed for the abortive NATO Multilateral Force.
  • Carrier-based bombers - e.g. the CVA-58 UNITED STATES and the A3D Skywarrior before it was cut down to operate from smaller ships. There are issues here - it's expensive to build and operate the carriers, and the bombers can't be as capable as land-based models. But it also allows for multiple attack vectors, making the job of defences more difficult. In the early days when B-36 or B-52-type bombers with air refuelling aren't available, it also avoids the need for forward bases. This could be very attractive in the right political environment.
  • Nuclear torpedoes, seriously proposed by the USSR and seemingly being developed by Russia today. Obviously only capable of attacking coastal targets, but potentially very effective against them.
Plenty of zany options too, like space basing, suicide freighter, airship, and subterrene. Some of them are even possible.
 
Derek Pullem

Derek Pullem

Donor
Edwin Moore said:
In OTL, the nuclear triad includes land based missile silos, strategic bombers, and SLBMs.
Is this necessarily set in stone? Could a world with different treaties, superpowers, or technologies have a drastically different set of weapon delivery systems?
Click to expand...
Space based missiles, nuclear cruise missiles and nuclear artillery?
 

Petros >Peter Fergus<

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm

There was a serious look at putting nuclear weapons under the ice-sheets of Greenland. They didn't expect to keep it secret, so the idea was that they'd develop thousands of firing positions and rotate hundreds of weapons between them. The Soviets wouldn't know about every firing position, even if they decided to strike against every one they did know about, most of the weapons could be saved and launched from the surviving positions.

It failed in real life for various reasons, mainly because the other options were cheaper, and it turns out you need to put in significant effort to maintain the ice-tunnels, but it wasn't totally nuts. It's conceivable that a state with an ice-sheet could decide this is their primary deterrent, if they didn't also have access to submarines, and if their territory outside the ice-sheet was too densely populated. Maybe Scandinavia goes the way of North Korea, and they develop Greenland into an arsenal. These tunnels would also allow conventional troops to hide, the enemy couldn't be sure how many were there and where exactly they were.
 
Workable Goblin

Workable Goblin

Petros >Peter Fergus< said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm

There was a serious look at putting nuclear weapons under the ice-sheets of Greenland. They didn't expect to keep it secret, so the idea was that they'd develop thousands of firing positions and rotate hundreds of weapons between them. The Soviets wouldn't know about every firing position, even if they decided to strike against every one they did know about, most of the weapons could be saved and launched from the surviving positions.

It failed in real life for various reasons, mainly because the other options were cheaper, and it turns out you need to put in significant effort to maintain the ice-tunnels, but it wasn't totally nuts. It's conceivable that a state with an ice-sheet could decide this is their primary deterrent, if they didn't also have access to submarines, and if their territory outside the ice-sheet was too densely populated. Maybe Scandinavia goes the way of North Korea, and they develop Greenland into an arsenal. These tunnels would also allow conventional troops to hide, the enemy couldn't be sure how many were there and where exactly they were.
Click to expand...
The problem with this is that it's just a variant on the silo model--indeed, one of the proposed Peacekeeper basing modes was basically this, but in dirt and rock instead of ice tunnels. To break out of the triad, you need something that's not a ballistic missile, not an aircraft, and not a ship, and there really aren't that many out there that are technically feasible. It's easier to just drop parts of the triad as redundant or unnecessary--land-based ballistic missiles are always popular because nowadays they don't really do anything that SLBMs can't do just as well or better.

RLBH said:
There's nothing inherently magical about a triad; justification for it as a policy was basically driven by a combination of the US treasury not wanting to develop still more nuclear delivery systems, and the US military not wanting to give up any of the ones it already had.
Click to expand...
The triad as a policy was obviously driven by these kinds of political considerations, but most feasible delivery technologies basically slot into the triad somehow. I mean, look at the list you have:
  • Intercontinental cruise missiles are, functionally speaking, very similar to bombers, not ICBMs. They're less accurate, but you can in principle abort them after launch (have them crash at sea) and they're vulnerable to interception just like bombers are.
  • Air based missiles are basically just Air Force SLBMs.
  • Rail and road-mobile ICBMs are just another version of land-based missiles. There's nothing fundamentally different about them.
  • Fixed sea basing is, again, another version of land-based missiles, in terms of its advantages and disadvantages.
  • Ship-launched missiles are just a cheaper but not as good version of SLBMs.
  • Carrier-based bombers are another version of bombers, with a possibly more survivable operational base.
  • Nuclear torpedoes can't hit inland targets, and so can't really be one of the legs of your strategic deterrent unless you're operating against an extremely coastal state like maybe Britain or the Dutch.
So you can see that all of these basically slot into the triad-as-we-know-it. It's really very hard to find delivery systems that don't end up basically replicating an element of the triad somehow.
 

Petros >Peter Fergus<

Workable Goblin said:
The problem with this is that it's just a variant on the silo model--indeed, one of the proposed Peacekeeper basing modes was basically this, but in dirt and rock instead of ice tunnels. To break out of the triad, you need something that's not a ballistic missile, not an aircraft, and not a ship, and there really aren't that many out there that are technically feasible. It's easier to just drop parts of the triad as redundant or unnecessary--land-based ballistic missiles are always popular because nowadays they don't really do anything that SLBMs can't do just as well or better.
Click to expand...

Yes, the weapons themselves are ballistic missiles, the gimmick is just that it's mobile and under ice.


Okay this one is a bit out there - a weapon delivered by burrowing under the enemy lines. We have had oil rigs drilling horizontally for a while, even passing under international borders without prior agreements at times. And we've had underground nuclear testing for a while too, so there was the opportunity to test the system. Yes it's like the nuclear mines described by other posters, but the gimmick is that they aren't in place prior to the conflict, they're delivered during the conflict.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top