Where to hide your nuclear missile submarine? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where to hide your nuclear missile submarine?

#61

Post by PhantomGremlin » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 10:08 AM UTC

avar wrote: post #26

pps43 wrote: post #25

If you detect a massive ICBM launch from Russia, you know what to do - nuke Russia. You have half an hour to launch before Russian missiles take out all silos. Now what do you do if you detect SLBM launch from somewhere in the Pacific Ocean? Who do you nuke?

The US is peculiar with its nuclear policy in trying to guarantee immediate response, by contrast say the UK only has nuclear submarines at sea, and it's expected that there'll be nothing like an immediate response, rather the captains of those submarines will find out who nuked the UK and respond. So the answer for deterrence purposes is you don't need to nuke anyone right away, immediate response is only one layer…

The US is peculiar with its nuclear policy in trying to guarantee immediate response

This doctrine is called "launch on warning". It hasn't been official US policy for 20 years[1]: In 1997, the Clinton administration changed the official policy away from launch on warning to one of retaliation after withstanding an initial first strike.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_on_warning

Re: Where to hide your nuclear missile submarine?

#62

Post by PhantomGremlin » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 10:15 AM UTC

There is a complementary land based system for detecting ballistic missiles. It's more limited in coverage and also has more-or-less the same blind spot: not much coverage of missiles launching from directly south of CONUS.

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

Re: Where to hide your nuclear missile submarine?

#63

Post by nerdponx » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 1:18 PM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #60

secfirstmd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the person is referring to North Korea - which has active concentration camps.

I think nerdponx is being deliberately ambiguous. One problem is that "concentration camp" can mean something like "extermination camp" or something like "internment camp". The US has a long history of concentration/detainment camps - Native Americans in the 1800s, in the Philippines around 1900, the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, the recent internments at Guantanamo, Bagram, and likely elsewhere. Some…

I genuinely forgot about North Korea for a minute, so I thought they were being ambiguous and I was really curious to know what "concentration camps" might have meant. I assumed it was Gitmo, or some other heinous offshore prison I hadn't heard about yet.

Thanks for the benefit of the doubt! I'm OK with the US being a rogue state at this point, it seems fitting.

Re: Where to hide your nuclear missile submarine?

#64

Post by avar » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #61

avar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is peculiar with its nuclear policy in trying to guarantee immediate response, by contrast say the UK only has nuclear submarines at sea, and it's expected that there'll be nothing like an immediate response, rather the captains of those submarines will find out who nuked the UK and respond. So the answer for deterrence purposes is you don't need to nuke anyone right away, immediate response is only one layer…

The US is peculiar with its nuclear policy in trying to guarantee immediate response This doctrine is called "launch on warning". It hasn't been official US policy for 20 years[1]: In 1997, the Clinton administration changed the official policy away from launch on warning to one of retaliation after withstanding an initial first strike. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_on_warning

I'm referring to the policy of still maintaining the systems necessary to launch on warning, past promises about how the systems will be used are just PR.

It's not like in a hypothetical scenario where Russia has launched hundreds of ICBMs at the US in a first strike scenario Trump (or any other president) is going to feel beholden to some promise Clinton made in the 90s.

The president has absolute power over when and how to launch nuclear weapons, and can do so at a moment's notice, as has been covered extensively in the media in the last year where people seemed shocked that the president had this power since they didn't like the new person in office, even though the power itself hasn't changed in more than half a century.