[HN Gopher] Dead Hand
___________________________________________________________________
Dead Hand
Author : starwind
Score : 59 points
Date : 2022-04-04 16:11 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| quarterdime wrote:
| From that wikipedia link: "Colonel General Varfolomey Korobushin,
| former Deputy Chief of Staff of Strategic Rocket Forces, in 1992
| said that the Russians had a system, to be activated only during
| a crisis..."
|
| Activated only during a crisis? In late February Putin announced
| that "deterrence forces" were placed on high alert. Reporting on
| the topic was vague, with no answers about what this announcement
| meant. In a Reuters article after that announcement, an unnamed
| US official said this was "putting in play forces that, if
| there's a miscalculation, could make things much, much more
| dangerous" [0]. I wonder if Putin's announcement meant activating
| this dead hand system.
|
| Finally I suggest watching Dan Ellsberg's "Doomsday Machine" talk
| [1].
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-strategic-missile-
| forc... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7cJG9j0NdY
| megous wrote:
| Why counterattack, though? MAD is for deterence, so if one side
| attacks, MAD failed.
|
| Counterattack will likely not help anything other than further
| escalation and further losses on the counter-attacking side. It
| would be kinda irrational at that point.
| disambiguation wrote:
| Well the "counterattack guarantee" has to exist in order for
| MAD to be true. If A can attack B fast and hard enough that
| they can't counter attack, then there is no MAD.
|
| As for rationality, don't assume everyone acts perfectly
| rationally -- or even partially.
|
| I have to imagine there's a strong murderous urge to get back
| at whoever just burned your country down in nuclear fire,
| regardless of the greater good.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Your understanding of MAD seems fundamentally flawed. MAD works
| precisely because of the existence of a credible counter-attack
| strategy, it doesn't matter whether that attack is before or
| after the missiles strike.
| megous wrote:
| Yes, I understand that correctly. You can have credible
| existance of counter attack ability for MAD, but it can still
| be irrational to counter-attack once one side drops a nuke.
| jpgvm wrote:
| It's 1-part reinforcing MAD and 1-part guaranteed revenge.
|
| Simply by existing it rules out any kind of first strike at
| all.
|
| No matter which targets you hit (you can't destroy all the
| nukes, that is essentially impossible), even if Moscow is a
| glass crater and you successfully hit every nuclear command
| bunker this thing is still going to wipe you out.
|
| Yes, all this does is end humanity - but the threat needs
| to be there to avoid the first strike in the first place
| and the contract is if you hit us with a nuke you are going
| to burn with us.
| motoboi wrote:
| It's not just capacity to counter-strike, but willingness
| to do so.
|
| This is a whole game theory thing that was developed in
| could war.
|
| To be willing to kill millions even if it was pointless is
| part of the game: the enemy must be completely and
| absolutely convinced that a counter strike will happen.
| This is the only way to deter.
|
| Absolute and complete certainty cannot be faked (given
| spies). It can only be provided if indeed the willingness
| to counter attack is real and enforced.
| motoboi wrote:
| He is absolutely correct. MAD is for deterrence. If your
| enemy already launched the missiles, there is no point in
| killing millions just for revenge.
|
| Obviously, you cannot have this benevolent mindset in the
| first place, because your enemy will know he can destroy you
| without consequences and thus won't be very much deterred
| from it.
|
| Even the name MAD was a reminder to the other country that
| the US was indeed crazy enough to destroy and kill millions
| if USSR attacked.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Aside from the MAD arguments others have pointed out, there is
| simple revenge.
|
| You say this is irrational, but that depends on your values. If
| you prioritize revenge over avoiding further losses, it is
| perfectly rationale.
|
| For example, if someone killed my family, I may value killing
| them over my personal life. This doesn't make me irrational,
| but rather speaks to my value system and what I am optimizing
| for.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > MAD is for deterence
|
| If you decide _now_ that you wouldn 't counteract _then_ , and
| your enemy knows this, your MAD deterrence plan has already
| failed.
| megous wrote:
| You can decide now, you just have to not televise it (or
| televise the opposite) to the other side. :D
|
| Anyway I'm more interested in the rationality of the
| counterattack once the deterence fails, and nuclear conflict
| starts.
| vkou wrote:
| It's not rational, just like it's not rational to kill a
| hostage when your demands aren't met, but you need to
| actually carry the threat out, in order for your threats to
| be credible.
|
| In short, it's rational on a macro level.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Isn't both sides alwats full of informants? I don't think
| you could confidently design a non functioning system and
| be sure the other side doesn't know it doesn't work
| krisoft wrote:
| > I don't think you could confidently design a non
| functioning system and be sure the other side doesn't
| know it doesn't work
|
| Well. The UK's "Letters of Last Resort" are kind of that.
| It intentionally keeps it ambiguous what will be the
| reaction of the British ballistic missile submarines in
| case of an unexpected decapitation attack.
|
| The idea is that an incoming Prime Minister writes four
| identical, hand written letters to the commanders of the
| subs. They place these letters in safes on the
| submarines. Only the Prime Minister knows what the
| letters say.
|
| In case the UK command structure is destroyed in a sudden
| decapitation strike, the submarine will detect this. For
| example by the fact that all naval broadcast cease to
| transmit. But nobody wants a single point of failure
| accidentally triggering a war, so they also check if the
| BBC 4 is still broadcasting, and they probably check
| other things too but the specifics are kept secret.
|
| After the commander of the submarine, in agreement with a
| few other officers come to the conclusion that the UK is
| no more they open and read the letter. The letter gives
| them an instruction. It can tell them to retaliate with
| all they got. It can tell them to not retaliate, find a
| safe port and live the rest of their lives to the
| fullest. It can tell them to use their best judgement
| based on what they know. It can tell them to join the
| navy of a friendly country.
|
| > Isn't both sides always full of informants?
|
| The system assumes so yes. It is very hard to keep
| something secret once multiple people knows it. The idea
| here is that the secret is only known to one person, it
| is only distributed to a very limited set of very secure
| locations and everything is kept very low-tech to make it
| easier to manage the risk. Probably there are other
| undisclosed security arrangements too. (For example I
| wouldn't be surprised if the letter is carried by
| multiple trusted people, checking each other to prevent
| an enemy snooping or doing a switcheroo.)
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Ah, that's a interesting system. I can see how something
| like that would work well
| starwind wrote:
| MAD sets ups a lose-lose scenario. No one wins if they fire
| nuclear weapons so, theoretically, no one would fire nuclear
| weapons
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Unfortunately this only works if the people in charge are
| relatively sane and don't have a death wish.
| starwind wrote:
| And no strategy can really deal with that beyond "prevent
| them for acquiring the means"
| jakedata wrote:
| I have read a lot of chatter about the state of the Russian
| military being significantly degraded by material and financial
| diversions, skill shortages and even looting parts not only from
| spares but actual deployed equipment.
|
| Maintaining a nuclear arsenal and the infrastructure to deploy it
| is eye-wateringly expensive. I am sure many people are
| questioning the degree of threat posed by whatever remains of
| Soviet nuclear armaments.
|
| The primary fissile material remains a threat but what about the
| ability to deliver it and actually trigger the intended explosion
| once it arrives? I would prefer not to put it to the test, even
| if 20% still works we are screwed.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Russian culture seems to treat everything as an excuse for
| skimming and corruption, so it's very unlikely that the entire
| arsenal would work as planned.
|
| Apparently it's also mostly tactical warheads which don't have
| a long-range delivery system.
|
| My best guess is that many of the bigger US and European cities
| would be wiped out, but neither continent would be turned into
| a sterilised desert - which is what would happen after a no-
| compromise exchange.
|
| It used to be assumed an initial exchange would target first
| strike and retaliatory systems, and cities would only be
| targeted if there was anything left when that phase was over.
|
| The Russian attacks on civilian targets suggests the opposite.
| Initial attacks would be on Western cities and populated areas,
| and the Russians wouldn't care about having their own cities
| wiped out in response.
|
| No one cares about having second strike silos being wiped out
| in Nebraska or the Urals when big population centres are
| already on fire.
|
| None of this is encouraging. Some cities and infrastructure
| _might_ survive, but the aftermath would still be extremely
| unpleasant.
| izend wrote:
| Supposedly the nuclear weapons development and maintenance was
| well funded in Russia.
| nimbius wrote:
| you seem to be conflating Russian military with Soviet military
| as if they enjoyed a significant divergence, but in reality one
| is just a progression of the other. the SU35 for example can
| still stalk down an SR71, just as its soviet SU25 could.
|
| Dead Hand is not a former soviet technology, it is actively
| maintained, staffed, and funded. as the CCCP invented the ICBM,
| i have full confidence in Russias ability to deliver it.
|
| Sarmat is the latest ICBM in development with planned service
| this year. much like their American counterparts (minuteman)
| missiles and technology are regularly advanced and upgraded.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat
| tetsusaiga wrote:
| > can still stalk down an SR71, just as its soviet SU25 could
|
| Did an SU-25 write this?
| z303 wrote:
| Isn't the SU-25 [1], a close air support plane roughly
| equivalent in role to the A-10 [2]?
|
| The Su-37 had its first flight in early 2008 [3] about ten
| years after the SR-71 was retired [4]. If you mean the SU-27
| that indeed flew in 1977 [5] but only has a service celling
| of 19km, much less than the SR-71's 26km.
|
| Above top secret has an interesting thread on how you would
| actually go about such an interception [6]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-25
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thu
| nde...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-35
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-27
|
| [6] https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread174271/pg1
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > the SU35 for example can still stalk down an SR71, just as
| its soviet SU25 could.
|
| At best, you are confusing Sukhoi with Mikoyan-Gurevich at
| least once here; the Su-25 definitely couldn't stalk a SR-71.
| (A MiG-35 or Su-35 doing so is a bit of stretch, too, but
| less implausible.)
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Man, you must have been living under a rock for past month.
| All these statements about Russian military were claimed for
| few decades on general level, and they seemed to match
| reality when small conflicts were happening.
|
| Then Ukraine happened and basically none of the predicted
| capacities and skills 'actively maintained' of russian
| military were displayed when facing actual equipped and
| trained army.
|
| You disregard completely utter corruption, thievery and
| incompetence on all levels including top of power pyramid. I
| have 0 doubts that Russians have working nukes of various
| loads and range. I am very positive that number of usable
| ones is somewhere in 1-5% range and its often not immediately
| clear which are which.
|
| If there was any maintenance to be done, rest assured it was
| skimmed and funds stolen. If any replacement should have
| happened, it was stolen too. Few nukes got probably stolen
| themselves. That's how state works for a long time, that's
| how Volodya keeps all bloodthirsty underlings happy, and
| these are side effects.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Then Ukraine happened and basically none of the predicted
| capacities and skills 'actively maintained' of russian
| military were displayed when facing actual equipped and
| trained army.
|
| For instance, the thing with the tires: https://twitter.com
| /trenttelenko/status/1499164245250002944.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Some good friends work in this community, so to speak. They
| have all expressed confidence in the current state of the
| Strategic Rocket Forces (as in we should expect everything to
| work).
|
| The SRF is handled differently than, say, a random mechanized
| infantry unit. They get funding, better troops, better training
| and maintenance, etc. For example, you wouldn't see the tires
| failing on their missile transporter-erector-launchers (TELs)
| because they actually take them out for a spin now and then,
| unlike some of the vehicles in Ukraine.
|
| The Russians have also gotten quite good at maintaining their
| deterrent at the lowest level of expenditure possible. Their
| submarines can "patrol" from the pier, as they are designed to
| be able to launch their rockets from port, only sortieing in
| times of tension. Their TELs can fire from within their storage
| barns.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Yeah. I bet there are all sorts of shortcuts there...being
| expensive, you'd think that we'd have intelligence on how much
| they maintained the systems.
| jakedata wrote:
| I don't. I expect "we" do - or at least we have a pretty good
| idea. If black-market tritium was worth enough to hungry
| people in Russia we could probably set back readiness even
| more.
| Steltek wrote:
| The "semi autonomous" in the title makes me think of FSD cars.
| It's amusing to think of the differences in caution for adopting
| new technology: "might cause a crash" versus "might end the
| world".
| starwind wrote:
| I think they watched _Doctor Strangelove_ and said "yeah, let's
| do that"
|
| Excerpt: It was meant to be a backup communication system, in
| case the key components of the "Kazbek" command system and the
| link to the Strategic Missile Forces are destroyed by a
| decapitation first strike.
|
| To ensure its functionality the system was designed as fully
| automatic, and with the ability to decide on the adequate
| retaliatory strike on its own with no (or minimal) human
| involvement in the event of an all-out attack.
|
| According to Vladimir Yarynich, a developer of the system, this
| system also served as a buffer against hasty decisions based on
| unverified information by the country's leadership. Upon
| receiving warnings about a nuclear attack, the leader could
| activate the system, and then wait for further developments,
| assured by the fact that even the destruction of all key
| personnel with the authority to command the response to the
| attack could still not prevent a retaliatory strike. Thus, use of
| the system would theoretically reduce the likeliness of a false-
| alarm-triggered retaliation.
| [deleted]
| tines wrote:
| > Thus, use of the system would theoretically reduce the
| likeliness of a false-alarm-triggered retaliation
|
| How does not preventing a retaliatory strike reduce the
| likeliness of a false-alarm-triggered retaliation? It seems
| like it increases it.
| monocasa wrote:
| Dead hand can be stopped by the normal command and control
| system. The idea is that by starting the timer in a way that
| guarantees the missiles launch if command and control is
| wiped out, that gives them another option than 'launch the
| missiles now because we won't get a second chance'.
| bombcar wrote:
| Because you KNOW that if it hits the fan, they'll launch, you
| aren't as tempted to early launch thinking that if it IS an
| attack and aimed at you, you won't be able to order the
| launch.
|
| That probably doesn't clear it up. Let's try again.
|
| 1. Nuke incoming, maybe. 2. If it is incoming, it will hit
| me, and I will be unable to order a retaliation. 3. Therefor,
| I should order it now to be safe.
|
| Instead you replace 3 with "I will arm the dead hand, and it
| WAS an actual strike, the dead hand will retaliate for me. If
| it was not, nothing will happen."
| starwind wrote:
| Assuming Perimeter worked as intended, it would finish the
| job automatically eliminating the fear that no one would be
| alive to fire a retaliatory strike. Moscow would not longer
| have to fire their nuclear weapons in a panic.
|
| During the Cold War, MAD implied you had to be suicidal to
| launch a nuclear strike against another nuclear-armed
| adversary--the adversary fires everything in retaliation and
| kills you. So the mission in a first-strike shifted to taking
| out the adversary's leadership preventing them from launching
| a retaliatory strike. This created a situation where the US
| and the Soviets were incentivized to fire at the slightest
| provocation: if Moscow thinks Washington launched a nuclear
| strike, Moscow better fire before American nukes come down.
|
| With the Dead Hand, Moscow could activate Perimeter which
| would listen for certain indications of nuclear strikes and
| if it was determined that a nuclear strike occurred,
| automatically launch Soviet nuclear weapons in retaliation.
| tines wrote:
| Ah, that makes sense. I feel like the way it was originally
| worded was a bit confusing.
| starwind wrote:
| the sentence from wikipedia definitely needs more context
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Assuming Perimeter worked as intended, it would finish
| the job automatically eliminating the fear that no one
| would be alive to fire a retaliatory strike. Moscow would
| not longer have to fire their nuclear weapons in a panic.
|
| > ...This created a situation where the US and the Soviets
| were incentivized to fire at the slightest provocation: if
| Moscow thinks Washington launched a nuclear strike, Moscow
| better fire before American nukes come down.
|
| > With the Dead Hand, Moscow could activate Perimeter which
| would listen for certain indications of nuclear strikes and
| if it was determined that a nuclear strike occurred,
| automatically launch Soviet nuclear weapons in retaliation.
|
| If the Russians developed Perimeter to address these
| concerns, what did the US do? I'd assume it built more
| resilient command and control infrastructure with more
| delegation, because Russia seems less comfortable with
| decentralization than the US, but I don't really know.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| try to change the Wikipedia page - go ahead, we are
| watching ! I mean, most everyone agrees it could be
| improved right? "wiki" - pedia?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| My pet theory on Putin's ability to maintain power and avoid a
| coup at this point is that he has spent the last 20 years rigging
| this system (or something similar) to a personal dead man switch,
| and is actively holding the entire country of Russia hostage.
| Everyone in his inner circle is made aware of it once they get
| close enough, and any leak about it ends with you falling from a
| window. He's _just_ cynical enough that it goes from "comic-book
| farce" to "terrifying possible reality" the more you think about
| it.
| tablespoon wrote:
| Kinda sorta. My understanding is that he maintains a situation
| where everyone in power is dirty and you _must_ be demonstrably
| dirty to get close to the levers of power. That shared guilt
| helps keep the ruling clique together. Add to that the very
| real threat of assassination, and it seems pretty airtight.
|
| Your idea has the flaw that the leak would be damaging if done,
| and sometimes people are willing to take action at suicidal
| personal cost.
| W-Stool wrote:
| More information can be found in the book "The Dead Hand: The
| Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy"
| by David E. Hoffman. It really is a Dr. Strangelove inspired
| "Doomsday Device".
| yabones wrote:
| The sections of that book about Biopreparat were deeply
| unsettling. Knowing the lengths they went to keeping the
| program a secret, it wouldn't shock me if they _did_ continue
| to develop or conduct secret research on biological weapons
| after 1995. With nuclear weapons you want everybody to know you
| have them, but bio weapons by nature are secretive. It 's the
| kind of cruel and horrifying weapon that even your own people
| can't know about.
| pvg wrote:
| The book also covers a broad range of late Cold War events and
| weapons programs - it's well worth the read, just don't expect
| it to be a mirror image of something like Eric Schlosser's
| _Command & Control_ (which is also a great read but with a much
| narrower focus).
| saboot wrote:
| I haven't read this book, but I did recently read Eric Kaplan's
| "The Bomb", he goes into detail the decision processes of the
| US nuclear response and how much it changed (or didn't!)
| throughout all of the presidents
| pvg wrote:
| Small nitpick, the name of the author is Fred Kaplan.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The way I understand it it needs to be activated first, and
| that requires a human.
| jpgvm wrote:
| I also think there is a second human stage after the system
| has been activated.
|
| From my understanding after Dead Hand is armed with the
| access codes it goes into a monitoring state.
|
| Until all conditions are met nothing happens but upon losing
| its links to all nuclear commands -and- it detects that a
| nuclear strike has landed on Soviet soil only then does it
| provide nuclear arming codes to the staff of the Dead Hand
| control bunker.
|
| These poor souls then make the decision to end humanity or
| not by launching the control missiles which will activate all
| automated nuclear weapons, transmit authorizations to bombers
| and submarines etc - which too will have humans that need to
| make the call if they want to take part in the apocalypse.
|
| Though AFAICT Russia still has enough land based ICBMs to
| level every major city on earth and all of those are probably
| 100% automated so I don't think the poor airmen/seamen will
| have to worry too much about their conscience no matter which
| choice they make.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There has been some speculation about how many of these
| will still work due to periodic remanufacturing
| requirements, that would be interesting to get some hard
| data on. Probably a very closely guarded state secret.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Though AFAICT Russia still has enough land based ICBMs to
| level every major city on earth...
|
| I learned the other day that there are two main strategies
| for targeting nuclear weapons, counter-force (nuking
| military targets) vs counter-value (nuking cities). The
| former requires a lot more warheads for an effective
| deterrent, and the large stockpile of nukes in the US and
| Russia implies that they're doing a lot of counter-force
| targeting (though I suppose that doesn't mean they won't
| also attack counter-value targets as well).
|
| IIRC, according to this an exclusive counter-force nuclear
| attack against Russia would use far more warheads, but kill
| less people than an exclusive counter-value attack (~10
| million vs 50 million deaths).
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/057004008
| jpgvm wrote:
| That is really interesting.
|
| For me the counter-value strategy seems like a more
| effective deterrent though from a MAD/counter-attack
| perspective. It's meant to be a terrifying outcome and
| maximally terrifying is the best possible configuration
| to prevent nuclear war.
|
| There is only ~500 cities in the world with over 1mil
| population, Russia has over 5k operational nukes. That is
| ~10 nukes for every large city on Earth. If they were
| only interested in nuking the US that is still ~100 nukes
| per US state.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I think I'd rather have the Soviet system of having this system
| that you can turn on that fails deadly while also requiring
| multiple parties to agree to turn it on or launch than the US
| system where just one person has the authority to launch a
| nuclear attack all on their own.
| [deleted]
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I think this is more of a dead mans switch and not replacement
| for individual authority. I would not be surprised if something
| similar exists somewhere in the US defense system actually. I'm
| sure there were individuals in the Soviet Union who could fire
| a nuclear weapon.
| Symmetry wrote:
| It's not that it's a replacement for individual authority, it
| just removes the need for that individual authority. You
| can't rely on getting several people together to make the
| decision to launch a retaliatory attack in time, hence the
| need in the US system to invest that power in one person.
| Because retaliation is handled by the dead man switch you can
| require other uses of nuclear weapons to require consensus.
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| Friendly reminder that getting out of all those pesky nuclear
| arms control treaties meant a greatly reduced reaction time on
| both sides. And having 15 instead of 45 minutes to react to a
| detected launch makes errors naturally a lot more likely.
|
| Nuclear war doesnt need crazy people on both sides ready to ride
| the bomb to end human civilization. It only needs sufficiently
| brainwashed bureaucrats who are stuck in the process of an
| apparatus that believes they have their hands forced to
| retaliate.
|
| edit: And just in case somebody still has any delusions of
| efficiency left, most of those past cases of "almost ended the
| world" were down to one men who had the power and accompanying
| backbone to overrule and /or block a strike decision. With Vasily
| Arkhipov it was 2 to 1 for the "retaliatory" nuclear strike
| against depth charges aimed at getting them to surface.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Friendly reminder that getting out of all those pesky nuclear
| arms control treaties meant a greatly reduced reaction time on
| both sides. And having 15 instead of 45 minutes to react to a
| detected launch makes errors naturally a lot more likely.
|
| Could you be more specific about the treaties?
|
| It kind of sounds like you're talking about the INF treaty
| given the comment about reaction time, but IIRC that treaty
| _never_ covered submarine-launched missiles and a treaty isn 't
| any good if it's not actually complied with (e.g. the Wikipedia
| page lists a decade of alleged violations prior to withdrawal,
| and furthermore the treaty didn't bind all relevant powers).
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| In February Biden left the Russian Arms Control Talks in
| reaction to the Russian troop movements. They were discussing
| reinstating the INF. With intermediate range missiles like
| the SS20 and Pershing with especially short reaction cycles.
| Which we actually got rid of in the 80s.
|
| Could you be more specific with treaty violations?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-
| Range_Nuclear_For... Has the tests for missiles with a
| disputed range
|
| On a side note, when searching for it google also told me
| that the last policy round apparently allowed the first
| strike use of nuclear weapons
| https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-04/news/biden-policy-
| al...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > With intermediate range missiles like the SS20 and
| Pershing with especially short reaction cycles. Which we
| actually got rid of in the 80s.
|
| Did we though? https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/a
| ttach/2015/01/Ha...:
|
| > a submarine-based missile could strike in as little as 10
| to 15 minutes after launch
|
| IIRC, INF treaty only banned US and Russian _land_ -based
| intermediate-range missiles. It didn't ban similar _sea_
| -based missiles nor did it ban _Chinese_ land or sea-based
| intermediate-range missiles.
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| And they were renegotiation, a point in time where
| addressing such shortcomings was a real possibility.
| China is also not currently involved in reckless power
| plays. It was plain and simply better then the
| alternative.
|
| We are stuck with people having an end of the species
| button and are left dealing with this somehow. There are
| two approaches, one is to do everything to prevent
| accidental triggering. You put a case over it and and
| agree to not make any sudden movements. Arms control is
| about giving both sides a clear picture that the other
| one isnt going to use theirs. In short deescalation,
| making sure nobody is getting nervous because we know
| that nuclear holocaust would be a bad thing.
|
| The other is to use it as a threat. In short escalation.
|
| It is quite clearly heavily escalating with the second
| approach in a time where the former is absolutely
| necessary.
|
| Lets not sugarcoat it, such behavior is very much in
| villain territory. Its risking the end of the species for
| short term political power plays.
|
| edit: Differently put, i am going to go out on a limb
| here and argue that increasing the risk for a nuclear
| holocaust is a bad thing. I havent seen many people
| disagree here outside of some posadist circles
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| And we had solid intel under the Obama administration
| that the Russians were cheating w/ INF. I am a huge fan
| of INF and think it was one of the great achievements of
| Cold War arms control. I also think it didn't make sense
| to keep it given Russian cheating and the fact that
| China's not covered at all.
|
| Cheating isn't new with Russia: during the Late
| Unpleasantness, the SA-5 system was given an ABM
| capability in clear violation of applicable treaties.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > With Vasily Arkhipov it was 2 to 1 for the "retaliatory"
| nuclear strike against depth charges aimed at getting them to
| surface.
|
| Hopefully the modern US government would also know not to
| attack a nuclear submarine in international waters.
| vkou wrote:
| The 'government' isn't necessarily looped into every such
| decision. A lot of 'should we shoot' escalations are
| ultimately in the hands of local commanders.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Hopefully the government is looped in to decisions to
| attack nuclear submarines in international waters
| unprovoked.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Is a treaty any good if the countries in that have shown to
| violate them?
| cf141q5325 wrote:
| Yes, very much if you have inspector able to visit sites.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Sure, only if all the sites and tech was inspected.
| motoboi wrote:
| Doomsday devices and Mutually Assured Destruction where
| invented by those not wanting to destroy civilization. They're
| actually pacifist devices.
|
| Their very reason of existence it to remove power from those
| _wanting_ to use the bomb.
|
| It's a very scary equilibrium, but a possible one at the time
| when people were advocating for a preemptive strike as the only
| equilibrium.
|
| Of course no bomb at all is a much nicier equilibrium, but much
| much harder to achieve at the time (even now).
|
| A even better equilibrium would be uninventing the bomb, but
| this is pretty much impossible.
| [deleted]
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| Would the Reagan administration really allow a doomsday device
| gap? Think about it.
| motoboi wrote:
| America has one.
| evo wrote:
| Historically, I think the answer is even scarier: the Dead
| Hand system presupposes that a centralized power is necessary
| to start nuclear war, the American system has been to
| delegate that power to regional and even theater-level
| military commanders (particularly in the bomber days, when
| sending orders to the Pacific theater was never going to work
| in the necessary timescale). It makes sense from a game
| theory perspective--if the commander-in-chief was literally
| the only person with strategic command authority, an
| assassination could render the entire country vulnerable to
| an unopposed first strike.
|
| An airfield on the northern edge of Japan is close enough to
| Russian airspace that, at alert, the local airfield commander
| was going to have to make the call to sortie their bombers
| while the runways were still intact, and once deployed it
| wasn't unimaginable that a Dr. Strangelove-style scenario
| could go down.
|
| It's been a few years, but I think this was mostly detailed
| in The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| They didn't. Various mobile nuclear C3 assets were created
| and/or modernized, GWEN was started, etc. We didn't need the
| precise equivalent because we chose a different route:
| redundant mobile command assets and a great deal of effort into
| preserving the Presidency (the office, not the person) at least
| until the combatant commanders had launch authority delegated
| to them.
|
| FWIW, the US used to have launch code broadcast rockets. The
| early ones were housed in dedicated sounding rockets. Later,
| radio "warheads" were secretly dispersed among the Minuteman
| fields. We no longer use them because there are enough reliable
| nodes to get the word out even while under attack (e.g.
| Milstar).
|
| Fun fact: missile command centers fitted to support the command
| rockets had a voice console where a crew member would read the
| current go codes into a microphone to be recorded on the
| "warhead" just before launch. Try not to stutter!
| alehlopeh wrote:
| It's funny how the presence of the last sentence changes the
| vibe of your comment from "well-intentioned question implicitly
| asking the reader to give it some thought" to "crazy talk
| coming from a conspiracy-theorist."
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Why a command rocket that is launched to broadcast orders instead
| of using satellites?
| evan_ wrote:
| Easier to defend than a satellite maybe?
| jpgvm wrote:
| Correct. Also there is apparently multiple of them.
|
| Rocket silos are incredibly difficult to destroy, even with
| nukes.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Anti satellite missiles would likely be the first things fired
| in WW3
| evo wrote:
| The most consequential recipient of said orders is going to be
| a ballistic nuclear submarine deep underwater, and water is a
| terrific shield for the higher frequency radio bands a
| satellite will have access to. I'm guessing the command rocket
| will spool out an extremely long wire on its flight trajectory
| and give access to the VLF or ULF radio bands that can
| penetrate the ocean.
| jpgvm wrote:
| I think the command signal is merely picked up by existing
| repeaters that broadcast to the submarines.
|
| I actually think the most consequential recipients are
| actually the land based ICBMs as those are likely 100%
| automated installations.
|
| Even if the submarines are already at launch depth I would
| assume there would still be final humans in the loop in all
| nuclear bombers and subs, making them unreliable launchers.
| (who really wants to press the "end the world" button?)
| evo wrote:
| I actually wouldn't be surprised if it did have a direct
| VLF antenna system. If the Dead Hand had triggered, that
| suggests multiple Soviet C&C headquarters went offline due
| to a first strike, and at that point you can't really
| assume your repeaters or silos are still online. The
| submarine fleet's primary purpose is to be the surviving
| second strike capacity.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Both the US and Russia have flying command systems which
| use very long trailing wires to send launch commands.
|
| The problem: they're nearly a single point of failure. If
| you can hit the other side's command systems their
| missiles won't be going anywhere.
|
| I'd assume both sides know this and contingencies and
| redundancies exist.
| [deleted]
| daenz wrote:
| As someone who has worked with extremely intelligent and skilled
| system engineers, who have all checked each other's work, but
| still a critical infrastructure issue slips by, this scares the
| shit out of me. The hubris of thinking human beings can design a
| robust system that, if it fails, kills everyone alive in short
| order, is insane.
| jpgvm wrote:
| There are multiple humans in the loop. Only the most scary (and
| likely inaccurate) descriptions of the system make it seem
| fully automated. AFAICT there is still a bunch of folk buried
| deep in a bunker that still need to decide if the world should
| end.
| [deleted]
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