If the enemy thinks that they can take out your missiles before you get a chance to launch then there is nothing to deter them from launching their own missiles. Therefore, you make it so that there is no way that they can take out your missiles before you get a chance to launch. For this you need early warning systems, which both sides have. There are satellites in space with infrared detectors which will see the exhaust from ballistic missiles as soon as they are launched. There are massive radars which monitor the sky for the approach of strategic bombers and the warheads as they fly through space. There are other systems in place as well, but radar and heat sensing are the main ones used to give both sides warning should one side decide to use their weapons.
Which it brings us to the Nuclear Triad. Nuclear bombs can be delivered to their targets in a variety of different ways. The first is when they are launched from a silo, (шахтная установка), or in the case of Russia there are also mobile transporter-erector-launchers (TEL), basically massive trucks with a nuclear missile on the back. The silos are underground protected by several feet of steel and concrete and are very difficult to destroy. The TELs are constantly on the move and you have to know where they are if you're going to destroy them.
The second type of missiles are launched from the water, from the ballistic missile submarines. The idea with the submarines is that the other side will never know exactly where the submarine is and so the submarine can launch before the enemy can destroy it. In the days of the Cold War it was possible for each side to have several ballistic missile submarines at sea at once. Now however, Russia has only a handful of submarines and only a portion of them actually work. America's task is to follow those ballistic missile submarines with their own hunter killer submarines and sink the Russian sub with a torpedo before it can launch. Given that America has 70 plus nuclear submarines and Russia only about a dozen, Russia's leg of this stool is fairly weak. But remember, the Russian submarine only needs to survive long enough to launch its missiles, once the missiles are airborne they cannot be stopped reliably.
The final type are delivered by aircraft, either on a long-range missile or simply in the form of a bomb dropped by the aircraft. This is the third leg of the nuclear triad, and it relies on mobility and numbers for survival. Aircraft are difficult to take out using nuclear weapons, and they are loaded up with enough cruise missiles so that although the enemy may shoot some of them down, at least some of them will make it to their targets.
So we have land-based, air-based, and water-based nuclear weapons. The land-based and water-based weapons are delivered by ballistic missile. These are like tiny spaceships that launch up into space and travel partway around the Earth and then re-enter the atmosphere over their intended target. Is there very different from cruise missiles which fly more or less like a small airplane to deliver their payload to the target. Both cruise and ballistic missiles can be fitted with a nuclear warhead.
The size of nuclear warheads.
Actually, let's not bother. They range from destroying a neighborhood to destroying a large city. They're bad. The smallest are like the ones used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We (humanity) actually have conventional non-nuclear weapons now that are more powerful than the ones dropped on Japan. Just assume that if they are used it will be a city size disaster.
Will Putin use nuclear weapons?
I think the chance is zero that Putin will launch a nuclear warhead from a ground-based or water-based system. At the moment of launch there is no way to know where the ballistic rocket is targeted and thus it would provoke an immediate and irrevocable response from the Western powers. So that leaves us with air launched.
Putin has no strategic advantage to use nuclear weapons. Lavrov has threatened that they might use nuclear weapons in retaliation for sanctions or for the military aid that NATO is giving you Ukraine. And neither case does it make sense for them to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. If used on NATO the only acceptable response would be total disarmament and subjugation of the Russia Federation. My estimate is that this would take minutes to do with nuclear weapons, which would kill tens or hundreds of millions of people and render large parts of the planet uninhabitable. The other solution would be to destroy Russia's nuclear weapons and then subjugate Russia with conventional means. This would take days or weeks. Russia doesn't have the morale now that it had in world War II to defend itself from Hitler. It doesn't have the Russian winter to save it because modern armies are perfectly capable of operating in cold environments. As we've seen, the Russian army is in shambles, an embarrassment. Concentrated Western armies would make short work of everything that Russia can put into the field.
So Putin has a limited number of choices.
Attack Kyiv
Attack a smaller Ukrainian city
Attack the west
There is zero strategic advantage or even tactical advantage to hitting Kyiv with a nuclear weapon, he might do so only out of frustration or a desire for revenge. I imagine it drives him mad thinking of how Ukraine has broken the spine of the Russian military. Doing so would be a Pyrrhic victory. Were he to do so, the few countries that still trade with Russia would implement sanctions and Russia would be cut off from the world economy for as long as Putin was in power, which wouldn't be long. Putin has no more friends in Russia. He has Lavrov, and perhaps Peskov. Defense minister Shogu has betrayed himself in the deplorable state of Russia's military. The rest of the country has already displayed their intolerance for this ridiculous war, both within the military and the civilian population.
There is some strategic advantage to striking a medium-sized Ukrainian city. This might convince Zelensky to surrender. This, also would be a Pyrrhic victory, as the same sanctions would hit Russia and the demand in the world stage would be that Russia be completely disarmed. Indeed, Russia's conventional military forces are almost exhausted already. This would be a war crime of such staggering proportion that Russia would take decades to recover. The world might, I would hope, demand complete nuclear disarmament of all countries in response. As we have seen with Donald Trump, wanna-be dictators can arise in any country.
This leaves us with striking one of the Western countries for implementing such powerful sanctions against Russia. This was hinted at by Lavrov this week, where he compared the sanctions to nuclear war. This is an absolutely absurd proposal, as it would no doubt be met with a nuclear response.
So all of this hinges on the mental state of Vladimir Putin, but not quite. It is this author's belief that Vladimir Putin has gone mad. He sees danger in every shadow and is consumed by paranoia. This is not the type of person we want to have with his finger on the button.
But I am comforted by the fact that there is no button. The use of nuclear weapons has to be approved by many people in the chain of command. Putin can issue the order, but Shoygu could countermand it. The most likely scenario here would be an air-based strike upon a smaller Ukrainian city. This means that people at the air base can refuse to load the nuclear weapon onto the plane, the pilots can refuse to fire the nuclear weapon. All in all I would say that there is at least five or six people who could stop it from happening. And even if all five or six of those people go ahead with the plan there is still a good chance that the aircraft could be stopped before it could deliver the weapon. The West's intelligence capabilities are beyond impressive, and they would realize I was happening before it happened. There are fighter jets in the air as we speak over NATO countries that could be redirected to intercept any incoming nuclear bomber and shoot it down before it could deploy the weapon. The weapon would be most likely mounted onto a cruise missile which could also be shot down by Ukrainian or Western fighter jets, or the PVO system or ever-present stinger missiles.
This would be the worst case scenario for Russia of course. The world would know that Russia had attempted to use nuclear weapons but had been stopped. , The same sanctions would be implemented, the Russian economy would collapse to the point where it was no longer capable of maintaining any sort of military, and eventually even it's nuclear arsenal would be rendered ineffective. Nuclear weapons are very expensive to maintain and develop, and they don't last forever. Russia's is arsenal is already quite old, much of it dating back to Soviet era.
In the end, the question of whether Russia will utilize nuclear weapons as part of its strategy to resolve the crisis that Vladimir Putin himself created in Ukraine hinges upon only two things. The sanity of Vladimir Putin, and the sanity of those immediately around him.
Any use of nuclear weapons by Russia would be the end of the Russian state, it's only a matter of scale. A limited use of nuclear weapons would result in a drastic and prolonged economic decline within Russia. This would no doubt lead to a revolution as the oligarchs turned on Putin and the Russian people did as well. The large scale use of nuclear weapons is not worth worrying about. Those who are lucky won't be around to deal with the consequences of global nuclear war. Those unlucky enough to survive should seek underground sources of fresh water, because it won't be as contaminated as everything else.
Obviously the best solution here is that somebody within Russia removes Putin from power. The second best solution is that the crisis resolves itself without the use of nuclear weapons, in which case I believe that Ukraine will emerge victorious, receive hundreds of billions of dollars of investment from the West, join NATO and the European Union, and Russia will be reduced to a much larger version of North Korea, a state that is closed off from the world, unable to trade, and unable to develop its own economy due to its own internal corruption. In the scenario Putin's government will not last long. Let us hope that his replacement will be somebody like Navalny.
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