An elevated port side view of the forward section of a Soviet Oscar Class SSGN nuclear-powered attack submarine. (Soviet Military Power, 1986)
One person commented on this blog about the danger posed by Russian submarines. Probably a good time to look at what the threat is.
I did start my career in the U.S. defense industry working with submarine sonars and spectrum analyzers. This was back in the bad old days, when there were hundreds of subs out there. In our new found more peaceful world, there are a lot less.
Russian has around 56 submarines, according to Wikipedia. How many of these are fully operational is not something I know. Of those, 11 of them are boomers or ballistic missile submarines. These are submarines that carry nuclear missiles and would not be part of any fleet-on-fleet battle. They also list 6 “special-purpose submarines,” two are old converted attack submarines. The group of subs that threaten our control of the seas are 8 cruise missile submarines (SSGN) and 15 nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs). There are also 22 smaller diesel-power attack submarines. This is 45 or less operational subs to threaten our carrier fleets.
The biggest danger from Russian fleet is their 8 cruise missile submarines. These really are a threat to our carriers.
The United States has around 66 submarines. Of those, 14 are boomers.
Special purpose subs…………………………………………6………….600 – 18,200 tons
I did not bother to list landing craft (Russia has 37 of 555 tons or less), patrol boats (Russian has 37 of 139 tons or less), mine countermeasure vessels (Russian has 6 of 1,100 tons or less), auxiliaries (cargo ships, ice breakers, logistic vessels, salvage vessels, tugs, tankers, oilers, transports, etc.), LCCs (amphibious command ships), submarine tenders, maritime prepositioning ships (T-AK), the USS Pueblo, and the USS Constitution.
We’re like policemen. We’re not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in the week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.
I have plans on Afghanistan that if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be gone, it would be over literally in 10 days.
Well, to start with it is pretty hard to kill 10 million people. We won’t discuss the six or so cases where people actually succeeded in doing this, they are pretty well known. None of them were done in 10 days. It would appear that the only way you could cause such havoc in 10 days would be through a massive nuclear attack. It would have to be fairly extensive attack to kill 10 million of the 35 million people in Afghanistan, especially as they are somewhat dispersed.
Is someone actually discussing this possibility inside the White House or Pentagon? I seriously doubt it.
Now, I have never been involved in estimating losses from a nuclear attack. It can be done. Each bomb or missile has a lethal radius, a less-than-lethal radius, and of course, there is radiation poisoning, nuclear fallout, and a rather extended long-term series of illnesses, as the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could recount in painful detail. It would certainly require dozens of nuclear bombs. The U.S. has around 1,800 deployed nuclear warheads.
He also said:
If we wanted to, we could win that war. I have a plan that would win that war in the very short period of time.
I do find that hard to believe, as large insurgencies have been particularly intractable. See page 47 of my book America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.
Portner (2008) and Evans, Hu & Zhao (2008) show that fertility decreases with hurricane and high-severity storm warnings, whereas Rodgers, John & Coleman (2005) and Trail & Borst (1971) find that fertility increased in Oklahoma County after Oklahoma City Bombing, in 1995 and in New York after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941, respectively.
We find that on average, the Cuban Missile Crisis did not have an effect on fertility. However, states closer to Cuba and with a greater presence of military installations experienced surges in births 8-10 months after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The findings suggest that individuals are more likely to engage in reproductive activities when facing high mortality risks, but reduce fertility when facing a high probability of enduring the aftermath of a catastrophe.
Just for the record, my father was deployed to Florida for the Cuban Missile Crisis and was part of the units that would have landed in the initial wave. It was an volunteer only effort, as they were anticipating high casualties. None of the men in his unit choose not to volunteer.
I was born well before that time, and, I am the youngest of the family. I have no relatives in Florida.
Putin: “We aren’t threatening anyone, we aren’t going to attack anyone, we aren’t going to take anything from anyone,” — Why does this remind me of a Twisted Sister song?
Putin: “The growing Russian military power will guarantee global peace.”
America has 652 deployed ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and heavy bombers, while Russia has 527. The U.S. possesses 1,350 nuclear warheads on deployed ICBMs, SLBMs and heavy bombers, while Russia has 1,444. The U.S. claims 800 deployed and nondeployed nuclear launchers, while Russia is estimated to have 779. Note that this is all limited under existing treaties between the U.S. and USSR.
Putin: “I want to tell all those who have fuelled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful sanctions aimed to contain our country’s development: All what you wanted to impede with your policies have already happened. You have failed to contain Russia.”
On the other hand, if you are going to get into an arms race….you kind of need to have the mula to back it up.
U.S. GDP = 19,362,129 Million $ (2017 IMF figures)
USSR Russia’s GDP = $1,469,341
This is 7.6% of the U.S. GDP. Russia’s GDP is lower than South Korea’s. The European Union’s GDP is $17,112,922 million.
Right now, I gather the President of the United States has the authority to unilaterally fire off the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal on a whim. Whether this would actually happen if he tried to order this is hard to say. But I gather there is no real legal impediment to him waking up one morning and deciding to nuke some city and that there is no formal process in place that actually stops him from doing this.
This is a set of conditions that came into being during the Cold War for the sake of making our nuclear deterrent and strike and counterstrike capability more credible. The U.S. and Russian no longer have their nukes targeted at each other. This is more a matter of good manners and is something that could be changed in a moments notice.
Is it time for the United States to consider placing the authority to launch nuclear weapons under control of more than one person? Perhaps the authority of three people, the president, a senior military leader, and a representative of congress?
There is a little technical difficulty here, for in the case of an emergency, the President, Vice-President and Speaker of the House would be shuttled off to separate locations. Still, there could be a designated representative for the military (commanding general or his representative at United States Strategic Command) and one of our 535 congressmen or senators appointed as a representative for congress. There are any number of ways to make sure that three people would be required to authorized a launch of a nuclear weapon, as opposed to leaving a decision that could exterminate millions in seconds in the hands of one man. With the Cold War now in the distant past, and nuclear strike forces a fraction of their original size, maybe it is time to consider changing this.
[The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension (1984)]
While the need for the president of the United States to respond swiftly to a nuclear emergency is clear, should there be limits on the commander in chief’s authority to order use of nuclear weapons in situations that fall below the threshold of existential threat? The question has arisen because the administration of President Donald Trump has challenged the existing taboos against nuclear use.
Last November, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing to investigate the topic, which congress had not considered since the height of the Cold War in the mid-1970s. Called at the behest of Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), the committee chairman, the hearing appeared intended to address congressional concerns over rumors of consideration of a preemptive U.S. attack on North Korea that could include nuclear strikes.
The consensus of the witnesses called to testify was that as presently construed, there is little statutory limit on the president’s power to authorize nuclear weapon use. The witnesses also questioned the wisdom of legislating changes to the existing setup.
Professor Peter Fever of Duke University, a noted scholar on nuclear issues and former National Security Council advisor, caveated between presidential authority to respond to a “bolt from the blue” surprise nuclear strike by an adversary, which was unquestioned, and the legitimacy of unilaterally ordering the use of nuclear weapons in a non-emergency scenario, which would be far more dubious. He conceded that there is no formal test for legality; the only real constraint would lie in the judgement of U.S. military personnel whether or not to carry out a presidential order of uncertain lawfulness.
There is no existing statutory framework undergirding the existing arrangement; it is an artifact of the urgency of the Cold War nuclear arms race. Under the Atomic Energy Act, congress gave responsibility for development, production, and custody of nuclear weapons to the executive branch, but has passed no laws defining the circumstances under which they may or may not be used. Harry S. Truman alone decided to use atomic bombs against Japan in 1945. In the late-1950s, Dwight D. Eisenhower secretly pre-delegated authority to use nuclear weapons in certain emergency situations to some U.S. theater commanders; these instructions were also adopted by John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Several presidents authorized secret deployment of nuclear weapons to overseas storage locations.
The U.S. constitution offers no clear guidance. War power are divided between congress, which has the sole authority to declare war and to raise and maintain armed forces, and the president, who is commander in chief of the armed forces. Congress attempted to clarify the circumstances when it was permissible for the president to unilaterally authorize the use of military force in the War Powers Resolution of 1973. It stipulates that the president may commit U.S. military forces abroad only following a congressional declaration of war or authorization to use force, or in response to “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” Successive presidents have held that the resolution is unconstitutional, however, and have ignored its provisions on several occasions.
Congress has traditionally afforded presidents wide deference in the conduct of foreign affairs and military conflicts, albeit under its existing mechanisms of oversight. In waging wars, presidents are subject to U.S. law, including obligations to follow congressionally-approved international conventions defining the laws of war. While the president and congress have disagreed over whether or not to begin or end foreign conflicts, the legislative branch has rarely elected to impose limits on a president’s prerogatives on how to wage such conflicts, to include the choice of weapons to be employed.
The situation in Korea is an interesting case in itself. It was the first post-World War II case where a president committed U.S. military forces to an overseas conflict without seeking a congressional declaration of war. Congress neither authorized U.S. intervention in 1950 nor sanctioned the 1953 armistice that led to a cessation of combat. Truman instead invoked United Nations Security Council resolutions as justification for intervening in what he termed a “police action.”
Legally, the U.S. remains in a state of hostilities with North Korea. The 1953 armistice that halted the fighting was supposed to lead to a formal peace treaty, but an agreement was never consummated. Under such precedents, the Trump administration could well claim that that the president is within his constitutional prerogatives in deciding to employ nuclear weapons there in a case of renewed hostilities.
In all reality, defining the limits of presidential authority over nuclear weapons would be a political matter. While congress possesses the constitutional right to legislate U.S. laws on the subject, actually doing so would likely require a rare bipartisan sense of purpose strong enough to overcome what would undoubtedly be resolute political and institutional opposition. Even if such a law was passed, it is likely every president would view it is an unconstitutional infringement on executive power. Resolving an impasse could provoke a constitutional crisis. Leaving it unresolved could also easily result in catastrophic confusion in the military chain of command in an emergency. Redefining presidential nuclear authority would also probably require an expensive retooling of the nuclear command and control system. It would also introduce unforeseen second and third order effects into American foreign policy and military strategy.
In the end, a better solution to the problem might simply be for the American people to exercise due care in electing presidents to trust with decisions of existential consequence. Or they could decide to mitigate the risk by drastically reducing or abolishing the nuclear stockpile.
It will be a little bit before the F-35 is capable of shooting down North Korea ballistic missiles. There are some “slight tweaks” that have to be done.
There is THAAD, which in a recent test the system in Alaska intercepted a U.S. ballistic missile fired over the Pacific.
There is GMD, which according to Atlantic magazine is 55% effective. Last May it did intercept an ICBM that was launched from 4,200 miles away.
They could develop drones with lasers
“Of North Korea were to launch only one missile at us, we could probably shoot it down…But their new missile could carry some very simply decoys, and it’s not certain that the missile we send out will be able to tell the difference between debris, decoys and a real warhead.”
There are several interesting links in the article.
The article also notes the need for the North Koreas to “master missile guidance and targeting” and the two-stage missile was at least partially liquid fueled, which takes time and can provide U.S. intelligence with a warning before it is launched.
Anyhow, it is still a developing program, although they have surprised people with how fast they have developed.
Flight trajectories of North Korean missile tests, May-November 2017. [The Washington Post]
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) conducted another ballistic missile test yesterday. Following a nearly vertical “lofted trajectory,” the test missile reached a height of 2,800 miles and impacted 620 miles downrange in the Sea of Japan. This performance would give the missile, which the North Koreans have designated the Hwasong-15, a strike range of 8,100 miles, which would include all of the United States.
Appended here is a roundup of TDI posts that address the political and military challenges posed by North Korea. It should be noted that the DPRK nuclear program has been underway for decades and has defied easy resolution thus far. There are no clear options at this stage and each potential solution carries a mix of risk and reward. The DPRK is highly militarized and the danger of catastrophic conflict looms large, with the potential to inflict military and civilian casualties running into the hundreds of thousands or more.
The first set of posts address a potential war on the Korean peninsula.
