The_Atomic_Pigeon

In my last video I explained how the risk of nuclear war can be minimised by making the nuclear deterrent force as survivable as possible, however this all assumes that you have a secure and survivable Nuclear Command, Control and Communications or NC3 system. If your nuclear forces are able to survive even a full-scale surprise attack from an enemy without having to be launched before enemy warheads reach their targets, then the incentive to launch your forces on an unconfirmed warning of enemy attack is eliminated. In this case it does not matter if your nuclear forces are on high or low alert or whether you launch your weapons before enemy warheads arrive, or after they have hit their targets, the result will be the same, a response is inevitable. This reduces the chance that you will view reports of an unconfirmed attack as credible, and therefore responding to it, now both you and your enemy know that they cannot possibly win a nuclear war with you, as you will always be a...

Many people consider the de-alerting of nuclear weapons to be a positive step towards reducing the likelihood of nuclear war, however, despite its advantages, many fail to address the inherent issues that prevent this concept from becoming a reality. Let’s consider the practicality of de alerting the various parts of the nuclear triad. Bombers can be de alerted by keeping them unfuelled and keeping their weapons locked inside nearby weapons storage facilities, this is something an adversary could verify using near real time surveillance satellites. Requiring aircraft to be both fuelled and armed before take-off would take many hours and be readily detectible to an adversary. Silo based ICBMs can be de alerted by placing large, heavy objects over their lids, to remove all of the objects may take days. Mobile ICBMs could have their warheads removed to be stored in secure facilities at their bases again possibly requiring days for all warheads to be re-install. Again, both of ...

Ballistic missile defence systems often work by using a kinetic kill vehicle to smash into its target. Let’s consider an attacking country launching an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile, or ICBM, against a defending country. There are 4 different phases of a ballistic missile flight that we will consider: boost, post-boost, mid-course, and terminal. The boost phase lasts between 3 and 5 minutes depending on whether the ICBM is solid, or liquid fuelled. This is technically the easiest time to shoot the missile down however this is usually impractical due to the location of the missile from interceptors at the time. The post boost phase can last between 5 and 10 minutes where the post boost vehicle, or bus, manoeuvres into predesignated locations to release warheads and decoys. Intercepting the bus is more difficult than intercepting the entire missile, but far easier than intercepting each object released by the bus. The midcourse phase can last 20 minutes, when the warhea...

MIRVs refer to when a ballistic missile carries Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles, which are arranged on a bus. The warheads are released shortly after the boost phase of the missile, decoys are also carried to enable the warheads to penetrate enemy missile defences. The purpose of MIRVs is to deploy a greater number of warheads for a given number of missiles, as it is far easier to deploy multiple warheads on a single missile than to deploy another missile for each warhead. This is especially important when considering practical limits on the number of missiles available, such as on a ballistic missile submarine, a mobile missile regiment, or a limited number of missile silos. For a given number of warheads, whether or not they are deployed on MIRVed missiles may only affect the timings of the warheads reaching their targets. MIRVs are often described as a way to overcome missile defence systems, however this is only the case when using MIRVs allows a greate...