The Mess

[SuburbanFarmer]

Had a funny thought, with all this talk about nuclear war.

Imagine the psychology of a sub crew that's just launched their missiles, not knowing if there's any port to return to. I'd imagine that protocol dictates that they submerge again, and return to base. Do they even have radiation detectors on board to determine whether they can disembark safely? Do they go to an alternate port?

I'd imagine that they most likely just go rogue and sail away...

[TheReal_ND]

It's not so funny a thought because at the end of the day it's the captain that chooses to launch and that is the protocol. He may launch or he may not. It's literally in his chain of command. He may nuke you tomorrow unprompted if he wishes to.

[Smitty-48]

In the case of a preemptive counterforce, as the Americans would still have the capacity to retaliate with tactical nuclear weapons in an ad hoc countervalue scenario, the Russian Boomers would simply return to their bastions to add their weight to the attack submarine force attempting to hunt down the American SSN's, which could stll pose a threat with nuclear tipped SLCM's. Upon American capitulation, they would return to Murmansk and Petropavlosk to reload with fresh SLBM's as available.

[TheReal_ND]

Sky King will eliminate that threat but what worries me, or actually doesn't, is the fact that Russia is prepared for midnight and America is still trolling.

[Smitty-48]

A preemptive counterforce could not be executed until the American SSBN's on patrol in their bastions were sunk, along with nuclear torpedo attacks on the American SSBN bases at Kings Bay and Kitsap, thus, the TACAMO would be broadcasting the EAM's to the dead by that point.

A first strike is like a sniper initiated assault, once the "snipers" have all the SSBN's in the kill zone, that is what initiates the attack.

[TheReal_ND]

Well that's precisely the problem. The Sky Kings would go out to a few captains and by then it won't make a difference. Russia is playing it cool. I tip my military fedora at Putin.

[Smitty-48]

It's a question of time, the National Command Authority would have no idea that the SSBN's were down, they don't broadcast, they only recieive, so there would be no signal as the Boomers were sunk, the Boomers do not have the CIP keys, so they can't launch a retaliation until the NCA figures out what is going on and then transmits them, this buys the Russians all sorts of time to get to the Boomers in the bastions, they're going to use underwater tac nukes, they don't need to get close, and they wont miss, then the NCA would have to assess why the DSP was down all at once, and then issue the Gold Codes to TACAMO, by the time all that went down, the Russian SLBM's would already be raining down on the Great Plains.

[Montegriffo]

Had a funny thought, with all this talk about nuclear war.

Imagine the psychology of a sub crew that's just launched their missiles, not knowing if there's any port to return to. I'd imagine that protocol dictates that they submerge again, and return to base. Do they even have radiation detectors on board to determine whether they can disembark safely? Do they go to an alternate port?

I'd imagine that they most likely just go rogue and sail away...

I heard a really good radio play about that once, wish I could remember it's name. Pretty much what you said happened and the crew were stuck in the middle of the Pacific with no radio contact just interference and they had to decide what to do.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I heard a really good radio play about that once, wish I could remember it's name. Pretty much what you said happened and the crew were stuck in the middle of the Pacific with no radio contact just interference and they had to decide what to do.

Sounds like Hunt For Red October.

It's a question of time, the National Command Authority would have no idea that the SSBN's were down, they don't broadcast, they only recieive, so there would be no signal as the Boomers were sunk, the Boomers do not have the CIP keys, so they can't launch a retaliation until the NCA figures out what is going on and then transmits them, this buys the Russians all sorts of time to get to the Boomers in the bastions, they're going to use underwater tac nukes, they don't need to get close, and they wont miss, then the NCA would have to assess why the DSP was down all at once, and then issue the Gold Codes to TACAMO, by the time all that went down, the Russian SLBM's would already be raining down on the Great Plains.

Underwater tac nukes? And that's not going to be noticed by the US forces within seconds?

Ridiculous fantasy, and exactly the kind of thinking that could end the world.

[Smitty-48]

The key thing to understand, is that the situation has changed fundamentally since the end of the Cold War, during the Cold War, America possessed massive redundancy within the TRIAD, thousands of warheads on alert, hundreds of bombers flying failsafe, dozens of Boomers on patrol, there was simply no way for the Soviets to reliably execute a preemptive counterforce therein, but due to the ostensible "peace dividend' and ceaseless agitation by the "peace movement", railing against the ostensible "overkill" of massive redundancy, the American deterrent is no longer thus, and it is not maintained at the same level of hair trigger alert neither, so it is only now, in the age of bare minimum deterrence, wherein the window for executing a preemptive counterforce has once again opened, not for technical reasons, but rather poltical.