Video: Networked Army Radar Destroys 2 Maneuvering Cruise Missiles
By Peter Huessy, President of GeoStrategic Analysis, Potomac, Maryland – Senior Warrior Maven Columnist
December 10, 2020, Nuclear Triad Symposium, Sponsored by the Air Force Association Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Cyber Innovation Center, and Louisiana Tech Research Institute Symposium, remarks of Peter Huessy, director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies
MR. PETER HUESSY: Hi, I’m Peter Huessy. I am director of strategic deterrent studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, as part of the Air Force Association, and I’m here to talk to you about deterrence, arms control, nuclear modernization, and in particular the role of the ICBMs in our nuclear deterrent. As part of this discussion, I will review some of the common misconceptions and mythologies surrounding the nuclear deterrent business especially efforts to eliminate the ICBM leg of the Triad.
Let us start with the question of “What is deterrence?” People particularly the disarmament community, often assume that deterrence is having enough retaliatory capabilities to blow up the other guy’s cities. First, we don’t blow the other guy’s cities up. Our deterrent is based on taking out their military capability so they no longer can fight seriously and achieve their hegemonic aims. The idea of MAD, or mutual assured destruction, was a strategy developed in the 1960’s but has long ago been jettisoned.
When one looks at history and looks at totalitarian powers like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, both countries fought on even though they knew they were defeated, even though they were losing hundreds of thousands of people in their cities from bombing. They continued to fight and did not surrender. Therefore, it is very instructive to know that totalitarian countries highly value their military capabilities that enable them to achieve their aggressive and hegemonic aims. So, deterrence is having sufficient capabilities to go back at them and take out their military capabilities, which in the case of nuclear deterrence, is their remaining ICBMs, their submarines, their bombers, and critical conventional forces.
The second issue is, what’s the threat? We can make a point that since the New START Treaty was signed between the United States and Russia, Russia has built over 20 new types of nuclear weapons systems, including cruise missiles, bombers, land-based ICBMs, sea-launched ballistic missiles, and submarines. And, in fact, since the end of the Cold War, roughly in 1992, the Russians have built not 21, but 31 new types of nuclear weapons systems, basically, 80 percent of the pace that they had during the Cold War.
