Sea changes: The future of nuclear deterrence

Abstract

In order to deter adversaries, a nuclear-armed power must deploy an invulnerable second-strike force; its leadership must display the willingness to use that force under certain well-defined circumstances; and it must make believers out of the prospective foes it hopes to deter, convincing them that its capability is real, and it has the resolve to use it. But new technology is empowering navies to peer underneath the sea, finding deep-running submarines more effectively than ever before. This calls into question the invulnerability of nuclear-powered ballisticmissile submarines, the most invulnerable retaliatory asset there is. This article explores the dynamics shaping undersea nuclear deterrence in the second nuclear age and ventures some speculation about how submarine combat may unfold in the coming decades.

Reference Phase Stabilizer for Distributed Underwater Sonar Systems

“…Detailed descriptions about distributed sonar system can be found in Refs. [2,3,4] and “Distributed Agile Submarine Hunting (DASH)” program disclosed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) [5]. To accurately measure the direction of arrival (DOA) of echoed signals, all sensor nodes share a highly stable reference signal.…”

How Might Artificial Intelligence Affect the Risk of Nuclear War?

“…AI technologies could help enable new breakthroughs in tracking and targeting and in antisubmarine warfare or make it easier for high-precision conventional munitions to destroy hardened ICBM silos (Holmes, 2016 This is tantamount to the adoption of a launch-under-attack posture that could place great pressure on Russian leaders to launch first in a crisis, increasing the chances of accidental escalation.…”