What makes you think that Russia uses their budget more efficiently than Germany, with less beaurocracy, corruption and nepotism?
And I think France’s 290 nukes should be sufficient deterrent.
That’s enough to nuke earth back into the iron age.
If that’s not deterring an attacker, nothing will.
You have a good point about a lacking unified command structure. Although NATO’s structure won’t supersede the member countries’ so you’ll have overlapping authorities and friction in any case.
What makes you think that Russia uses their budget more efficiently than Germany, with less corruption and nepotism?
Of course, they are using it for corruption and nepotism, but still they are buying whatever useful they are buying despite of this orders of magnitude cheaper.
And I think France’s 290 nukes should be sufficient deterrent.
France doesn’t have many carrier systems for a credible second strike. Their strategic deterrent consists of 4 missile submarines, each carrying 16 missiles with 6 warheads each. At most two of those submarines can be armed and at sea at once, (typically, one is at sea at all times, another one is armed in port, ready to put to sea on short notice, while the remaining two are undergoing maintenance or are training) so it’s at best 192 warheads available for a second strike, from only two launch platforms. That’s a lot, but not the level of overkill available to the large nuclear powers, also it relies on the submarine(s) at sea remaining undetected. If an adversary manages to reliably detect and track the submarines, their deterrence value against that adversary approaches zero. With current geopolitical realities, one of the potential adversaries to be deterred are the USA, which do operate a worldwide hydrophone network for submarine detection and tracking, of unknown capabilities. The USA are also ruled by a clique of unhinged megalomaniacs who might be willing to disregard a threat if they only believe hard enough that they can neutralise it.
Honestly, if we’re at a point where Europe’s second strike capability against the US becomes important, then everything we can discuss here will be irrelevant already.
Honestly, if we’re at a point where Europe’s second strike capability against the US becomes important, then everything we can discuss here will be irrelevant already.
The USA have already threatened to invade the territory of a European country. It has been important since then.
What makes you think that Russia uses their budget more efficiently than Germany, with less beaurocracy, corruption and nepotism?
And I think France’s 290 nukes should be sufficient deterrent.
That’s enough to nuke earth back into the iron age.
If that’s not deterring an attacker, nothing will.
You have a good point about a lacking unified command structure. Although NATO’s structure won’t supersede the member countries’ so you’ll have overlapping authorities and friction in any case.
Of course, they are using it for corruption and nepotism, but still they are buying whatever useful they are buying despite of this orders of magnitude cheaper.
France doesn’t have many carrier systems for a credible second strike. Their strategic deterrent consists of 4 missile submarines, each carrying 16 missiles with 6 warheads each. At most two of those submarines can be armed and at sea at once, (typically, one is at sea at all times, another one is armed in port, ready to put to sea on short notice, while the remaining two are undergoing maintenance or are training) so it’s at best 192 warheads available for a second strike, from only two launch platforms. That’s a lot, but not the level of overkill available to the large nuclear powers, also it relies on the submarine(s) at sea remaining undetected. If an adversary manages to reliably detect and track the submarines, their deterrence value against that adversary approaches zero. With current geopolitical realities, one of the potential adversaries to be deterred are the USA, which do operate a worldwide hydrophone network for submarine detection and tracking, of unknown capabilities. The USA are also ruled by a clique of unhinged megalomaniacs who might be willing to disregard a threat if they only believe hard enough that they can neutralise it.
Honestly, if we’re at a point where Europe’s second strike capability against the US becomes important, then everything we can discuss here will be irrelevant already.
The USA have already threatened to invade the territory of a European country. It has been important since then.