NATO can easily deny Russia using first strike nuclear attack.
Without centralised command issuing computerised targeting info, it will be for missile officers own initiative to launch them, fully knowing from what they learned in the military academy that an uncoordinated launch will likely be futile.
USA missile defences in Arctic, and North Pacific can guarantee intercept a dozen uncoordinated launches, if what Raytheon says is true.
Raytheon has never guaranteed anything. GMD tests have been very limited with many failures. And I don't mean that as a criticism of Raytheon or the other defense contractors involved; ballistic missile defense is extremely hard and getting it working at all was an amazing technical accomplishment.
>USA missile defences in Arctic, and North Pacific can guarantee intercept a dozen uncoordinated launches, if what Raytheon says is true.
Russia has >6000 Nukes. If most were launched and missile defense systems have a 99% success rate that is still 10s of Nuclear strikes on the US Mainland. This would be the end of the US and likely irradiates large parts of North America...
46 R36, 6 with 20MT warheads, 40 with 10 1MT MIRV. 406 warheads total.
36 UR100
162 Topols
The Russian airforce doesn't have serious nukes, the land force don't have megaton scale weapons either.
R36, and UR100 in silos are the only genuine first strike option, everything else is a retaliation weapon. Only a coordinated first strike gives Russia a chance on victory, it's impossible with military C3 beheaded. The surviving military officers in bunkers in far reaches of the country would know that each of them don't have enough forces under their command to continue the war.
Without centralised command issuing computerised targeting info, it will be for missile officers own initiative to launch them, fully knowing from what they learned in the military academy that an uncoordinated launch will likely be futile.
USA missile defences in Arctic, and North Pacific can guarantee intercept a dozen uncoordinated launches, if what Raytheon says is true.