Navies in the second nuclear age
When it comes to risk, in peace, crisis or war, context isn’t everything. But it’s almost everything. US security faces an increasingly nuclear context as these weapons have spread to nine countries, and counting. China’s nuclear breakout is especially significant. Moreover, new technology (AI, hypersonic missiles, smart drones, cyber) create options unseen in the Cold War for conventional counterforce attack of enemy nuclear missiles. The growing nuclear context shapes how—and even whether—the new technologies will be used in peace, crisis, or war. The US must avoid a situation where it faces a choice of capitulation or nuclear war
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New war machines and old nuclear weapons
Strategic competition is increasingly based on technology. Fighting with mass armies and colossal numbers of ships and aircraft would be so costly, and politically unacceptable, as to be impractical. US global leadership therefore depends on technology.
The information revolution is central to this strategy because it allows the United States to substitute technology for force structure. The exponential increase in information undergirds US leadership. The Global Information Grid’s scale and
Counterforce in the second nuclear age
Overly narrow framing of the use of nuclear weapons was a problem in the past. But the new war machines now give an ability to destroy others’ nuclear forces with conventional weapons. Call it conventional counterforce. It combines information from AI, drones, target recognition, satellites, undersea sensors, and cyber hacks with the new war machines, hypersonic missiles, stealth, autonomy, and others. The result is a conventional kill network that can destroy nearly any target. Moreover, it
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030438723000571
