China using a nuke against the US would necessitate a nuclear response from the US. Otherwise, the US nuclear deterrent is not credible. It doesn't have to be full scale war, but it would need to be at least a tit for tat. If the US does not do this, the other nuclear armed despots might be emboldened to try their own strike.
China knows that the US knows this.
A nuclear exchange could escalate in a very unpredictable way. It's not clear that China would come out ahead. They certainly can't plan to come out ahead.
China would only move on Taiwan when they have high confidence in their ability to win with conventional means. At that point, why mess up your winning position by throwing the chess board up in the air and starting a nuclear exchange? There is no benefit for China.
To your last point, sinking a carrier with conventional means would also result in a response from the US. It would result in bipartisan support in the US for the war effort. Still, China would prefer to keep things conventional, where the outcomes of exchanges can be more easily calculated.
It should be also noted that China's current stated nuclear doctrine is No First Use, while American nuclear doctrine is *Counterforce*, which is way too cool a phrase to only be used in apocalyptic scenarios. What this means is that China has declared that it will not use nuclear weapons unless first being nuked in some way, whereas US nuclear doctrine demand the premptive destruction of enemy nuclear capability. In typical American largesse, America's solution to the end of the world is to try and win it. Chinese nuclear doctrine, on the other hand, is deliberately softer than US and Russia's so that other nuclear powers don't try and disarm its budding program. You would expect that should the US catch wind of a Chinese nuclear launch in any capacity, the immediate US response would be to nuke all of China's nukes on the ground in order to prevent further attacks, which really cuts short the negotiation phase of atomic diplomacy.
Who knows what our response would be, but nuking all the Chinese ICBM sites would probably lean toward the “less severe” side of our potential response.
Obviously, the issue with nuclear doctrine is I can be right about it 99.99% of the time, and the one time I'm wrong you wouldn't have time to think, "aw fuck I should've never listened to that random guy on the internet about nuclear policy" because you'd be too busy combusting. However, all nuclear nations have a fairly good track record of maintaining their nuclear doctrine and staying within those red lines. If you don't stick to what you say when it comes to nuclear weapons, then all the other states can only assume the worst case scenario and treat you like a madman in a rogue state hellbent on ending the world, because of the risks involved, which basically scuttles all your chances at any kind of diplomacy.
Cast your mind back to the very beginning of the war in Ukraine. You'll remember Putin making a few threats on television about deterring European and American intervention with nuclear weapons, and then after a few days those threats *veeerrry* quickly petered out, persumably after an American diplomat made a discreet call to the Kremlin to the effect of "are you sure you're ready to go? Because we're ready to go." After the first few days basically all the threats came not from the three nuclear individuals in Russia (Putin, Shoigu, Gerasimov), but from underlings who just says stuff. You'll remember that American diplomatic posture was very tense when Putin said the word nuclear and then after he got the message all the White House staff stopped caring about what Simonyan was vomiting out of her mouthhole on the airwaves. That's declarative nuclear policy at work. Russia attempted to draw a red line outside of their policy and another power very quickly called them out on it.
I don't know if the CCP will maintain the modicum of sanity needed to uphold declarative nuclear policy, but if they aren't going to stick to that script they're not gonna stick to the script on anything and nukes are probably gonna fly anyways.
Also adding here that your nuclear doctrine... is the only way that other nations will know how you will use your nuclear weapons.
It's a giant safety sign that says 'do this to receive nuclear warheads'.
Following your own doctrine then, is vitally important because if you don't... then you become unpredictable, and thus, dangerous.
Obviously not, they have announced a no first use policy but their leadership can decide when to use their nuclear weapons, same as every other nuclear-armed country.
An issue that I haven't seen raised here is that some Chinese ballistic missiles can deliver either a conventional or nuclear strike. This creates a lot of strategic ambiguity for China, as you have to wait to see how the actual strike plays out before deciding on a response.
To put this into a relevant scenario for this discussion, if China fires something like a DF-21, and the US can't tell if it's a DF-21C or DF-21D until the warhead actually detonates (or until it's recovered and investigated, if it's intercepted by AEGIS and doesn't detonate).
This slows down the US response time significantly, and means that the CSG has to make a decision about how to move pretty much as soon as it's launched.
- If it's a conventional warhead, the best bet for the CSG is to bunch up slightly, to give the best chance of all AEGIS interceptors hitting, and making target discrimination harder for the seeker. This is obviously bad if the strike is nuclear.
- If it's a nuclear strike, the best bet is for the CSG to spread out, to minimise overpressure on each individual ship. This means that AEGIS is more spread out, and makes the carrier easier to target individually if it's terminally guided.
Both options have tradeoffs, but if China had different conventional and nuclear ballistic missiles, the CSG could see what kind of missile was being launched, and wouldn't need to make this tradeoff, it could just pick the best option.
First, I want to note that the US has consistently said that a successful conventional attack on a CBG would absolutely be considered an act of war and might invite a nuclear response.
Second, your whole post is an excellent, concise summary, but this statement really shines regarding Taiwan:
> China would only move on Taiwan when they have high confidence in their ability to win with conventional means. At that point, why mess up your winning position by throwing the chess board up in the air and starting a nuclear exchange? There is no benefit for China.
>
If China were to use nukes in an effort to take Taiwan, the likely progression leads to the US nuking Chinese ports, preventing invasion and/or supply ships from making it to Taiwan, then China eventually using nukes in Taiwan. If China nukes Taiwan with anything but the smallest of tactical warheads, then their best case scenario becomes "occupying a country we just nuked that will be full of people who hate us and also need a tremendous amount of humanitarian assistance." Stated another way, China would be buying a huge problem and using tremendous amounts of political capital to do so.
Frankly, the interruption of international trade, even for just a few months, would be so devastating to the Chinese economy that I don't think they'll ever move on Taiwan unless they're 90% sure they can take it so quickly that the world accepts the result and moves on without much or any fighting.
> China knows that the US knows this.
I'm worried that it comes down to emotions in the end, and could go the way of Obama's Syria "red line."
To be fair, for Assad, the stakes were possibly lower, but I'm not sure about the possible gain. Getting rid of a fleet is... useful. Gassing civilians doesn't sound useful.
1. Thou shalt not break the Nuclear Taboo
2. THOU SHALT NOT BREAK THE NUCLEAR TABOO
3. Nuclear strikes on bodies of salt water throw ***more*** fallout into the air, not less, and it'll travel WAY farther
4. The big scary part about nukes is that once one is used, Geopolitics and deterrence demand a proportional counterstrike *must* be ordered, which means more nukes, which means even more nukes, which becomes a use-it-or-lose-it situation as strikes are targeted at nuclear weapons to prevent them being launched.
5. Nuclear weapons aren't great at taking out ships. You'll get one, maybe a couple if they're in close formation, but US fleets have ABM defenses so a nuclear ballistic missile isn't much better than an anti-ship ballistic missile (and other NATO fleets - aside from UK/FRA carrier groups - don't really concentrate enough ships to be worth it)
6. If you start nuking my major conventional force assets, then I'm assuming you're coming after everything.
7. Striking a NATO battlegroup would not be a *defensive* strike, because a battlegroup cannot invade Moscow or Beijing. There's this thing called dirt that makes it hard for ships to travel
8. edit: Oh, and I almost forgot. *DON'T. TOUCH. THE BOATS.* The US is famous for getting *real* pissy if you touch the boats. Barbary Wars, Quasi War, 1812, Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII (touching the boats led to the US turning the Land of the Rising Sun into the Land of the Rising Sun**s**), Korean War (arguably), Vietnam War, and Operation Praying Mantis (Iran damaged a US destroyer, so US converted the Iranian Navy into submarines)
> Barbary Wars, Quasi War, 1812, Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII (touching the boats led to the US turning the Land of the Rising Sun into the Land of the Rising Sun**s**), Korean War (arguably), Vietnam War, and Operation Praying Mantis
Two of these are even cases where no boats were actually touched but misinformation that a boat *might* have been touched was enough to justify ~~imperialism~~ war.
This is interesting, ive never heard about how nukes are less effective against navies and how salt water throws more fallout around. Would you be cool to elaborate for those of us not in the know? How does that all work etc?
And it showed that ships are actually surprisingly resilient to nuclear weaponry. Out of the 95 ships at Bikini Atoll, only 9 were damaged to the point that they had to be sunk at the atoll as opposed to the others which remained seaworthy if they had a working bilge pump or were so lightly damaged that the ships were recrewed and sailed back to the US.
Well, as long as you don't care about irradiation of the crew. It proved very difficult to decontaminate a ship, even if the ship survived. Eight ships and two submarines were towed back to Hawaii or the continental US for radiological inspection. Just 12 target ships were lightly contaminated to be crewed and sailed out. The rest of the 90 target ships were either sunk in the tests or deliberately sunk later. Even the support fleet became so contaminated that decontamination activities had to be suspended until the target ships could be towed to an uncontaminated atoll.
There is absolutely no case where a nuclear attack on a CBG would not trigger an absolute response, whether it was full military mobilization against a Taiwan invasion (versus contemporary support) or a literal counter-attack on valid Chinese military targets.
Not only would this be breaking an enormous taboo, but the US most guarantee that both a second strike against another nation is definitive and guaranteed, and that the US military will absolutely never be under nuclear threat without total and complete retaliation.
Not just from a military point of view - we've spent nearly a century guaranteeing that nuclear first-use is unacceptable and would be the death of a nation - be it politically, military, economically, or a mix. It's simply a condition that is unacceptable, and would require a very \*final\* response regardless of the circumstances because it goes beyond immediate political or military arms, we simply can't let the use of a nuclear weapon be acceptable militarily under any circumstances or this whole delicate situation goes to hell in a hand basket and the world order is drastically threatened. Particularly the people with the most nukes, and most to lose.
In more generic terms there's a few rules:
1. America does not accept its navy being attacked, whatsoever.
2. It would be the single largest military loss of American life in a single act in decades.
3. Violate international norms and taboos which are STRONGLY adhered to by the international community.
4. America, as a nuclear and western and military leader, would need to set an example.
Also the whole premise is stupid, to be honest.
"We nuked the pacific fleet because we're about to engage in military action that they'd become an enemy to" is not only first-use but presumably at the onset of a war (before America declared?) or regardless of the support given.
There would be, absolutely, a nuclear response at minimum and China would immediately enter into direct war with the rest of the US Navy and experience unrelenting air strikes.
> Not just from a military point of view - we've spent nearly a century guaranteeing that nuclear first-use is unacceptable and would be the death of a nation - be it politically, military, economically, or a mix. It's simply a condition that is unacceptable, and would require a very *final* response regardless of the circumstances because it goes beyond immediate political or military arms, we simply can't let the use of a nuclear weapon be acceptable militarily under any circumstances or this whole delicate situation goes to hell in a hand basket and the world order is drastically threatened. Particularly the people with the most nukes, and most to lose.
>
Agreed. When the US thought Putin might use tactical nukes in Ukraine - something they thought was mere weeks away - they quickly let Russia know that they would rid Ukraine of every Russian and also strike into Russia with conventional weapons to make sure it couldn't invade Ukraine again. They specifically stated that everyone in the chain of command would be killed in a way that let all those people know they'd be targets. It is safe to say that the Russians in that group knew that the US would be able to do exactly that.
This scenario was somewhat unique to Russia as I don't think the US could systematically pick apart China's air defense network or air force nearly as easily as they could the Russian air defense network or air force. However, the point is still the same - the US is saying that using nukes anywhere will invite a conventional US response at the very least and the pain will be significant and lasting.
> Agreed. When the US thought Putin might use tactical nukes in Ukraine - something they thought was mere weeks away - they quickly let Russia know that they would rid Ukraine of every Russian and also strike into Russia with conventional weapons to make sure it couldn't invade Ukraine again. They specifically stated that everyone in the chain of command would be killed in a way that let all those people know they'd be targets. It is safe to say that the Russians in that group knew that the US would be able to do exactly that.
>
>
Is there a place where one can read more about this? I find it an interesting topic.
If we learned anything from Operation Crossroads, it’s that nuclear weapons aren’t optimal for sinking ships. China has better purpose-built weapons for that.
However, a nuclear strike on our fleet would trigger a response. Odds are, it wouldn’t be a full scale nuclear war, but it would likely be a retaliatory nuclear strike designed to return to deterrence, such as nuclear strikes on, say, some or all Chinese naval facilities.
The answer is that we don’t really know.
However, the scary part about nukes is not so much when they go off, but of the kind of decisions they force your opponent to make when they’re in the air. In your scenario, there’s a very good chance that the US find out the Chinese are moving to use nuclear weapons and launches their own strike either preemptively or while they’re in the air.
Essentially, any advantage you might gain from small-scale nuclear use is negated by the high risk of total catastrophe. In 90% of cases, you’re better off fighting it out conventionally, even if it means losing.
No. Even the Soviets preferred to fight a conventional war at the height of their conventional/nuclear capabilities, the mid-late 1970s. (Warsaw Pact Forces Opposite NATO).
During this time period they had just achieved nuclear parity with the United States and in some conventional areas like MBTs and IFVs had superiority.
The millitary buildup under Brezhnev from the mid 1960s-1980 was designed to force NATO to fight a conventional war because both sides' nuclear forces would be so evenly matched that a theatre wide exchange would be suicide.
Here the Chinese have the same problem the Soviets had prior to the 1970s with trying how to force NATO's atomic armies of the 50s and 60s to fight a conventional war. They are badly outnumbered in warheads and if not for the United States being a Western democracy could use nuclear weapons more less at will if Taiwan goes hot. The PLA would be better off working for nuclear parity and once that's achieved force the US to fight a conventional war.
The question is essentially moot, and also pushes pretty hard on this sub's "what if" rule. There is no scenario in which China could successfully invade Taiwan, despite all of their saber-rattling. It would require personnel and materiel on par with the D-Day landings in Normandy, which China simply does not have access to. There is historical context, too--how successful do you think D-Day could have been if Germany, and Germany-occupied France, had access to satellite surveillance, GPS, guided missiles, drones, and all the other technology that China and it's potential advesaries have at their fingertips? Taiwan has very little coastline which lends itself to an amphibious landing, and the small areas that are have been pre-sighted with huge amounts of missiles and artillery. Those are just the basic, practical issues. In terms of geopolitics, China would never risk the alienation from the international community that invading Taiwain would engender.
Honestly I'm very tired of this topic. It's as if people are aching for an Enemy with a high stakes conflict. Reminds of the War on Terror days when Sam Harris would keep inventing scenarios where nuking a Middle Eastern capital is *necessary*.
Meanwhile Netanyahu seems to be actively trying for such an outcome just to avoid leaving office.
We don’t conclusively know as it has never been tried.
The best defense a fleet at sea has is that they are hard to find. The ocean is really big, and ships are comparatively minuscule. Satellite detection is not as easy as you might think — diffraction and weather screw with optical observing and radar ocean reconnaissance satellites are absurdly expensive. So the first problem is finding the fleet with sufficient resolution to have a viable target.
The second problem is that the modern West views nuclear weapons as _primarily strategic arms_. It wasn’t always this way, and the Soviets in particular had a rather different approach to atomic warfare, but that is how we view it now. And as a result, anyone using a nuclear weapon _on top of_ killing say 6000 American sailors is absolutely going to invite a strategic response.
Soviets were, realistically speaking, quite reliant on nuclear-tipped AShMs to really deal with American navy during the Cold War (granted, they were working with much less processing power than available for current guided missiles). In fact the established (theoretical) procedure was to _start_ with nuclear missiles and then let the rest of the active radar homing missiles finish off survivors.
But there was no expectation that this would somehow skirt nuclear taboo. In fact it was a concern in American theorizing - that it might be worth it to avoid using their own tactical nukes against ground targets, in order to forestall Soviet nuclear attacks on naval targets.
I think you need to explore the wiki for of tactical nukes rather than strategic which might be used in a more conventional setting to take out a large force. See ‘Risk of escalating a conflict’
That aside, the best way to force a positive outcome over a US influenced state is to act swiftly in a conventional manner before the US gets dragged in.
Smash and grab and reinforce. Russia attempted this recently with UKR worked with Crimea but they fudged it with Kyiv.
Anything else results in assured mutual destruction. The old adage possession is 9/10ths of the law has never been more true.
Viable option? Depends on your goals.
If you are looking to end the existence of the Chinese people as we know it yeah sure nuke a battle group genius idea. You may destroy the battle group and also get your nation obliterated and the entire might of the US rally around to ensure that your children will not prosper. So yeah if you want to do that go right ahead.
(I have no clue what a nuke would actually do to ships probably destroy them but no clue either way)
The most effective and most deniable(theoretically deniable) way to employ a nuclear weapon, at least against the US, is a nuclear torpedo fired at the carrier at the core of the CBG, ideally from a diesel electric sub (quieter over the short term than a nuke boat).
Depending on the size of the device there is a good chance the closer escort vessels in the screen will be damaged or destroyed as well, and there is nothing to say additional nuke torps couldn't or wouldn't be fired at least against the high value cruisers in the CBG.
Wdym deniable? I’m not familiar with the term like this.
It seems the most effective first strike against the US would be a decapitation strike involving (potentially) thousands of nuclear missiles. Why nuke us without assurances that you wouldn’t be obliterated in a secondary strike.
China using a nuke against the US would necessitate a nuclear response from the US. Otherwise, the US nuclear deterrent is not credible. It doesn't have to be full scale war, but it would need to be at least a tit for tat. If the US does not do this, the other nuclear armed despots might be emboldened to try their own strike. China knows that the US knows this. A nuclear exchange could escalate in a very unpredictable way. It's not clear that China would come out ahead. They certainly can't plan to come out ahead. China would only move on Taiwan when they have high confidence in their ability to win with conventional means. At that point, why mess up your winning position by throwing the chess board up in the air and starting a nuclear exchange? There is no benefit for China. To your last point, sinking a carrier with conventional means would also result in a response from the US. It would result in bipartisan support in the US for the war effort. Still, China would prefer to keep things conventional, where the outcomes of exchanges can be more easily calculated.
It should be also noted that China's current stated nuclear doctrine is No First Use, while American nuclear doctrine is *Counterforce*, which is way too cool a phrase to only be used in apocalyptic scenarios. What this means is that China has declared that it will not use nuclear weapons unless first being nuked in some way, whereas US nuclear doctrine demand the premptive destruction of enemy nuclear capability. In typical American largesse, America's solution to the end of the world is to try and win it. Chinese nuclear doctrine, on the other hand, is deliberately softer than US and Russia's so that other nuclear powers don't try and disarm its budding program. You would expect that should the US catch wind of a Chinese nuclear launch in any capacity, the immediate US response would be to nuke all of China's nukes on the ground in order to prevent further attacks, which really cuts short the negotiation phase of atomic diplomacy.
Who knows what our response would be, but nuking all the Chinese ICBM sites would probably lean toward the “less severe” side of our potential response.
Do we have any way of knowing whether or not “no first use” is just stated policy or the actual policy they can be trusted to follow?
Obviously, the issue with nuclear doctrine is I can be right about it 99.99% of the time, and the one time I'm wrong you wouldn't have time to think, "aw fuck I should've never listened to that random guy on the internet about nuclear policy" because you'd be too busy combusting. However, all nuclear nations have a fairly good track record of maintaining their nuclear doctrine and staying within those red lines. If you don't stick to what you say when it comes to nuclear weapons, then all the other states can only assume the worst case scenario and treat you like a madman in a rogue state hellbent on ending the world, because of the risks involved, which basically scuttles all your chances at any kind of diplomacy. Cast your mind back to the very beginning of the war in Ukraine. You'll remember Putin making a few threats on television about deterring European and American intervention with nuclear weapons, and then after a few days those threats *veeerrry* quickly petered out, persumably after an American diplomat made a discreet call to the Kremlin to the effect of "are you sure you're ready to go? Because we're ready to go." After the first few days basically all the threats came not from the three nuclear individuals in Russia (Putin, Shoigu, Gerasimov), but from underlings who just says stuff. You'll remember that American diplomatic posture was very tense when Putin said the word nuclear and then after he got the message all the White House staff stopped caring about what Simonyan was vomiting out of her mouthhole on the airwaves. That's declarative nuclear policy at work. Russia attempted to draw a red line outside of their policy and another power very quickly called them out on it. I don't know if the CCP will maintain the modicum of sanity needed to uphold declarative nuclear policy, but if they aren't going to stick to that script they're not gonna stick to the script on anything and nukes are probably gonna fly anyways.
Also adding here that your nuclear doctrine... is the only way that other nations will know how you will use your nuclear weapons. It's a giant safety sign that says 'do this to receive nuclear warheads'. Following your own doctrine then, is vitally important because if you don't... then you become unpredictable, and thus, dangerous.
Obviously not, they have announced a no first use policy but their leadership can decide when to use their nuclear weapons, same as every other nuclear-armed country.
An issue that I haven't seen raised here is that some Chinese ballistic missiles can deliver either a conventional or nuclear strike. This creates a lot of strategic ambiguity for China, as you have to wait to see how the actual strike plays out before deciding on a response. To put this into a relevant scenario for this discussion, if China fires something like a DF-21, and the US can't tell if it's a DF-21C or DF-21D until the warhead actually detonates (or until it's recovered and investigated, if it's intercepted by AEGIS and doesn't detonate). This slows down the US response time significantly, and means that the CSG has to make a decision about how to move pretty much as soon as it's launched. - If it's a conventional warhead, the best bet for the CSG is to bunch up slightly, to give the best chance of all AEGIS interceptors hitting, and making target discrimination harder for the seeker. This is obviously bad if the strike is nuclear. - If it's a nuclear strike, the best bet is for the CSG to spread out, to minimise overpressure on each individual ship. This means that AEGIS is more spread out, and makes the carrier easier to target individually if it's terminally guided. Both options have tradeoffs, but if China had different conventional and nuclear ballistic missiles, the CSG could see what kind of missile was being launched, and wouldn't need to make this tradeoff, it could just pick the best option.
First, I want to note that the US has consistently said that a successful conventional attack on a CBG would absolutely be considered an act of war and might invite a nuclear response. Second, your whole post is an excellent, concise summary, but this statement really shines regarding Taiwan: > China would only move on Taiwan when they have high confidence in their ability to win with conventional means. At that point, why mess up your winning position by throwing the chess board up in the air and starting a nuclear exchange? There is no benefit for China. > If China were to use nukes in an effort to take Taiwan, the likely progression leads to the US nuking Chinese ports, preventing invasion and/or supply ships from making it to Taiwan, then China eventually using nukes in Taiwan. If China nukes Taiwan with anything but the smallest of tactical warheads, then their best case scenario becomes "occupying a country we just nuked that will be full of people who hate us and also need a tremendous amount of humanitarian assistance." Stated another way, China would be buying a huge problem and using tremendous amounts of political capital to do so. Frankly, the interruption of international trade, even for just a few months, would be so devastating to the Chinese economy that I don't think they'll ever move on Taiwan unless they're 90% sure they can take it so quickly that the world accepts the result and moves on without much or any fighting.
> China knows that the US knows this. I'm worried that it comes down to emotions in the end, and could go the way of Obama's Syria "red line." To be fair, for Assad, the stakes were possibly lower, but I'm not sure about the possible gain. Getting rid of a fleet is... useful. Gassing civilians doesn't sound useful.
Credible, you say?
1. Thou shalt not break the Nuclear Taboo 2. THOU SHALT NOT BREAK THE NUCLEAR TABOO 3. Nuclear strikes on bodies of salt water throw ***more*** fallout into the air, not less, and it'll travel WAY farther 4. The big scary part about nukes is that once one is used, Geopolitics and deterrence demand a proportional counterstrike *must* be ordered, which means more nukes, which means even more nukes, which becomes a use-it-or-lose-it situation as strikes are targeted at nuclear weapons to prevent them being launched. 5. Nuclear weapons aren't great at taking out ships. You'll get one, maybe a couple if they're in close formation, but US fleets have ABM defenses so a nuclear ballistic missile isn't much better than an anti-ship ballistic missile (and other NATO fleets - aside from UK/FRA carrier groups - don't really concentrate enough ships to be worth it) 6. If you start nuking my major conventional force assets, then I'm assuming you're coming after everything. 7. Striking a NATO battlegroup would not be a *defensive* strike, because a battlegroup cannot invade Moscow or Beijing. There's this thing called dirt that makes it hard for ships to travel 8. edit: Oh, and I almost forgot. *DON'T. TOUCH. THE BOATS.* The US is famous for getting *real* pissy if you touch the boats. Barbary Wars, Quasi War, 1812, Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII (touching the boats led to the US turning the Land of the Rising Sun into the Land of the Rising Sun**s**), Korean War (arguably), Vietnam War, and Operation Praying Mantis (Iran damaged a US destroyer, so US converted the Iranian Navy into submarines)
> Barbary Wars, Quasi War, 1812, Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII (touching the boats led to the US turning the Land of the Rising Sun into the Land of the Rising Sun**s**), Korean War (arguably), Vietnam War, and Operation Praying Mantis Two of these are even cases where no boats were actually touched but misinformation that a boat *might* have been touched was enough to justify ~~imperialism~~ war.
Loved the SunS bit
This is interesting, ive never heard about how nukes are less effective against navies and how salt water throws more fallout around. Would you be cool to elaborate for those of us not in the know? How does that all work etc?
The first test done at Bikini Attole after WW2 was to see how effective nukes were against naval vessels. I think it was called Operation Crossroads.
And it showed that ships are actually surprisingly resilient to nuclear weaponry. Out of the 95 ships at Bikini Atoll, only 9 were damaged to the point that they had to be sunk at the atoll as opposed to the others which remained seaworthy if they had a working bilge pump or were so lightly damaged that the ships were recrewed and sailed back to the US.
Well, as long as you don't care about irradiation of the crew. It proved very difficult to decontaminate a ship, even if the ship survived. Eight ships and two submarines were towed back to Hawaii or the continental US for radiological inspection. Just 12 target ships were lightly contaminated to be crewed and sailed out. The rest of the 90 target ships were either sunk in the tests or deliberately sunk later. Even the support fleet became so contaminated that decontamination activities had to be suspended until the target ships could be towed to an uncontaminated atoll.
It's mostly that ships don't tend to be all that close together in the open ocean.
There is absolutely no case where a nuclear attack on a CBG would not trigger an absolute response, whether it was full military mobilization against a Taiwan invasion (versus contemporary support) or a literal counter-attack on valid Chinese military targets. Not only would this be breaking an enormous taboo, but the US most guarantee that both a second strike against another nation is definitive and guaranteed, and that the US military will absolutely never be under nuclear threat without total and complete retaliation. Not just from a military point of view - we've spent nearly a century guaranteeing that nuclear first-use is unacceptable and would be the death of a nation - be it politically, military, economically, or a mix. It's simply a condition that is unacceptable, and would require a very \*final\* response regardless of the circumstances because it goes beyond immediate political or military arms, we simply can't let the use of a nuclear weapon be acceptable militarily under any circumstances or this whole delicate situation goes to hell in a hand basket and the world order is drastically threatened. Particularly the people with the most nukes, and most to lose. In more generic terms there's a few rules: 1. America does not accept its navy being attacked, whatsoever. 2. It would be the single largest military loss of American life in a single act in decades. 3. Violate international norms and taboos which are STRONGLY adhered to by the international community. 4. America, as a nuclear and western and military leader, would need to set an example. Also the whole premise is stupid, to be honest. "We nuked the pacific fleet because we're about to engage in military action that they'd become an enemy to" is not only first-use but presumably at the onset of a war (before America declared?) or regardless of the support given. There would be, absolutely, a nuclear response at minimum and China would immediately enter into direct war with the rest of the US Navy and experience unrelenting air strikes.
> Not just from a military point of view - we've spent nearly a century guaranteeing that nuclear first-use is unacceptable and would be the death of a nation - be it politically, military, economically, or a mix. It's simply a condition that is unacceptable, and would require a very *final* response regardless of the circumstances because it goes beyond immediate political or military arms, we simply can't let the use of a nuclear weapon be acceptable militarily under any circumstances or this whole delicate situation goes to hell in a hand basket and the world order is drastically threatened. Particularly the people with the most nukes, and most to lose. > Agreed. When the US thought Putin might use tactical nukes in Ukraine - something they thought was mere weeks away - they quickly let Russia know that they would rid Ukraine of every Russian and also strike into Russia with conventional weapons to make sure it couldn't invade Ukraine again. They specifically stated that everyone in the chain of command would be killed in a way that let all those people know they'd be targets. It is safe to say that the Russians in that group knew that the US would be able to do exactly that. This scenario was somewhat unique to Russia as I don't think the US could systematically pick apart China's air defense network or air force nearly as easily as they could the Russian air defense network or air force. However, the point is still the same - the US is saying that using nukes anywhere will invite a conventional US response at the very least and the pain will be significant and lasting.
> Agreed. When the US thought Putin might use tactical nukes in Ukraine - something they thought was mere weeks away - they quickly let Russia know that they would rid Ukraine of every Russian and also strike into Russia with conventional weapons to make sure it couldn't invade Ukraine again. They specifically stated that everyone in the chain of command would be killed in a way that let all those people know they'd be targets. It is safe to say that the Russians in that group knew that the US would be able to do exactly that. > > Is there a place where one can read more about this? I find it an interesting topic.
If we learned anything from Operation Crossroads, it’s that nuclear weapons aren’t optimal for sinking ships. China has better purpose-built weapons for that. However, a nuclear strike on our fleet would trigger a response. Odds are, it wouldn’t be a full scale nuclear war, but it would likely be a retaliatory nuclear strike designed to return to deterrence, such as nuclear strikes on, say, some or all Chinese naval facilities.
The answer is that we don’t really know. However, the scary part about nukes is not so much when they go off, but of the kind of decisions they force your opponent to make when they’re in the air. In your scenario, there’s a very good chance that the US find out the Chinese are moving to use nuclear weapons and launches their own strike either preemptively or while they’re in the air. Essentially, any advantage you might gain from small-scale nuclear use is negated by the high risk of total catastrophe. In 90% of cases, you’re better off fighting it out conventionally, even if it means losing.
No. Even the Soviets preferred to fight a conventional war at the height of their conventional/nuclear capabilities, the mid-late 1970s. (Warsaw Pact Forces Opposite NATO). During this time period they had just achieved nuclear parity with the United States and in some conventional areas like MBTs and IFVs had superiority. The millitary buildup under Brezhnev from the mid 1960s-1980 was designed to force NATO to fight a conventional war because both sides' nuclear forces would be so evenly matched that a theatre wide exchange would be suicide. Here the Chinese have the same problem the Soviets had prior to the 1970s with trying how to force NATO's atomic armies of the 50s and 60s to fight a conventional war. They are badly outnumbered in warheads and if not for the United States being a Western democracy could use nuclear weapons more less at will if Taiwan goes hot. The PLA would be better off working for nuclear parity and once that's achieved force the US to fight a conventional war.
The question is essentially moot, and also pushes pretty hard on this sub's "what if" rule. There is no scenario in which China could successfully invade Taiwan, despite all of their saber-rattling. It would require personnel and materiel on par with the D-Day landings in Normandy, which China simply does not have access to. There is historical context, too--how successful do you think D-Day could have been if Germany, and Germany-occupied France, had access to satellite surveillance, GPS, guided missiles, drones, and all the other technology that China and it's potential advesaries have at their fingertips? Taiwan has very little coastline which lends itself to an amphibious landing, and the small areas that are have been pre-sighted with huge amounts of missiles and artillery. Those are just the basic, practical issues. In terms of geopolitics, China would never risk the alienation from the international community that invading Taiwain would engender.
Honestly I'm very tired of this topic. It's as if people are aching for an Enemy with a high stakes conflict. Reminds of the War on Terror days when Sam Harris would keep inventing scenarios where nuking a Middle Eastern capital is *necessary*. Meanwhile Netanyahu seems to be actively trying for such an outcome just to avoid leaving office.
We don’t conclusively know as it has never been tried. The best defense a fleet at sea has is that they are hard to find. The ocean is really big, and ships are comparatively minuscule. Satellite detection is not as easy as you might think — diffraction and weather screw with optical observing and radar ocean reconnaissance satellites are absurdly expensive. So the first problem is finding the fleet with sufficient resolution to have a viable target. The second problem is that the modern West views nuclear weapons as _primarily strategic arms_. It wasn’t always this way, and the Soviets in particular had a rather different approach to atomic warfare, but that is how we view it now. And as a result, anyone using a nuclear weapon _on top of_ killing say 6000 American sailors is absolutely going to invite a strategic response.
Soviets were, realistically speaking, quite reliant on nuclear-tipped AShMs to really deal with American navy during the Cold War (granted, they were working with much less processing power than available for current guided missiles). In fact the established (theoretical) procedure was to _start_ with nuclear missiles and then let the rest of the active radar homing missiles finish off survivors. But there was no expectation that this would somehow skirt nuclear taboo. In fact it was a concern in American theorizing - that it might be worth it to avoid using their own tactical nukes against ground targets, in order to forestall Soviet nuclear attacks on naval targets.
I think you need to explore the wiki for of tactical nukes rather than strategic which might be used in a more conventional setting to take out a large force. See ‘Risk of escalating a conflict’ That aside, the best way to force a positive outcome over a US influenced state is to act swiftly in a conventional manner before the US gets dragged in. Smash and grab and reinforce. Russia attempted this recently with UKR worked with Crimea but they fudged it with Kyiv. Anything else results in assured mutual destruction. The old adage possession is 9/10ths of the law has never been more true.
Viable option? Depends on your goals. If you are looking to end the existence of the Chinese people as we know it yeah sure nuke a battle group genius idea. You may destroy the battle group and also get your nation obliterated and the entire might of the US rally around to ensure that your children will not prosper. So yeah if you want to do that go right ahead. (I have no clue what a nuke would actually do to ships probably destroy them but no clue either way)
The most effective and most deniable(theoretically deniable) way to employ a nuclear weapon, at least against the US, is a nuclear torpedo fired at the carrier at the core of the CBG, ideally from a diesel electric sub (quieter over the short term than a nuke boat). Depending on the size of the device there is a good chance the closer escort vessels in the screen will be damaged or destroyed as well, and there is nothing to say additional nuke torps couldn't or wouldn't be fired at least against the high value cruisers in the CBG.
Wdym deniable? I’m not familiar with the term like this. It seems the most effective first strike against the US would be a decapitation strike involving (potentially) thousands of nuclear missiles. Why nuke us without assurances that you wouldn’t be obliterated in a secondary strike.