Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) has always been a game of hide and seek, with adversarial states looking to adopt and deploy emerging technologies in submarine stealth or detection to give them the strategic edge. The advantage …
The Strategist on: "Undersea deterrence"
The decision to deploy nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) in the years to come will be a product of the major paradigms and concepts used to manage nuclear dangers more broadly. Recently, an emerging literature …
The US undersea deterrent is the most survivable leg of America’s nuclear triad of ground-, air- and sea-based nuclear capabilities. The sea-based leg, however, is also the most brittle of the three. If an alert …
No other weapon system embodies the menacing, but also out-of-sight, presence of nuclear weapons better than the stealthy nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) that have, for six decades, ceaselessly prowled the world’s cold ocean depths, …
At the end of April, two upgraded Chinese Type-094 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) reportedly went into service. But China’s SSBN capability is a far less important component of its nuclear deterrent than its land-based …
Today is an age of acceleration, a time when Moore’s Law is creating profound changes at diminishing intervals, making it difficult to anticipate strategic, social and technological developments. Some organisations facing these cascades of change, …
The maritime strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific is changing rapidly. The future of undersea nuclear deterrent forces has strategic, operational and force structure aspects for all major powers in the region. Strategic competition in an …
China finally achieved an operational underwater nuclear capability in recent years, almost six decades after it first launched its nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) program in the late 1950s. The deployment of the Jin-class (Type …
Amid rapid geopolitical change at the start of the 2020s, unfolding now in the Covid-19 crisis, nuclear weapons manifest grim continuity with the previous century. Especially persistent is a capability that has existed since the …