First strike (nuclear strategy)

The preferred methodology is to attack the opponent's strategic nuclear weapon facilities (missile silos, submarine bases, bomber airfields), command and control sites, and storage depots first.

First-strike attack, the use of a nuclear first strike capability, was greatly feared during the Cold War between NATO and the Soviet Bloc.

Meanwhile, tensions between the two nations rose as 1956 saw Soviet invasion of Hungary; the U.S. and European nations drew certain conclusions from that event, while in the U.S., a powerful social backlash was afoot, prompted by Senator Joseph McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, U.S. citizens executed in 1953 after conviction of espionage.

The 1960 U-2 incident, involving Francis Gary Powers, as well as the Berlin Crisis, along with the test of the Tsar Bomba, escalated tensions still further.

During the crisis, Fidel Castro wrote Khrushchev a letter about the prospect that the "imperialists" would be "extremely dangerous" if they responded militarily to the Soviet stationing of nuclear missiles aimed at US territory, less than 90 miles away in Cuba.

The following quotation from the letter suggests that Castro was calling for a Soviet first strike against the US if it responded militarily to the placement of nuclear missiles aimed at the US in Cuba: If the second variant takes place and the imperialists invade Cuba with the aim of occupying it, the dangers of their aggressive policy are so great that after such an invasion the Soviet Union must never allow circumstances in which the imperialists could carry out a nuclear first strike against it.

The Soviet Union, in response, sent experts to spell out for Castro the ecological consequences for Cuba of nuclear strikes on the United States.

This poor timing drove the world very close to nuclear war, possibly even closer than the Cuban Missile Crisis over 20 years before.

Such a system would be designed to destroy all weapons launched by any nation in a ballistic trajectory, negating any nation's capability to launch any strike with ballistic missiles, assuming the system was sufficiently robust to repel attacks from all potential threats, and built to open standards openly agreed upon and adhered to.

According to the theories of nuclear deterrence and mutual assured destruction, full countervalue retaliation would be the likely fate for any state that unleashed a first strike.

To maintain credible deterrence, nuclear-weapons states have taken measures to give their enemies reason to believe that a first strike would lead to unacceptable results.

The main strategy relies on creating doubt among enemy strategists regarding nuclear capacity, weapons characteristics, facility and infrastructure vulnerability, early warning systems, intelligence penetration, strategic plans, and political will.

In terms of military capabilities, the aim is to create the impression of the maximum possible force and survivability, which leads the enemy to make increased estimates of the probability of a disabling counterstrike, and in terms of strategy and politics, the aim is to cause the enemy to believe that such a second strike would be forthcoming in the event of a nuclear attack.

The depths of the ocean are extremely large, and nuclear submarines are highly mobile, are very quiet, have virtually unlimited range, and can generate their own oxygen and potable water.

The Greenbrier, located in West Virginia, was once the site of the Supreme Court of the United States and Congress's relocation bunker, but it is no longer a secret but is now a tourist attraction.

The Russians have a system called SPRN (СПРН), which can detect nuclear launches and providing early warning so that any such strike would not be undetected until it is too late.

However, their unique and special capability can be found with their Dead Hand fail-deadly computerized nuclear release system,[3] which is based at Kosvinsky Kamen in the Urals.

that China's leaders do not greatly fear a first strike, because of their posture of inflicting unacceptable losses upon an adversary, as opposed to the American and Russian policy of trying to "win" a nuclear war.

At very small numbers of targets, each defensive asset will be able to take multiple shots at each warhead, and a high kill ratio could be achieved easily.

Second, one of the easiest ways to counter any proposed defenses is to simply build more warheads and missiles, reaching that saturation point sooner and hitting targets through a strategy of attrition.