More Thoughts On Russia’s Bomber Losses
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The Ukrainian drone attack hit two components of the Russian nuclear force. The primary purpose of the attack was to destroy the planes that launch cruise missiles at Ukraine. Some of those planes are also the types that carry nuclear weapons. There also were hits at Severomorsk, the headquarters of the Northern Fleet and Russia’s ballistic missile submarines. We have much less information about the hits at Severomorsk, so I won’t say more about it in this post. I want to make clear that from what we know, no nuclear weapons were involved in today’s action. The primary nuclear bomber bases were not targeted.
As much as a third of Russia’s nuclear bomber fleet was destroyed. No new bombers have been produced for some time, and there are no facilities to produce them. This has serious implications for the nuclear balance between Russia and the United States.
The nuclear balance is maintained when both sides can credibly destroy the other in a return attack. Both sides rely on three types of delivery vehicles for that second strike capability: land-based ICBMs, submarines, and bombers. The land-based ICBMs would go first, both offensively and defensively. Their locations and requirements for destruction are known, so they would be the first to be fired and the first to be destroyed.
The submarines are the ultimate backup: they are constantly on patrol, and the other side doesn’t know their locations. They would survive a first nuclear strike. Each US sub carries up to 20 missiles with multiple separately targeted warheads. The US has 18 nuclear-armed submarines, and Russia has 11.
The bombers are somewhere in between. They could be hit on the ground, as we saw today, or they could be ordered into the air, where they would be able to survive a first strike. Bombers on the ground are vulnerable; this has been known and their consequent value argued about since at least the late 1950s.
Russia and the US have negotiated over delivery vehicles and have argued internally what mix makes the most credible deterrent. Russia now has to consider a large adjustment to the bomber element of its triad.
For those of us contemplating this from our place in front of a consumer-quality computer, it seems like it shouldn’t make a big difference. But the military makes calculations of deterrence effects, and those calculations have now changed. Whether forcing that change was escalatory is not clear; we will eventually hear from Russia about that, mostly in what they do. My own judgment is that they will not escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. What else they do is open, although they now have fewer planes to do it with.
Conversely, there are probably a few nuclear-loving US generals gaming out what difference 20 fewer bombers make in a nuclear attack. I’ll guess probably not a lot, although I’m sure they can come up with a scenario that means we need more weapons of their favorite type. In defensive terms, some are probably reconsidering the vulnerability of planes on the tarmac, a new danger only in the changes in the cost-benefit ratio incurred by drones.
The Ukrainians are master strategists, to steal Darth Putin’s conceit. High value target? The planes causing most of the destruction in Ukraine. Vulnerable on the tarmac, carrying the fuel that will destroy them when a match is supplied. So the Ukrainians figured out how to supply those matches.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner
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