The Strange Defeat of Nuclear Deterrence in 2025

Food for thought! How vulnerable have nuclear weapons become in the age of drone warfare?

"In June 2025, Ukraine’s security services staged an audacious strike inside Russia. They infiltrated the country and hid short-range attack drones in cargo trucks near a slew of Russian air bases as far away as the Amur region on the border with China. Most of these bases were home to Russian strategic heavy bombers—aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Using Russia’s mobile phone network, Ukrainian operatives remotely launched the drones, successfully destroying at least ten of the bombers and damaging a total of 41 planes, including some used for nuclear command and control, according to Ukrainian assessments. ..."

The Strange Defeat of Nuclear Deterrence | Foreign Affairs "And the Coming Crisis in Strategic Stability"

Most Germans want Europe to have its own nuclear umbrella, poll finds

Food for thought! How could the nuclear weapons capabilities and deterrence of France and the UK be expanded across Europe?

"Nearly two-thirds of Germans support a European nuclear deterrent independent of the United States, according to a new poll released Monday, marking a dramatic shift in public opinion amid growing concerns about American commitment.

The survey found 64% of Germans back the concept of a European nuclear umbrella that doesn’t rely on Washington, with support spanning age groups, regions, and political parties — an unusual consensus in German policy debates. The poll was conducted by the well-regarded pollster Forsa and commissioned by the magazine “Internationale Politik.” Polling was conducted in mid-June, before U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to German press agency DPA, which reported on the findings. ..."

Most Germans want Europe to have its own nuclear umbrella, poll finds

Iran Claims Pakistan Promised to Nuke Israel with Palki Sharma...

Serious stuff! Did Pakistan pledge to drop a nuclear bomb on Israel if Israel drops a nuclear bomb on Iran? Pakistan has shut down the long border it shares with Iran.

Trump wants nuclear arms talks with Russia and China to cut defense spending in half

Good news! I wonder why. For cutting defense spending?

Blessed are the peacemakers! However, trust but verify!

In recent years, it nuclear arms reduction negotiations has become a rather mute subject as far as news are concerned. Perhaps, the negotiations were held in secrecy. Or the status quo was just maintained.

"President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that, eventually, he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half. ...

Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the U.S. adversaries to cut their own spending. ...

“One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say, ‘Let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to.” ..."

Trump wants nuclear arms talks with Russia and China

The man who saved the WORLD from nuclear armageddon - Stanislav Petrov

Very recommendable! Sometimes it comes down to one individual to prevent a major disaster etc.!

Prospects for game-changers in submarine-detection technology

Very recommendable! Very comprehensive, but succinct!



The situation:

"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 has shifted back and forth, but, on the whole, it has proved easier to hide a submarine than find one: the oceans are wide, deep, dark, noisy, irregular and cluttered. ... Several articles and studies in recent years have revisited the survivability of SSBNs, for which game-changers would perhaps have the greatest consequences for international security. As Norman Friedman notes, ‘strategic submarines seem to be key to strategic stability’, providing what is generally believed to be the most survivable nuclear second-strike force."



Latest developments and game changers:

"ASW traditionally relies on a limited number of costly manned platforms such as attack submarines (SSNs and SSKs), frigates and maritime patrol aircraft fitted with a variety of sensors. Today, there’s evidence of a move away from this model towards unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) fitted with equivalent sensors, which are more expendable and are becoming cheaper to develop, produce, modify and deploy at scale. ... Whereas the new US FFG(X) frigate costs a sizeable US$1 billion per ship, MDUSV platforms are reported to cost only US$20 million each and so could conceivably be produced at scale to autonomously or semi-autonomously seek and trail submarines. ... However, the range of signals may grow as sensor resolution, processing power and machine autonomy reach the necessary thresholds to reliably separate other, ‘quieter’ kinds of signal. As Bryan Clark notes, ‘While the physics behind most [non-acoustic detection] techniques has been known for decades, they have not been exploitable until very recently because computer processors were too slow to run the detailed models needed to see small changes in the environment caused by a quiet submarine.’ However, he adds there’s now ‘the capability to run sophisticated oceanographic models in real time’."

I have just seen an article discussing China's latest use of swarm USVs



Prospects for game-changers in submarine-detection technology | The Strategist

How Russia could force a nuclear war in the Baltics

Very recommendable! Serious stuff! The escalate to deescalate strategy has something plausible!

As long as there are even small contingents of NATO soldiers stationed in the Baltic states Putin the Terrible will probably think twice to do anything foolish. Remember West Berlin!

"Yet a series of reports by the nonpartisan RAND Corporation shows that the possibility of nuclear escalation in a conflict between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia over the Baltic region is higher than one might imagine. ...

So the Kremlin has signaled that it might carry out limited nuclear strikes — perhaps a “demonstration strike” somewhere in the Atlantic, or against NATO forces in the theater — to force the alliance to make peace on Moscow’s terms. This concept is known as “escalate to de-escalate,” and there is a growing body of evidence that the Russians are serious about it."

How Russia could force a nuclear war in the Baltics | American Enterprise Institute - AEI: The best way of reducing the danger of a nuclear war in the Baltics is to ensure that NATO won’t immediately lose a conventional one. The Kremlin's "escalate to de-escalate" nuclear strategy could easily get out of hand.