plawolf
Lieutenant General
Global satellite networks are unlikely to be significantly destroyed or degraded in the opening few minutes of a nuclear exchange. Little is going to be left 20+hours after. Just the EMP from detonating nukes will probably fry a lot of them as pure byproducts.Don’t other delivery systems rely on INS navigation? Would INS work for a drone? Sure there is some error associated with it because of drift over time but it’s pretty small and the blast of a nuke will be large enough.
Similarly, enemy nukes are not going to reach your ICBM/SSBN launch locations before you get to press the button yourself if China is indeed moving to a launch on warning posture
If airbursting nukes along likely paths is the best form of defense against the concept then surely they could be employed to avoid that, eg they could fly over Russia, or they could delay their launching over several hours, or they could land and wait at small runways en-route, or they could be hidden.
What makes you think your drones can even get anywhere near Russian airspace before enemy ICBMs, especially SSBN launched ones arrive? Unless you want to base said nuke drones right on the Russian boarder, in which case the Russians are unlikely to be best pleased about that.
If you delay launch by even a few minutes, all those drones will just get nuked while still in the ground
In the future it’s reasonable to assume that the range of these stealthy drones will increase, allowing new vectors and launch options. It can fly 12k km today, could another version fly 20k in 2025? Or 40k by 2035?
Unlike ICBM’s, drone development is making large strides and breakthroughs, having a drone based deterrent allows you to take advantages of all these advances, e.g. swarming, loitering.
Second strike Nuclear Deterrence relies on two key , ideally both. 1 is speed and 2 is detectability.
The enemy cannot stop your launch if you can launch before their fastest first strike weapons can reach you.
The enemy also cannot stop your launch if they don’t know where your nukes are to strike at them.
Traditional nuclear cruise missile element of the triad relies on having lots of bombers on quick alert standby and/or always airborne and where each can carry a large number of nukes.
Even one bomber getting through could mean dozens of cities gone.
If you are desperate to go with the cruise missile/UAV route, you might as well go for a Project Pluto like ultimate FU vengeance weapon for extra lolz.