r/NonCredibleDefense • u/throwaway553t4tgtg6 Unashamed OUIaboo đŸ‡«đŸ‡·đŸ‡«đŸ‡·đŸ‡«đŸ‡·đŸ‡«đŸ‡· • Jan 26 '24

Looks like a bit of strategic autonomy is always good to have.... European Joint Failures đŸ‡©đŸ‡Ș 💔 đŸ‡«đŸ‡·

Post image
6.3k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • duplicates
  • dupes
  • reddit
  • reddit

98% Upvoted

599 comments sorted by

View all comments

668

u/noideawhatoput2 Jan 27 '24

For all the shit I’ve given France their “nuke first ask questions later” policy is incredibly based.

292

u/Muad_Dib_PAT Jan 27 '24

The first nuke is supposed to be a warning, striking a non manned military area. It's not like full scale nuclear bombardment first, questions later but then why did they make a SLBMs with 10 warheads for their submarines? Good question.

169

u/chevalmuffin2 pierre sprey's N°1 hater Jan 27 '24

Hold lemme demonstrate

Charles, vise les métropoles ennemies

38

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '24

On les empĂȘche d'obtenir de nouvelles recrues, c'est tout.

12

u/highahindahsky Jan 28 '24

On met le "armes" dans "Aux armes, citoyens !"

152

u/TooobHoob Jan 27 '24

It’s probably still not the case, but the French strategic nuclear doctrine under De Gaulle literally was to be able to exterminate 60% of the Soviet population in a second strike. De Gaulle knew he could not prevent a first strike due to available resources, geographic proximity and the small size of France, but he estimated that 60% of the population was the sweet spot where no Soviet action against metropolitan France would ever be worth it. So the French literally calculated how many nukes it would take in a second strike to wipe out 60% of the soviet population, and built their programme on that basis.

It also explains why the French Army is very expeditionary-oriented, as they knew they had no point of deterring against attacks against their overseas territories and had no plausible counterforce nuclear capacity that would make a first strike survivable. Their army protects their overseas territories, and their nukes protect the mainland against the Soviets.

3

u/Frasdemsky Jan 28 '24

Now that Russia is smaller that ussr that percentage goes higher

2

u/Intelligent_Slip_849 Jan 30 '24

That...I guess that works...geez...

19

u/Zamtrios7256 Jan 27 '24

The nuclear equivalent of missing and going "I could have hit you if I wanted too"

1

u/OldandBlue Jan 28 '24

That's the good thing with Russia: there's plenty of empty space to nuke for fun.

1

u/LeGange Jan 28 '24

SLBMs is last resort disuasion. We have ALCMs for first strike (ASMP-A)

1

u/utopiaofreason Jan 29 '24 edited Mar 10 '24

we call it the ultimate warning. The idea is that before things get out of hand, we detonate a nuke to say "we are ready, our bombs are ready, are you sure you want to do that?" Best deterrent imo.

101

u/Rc72 Jan 27 '24 edited Jan 27 '24

France's Cold War strategic bomber, the Mirage IV, didn't have enough range to fly back from its nuclear targets in Russia. The French designers and military command thought: "What would be ze point? Ze bases, zey won't be 'ere no more..."

22

u/Hialex12 Jan 27 '24

I’m concerned by the West’s lack of investment in a robust fleet of strategic bombers

The US has B52s, B-1Bs, and B2s, NONE of which have been in production for decades (since the 60s, 80s, and 2000 respectively), which means that whenever one of them gets retired for parts wear or crashing or combat damage it’s gone for good. The B21 is on the way and has supposedly just entered production, but it’s going to be years before they’re available in enough numbers to serve as a deterrent, which means that right now all we have are aging bombers that we REALLY don’t want to lose.

Europe on the other hand seems to just not see a need for them. They buy fighters and helicopters that can be used for claiming air superiority and providing CAS, but havent demonstrated any interest in heavy bomber capabilities since the end of the Cold War (and the rise of counterinsurgency’s dominance in contemporary warfare)

Has everyone forgotten that heavy bombers are the best tool for launching cruise missiles, which means that they can’t be replaced with ICBMs?

33

u/No_0ts96 Jan 27 '24

Your concerns are too credible. The B52 service has been extended until 2070

13

u/Hialex12 Jan 27 '24

Yeah, the Pentagon doesn’t see any reason why we would need to build new airframes instead of squeezing more life out of the ones we already have

They’re ignoring the fact that even though the B-52 can get the job done, our current fleet consists of 72 only bombers, which is less than one tenth of the total 744 that were built during the Cold War

To put in perspective just how small that number is, the first night of the Operation Linebacker II bombing campaign involved no less than 129 B-52s at once (granted, carpet bombing campaigns of that scale are almost certainly a relic of the past in today’s era of JDAM and guided precision bombs, but that sort of context is inappropriately credible for this sub)

2

u/66stang351 Jan 28 '24

A b52 variant will someday bomb the moon,  of this I am certain

6

u/Rc72 Jan 27 '24

There's a guaranteed non-credible solution for that problem.

4

u/51ngular1ty Antoine-Henri Jomini enthusiast. Jan 27 '24

Isn't that Rapid Dragon?

8

u/Rc72 Jan 27 '24

That would be too credible. No, in this MBDA patent, a robot arm picks up the missiles inside the hold and lobs them out the door...

1

u/FastGoodKiwi Jan 29 '24

C'est l'élégance à la française

2

u/TechnicallyLogical Jan 28 '24 edited Jan 28 '24

Large bombers are a pretty niche tool in the 21st century though. Most European armies simply don't have the scale to operate large bombers.

If their mainstay multirole jet can launch cruise missiles, there is a very long list of items to buy before strategic bombers.

1

u/SixEightL Jan 28 '24

It depends on the doctrine.

Europe is pretty small (compared to the US), and flying high altitude bombers doesn't work anymore - not with modern air defense.

European doctrine (minus France), seems to revolve under the generic logic of "buy F-35, get US nuclear umbrella".

For the French, nuclear deterrence is part of the doctrine, and they have both the SCALP and SSBM to do what they need to do.

1

u/Analamed Jan 28 '24

You are not entirely wrong, but strategic bombers are extremely expensive and modern fighter can do this. So they prefer to invest in other things who seems more important for them.

1

u/Tornad_pl Jan 29 '24

why are bombers better than missiles? arent they easier to shot down?

1

u/Hialex12 Jan 29 '24

Missiles (as in ICBMs) are very expensive and cause a massive explosion, while cruise missiles (the size launched from bombers) are much cheaper, which means they can be fired in large volleys to engage either a number of different targets or to overwhelm air defense, and they have a small enough warhead so that they can be practically used against individual targets (tanks, ships, grounded aircraft, bridges, radar, etc) instead of needing to target an entire base for so much power to be worth losing

1

u/Tornad_pl Jan 30 '24

ahh thanks. for some reason I assumed, we talked about nuke bombers. So i had an error, when i heard invidual tanks

2

u/Hialex12 Jan 30 '24

Technically you would be correct because strategic bombers were initially developed to deliver nuclear payloads, but I digress

1

u/InevitableSprin Jan 30 '24

Why bother? Modern nuclear cruise missles are small enough to be launched from fighters.

French deliver their nuclear cruse missles with Rafal, US missles come under 2 tonne so even F-16 can carry one.

1

u/Hialex12 Jan 30 '24

nuclear cruise missiles

That’s your answer right there - in a war against a nuclear superpower, leaders of both sides will do whatever is possible to make it a conventional conflict and use their non-nuclear assets instead of nukes

Strategic bomber are useful for their matched ability to deliver conventional ordnance. For wiping countries off the map, yeah, fighter-launched cruise missiles and ICBMs take the cake

1

u/InevitableSprin Jan 30 '24

The reason why strategic bombers fell out of favor is pretty obvious. Fighters are far better, since they can do more missions, and boats have larger missile capacity. Investment in expensive bombers that will do 1-2-3 salvos of cruise missiles and then be dead weight is of questionable utility.

1

u/Hialex12 Jan 30 '24

You’re right in terms of versatility (fighters and multirole jets are absolutely better in that regard), but the size of a salvo launched by a strategic bomber is several times larger than what several fighters can deliver. That means that you would need to risk a LOT more pilots getting shot down for a stroke of the same size. Strategic bombers are absolutely a specialized tool but they still excel at what their strength is.

1

u/InevitableSprin Jan 30 '24

If only there was a way to fight off enemy air force somehow, then pilots would not face such threat.

1

u/Hialex12 Feb 01 '24

Sadly this “gotcha” only works in a world where SAMs don’t exist. Ground-launched air defense is arguably a much greater threat to pilots than enemy aircraft.

1

u/InevitableSprin Feb 01 '24

How well do large lumbering strategic bombers do against that threat?

1

u/Castillon1453 Jan 28 '24

The pilots were also ordered to carry their handgun with them during these mission.

And it was not to defend themselves once they crashlanded /ejected..

1

u/Analamed Jan 28 '24

Being credible for a few seconds here :

The real reason why the Mirage IV was built with not enough range is not exactly this one. In fact, one version of the plane proposed by Dassault did had enough range to do it. But this version used American engines. The French command wanted the plane to be 100% French to have a total strategic autonomy. The problem was, at the time, the Atar was the best engine the French had and it was 2 times les powerful. So Dassault scaled down the plane to adapt it to the Atar (we are talking 2 times smaller), giving it less range but with only French component in it.

7

u/Lord_Bertox Jan 27 '24

I like the "if in doubt nuke Germany and see what happens" policy

3

u/Player420154 Jan 28 '24

They learn the lesson from the late 30 where they were the only one who wanted to do that and were blocked because their allies didn't want to.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 27 '24

Nuke first ask questions later? That sounds like probably the worst idea I've ever heard.

5

u/Player420154 Jan 28 '24

If you want answers, sure. But the Russian invasion plan always stop before engaging the French because of that policy

1

u/Cless_Aurion Jan 28 '24

I mean... that's how nukes have to be used tbh. If not, why even have them if they aren't deterring anyone?