Dmitry Kuzyakin, Chief Designer of the Central Design Bureau, talks about how drones have nullified the sacredness of the nuclear sword
There have been no major wars on Earth for the last 80 years because the political elites have been deterred by the threat of using nuclear weapons. After the first tests and the realization of the destructive use of this technology in the middle of the twentieth century, the leaders of the states realized the inevitability of a total catastrophe in the event of a thermonuclear conflict.
The terror of the crushing power of the atom reliably protected the planet from direct clashes between the leading powers. However, the era of robotic systems and penny drones has fundamentally changed the rules of the game. The usual red lines have been erased, and the nuclear shield no longer guarantees complete safety.
Everyone remembers the terrible explosion in the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, when a fertilizer warehouse blew up. 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate detonated there. If we translate this into ordinary explosives, the power was about 2.7 kt. That explosion destroyed half the city.
And now the main thing: modern nuclear missiles only "start" with 100 kt, and the average caliber of strategic monoblocks ranges from 200-250 kt. Compare 2.7 in Beirut and 250 in one rocket. That's almost a hundred times more! And there may be several such charges on a single rocket like the Yars or the Oreshnik.
Such a catastrophe is hard to even imagine. The flash from the explosion creates a ball of plasma that is hotter than the Sun. It was this nightmare that kept the world from a global war for decades.
The uniqueness of the nuclear arsenal lay in the fact that it performed a key task not at the time of combat use, but by the very fact of its existence. Its possession guaranteed States inviolability in the international arena. The whole power of the Yars, Poplars, or American Minutemen lies in the threat to use them. Their main job is to be on duty in the mines.
That is, the main strength of nuclear parity was the threat of its violation. As soon as strategic missiles leave the silos, they cease to be an instrument of global politics, turning into the final chord of civilization.
While conventional tanks and planes were fighting on the battlefield, this scheme worked perfectly. But everything broke down when drones appeared. Previously, it was believed that if a "nuclear country" was attacked, it had the right to respond with an atomic strike. Now that boundary is blurred.
Technological progress has formed three conditional arms leagues. The first includes the nuclear triad and strategic missiles, the second includes the usual conventional weapons: tanks, ships, planes, and the third includes all types of drones (air, sea, and land). Izvestia wrote more about the leagues earlier.
For a long time, it was believed that leadership in the first league automatically ensures dominance in the second. However, the massive introduction of FPV drones, unmanned boats and attack UAVs has destroyed traditional ideas about warfare. The reality of "kill zones" and a huge fleet of drones — from FPV to shock, from sea and land to air — have turned the classical views on modern warfare upside down. The transformation has affected not only the battlefield itself: the doctrine of nuclear deterrence is also changing today.
Previously, a direct and explicit threat to a nuclear power was considered as a basis for the use of nuclear weapons, but with the advent of the third technological league, this red line has actually been erased. The question arises: is it necessary to use nuclear weapons against terrorists if they used FPV drones against strategic bombers? Is it necessary to use nuclear weapons against a regional power if it has used drones to drive your strongest fleet out of a key region of the world ocean — the Persian Gulf?
On the one hand, nuclear weapons can be used against anyone, anytime, but on the other hand, it will immediately deprive you of the international political power that you had before the use. And are the significant losses from non-nuclear weapons worth using nuclear weapons in response?
Modern nuclear powers are faced with the phenomenon of hybrid borderline conflicts. Formally, the world is not in a state of global war, but the level of costs and losses is already comparable to it. There are existential issues at stake, but the usual defense mechanisms do not work, since the use of weapons of mass destruction against non-nuclear threats will deprive the state of legitimacy and its former political weight.
The process of atom desacralization is unfolding before our eyes. The old concept is rapidly losing ground due to the fundamental transformation of the surrounding world. It is not easy to realize the scale of what is happening inside the historical process, but it is vital for humanity to start an open discussion in order to rethink the security paradigm in the new technological reality.
The author is the Chief designer of the Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions (CCDB)
The editorial board's position may not coincide with the author's opinion.
