The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics by Paul Bracken

Author:Paul Bracken [Bracken, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2012-11-12T16:00:00+00:00

Clearly, Israel cannot have soft nuclear forces that are easy to take out via an Iranian missile attack. If Israel continues to rely on aircraft and missiles, it will be vulnerable to Iranian nuclear attack. Some new strategic mixture of sea-based and ground-based forces is needed. What cannot be emphasized strongly enough is that this new posture will have several functions; it will not be solely to deter an Iranian devastation attack. It will have to be evaluated in terms of its performance in escalation control and at lower levels of war and crisis.

Israel’s deterrent is likely to be considerably more complex, more dispersed, and more noticeable than its current one. The command-and-control system will be especially vulnerable, as the links connecting political leadership to the forces are the weakest part of the system.

There are many possible responses here. The Israelis could deploy more mobile missiles in the Negev Desert. Or they could move part of the deterrent to sea, aboard ships and/or submarines. A maritime force could be made up of sea-launched ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, or, cheaper still, nuclear missiles on barges protected by the Israeli navy.

Israel is already shifting some of its nuclear force to sea in the form of cruise missiles, and perhaps other kinds of missiles, aboard submarines. The submarines are diesel powered and built in Germany with the full consent of the German government. This shift will give Israel’s nuclear force a far larger geographic footprint that will be a lot more noticeable, politically speaking, than the nuclear force it has had in the past. It’s worth highlighting some features of a submarine-based nuclear force. The United States went this route in the cold war. But it can be very expensive for a small country like Israel.

Here we see a problem for a small, secondary power like Israel. It is very risky to have fewer than three submarines for carrying nuclear missiles. With two, an accident might halve the survivable deterrent. Submarines do have accidents, even those carrying nuclear warheads. Three subs at sea would seem to be the absolute minimum prudent number.

But to have three submarines on patrol, about seven to nine are needed. This is because submarines are always breaking down, need preventive maintenance, and require crew changes. It’s a pretty expensive proposition. Moreover, German submarines are designed for short patrols with the submarines out of port for a minimum duration. They are not like American-made subs, which are built for long-haul deployments under stressful conditions. The possibility exists of significant mechanical and other kinds of technical problems, aggravated by the fact that Israel doesn’t really have its own submarine industry. It will be reliant on outsiders for maintenance and repair, and this dependence raises the political profile and the political risk for Israel.

There are ways to reduce the number of subs, but they come with greater risk. For example, some subs could be kept in port, to be flushed to sea if tensions rose. But the problem is that the missile flight times in the region are only about ten minutes.

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