The LRCM: (the Long-Range Strategic Cruise Missile) Asymmetries, Deterrence and SAL (Strategic Arms Limitation)

Abstract

This paper examines the many factors surrounding the potential deployment of the long-range strategic cruise missile focusing on: the technical and strategic asymmetries including guidance systems, air defense forces, nuclear weapons targeting vulnerabilities and strategic weapons essential equivalence; strategic implications including the missile's impact on the strategic balance and its potential stabilizing influence on a deterrence model; and implications on Strategic Arms Negotiations. It examines how the long-range cruise missile will add a measure of stability to the strategic deterrent balance and contribute to the restrained counterforce doctrine. The sea-launch cruise missile platform would provide a non-time sensitive reserve weapon capable of inflicting unacceptable damage on the adversary, hence increasing the stability of deterrence.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1976
Accession Number
ADA026455

Entities

People

  • Darold S. Axtman

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Defense
  • Aircrafts
  • Anti-Ballistic Missiles
  • Defense Systems
  • Deterrence
  • Early Warning Systems
  • Gamma Rays
  • Guidance
  • Inertial Navigation
  • Inertial Navigation Systems
  • Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
  • Models
  • National Security
  • Navigation
  • Strategic Weapons
  • Warning Systems
  • Weapons Effects

Readers

  • Oceanography.
  • Strategic Security Studies