Stability of Large Offensive Force Reductions

Abstract

Decreasing offensive forces with fixed defenses has much the same effect as increasing defenses with fixed offenses. Both increase stability. First and second strikes are increased but are largely shifted to non-alert aircraft. In the absence of defenses, offensive reductions could reduce stability. A companion report on "Crisis Stability Indices for Adaptive Two-Layer Defenses" discusses crisis stability indices for two-sided exchanges between symmetrical offensive and defensive forces. In it the offensive forces are held at START levels, and defensive forces are varied. This report studies the effect of significantly reducing offensive forces while defenses are held fixed.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1992
Accession Number
ADA338690

Entities

People

  • Gregory H. Canavan

Organizations

  • Los Alamos National Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Arms Control
  • Ballistic Missiles
  • Boost Phase
  • California
  • Governments
  • Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
  • Losses
  • New Mexico
  • Space Based
  • Strategic Weapons
  • Submarine Launched
  • Survivability
  • Targets
  • United States
  • United States Government
  • Weapons

Readers

  • Irregular Warfare and Special Operations Cyberspace Operations against Adversarial Threats.
  • Regression Analysis.
  • Strategic Security Studies