Originally Posted by
Jackonicko
The Polaris/Chevaline/Trident's supposedly unique ability to take out the lads in the biggest fur hats in their capital was almost certainly a sham, based on a dramatic over estimate of Soviet ABM capabilities, and you could almost certainly have done the job by throwing enough manned platforms with lay down bombs at it, as Mr Rust seemed to prove in his Spam Can. You could certainly do it with stand off missiles and a nuke TLAM.
The ability to hold a major power's capital at risk might still be useful - but I do not believe that one could not do that with nuke TLAM and nuke Storm Shadow.
If there's any doubt about that, then a nuke based on a hypersonic platform like Boeing's HyFly would be just as unstoppable as an SLBM, and would be cheaper to develop and deploy - and would then be carriable by more versatile and more useful platforms.
Jacko
Which bit of limited range/overflight is passing you by? Whether Mr Rust got lucky (nearly twenty years ago) or not, I don't think tacair launching from NATO bases would have gone un-noticed back then, do you?
As for HyFly being cheaper to develop, I applaud your sense of the comedic.
I appreciate the idea that manned / or unmanned tac-air would provide another string to the Typhoo bow (or even whatever FOAS is now), but the truth is that they are not comparable to SLBM in deterrent value. We should actually have both - by pitching the argument at SLBM vs tacair, we are all accepting the received wisdom that defence should not get a larger share of the funding pie. Given the obscene sums being shunted out annually on welfare, not putting @rseholes behind bars and paying immigration officials to not police our borders, I think we should be making the case for more support for the forces rather than trying to decide the colour of the instant sunshine bucket.