Nuclear Response to Cyber Attack

[mahogany bob]

NUCLEAR RESPONSE TO CYBER ATTACK

The risk of a 'mankind ending ' Nuclear War appears to have risen recently with the threat of a 'limited' nuclear response to a cyber attack!!

WOW am I right to be seriously scared for the future of us all?

THOUGHTS AND SOLUTIONS

1. Difficulty in knowing whether the cyber attack came from a teenage super-brain or a world superpower?
2. No such thing as a limited nuclear response - as soon as one has been detonated the games on for total destruction!
3. The proposed large increase in our nuclear arsenal sends all the wrong signals! Surely 180 odd weapons is enough to deter a potential aggressor?
4. The SOLUTION is to double/treble our efforts to get all the countries with nuclear weapons around a table and TALK TALK TALK until a reasonable way forward is agreed - if necessary in a locked hanger with compo rations and not allowed out until progress has been made! - before it is too late.Look to the future not the acrimonious past!
5. My -forlorn - hope was that the global pandemic would serve to unite nations against the common threat! Recriminations help no-one!

NAIVE -yes but has anyone got a better solution?

PS I flew Vulcans in the sixties and was and am totally in favour of the nuclear deterrent - you can't uninvent nuclear bombs!

[Hipper]

I thought I read or heard somewhere that this change of numbers of nuclear warheads was due to improvements or replacements that will mean some of the old and new warheads will exist at the same time. Not this article though:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56413920

[Saintsman]

Well a cyber attack is more than someone trying to steal your bank details!

Let's face it, these attacks will be state sponsored and if they are carried out, the results are likely to be quite serious. Therefore you need to have a deterrent of some sort. Saying that we will respond with nukes will make whomever think twice.

Not that I would wish to see them used, but the nuclear deterrent has been around for some time and it has been effective.

[esa-aardvark]

Bring back WWMCCS, or not !

[N707ZS]

Is Boris teaming up with Kim Jong-Un.

[Asturias56]

It's a nonsense - we all know that - no-one is going to nuke someone for a cyber attack - especially if they have one themselves


And if they don't the UK has just given them a reason to go out and build one :ugh:

[esa-aardvark]

Asturias56,
Devils Advocate,
how do you know if a Cyber attack is not a pre-cursor to a physical attack ?

[charliegolf]

Press release: "As a result of a dastardly, wide-ranging cyber attack on the UK's defence capability, we can confirm a number of our nuclear warheads have been misappropriated by actors unknown. We hope they will not used in anger."

BOOM!

CG

[langleybaston]

We hope they will not used in anger."

Nearly!

Try:

We hope they will not used in anger.be"

Quaint but makes sense.

Other constructions are available.

[ex-fast-jets]

Perhaps we should use them against weathermen who forecast gloom and doom - and then it is sunny, or who forecast wall to wall sunshine, just before it rains.

[Non Linear Gear]

EMP kills cyber attacking machinery, unless it is hard as nails ;)

[langleybaston]

Perhaps we should use them against weathermen who forecast gloom and doom - and then it is sunny, or who forecast wall to wall sunshine, just before it rains.

By all means.

They made me [variously] a computer programmer, a lecturer, a gopher for the head honcho, TACEVAL man, Civil Aviation inspector ......... anything to keep me away from the nasty decision-making weather guesses. If you don't do many forecasts, you don't make many mistakes. Oh! and take leave or go on a course in the periods of the year when the choices are fog/no fog, and snow/rain..

Good pension.

[mahogany bob]

The Defence Secretary has confirmed a 44% increase in our Nuclear stockpile - in order to keep it credable - and also infers that we could respond to the grey area threats with a nuclear retaliation.

Even more important to Jaw Jaw Jaw rather than War War War !

[etudiant]

The Defence Secretary has confirmed a 44% increase in our Nuclear stockpile - in order to keep it credable - and also infers that we could respond to the grey area threats with a nuclear retaliation.

Even more important to Jaw Jaw Jaw rather than War War War !

Nukes are super cheap compared to conventional forces.
So it is logical that HMG should try to ease the pressures on an overstretched military budget by an increased nuclear capability.
Of course, as always, the devil is in the details, which remain to be revealed.

[LTCTerry]

How many people have been killed in nuclear attacks since, say, September 1945? Fairly confident that number is zero. How many people have been killed with Kalashnikovs? High explosives? .50 caliber rounds? 7.62? 5.56? Those numbers are, I think, in the millions. Perhaps all the "ban the bomb" energy would have been better served banning the Kalashnikov instead...

We had about 45 years of the Cold War. Hard to fathom sometimes, but we're now at 30 years "since the Cold War ended..."

"Limited nuclear war" is certainly possible if a nuclear power responded to a nuclear strike with a "measured response." How likely is either part of that equation? Maybe not so very likely... How would the world's nuclear powers respond to a terrorist organization's dirty bomb?

Nuclear response to a cyber attack? Unlikely. Something more surgical perhaps.

40 years ago the big powers had huge arsenals of nuclear and conventional weapons and large numbers of ground forces. The big powers kept the little powers under control. The big powers disarmed and retreated, changing the relative balance of power. Rational people controlled the nuclear arsenals, and they knew too well what would happen if either side pushed the button. MAD prevented either's destruction. I've often postulated that the world was a safer place 40 years ago than it is now.

Lest anyone misunderstand - I am glad the Cold War is over. Glad the nuclear stockpiles have been reduced. Etc. People don't understand, everything needs maintenance, upgrades or replacement, even nuclear weapons. Tritium, for example, has a finite life. Wouldn't you hate it if you needed your nuke(s) and they were duds?

[etudiant]

Agree that the world was safer 40 years ago, but the nuclear powers behavior showed that no state was safe from outside attack unless it had nuclear weapons.
There is no disincentive to acquiring nuclear weapons, rather the contrary. Iran must be desperate to have them, as a deterrent to US and others, just as Taiwan needs to deter China.
Perhaps nations will be forced to compete in other ways. China's gradual influence expansion via loans and salami slicing tactics seem to be the most effective current model.

[Asturias56]

I have said it several times on this board - if I were Iranian I'd be sacrificing everything to get a nuclear capability.

[Dryce]

Agree that the world was safer 40 years ago, but the nuclear powers behavior showed that no state was safe from outside attack unless it had nuclear weapons.
There is no disincentive to acquiring nuclear weapons, rather the contrary. Iran must be desperate to have them, as a deterrent to US and others, just as Taiwan needs to deter China.
Perhaps nations will be forced to compete in other ways. China's gradual influence expansion via loans and salami slicing tactics seem to be the most effective current model.

The world didn't feel safer 40 years ago. That wasn't far off the time that the Soviet Union went into Afghanistan at which point there was a huge amount of nervousness. And 40 years ago if the alarms across a city went off then people would be thinking the unthinkable. Now I suspect that most of them would simply be curious as to what was going on.

Given the disparity in power of a nuclear vs conventional arsenal it appears the nuclear powers have been quite restrained compared with what might have happened in another era.

I would suggest that things felt rather safer about 30 years ago and we entered a globalisation of the economy without too much big power abrasion. Now we see the abrasion growing but it's not yet at anything like the shadow that hung over us in 1981.

[Asturias56]

It was in the early '80's we came closest to all out Nuclear War since the Cuba crisis IIRC due to "Able Archer"