Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present:

counter-assault requires a highly efficient technical and human intelligence-gathering system. Inthis respect, the degree of confidence of the country’s leaders in the intelligence services must beextremely high, which is a rare thing in world history. A state leader must first of all understandwhat can and what can’t be done by the best intelligence service; consequently, that state leaderhas no right to assign excessive tasks to the intelligence service.In order to ensure the ability to deliver a retaliatory counterstrike (counter-assault) while concurrentlyguaranteeing a high capacity for prevention of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclearweapons, it is necessary to continuously search for an optimum in the course of determiningthe relevant algorithms that determine the functions of the relevant man-machine system. It isprecisely that system that provides for the formulation, adoption and realization of the relevantdecision, as well as the necessary controls governing the implementation of that system. It shouldalways be borne in mind that such an optimum is found once and forever. There is a fundamentalcontradiction between the requirement of responsiveness of the SNF command and controlsystem and the requirement or reliability of locks providing for guaranteed prevention of accidentalor unauthorized use of nuclear weapons: the harder it is to open a lock in the command andcontrol system, the longer it takes to issue the commands to use nuclear weapons.Very important perceptions concerning the problems of the retaliatory counterstrike are presentedin the treatises of the most distinguished Russian arms expert, Academician Yuri Trutnev.As part of this concept, writes Trutnev, Soviet leaders would have had to make decisions inseveral minutes, when they practically did not have “enough information about the actual scaleof the first strike of the U.S.” (For example, information about the damaged assets and the extentof such damage, the damage inflicted to the population and the MEP, 49 and post-attack survivingmunitions). 50 Therefore, from the military point of view, this may result in “politically incorrectand absolutely unbalanced and unjustified actions” like a massive nuclear strike on U.S. cities inresponse to the first low-yield nuclear or non-nuclear SOA strike on the Russian launch facilities.”Trutnev rightly notes that this may “transform a limited conflict into a global collision.” 51However, the threat of a retaliatory counterstrike and counter-assault is a serious deterrent-against a potential aggressor that contemplates a preemptive decapitation strike. The meansproviding for such a strike must be developed accordingly. In this context, the missile warningsystem (as one such means) and its qualitative characteristics play a very important role.28Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present: Theoretical and Applied Questions