New_Scientist_May_27_2017

If submarines are trackable then our nuclear strategy
is in trouble, says David Hambling
Dead in the water
STEVE KAUFMAN/CORBIS/GETTY
ON 17 April, North Korea’s deputy
ambassador to the UN gave a tense press
conference. The US was insisting that
North Korea scale down its nuclear
programme, and this, said Kim In-ryong, had
created a situation in which “thermonuclear
war may break out at any moment”.
It was not the first time such warmongering
talk had come from North Korean diplomats,
but concerns over nuclear war have rarely
been higher. Donald Trump has warned of
a “major, major conflict” with the country.
On the face of it, such tensions might seem
to bolster the case for maintaining a nuclear
deterrent in the West. Recent arguments in the
UK in particular about replacing the ageing
submarines that carry the country’s Trident
nuclear missiles are part of that wider debate.
But what if those submarines are lame
ducks? A rumour has circulated since the cold
war that subs, often considered the epitome of
military stealth, can in fact be tracked. If that’s
true, and there are fresh hints that it could be,
it overturns an opinion that has largely held
sway among military analysts for nearly
50 years – and changes the terms of debates
about nuclear deterrence entirely.
It was the 1960 book The Strategy of
Conflict by economist Thomas Schelling
that put forward the first rigorous analysis
of strategies for preventing nuclear war.
Schelling used game theory to introduce
the idea of a “credible commitment”. This
principle says the US must be locked into
ordering a retaliatory strike if it is hit by a
nuclear missile. This guarantee of a counterstrike
is supposed to deter the use of nuclear
weapons in the first place.
For the commitment to be credible, the >
Disappearing act: we’ve always thought
submarines are virtually untraceable
27 May 2017 | NewScientist | 37