Russia in case of a nuclear war with USA:

There's an implicit agreement by our strategic defense systems that essentially states, "We can hurt each other sufficiently, so there's no reason to engage in an arms race to the point of bankrupting both of our nations and plunging the earth into a 7 year night."

Wrong. The whole premise of MAD is that each has the assured capability of completely destroying the other.

START to the current treaty allowed each side to go from 6,000 warheads each to between 1,200 and 1,500 warheads each. Still plenty, but if the US continues developing its ABM shields Russia will likely decide that 1,200 warheads is not enough and go back to 6,000 warheads.

With high capacity MARV warhead buses that would be rather easier than it used to be.

They are simply correct in their fear that they'll be rendered impotent against an American nuclear attack; that the unspoken arrangement of mutual annihilation would then be gone; yet another sign that Mother Russia is in decline.

Decline? Look in a mirror buddy... when there are other commercial centres establish themselves and the US isn't the economic centre of the world they wont be able to just print more money to solve their problems.... if any country is in decline it is the US.

The US developing ABM shields is reducing the concept of MAD to the point where one side might actually think they can fight and win a nuclear war. Whether they actually can or not is irrelevant because when they think they can win then they wont be afraid of finding out... this makes nuclear war actually very likely... which is what Russia and all sane sensible human being fear... when MAD fails you have war.

The easiest way to avoid this is simply to no sign anything after the Moscow Treaty expires and just build lots and lots of nuclear armed missiles... some 10 ton 20,000km range cruise missiles could be made cheaply in enormous numbers and deployed in their tens of thousands all over Russia and start buildign less appealing weapons like a nuclear jet engine powered supersonic cruise missile that blows irradiated air out the jet exhaust and can fly at mach 3 at low altitude and fly for years all over the US irradiating the entire country... ABM systems are designed to shoot down ballistic missiles... not low flying fast cruise missiles...

If the US could neutralize 1,000 Russian ICBM's, the fact is, an entire Russian nuclear assault is gone and the US has single, first strike capacity against the Motherland.

And if wishes were books you'd have about ten libraries of congress in this article...

That's because of a few well known facts on the ground:

1.) Nuclear weapons have incredibly high dud-rates. This is why multiple MIRV's are targeted at cities.

Moron. Nuclear weapons have incredibly low dud rates... have you ever in your life read about a nuclear weapon test where there was no explosion?

Cities are large area targets and so hitting them with one big powerful warhead is not actually that efficient... for the same reason you get better destructive coverage with a cluster bomb than much bigger standard bomb. A MIRV can hit multiple cities on its flight path with warheads released from the main weapon bus as it passes the target area. Most large area targets like cities will be targeted by multiple warheads from different weapons to ensure they are effectively destroyed.

2.) The Russian stockpile is the oldest of any major power and the dud-rate increases precipitously. We can conclude that somewhere between 30-50% will be duds. This means that the Russians need to double up on every target.

Moron... The Russian stockpile is the NEWEST and includes hypersonic glide vehicles intended specifically to evade ABM systems.

The Russians have been replacing their old soviet missiles with ukrainian parts to create all Russian weapons so their missiles and warheads are actually rather newer than the US missiles, which are also used against targets exactly the same way and are also very reliable.

3.) Russian nuclear "boomers" are trailed by American, French and British hunter subs. The Russians keep one or two boomers out at any time. They cannot escape the NATO boomers. Their subs would not launch all missiles before the NATO attack subs destroyed them.

So western SSNs trail the two Russian SSBNs at sea AND the ones in port too? How does that work?

they cannot escape the NATO boomers? Moron. A boomer is an SSBN that carries sub launched ballistic missiles.... NATO boomers would do everything they can to be no where near any Russian vessel of any kind.

Most modern Russian SSBNs can volley launch all their missiles very rapidly... most western SSNs would have to penetrate Russian ports to get at those Russian SSBNs by which time those SLBMs would be on their way.

4.) The Russian fleet is rusting and decaying.

Even in the 1990s the Russian SSBNs were fully capable of launching on command... now more than ever before.

5. )The Russian air-force has next to ZERO chance of getting their bombers or fast attack aircraft to the Homeland (bypassing Canadian and American missiles and fighters).

the Russian bombers will take 8 hours to fly over the pole to launch positions above Canada where their 5,000km range cruise missiles will take another 6-10 hours to get to their targets.

5 minutes into their flight the SLBMs will have hit and devastated much of North America... 25 minutes later another 600 odd detonations over Canada and North America and I don't think any interceptors or radars will be operational 7 and 1/2 hours later when the Bears launch their missiles or 10 hours later when 600 odd new nuclear detonations light up north america again...

This means that the Russian attack on the US is reliant upon it's ICBM's which are MORE than sufficient to do the job, regardless of how aging it is.

Regardless of how aging it is... it is 20 years younger than the youngest US ICBM system in service today...

—With just 500 launch vehicles (which is the full maximum extent of Russian launch capacity) with 8 MIRV's each (which is conservative), the Russians could land 4,000 nuclear warheads on the USA. Even if only 1,500 of them make their target, that's enough to end the nation forever and certainly enough to make the US rethink any nuclear attack EVEN if the American attack would result in a more thorough destruction of Russia (say, 3,500 American nukes vs. 1,500 Russian nukes -- dead is dead).

Current treaty obligations limit both sides to 1,200-1,500 warheads each... that includes all strategic weapons like ICBMs, SLBMs, and cruise missiles.

The US population is more concentrated in fewer places which means it would be easier to wipe out with fewer weapons.

But, if the US possesses a very reliable intercept capacity, and can launch 1,000 of them at the ICBM's before the MIRVs separate, they could potentially knock out a sizable portion of the fleet. Accounting for the dud-rate and other factors, if 75% of the remaining Russian ICBM's were prevented from destroying their targets (375 nukes make it), then the US has essentially neutralized the Russian attack, while having freedom to use its incredibly advanced submarine fleet and ICBM's to annihilate Russia totally while ensuring that SOMETHING of America survives (375 Russian nukes destroy the US, but something of the nation survives; 3,500 American nukes ensure complete Russian annihilation).

The US doesn't even have a bare bones defence capability... the current ABM system hasn't even proved as capable as the currently operational system around Moscow that has been in place and tested every year for the last half century or so.

With 50 interceptors the concept of shooting down 1,000 missiles is absurd. When the US announces it will build 1,000 ABM interceptors the Russians will simply start building missiles... probably 10s of thousands.

BTW with the ABM treaty no longer in effect the S-500 will be able to intercept ICBM warheads AND SLBM warheads, but the Russians are building them in numbers to the point where it is most likely them that will be shooting down BMs. Shooting down 1,000 ballistic missiles is absurd because there arent 1,000 ICBMs anywhere.

So, the US cannot allow reliable figures to be released on how successful its intercepts are. Such information would surely prompt the Russians to double-down on their nuclear deterrence and we'd be in a WMD race again.

There are plenty of spies within the US and the Russians have space tracking capability of their own... they can watch themselves and they know US ABM systems are crap.

The problem is that over time and with lots of money they wont remain crap and problems will be solved and eventually these systems will be a problem.

The American strike would be more thorough both for Russia and possibly for humanity.

More of the American warheads would be shot down.

The US's nuclear triad (ICBMs, Air Force and Navy) would have more successful launches due to the larger nature of the American forces and the more modern equipment.

US B-52s are original build from the 1960s.... Russian Tu-95s were built in the 1980s and 1990s... US Minuteman missiles are ancient, Russian missiles are Russian... ie post 1991 build. etc etc etc

Ballistic Missile Submarines (boomers) would do the trick, 14 total with nukes, seven deployed at any given time. They're beyond deadly. Their nuclear payloads capable of being launched in under 30 minutes.

Actually more like less than 15 minutes, but their lower flight speed means even S-400 should be able to engage many of them which greatly reduces their ability and performance.

1.) Each Ohio Class boomer has 24 Trident II SLBM that are MIRV'ed with between 6-8 W76 110kt nuclear warhead (5.5 times Nagasaki). Even if we went with the average (7 warheads), that's 1,176 nuclear strikes from the Ohio Class nuclear payload.

Yeah buddy the cold war is over... the Ohios with 24 missiles each armed with 7 warheads... which was their standard load means 24 x 7 which is a mere 168 warheads per boat which is of course pathetic compared with Akula that can carry 20 missiles with 10 warheads per missile as standard, which is obviously 200 warheads per boat.

Of course if you want to live in the past that is OK but with the Moscow Treaty in place limiting both sides to 1,200-1,500 warheads each that means each triad has between 400 and 500 warheads each...

2.) The US also operates 450 Minuteman III ICBMs that are MIRV'ed with 3 nuclear warheads (in the process if not concluded, the downgrade to 1 MIRV each). The exact type of warhead is classified, but the warheads are either the W78 or W87, with no less than 300kt of explosive yield (15x Nagasaki). That's a total maximum of 1,350 nuclear warheads, minimum of 450.

The total number of blasts would be insane, no less than 2,526. We haven't even counted any Air Force method, presuming that the Russians could/would destroy them in flight. Nevertheless, even if strikes were doubled and/or tripled up on cities, it would mean that no less than 1,000 locations would be wiped out by more than one (some with three or four) nuclear blasts. The destruction would be absolute.
===Total yield: no less than 30,000 times Nagasaki

Hilarious... both sides have 1,200 to 1,500 warheads and the greater accuracy of the older US warheads meant they tended to use smaller yield warheads so the 30,000 Nagasakis is just BS... the US yields will be rather lower than the Russian ones.

Trident missiles have 7 warheads for a total of 168 actual warheads... it carried less than the 200 warheads of the Akula class (20 x 10).

BTW Trident is a conventional missile in the sense that it has a warhead bus that carries its warheads and releases them as it passes over targets so if you have a ship sailing in the area of the north pole and a trident warhead bus flys over you can hit it with one shot if you get it early enough in its trajectory... decoys and all.

The problem with hearing from a lot of sources...

is that many like to use liquid fuelled ICBMs used by the Soviet Union as evidence of their backwardness... obviously solid fuel is superior to anything else... the west invented solid fuel don't you know... in China.

I would add that with an interception capability of targets moving at 4.8km/s most models of S-400 should be able to defend an ICBM silo field from SLBM attack... certainly with S-500 the job would be even easier...

Because Silos need direct hits I would think even TOR could blunt an SLBM attack on a silo...