Continuous At-Sea Deterrent

Why it decided the campaign

Every other allied capability in the rupture was defeated or bypassed. The F-35 fleet was switched off from Fort Worth. The SAMP/T battery at Keflavik was killed by the second salvo. The Typhoon force was cratered out of its main bases and had to fly from motorways. The Royal Navy lost a destroyer and the French lost a frigate.

The deterrent was not defeated, because it was never found. Twelve American attack submarines swept the approaches for twelve days and localised neither boat. American acoustic tracking confirmed both cleared the shelf into deep Atlantic launch sectors.

The arithmetic

Albion Anvil Phase I was designed to eliminate the deterrent first, and the Defense Intelligence Agency put the maximum confidence of that hunt at 18 to 22 percent before it began. That is to say: the plan's own authors expected to fail four times out of five.

Phases II and III were nonetheless written to follow it. The nuclear annex resolves the contradiction plainly — with the deterrent alive, an amphibious landing on British soil produces a nuclear counter-strike with 95 percent certainty, against carrier groups, Atlantic ports, or American cities.

What it demonstrates

The rupture is, among other things, a controlled experiment in the difference between a capability and a deterrent. A capability can be interdicted through its supply chain, its cloud, its runway, or its radar. A deterrent that is invisible, autonomous, and pre-delegated cannot be interdicted at all — only believed.

Britain's aircraft were switched off by their manufacturer. Britain's submarines were not, because nobody knows where they are, and that is the whole design. See also NATO nuclear sharing for the opposite case: nuclear weapons whose location is precisely known, and which are therefore worth nothing to their owner.

See also

• The North Atlantic submarine campaign
• Letters of Last Resort
• NATO nuclear sharing