[ChuckMcM]

This has been an interesting conversation but we are clearly talking past each other.

When you say something like : "As for relative cost, that’s a big reason why ICBMs took on such a prominent role: once the technology was worked out, they were much cheaper than bombers." I realize you continue to discuss this as an engineer might, how many lines of code to make a compiler versus an interpreter for example. Your statement is both correct and completely irrelevant in the context of the world we live in with its current treaties.

We are forbidden, by treaty, from making any additional ICBMs, no matter what they cost. As a nation we abide that treaty because we believe that doing so is in the best interests of the existence of the world.

In doesn't seem particularly useful to discuss an alternate world unconstrained by such treaties as the general consensus has been to date that such a world is short lived.

[mikeash]

I discussed the current state of things as well as hypotheticals, so I don't think we're talking past each other. I am having a damned difficult time getting a straight answer out of you, though. You keep saying that putting bombers on alert is helpful because it makes a preemptive strike more difficult, but have yet to explain how it would do so in any substantial way. When I asked, twice, if it was just a matter of requiring the enemy to use 1-2% more warheads or if it was something else, you didn't answer....

"I[t] doesn't seem particularly useful to discuss an alternate world unconstrained by such treaties...." You literally did just that only a few messages ago! "If New START is not renewed, and we see a build up in nuclear arms again...."

I don't get how bombers are useful either the way things are now or in a post-treaty era. As things stand now, you're only adding maybe a half-dozen targets to a preemptive strike target list which is already 400+ entries long. That doesn't seem significant. In a post-treaty world, it's far cheaper to lengthen the target list by building more ICBMs and silos than by building more bombers and bomber bases. (And we're currently about 200 launchers below our limits under New START, so we could build quite a few more. And bombers and ICBMs are lumped together under the same limit, so you can't use bombers as a way to get around a ceiling on ICBMs.)

I'm open to learning how alert bombers help. And if it's just a matter of using existing resources to expand the enemy's target list by 1-2%, that's fair enough. But so far you just keep telling me that it somehow makes a first strike much harder and that I should do more research.