Eli Sanchez

Security Studies Program, MIT

Zoom link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/99808622363

Abstract:

US ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) are widely believed to be invulnerable to disarming strikes. Measures which suppress their physical signatures render them extremely difficult to detect, while the long ranges of the missiles they carry enable them to patrol throughout vast area of the ocean. These properties present would-be attackers with significant intelligence challenges in identifying the locations of US SSBNs, greatly complicating efforts to destroy them. For this reason, the US SSBN fleet has long been thought to provide the United States’ an effective and durable deterrent against nuclear attacks and coercion.

However, within roughly the past decade a growing number of analysts have suggested that several emerging technologies may soon conspire to render SSBNs vulnerable to disarming strikes. These technologies include novel sensing modalities; uncrewed autonomous vehicles; and advanced computing techniques, particularly artificial intelligence (AI). Many of these analysts advocate for increases in US nuclear force levels and retention of US silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles to hedge against future threats to US SSBNs.

A recent study by the author surveyed all of the sensing technologies cited in this discourse and found that most cannot improve submarine detection capabilities. The only promising approach to enhancing submarine detection was found to be the application of novel signal processing methods – and in particular, those based on AI – to passive acoustic sensing. However, the capabilities that have been demonstrated by the relevant AI methods in the unclassified literature are suggestive of evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, advances in submarine detection.

The present study builds on this work by modeling hypothetical campaigns to find and destroy all deployed US SSBNs. From this model, the quantity of military hardware required for such campaigns to succeed was estimated, and conservative estimates of the financial expenditures states would incur in producing this quantity of hardware were generated. Campaigns employing contemporary antisubmarine warfare technology were modeled, as well as hypothetical campaigns employing advanced technologies that may become available in the coming decades. In all cases, the costs of the materiel required for such campaigns to succeed were found to exceed what modern national actors can afford by significant margins. This suggests that the US SSBN fleet will continue to provide the United States an effective nuclear deterrent into the foreseeable future.

Bio:

Eli Sanchez grew up in Smithville, TX, a small town roughly midway between Houston and Austin. He received his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry with a minor in Physics from the University of Texas at Dallas. He then worked for a year at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he used computational models to study the effects of radiation exposure on the human body, before beginning his PhD in the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department at MIT. His doctoral research assessed the implications of hypersonic boost-glide weapons for great power strategic stability. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at MIT, where he studies the potential for emerging technologies to increase the vulnerability of ballistic missile submarines.