I’m not sure this really qualifies as an arms race. France doesn’t have an arsenal like America or Russia, and this plan doesn’t involve expanding the French arsenal or putting nukes anywhere that there aren’t already nukes
it would make sense to expand their arsenal as well.
A quick search tells me that a french submarine contains 16 M51 missiles, and each of these missiles can contain up to 10 warhead witha power or 300 kt. Such a warhead SHot over New York City would killl over one million people, break the windows up to Newark airport.
let’s assume a Sub empty it’s load, and 80% of the warhead are intercepted by air-defence. It’s enough to wipe 32 cities/strategical sites from the map. I don’t see how a country even as big as Russia/China/US won’t fully collapse from that much damage.
So even a small actor as France has enough nuke to bring back a country in middle-age. It’s indeed making sense to have some Nuke abroad as it increases the number of potential targets in case of war. To my understanding France has been offering to share nuke with Germany for decades
I’m not sure this really qualifies as an arms race. France doesn’t have an arsenal like America or Russia, and this plan doesn’t involve expanding the French arsenal or putting nukes anywhere that there aren’t already nukes
I wouldn’t call it an arms race too, although, if France’s nukes are being spread out, it would make sense to expand their arsenal as well.
it would make sense to expand their arsenal as well.A quick search tells me that a french submarine contains 16 M51 missiles, and each of these missiles can contain up to 10 warhead witha power or 300 kt. Such a warhead SHot over New York City would killl over one million people, break the windows up to Newark airport.
let’s assume a Sub empty it’s load, and 80% of the warhead are intercepted by air-defence. It’s enough to wipe 32 cities/strategical sites from the map. I don’t see how a country even as big as Russia/China/US won’t fully collapse from that much damage.
So even a small actor as France has enough nuke to bring back a country in middle-age. It’s indeed making sense to have some Nuke abroad as it increases the number of potential targets in case of war. To my understanding France has been offering to share nuke with Germany for decades
80% is also suuuuper optimistic, especially if there are dummy munitions in the mix.