Cross-Post: Newsletters/sections are primarily categorized by region, and posts can only appear in one section/newsletter at a time. Posts may, however, be relevant to more than one region/section/newsletter.

In a recent post focusing on Iran, which is part of the Defending Iran Project, I borrowed the concept of (submarine) indiscretion rates to examine how Iran can enhance the survivability of its ballistic missile arsenal going forward. Israel and, more recently, the United States, have demonstrated their considerable capacity to locate, track, and target Iran’s mobile ballistic missile launchers once these leave the safety of Iran’s underground missile bases. The Iranian experience in this area is of particular interest to observers focusing on military dynamics in South Asia, including but not limited to observers interested in the survivability of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Pakistan’s longstanding limited strategic depth vis-a-vis India is being eroded by technological change. This includes not only the likes of Indian air-launched and ground-launched munitions, not limited to the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile family, but also developments in the area of lower-cost and, in comparative terms, lower-end strike munitions. Examples include the likes of the low-cost fixed-wing and multirotor drones that are being widely deployed in the Russia-Ukraine War over distances of 50 or more kilometers, as well as fairly low-cost propeller-driven strike drones in the vein of the Iranian Shahed-136 as well as low-cost cruise missiles that were originally pioneered by Iran and later emulated by first Ukraine and later Russia, and which are now being emulated by other countries around the world including India.

Some background on low-cost cruise missiles:

Given the above trends, India’s development and deployment of an ever-expanding array of strike munitions, including lower-end designs, some of which were employed in the brief but fairly high-intensity May 2025 India-Pakistan War, there are major questions about the future survivability of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, Pakistan’s critically important air force, and, not least, the survivability of Pakistan’s own conventionally-armed strike munitions, including but not limited to designs operated by the recently established Pakistan Army Rocket Force Command.

While not all parts of the Iranian experience are relevant to Pakistan and observers of military dynamics in South Asia, it bears emphasis that Pakistan’s geography, at least in parts of the country, allows it to pursue a conceptually similar approach to Iran’s underground missile bases. Pakistan’s nuclear forces already employ some underground and, more generally, hardened, facilities, but the interplay of technological change and evolving military dynamics in South Asia may well drive Pakistan to follow Iran’s lead, in which case the Iranian experience, including in terms of indiscretion rates, may be instructive as to how Pakistan may enhance the survivability of its nuclear-armed and conventionally-armed strike munition launchers alike.

Cross-Post: Newsletters/sections are primarily categorized by region, and posts can only appear in one section/newsletter at a time. Posts may, however, be relevant to more than one region/section/newsletter.

In a recent post focusing on Iran, which is part of the Defending Iran Project, I borrowed the concept of (submarine) indiscretion rates to examine how Iran can enhance the survivability of its ballistic missile arsenal going forward. Israel and, more recently, the United States, have demonstrated their considerable capacity to locate, track, and target Iran’s mobile ballistic missile launchers once these leave the safety of Iran’s underground missile bases.

There are important lessons here for Russia, as well as NATO countries facing Russia, notwithstanding the very limited attrition that the wheeled launchers associated with Russia’s Iskander-M ballistic missiles and Iskander-K cruise missiles have thus far experienced in the Russia-Ukraine War. Notwithstanding the ongoing qualitative and quantitative growth of Ukraine’s strike capabilities in terms of strike munitions of various types, Ukraine remains far less capable in this capability area than NATO as a collective, largely on account of the formidable state of American military capabilities, including some of the capabilities on display over the course of the 2026 American and Israeli war against Iran.

It bears emphasis that while Ukraine possesses a diverse array of affordable low-cost strike munitions, it has a limited number of primarily foreign-built and supplied high-speed/short time-to-target strike munitions, which it will require to target mobile Russian strike munition launchers such as those in the following images. Ukraine also lacks an air force that can both penetrate Russian airspace and loiter in the area of suspected strike munition launch activity to hunt for Russian strike munition launchers in the manner that Israel and the United States have undertaken against Iran.

Western Russia does not feature the rugged mountainous terrain found across much of Iran, and Russia is, therefore, unable to turn to hardening to enhance the survivability of its conventionally-armed strike, including but not limited to the Iskander-M and Iskander-K. This poses a particularly difficult challenge for Russia in Kaliningrad and around the Kola Peninsula. Given the current trajectory of technological advances, not least in the context of the Russia-Ukraine War, and the increasingly widespread adoption of lower-cost strike systems on the part of European NATO countries, including the types of designs that are being used by Ukraine, Russian strike systems including but not limited to Iskander-M and Iskander-K launchers will likely face very major risks going forward when deployed within 100-300 kilometers of NATO territory, and major risks over greater distances. All things considered, technological change is having the effect of depriving Russia of the relative security that it has long enjoyed in its “rear” on account of its so-called strategic depth. Russia may not be able to fully emulate the (imperfect) Iranian approach to basing and operating strike munition launchers, but there are aspects of the Iranian experience that Russia may well emulate.

Cross-Post: Newsletters/sections are primarily categorized by region, and posts can only appear in one section/newsletter at a time. Posts may, however, be relevant to more than one region/section/newsletter.

In a recent post focusing on Iran—which is part of the Defending Iran Project, which features posts that are relevant to readers interested in the themes of how China may attack Taiwan and how Taiwan may defend against Chinese attacks—I borrow the concept of (submarine) indiscretion rates to examine how Iran can enhance the survivability of its ballistic missile arsenal going forward. Israel and, more recently, the United States, have demonstrated their considerable capacity to locate, track, and target Iran’s mobile ballistic missile launchers once these leave the safety of Iran’s underground missile bases.

While Taiwan’s circumstances are quite different than those of Iran in multiple respects, there are important lessons here for Taiwan, not least on account of how the Taiwan Strait is, at its narrowest points, just 130-180 kilometers wide, and on account of how Taiwan’s western coastal plane tends to have a depth of just 25-35 kilometers. As I have explained in a series of previous posts, China can, among many other approaches, employ fixed-wing uncrewed aircraft as motherships for uncrewed "FPV” multirotor drones to attack targets in Taiwan’s western coastal plain, including the likes of highly conspicuous M142 HIMARS launchers and the trailer-type anti-ship cruise missile and land-attack cruise missile launchers that Taiwan is ever-increasingly reliant on to deter Chinese attacks and, failing that, to retaliate in time of war.

As indicated earlier, Taiwan’s situation is quite different than that of Iran. In important ways, however, Taiwan’s challenges in this area are actually far greater than those of Iran, because China is far closer to Taiwan than Israel and the United States are to Iran, even with access to Gulf Arab airspace and even Gulf Arab airbases. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is, in important respects, increasingly capable in this area, including in terms of how it may turn to ballistic missiles and similar. This notably includes the 300 mm/370 mm guided artillery rockets used with the PLA Ground Force’s (PLAGF) PHL-16 launchers, or the 750 mm ballistic missiles used with said launchers, to target Taiwanese M142 HIMARS launchers, cruise missile launchers, and similar once detected by the PLA’s expansive multi-phenomenology intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) architecture, which may well be complemented by the extensive employment of low-cost fixed-wing uncrewed ISR aircraft over Tiawan’s western coastal plain in times of war. Given the above, the construct of indiscretion rates for mobile missile launchers is as relevant to Taiwan as it evidently is for Iran, and Taiwan would do well to examine the Iranian experience, as well as how Iran may improve upon its observed performance in this area.

This post is part of the Defending Iran Project, accessible through this link.

Until the advent of marine nuclear propulsion in the 1950s, most submarines were, in effect, submersibles that primarily operated on the surface and briefly operated in a submerged state. Iran’s approach to employing its longer-range ballistic missiles can be productively understood as the opposite of how most submarines were employed prior to the advent of nuclear-powered submarines in the early Cold War. That is, Iran’s longer-range ballistic missile launchers and their associated missiles, including reloads, primarily remain underground, and briefly exit Iran’s heavily protected underground missile bases to operate outside so as to prepare ballistic missiles for launch, launch said ballistic missiles, and afterward return inside the underground missile bases—“submerge”—so as to reload, and more generally await orders to undertake another ballistic missile launch.

The pre-nuclear propulsion submarine analogy is also analytically productive for another reason. Even the latest diesel-electric submarines have to regularly operate at periscope depth so as to raise a snorkel (prior to the increasingly widespread use of snorkels toward the end of the Second World War, submarines had to fully surface so as to run their diesel engines). Even the latest diesel-electric submarines can be more readily detected when operating at periscope depth so as to run their diesel engines and, in so doing, recharge their electric batteries. The concept of a (submarine) indiscretion rate refers to the percentage of time that a non-nuclear-powered submarine must operate at periscope depth and run its diesel engines to recharge its batteries during a deployment. To reduce their exposure to threats and enhance their survivability, commanders of submarines without nuclear propulsion want to minimize the time they (unavoidably) have to spend at periscope depth, which is to say minimize their indiscrtion rate during a deployment.

The crews of Iran’s longer-range ballistic missiles and their parent units encounter much the same indiscretion rate dynamic as their counterparts who operate submarines not equipped with nuclear propulsion, whether in Iran or in any other country. Iran’s ballistic missile launch crews must, for all practical intents and purposes, exit the considerable safety of Iran’s underground missile bases so as to prepare ballistic missiles for launch, launch said ballistic missiles, and afterward return inside the underground missile bases—“submerge”—so as to reload, and more generally await orders to undertake another ballistic missile launch. As with the submarine analogy, Iran’s ballistic missile launch crews want to minimize the amount of time that they have to spend outside of the safety of their underground missile bases.

Indiscretion Rates and Liquid-Fuel Vs Solid-Propellant Ballistic Missiles

When it comes to Iran’s liquid-fuelled ballistic missiles, specifically those of R-17 Elbrus (i.e., “Scud”) heritage, including the longer-range Ghadr family, which combust liquid kerosene-type fuel with an oxidizer, the liquid fuel is, for all practical intents and purposes, not storable, and the missiles must be fuelled before use/launch. Fuelling is preferably undertaken outside, given the hazards that the liquid fuel combination poses to the crews, not least in an indoor setting of an enclosed space such as an underground missile base. While fuelling outside is preferable in terms of avoiding accidents and, failing that, mitigating the damage and casualties resulting from an accident during refuelling, it necessarily increases the indiscretion rate of Iran’s ballistic missile launch crews operating liquid-fuelled ballistic missiles (excluding those of the Khorramshahr family, which employ a different type of liquid fuel that is storable). As demonstrated in the June 2025 Iran-Israel War and over the course of the 2026 American and Israeli war against Iran, American and Israeli military aircraft, whether crewed or uncrewed, can be lying in wait outside Iran’s underground missile bases (among other ways to target Iran’s ballistic missile launchers outside of the underground missile bases). To lower the indiscretion rate of Iran’s liquid-fuelled ballistic missile launchers and associated crews, Iran is understood to be fuelling its liquid-fuelled ballistic missiles underground despite the major risks that doing so in an enclosed space poses in terms of the safety and, in effect, the survivability of all the personnel, launchers, and missiles stored within an enclosed underground missile base.

When it comes to Iran’s solid-propellant ballistic missiles, including those of the Kheibar Shekan family, the solid propellant is storable, and the missiles do not need to be refuelled prior to launch. The launchers associated with Iran’s solid-propellant ballistic missiles can be simply driven outside an underground missile base and quickly prepared for launch and thereafter return inside to reload.

There are trade-offs when it comes to liquid-fuel vs solid-propellant ballistic missile technology, not least for Iran. While solid-propellant ballistic missiles do not need to be fuelled prior to launch and are, as such, fairly safe to store underground, casting solid-propellant rocket motors is a hazardous activity and is, therefore, almost always undertaken above ground. Given the above, Israel, and now the United States, have been far better-positioned to degrade, if not suspend, Iran’s ability to manufacture solid-propellant ballistic missiles. In contrast, Iran appears to retain the ability to produce liquid-fuelled ballistic missiles, specifically those of the “legacy” and broadly outdated Ghadr family. It is important to note that Iran has reportedly placed greater emphasis on ballistic missiles of the Ghadr family since October 2024, despite the limitations of these “legacy” ballistic missiles relative to Iran’s newer solid-propellant ballistic missile designs.

The key point here is that solid-propellant ballistic missiles are, all things considered, the better option for Iran going forward, certainly as an alternative to non-storable liquid-fuel designs such as those of the Ghadr family, when it comes to lowering the indiscretion rate for Iran’s ballistic missile force, but there are highly pertinent Iran-specific factors at play which greatly increase the appeal of liquid-fuelled ballistic missiles for Iran, notwithstanding how non-storable liquid-fuels either result in higher indiscretion rates or, alternatively, pose greater risks of major damage resulting from accidents while fueling ballistic missiles within Iran’s underground missile bases.

Other Ways to Lower the Indiscretion Rate for Ballistic Missile Launchers

While a greater reliance on solid-propellant ballistic missiles amounts to one way to lower the indiscretion rate for Iran’s ballistic missile launchers operating out of underground missile bases, there are other ways to go about this, including ways to (further) reduce the indiscretion rate for Iran’s solid-propellant ballistic missile launchers. The key issue is to increase the number of ballistic missiles that a launch crew and associated launcher can launch per “sortie”—during every (preferably brief) deployment outside the safety of the underground missile base. This requires ballistic missile launchers that can launch more than one ballistic missile at a time. Needless to say, this does not lower the indiscretion rate for a given launcher and launch crew during a given “sortie,” but it can reduce the total number of “sorties” that an underground missile base must generate over a given timeframe, and this has the effect of functionally lowering the “aggregate indiscretion rate” over the course of a war, all else being equal.

Most of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers can only launch a single ballistic missile at a time, which is to say per “sortie.” This is particularly the case with respect to Iran’s longer-range ballistic missiles, that is, the launchers associated with ballistic missiles that have a maximum range of 1000 kilometers or more. This reflects the considerable size and weight of such Iranian ballistic missiles, including the quite large warheads that many such designs are equipped with in part to partially compensate for inaccuracy when equipped with a conventional high explosive-fragmentation warhead.

With respect to Iran’s “legacy” liquid-fuelled Ghadr family, which has a diameter of 1.25 meters, it is simply not possible for a reasonably sized launcher to transport and launch more than one such ballistic missile at a time. When it comes to smaller and comparatively shorter-range ballistic missiles, such as those of the related “legacy” liquid-fuelled Qiam family, which have a diameter of 0.88 meters, it is, however, possible to design a launcher that can carry two such missiles at a time. As the following images indicate, Iran has already done so.

With respect to Iran’s solid-propellant ballistic missiles, such as those of the Kheibar Shekan family, which includes the Fattah-1 and Fattah-2, a diameter of 0.81 meters makes it possible to design a launcher that can carry two such missiles at a time. As the following images indicate, Iran has already done so.

Other extant Iranian long-range ballistic missiles, namely the (storable) liquid-fuelled Khorramshahr family, and the solid-fuelled Haj Qasem design, are simply too large and/or heavy for a single trailer-type launcher to carry more than one of the aforementioned ballistic missiles at a time. It is worth noting that Iran’s comparatively shorter-range ballistic missiles, including the ~700-kilometer-range Zolfaghar and the ~1000-kilometer-range Dezful, which are related solid-propellant designs with a diameter of 0.68 meters—to say nothing of even smaller and lighter diameter solid-propellant designs—can be used with launchers that can carry at least two such missiles at a time. While beyond the scope of this post, it is worth noting that Iran’s shorter-range ballistic missiles encounter the very same indiscretion rate dynamic.

In addition to the 610 mm diameter Fateh-110 and extended range Fateh-313, which can be used with launchers that can carry two such missiles at a time, it is also worth noting that the likes of the much smaller, lighter, and shorter-range 456 mm diameter Fath-450 (i.e., BM-250) and the 368 mm diameter Fath-360 (i.e., BM-120), which are relevant when it comes to attacking targets located in the Gulf Arab states, are particularly well-suited for use with launchers that can carry more than two such ballistic missiles at a time. The Moghadam-360 launcher, for example, can carry and launch six 360 mm diameter Fath-360 (BM-120) short-range ballistic missiles at a time. While such measures are likely to be primarily motivated by a desire to increase salvo size without significantly expanding the headcount of the units operating shorter-range ballistic missiles, this approach inherently helps to lower indiscretion rates.

Iran’s Ballistic Missile Launcher Indiscretion Rates Going Forward

All things considered, there is considerable scope for Iran to significantly lower, or at least functionally lower, the indiscretion rates for its ballistic missile launchers and associated crews operating out of Iran’s underground missile bases by developing and deploying launchers that can carry at least two missiles at a time. As explained earlier, this will not be possible with the “legacy” liquid-fuelled Ghadr family ballistic missiles that Iran is likely to heavily rely on going forward, on account of the damage that Israel and the United States have done to Iran’s solid-propellant ballistic missile industrial base. It is also not practical with the likes of the (storable) liquid-fuelled Khorramshahr family and the solid-propellant Haj Qasem simply on account of size and/or weight. Needless to say, launchers that can carry two or more ballistic missiles at a time do not directly address the limitations and risks inherent to Iran’s preferred approach to operating long-range ballistic missiles from underground missile bases. It also does nothing to directly address the threat that American and Israeli aircraft, whether crewed or uncrewed, pose to Iran’s ballistic missile launchers and associated launchers when they unavoidably and necessarily leave the safety of the underground missile bases to launch ballistic missiles of any given type. Even so, the fact remains that the situation that Iran faces is far from hopeless, and that there is scope for adaptation.

It is important to note that Iran itself unveiled trailer-type launchers capable of carrying two Qiam family or two Kheibar Shekan family ballistic missiles well before the October 2024 exchange with Israel and the June 2025 Iran-Israel War, let alone the current American and Israeli war against Iran. This strongly suggests that Iranian military planners are well aware of this general dynamic, even if they may have pursued such launchers not to lower the indiscretion rate, or even through the use of an analytical construct borrowed from submarine operations, but to simply economize on manpower, which is to say expand the number of ballistic missiles that can be launched with a given launch unit without expanding headcount.

This post is part of the Defending Iran Project, accessible through this link.

While the Defending Iran Project will not be focusing on a hypothetical Iranian nuclear arsenal, several of the analytical dynamics that I highlighted in a (very long) recent post are highly relevant to any analysis examining how Iran can adapt to the challenges that the 2026 American and Israeli war against Iran has brought to the fore, as well as what is likely to come in the future vis-a-vis Israel, the United States, and the Gulf Arab states.

In the above analysis, I made the case that acquiring nuclear weapons—becoming a nuclear-weapon state—will likely be a bad deal for Iran itself. All things considered, an incipient Iranian nuclear-weapon state will likely face very major challenges in developing, deploying, and sustaining a credible nuclear deterrent against its primary nuclear-armed adversaries, which is to say Israel and the United States. In the above analysis, I highlighted, among other things, the major challenges that Iran faces in terms of reliability, accuracy and precision, and penetration rates when it comes to employing ballistic missiles, and perhaps other strike munitions, against Israel, the United States, and Gulf Arab states. I also highlighted the vexing challenge of warhead ambiguity, which raises serious questions as to whether a nuclear-armed Iran can deploy both conventionally-armed and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles with a range of 1000 or more kilometers (i.e., ballistic missiles with the range required to target Israel from Iranian territory).

In the above analysis, I explained that

if Iran had a large and capable air force, it could, in effect, readily place a partition between nuclear capabilities and its conventional capabilities and perhaps reduce its reliance on longer-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles. But Iran does not have a large and capable air force and is unlikely to possess such an air force anytime soon, not least vis-a-vis the formidable air combat capabilities of Israel and the United States, as well as the Gulf Arab states.

As things stand, Iran’s longer-range ballistic missiles, namely those of the Qadr, Kheibar Shekan, and Khorramshahr design families, as well as the orphan Sejjil design, are central to Iran’s conventional strike and, as such, conventional deterrence capabilities, irrespective to how much these leave to be desired in terms of reliability, accuracy and precision, and penetration rates against Israeli, American, and Gulf Arab ballistic missile defences.

Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons,

Iran will likely have to navigate an intensely unstable nuclear deterrence relationship with Israel—and the United States—all while possessing negligible ballistic missile defences, and without the ability to credibly deliver nuclear warheads of its own to targets in Israel on account of the poor accuracy and penetration rate exhibited by Iranian ballistic missiles to date in the face of Israeli and American ballistic missile defences.

All things considered, acquiring nuclear weapons will, in multiple important respects, compound and complexify the already immense challenges that Iran faces in bolstering its defences vis-a-vis Israel and the United States. The Defending Iran Project will feature posts written as if Iran will remain at some level of nuclear latency or nuclear threshold state status. As I explained in the above analysis,

many analysts succumb to the temptation of thinking in terms of “if I were the all-powerful emperor” or “if I could choose the all-powerful emperor,” or “if I could whisper into the ears of the all-powerful emperor, then I would pursue/recommend policies x, y, z.” I am not the all-powerful emperor, do not select the all-powerful emperor, and do not get to whisper in the ear of an all-powerful emperor. As an analyst, I strive to deal with the world as it is, not as I wish it would be. The current leadership of the Islamic Republic constitute the powers that be in Tehran, and those who collectively sit upon the proverbial peacock throne in Tehran alone have full control over Iran’s nuclear file, no matter what one may think of the Islamic Republic

or, indeed, of the potential benefits of Iran’s hypothetical transition to a nuclear-weapon state in terms of defending Iran in the aftermath of the 2026 American and Israeli war against the country.

This post is part of the Defending Iran Project, accessible through this link.

Reports indicate that Canada has proceeded to order M142 HIMARS wheeled launchers and associated munitions from the United States. Canadian interest in the M142 HIMARS, which has become something of a household name as a result of its widespread use in the Russia-Ukraine War, is not a new development, with a public notification to the United States Congress having been released in October 2025.

Much can be said about the wisdom, prudence, and efficacy of this procurement decision, not least on account of enduring tensions with the United States under Trump 2.0, which has made otherwise quite mundane procurement decisions politically toxic and the subject of considerable public curiosity. This post will focus not on the Canada-United States angle but on the question of efficacy with respect to the Canada-NATO angle. Simply stated, why is Canada procuring the M142 HIMARS—or indeed anything like it from any vendor country, including one not named the United States of America? Is this an efficacious procurement decision for Canada itself?

Canada declared its interest in procuring such a ground-based guided artillery rocket/ballistic missile-centric long-range fires capability in Our North, Strong and Free (2024), which resulted in the Long Range Precision Strike (Land) procurement program. According to the former, the objective is to “acquire long-range missile capabilities for the Canadian Army. These missiles will be deployed to enable our forces to shoot at greater ranges than our adversaries in combat.” According to the latter, the objective is to “deliver a long-range precision strike capability that can provide responsive, 24/7, all-weather, precision-guided indirect fire support to defend the continent, enable a combat-capable Canadian brigade within a NATO or FVEY-led Division to deter adversaries, or to neutralize and destroy adversary high pay-off targets.”

All things considered, Ottawa’s intent appears to be to enhance Canada’s contribution to NATO vis-a-vis Russia with respect to a land-based Canadian presence in Europe and with respect to launching such missiles against Russian targets either on NATO or on Russian territory. Given this, Canada is, in effect, buying a political-diplomatic weapon when it comes to M142 HIMARS launchers and associated munitions: the primary objective is to put a pacifier into the mouths of Canada’s NATO allies, including the United States. The fact that the Russian Federation will encounter a greater threat from NATO if and when Canada’s M142 HIMARS launchers are deployed in Europe is, in effect, rather incidental. Unlike many of the other procurement projects pursued by the Canadian Armed Forces, the M142 HIMARS and associated missiles contribute next to nothing to Canada’s security within North America (more on this later).

The October 2025 notification to the United States Congress indicates that Canada had requested to buy up to:

• 26x M142 wheeled launchers (i.e., M142 HIMARS) alongside various types of ancillary equipment.

• 132x M31A1 rocket pods (each loaded with 6x 227 mm diameter M31 series guided rockets, which is to say 792 M31 series guided rockets). M31A1 rockets are equipped with unitary high explosive-fragmentation warheads. These have a maximum range of approximately 90 kilometers.

• 132x M30A2 GMLRS pods (each loaded with 6x 227 mm diameter M30 series guided rockets, which is to say 792x M30 series guided rockets). M30A2 rockets are equipped with the so-called alternative warhead, which is to say a high explosive-fragmentation warhead surrounded by some 160,000 pre-formed tungsten fragments and an airburst fuse. These have a maximum range of approximately 90 kilometers.

• 32x M403 GMLRS-ER (i.e., extended-range) pods and 32x M404 GMLRS-ER pods (i.e., 384x GMRLS-ER guided rockets in total). The M403 is equipped with a high explosive-fragmentation warhead, whereas the M404 is equipped with the so-called alternative warhead, which comes with pre-formed tungsten fragments and an airburst fuse. These have a maximum range of approximately 150 kilometers.

• 64x M57 ATACMS 610 mm diameter short-range ballistic missiles. These have a maximum range of approximately 300 kilometers and are much larger and heavier than the aforementioned 227 mm diameter munitions. Each M142 launcher can be loaded with a single pod. Whereas each pod can be loaded with six 227 mm diameter guided artillery rockets, each pod can be loaded with just one 610 mm diameter ATACMS ballistic missile.

It bears emphasis that it is hardly unusual for governments not to purchase the full quantity of items specified in these public documents, which are intended to notify the United States Congress of the intentions of the American executive branch (other countries do not have a comparable procedure, so we typically do not know what deal other countries offer Canada).

The M142 HIMARS and associated 227 mm diameter GMLRS family guided artillery rockets and 610 mm ATACMS family ballistic missiles are potent and proven shorter-range strike systems. Leaving aside tensions in Canada-United States relations, which may well not endure beyond Trump 2.0 and January 2029, and the question of whether a different system, such as the South Korean K239 Chunmoo, is a better option for Canada, my primary objection to Canada’s procurement of any such system from any vendor country concerns how the allocation of Canada’s finite resources toward such a system and capability set is, in effect, increasingly redundant. I say this not least on account of how it is solely a Canadian contribution to NATO within Europe, as opposed to NATO within North America, where Canada’s “homeland” resides—a place that Canada’s European allies simply assume to be secure, even as they make negligible contributions, if any, toward the defence of NATO territory within North America.

At the time when Russia initiated its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, European NATO countries possessed shorter-range strike capabilities in the vein of the M142’s GMLRS guided rockets and ATACMS ballistic missiles in limited and inadequate numbers. Since February 2022, however, European NATO members have made heavy investments toward such capabilities. Existing M270 MLRS operators—the M270 is the older tracked counterpart to the better-known M142 HIMARS wheeled launcher—have doubled down on capabilities that they had been gradually shedding over the course of the post-Cold War era. Some European NATO members, particularly the Baltic states, have, like Canada, acquired such capabilities for the first time. Poland, which borders the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and functionally borders Russia proper, given the geographic realities of the Baltic states and Belarus, has undertaken a veritable procurement spree in this area. As a result, what was once a glaring capability shortfall for European NATO members is, in effect, no more.

According to the formal public notification to the United States Congress, Canada requested authorization to purchase up to 26x M142 HIMARS wheeled launchers alongside associated 227 mm diameter guided artillery rockets and 610 mm diameter short-range ballistic missiles. Each of the RCAF’s CC-177 military transport aircraft can carry up to two M142 HIMARS wheeled launchers at a time—the pods containing the 227 mm and 610 mm must also be transported from Canada to Europe alongside ancillary equipment required to operate the M142 HIMARS launchers. The RCAF operates a total of 5x CC-177 military transport aircraft, not all of which are flightworthy on a given day. The RCAF’s fleet of 17x CC-130J military transport aircraft can carry one M142 HIMARS wheeled launcher at a time and is also more limited in terms of range, not least when carrying even a stripped-down M142 launcher.

Simply stated, even deploying 8x M142 HIMARS launchers from Canada to Europe, specifically, to Poland and/or the Baltic states, will amount to a very significant logistical undertaking in times of crisis or war, which is to say at a time when non-American and American airlift capacity alike will likely be strained. The RCAF itself will have to transfer other types of equipment, as well as personnel and supplies, to Europe. While personnel and certain types of supplies can be loaded onto airliner-type aircraft chartered by the Canadian government, the M142 HIMARS launchers must be transported either via dedicated military transport aircraft or by sea. Maritime shipping from Montreal to a port in western Europe will take the better part of two weeks, even if a ship is immediately available for a Canadian M142 HIMARS unit that is immediately ready to deploy from a Canadian port. It will likely take a Canadian M142 HIMARS unit that reaches Europe several more days to arrive at potential launch sites from which targets in Kaliningrad and/or Russia proper can be targeted with existing munitions.

There is a real possibility that European NATO member states will run out of munitions for their M142 and M270 launchers by the time that non-forward-deployed Canadian M142 HIMARS launchers arrive in Europe, absent considerable early warning as to the potential onset of a war and considerable initiative in rapidly deploying Canadian Forces to Europe prior to the onset of a war. There is, therefore, a real possibility that European NATO member states will ask Ottawa to prioritize the transfer of Canadian-owned 227 mm diameter guided artillery rockets and 610 mm diameter short-range ballistic missiles. Ottawa may understandably balk at such requests, but it would be imprudent in times of crisis or war not to expedite the shipment of Canadian-owned munitions for Canada’s M142 HIMARS launchers over the launchers themselves, even if it means that Canada’s NATO allies, not Canada itself, will end up launching the munitions that Canadian taxpayers pay for.

Toward the beginning of this post, I characterized Canada’s procurement of M142 HIMARS launchers and associated munitions as buying a political-diplomatic weapon: the primary purpose is to put a pacifier into the mouths of Canada’s NATO allies, including the United States. As stated earlier, the fact that the Russian Federation will encounter a greater threat from NATO if and when Canada’s M142 HIMARS launchers are deployed in Europe is, in effect, rather incidental. Naturally, a permanent forward presence of Canadian M142 HIMARS launchers and associated crews in Europe will change things, but Canada is unlikely to forward-deploy its entire arsenal of M142 HIMARS launchers and/or the associated munitions in Europe, and the marginal utility and value of a Canadian M142 HIMARS launcher is inherently lower now that European NATO countries are deploying such systems in growing numbers. All things considered, the M142 HIMARS is a great example of precisely the type of system and capability set that European NATO countries themselves need to be procuring alongside the relevant munitions, and themselves forward-deploying closer to Poland and/or the Baltic states so as to bring Russian targets within range in the opening hours of a war, not the opening days or weeks of a war. M142 HIMARS launchers are simply useless to NATO if they are not within 300 kilometers of potential Russian targets (500 kilometers, if and when NATO member states procure and deploy the new longer-range American PrSM ballistic missile).

As stated earlier, unlike many of the other procurement projects pursued by the Canadian Armed Forces, the M142 HIMARS and associated missiles contribute next to nothing to Canada’s security within North America. In principle, Canada’s M142 HIMARS launchers can be used to target American forces, and perhaps American territory, in the unlikely but nevertheless non-zero probability event of an American invasion. I would, however, caution Canadians that the current state of relations with the United States under Trump 2.0 may not endure past January 2029, and that no amount of M142 HIMARS launchers and associated munitions—or, say, South Korean-built K239 Chunmoo launchers and associated munitions, will either solve the political-diplomatic challenge problem that is Trump 2.0, or afford Canada security—arms procurement is about sourcing means through which to reach the desired ends, above all enhancing Canada’s security.

Even if Canada were to employ the requested 610 mm diameter ATACMS ballistic missiles against the United States, a 300-kilometer range ballistic missile is rather inadequate for Canada’s purposes in a hypothetical American invasion scenario, and Canada’s M142 launchers will likely be subject to the full breadth of American counterforce capabilities in any such potentiality. There is a case for Ottawa to buy out some proverbial insurance policies for such an eventuality, but the M142 HIMARS launchers and associated munitions are a far cry from a suitable insurance policy for Canada’s purposes.

According to a CBC News report, the Carney government will soon review proposals from the Department of National Defence as to whether and how Canada should pursue a major expansion of the country’s military reserves to a target strength of 100,000 primary reservists and, more ambitiously and controversially, to establish a lightly trained and equipped supplementary reserve of 300,000. The latest reports follow a series of reports over the past year or so concerning what the Department of National Defence had in mind for the country. This notably included a proposal, which has since reportedly been abandoned following controversy, to target Canada’s federal public servants for recruitment into the Supplementary Reserve.

It is productive to offer a reminder of what this particular proposal reportedly entailed:

“The Supplementary or other Reserve should accommodate skilled and unskilled contributors while still differentiating those with previous CAF service from new members,” Carignan and Beck wrote in a nine-page, unclassified document obtained by the Citizen. “It should initially prioritize volunteer public servants at the federal and provincial/territorial level. The entry criteria for the Supplementary or other Reserve should be less restrictive than the Reserve Force for age limits as well as physical and fitness requirements.” [Emphasis added]

I have previously argued that there may be more to the notion of tapping into the labour pool composed of federal public servants than meets the eye.

In this post, I will explain why a hypothetical American invasion, which the Department of National Defence has been reportedly giving some thought to—a major headline in itself—is perhaps the only scenario in which there is a case for essentially sabotaging the administrative capacity of Canada’s federal government so as to arm more Canadians, not least in and around the Ottawa metropolitan area.

The Inherent Opportunity Costs of Revervist Mobilization

An expansion of military reserves can be tempting for a variety of reasons. If nothing else, a greater reliance on part-time military personnel means significantly lower military spending than would otherwise be the case if Canada were to only recruit additional full-time military personnel, not least in a context in which more than 30% of Canada’s annual military expenditures are allocated toward personnel expenses. An expansion of Canada’s military reserves also means that part-time military personnel will, at least in part, continue to contribute to the civil economy, unlike their full-time counterparts, who are, in effect, economically unproductive. In principle, an expansion of military reserves has many benefits, although there are inherent costs and trade-offs in terms of readiness, as well as the broader issue of the level of training and competency that can be attained and sustained over x years. Leaving aside a federal response to a natural disaster, for which Canada does not require uniformed part-time military personnel, let alone armed and unfiformed part-time military personnel, a military reserve that is not ready for any kind of combat-oriented deployment—without a dramatically elevated and, all things considered, politically unacceptable risk of combat losses—within several weeks or months may as well not exist, with the exception of one specific scenario: a hypothetical American invasion of Canada.

It is important to note that there are a series of approaches to non-full-time military reserves. This post—and public debate within Canada more generally—focuses on part-time all-volunteer military personnel and associated units in a manner largely pioneered by the United States, which is best understood in the context of the U.S. Army National Guard and the U.S. Air National Guard. There are, of course, other conceptions of military reserves, including the more or less universal notion of mobilizing ex-military personnel in wartime, as well as the notion of mobilizing discharged cohorts of conscripts where conscription still takes place.

The Canadian Armed Forces are composed of professional all-volunteer full-time Regular Force personnel as well as all-volunteer part-time Reserve Force personnel. There is no serious discussion about introducing (military) conscription or some kind of national service, and the proposed Supplementary Reserve force of 300,000 is expected to be nothing other than an all-volunteer part-time military force, one that will, in all likelihood, follow the American national guard model of “a weekend a month, two weeks a year” part-time military service (excluding initial training).

Discussions of military reserves often focus on what part-time reservist military personnel can offer a country, and why the approach may be preferable to an expansion of the full-time regular force (these are not, of course, mutually exclusive approaches). As with most things in life, there are, however, major trade-offs, and there exists a tendency to overlook how military reserves are fundamentally subtractive: when mobilized, the country loses something. To explain this dynamic, it is productive to offer a recent vignette from the United States.

Several years ago, schoolteachers in California went on strike. In response, the governor of California mobilized the California National Guard to help keep schools open. This resulted in a part-time enlisted national guard member who happened to work a day job as a Ph.D.-wielding physicist for one of the United States Department of Energy’s national laboratories temporarily working as a schoolteacher while dressed in a camouflage uniform. The strike affecting public schools was brief, and the physicist in question may not have missed much important work. Even so, the fact that such a difficult-to-substitute and highly skilled person working for the American federal government volunteered to join the national guard as a part-time reservist—an inherently personal choice—raised a complex and difficult-to-answer question for any democracy: was this a sensible allocation of the country’s human resources? In the event of a major war, such as a war with Russia, or a likely protracted war with China, did the United States really want to have volunteer reservists enlist as privates and serve in, for example, the infantry, even if they are neurosurgeons, food safety inspectors, air traffic controllers, or schoolteachers?

I draw attention to this vignette because it highlights something important about military reservists: unlike their full-time counterparts, which is to say the personnel who constitute the Canadian Armed Forces’ regulars, reservists are doing something on a typical workday, and often something economically productive at that. Reservists may be hairdressers, school teachers, bus drivers, medical doctors, musicians, electricians, truck drivers, carpenters, and so forth. When called to duty, whether in time of war or in response to a natural disaster, mobilized reservists naturally cannot do what they otherwise do on a typical workday, and Canadian society and Canada’s economy will feel their temporary absence. In this particular sense, military reserves are fundamentally subtractive. If, for example, a country has a reserve military field hospital of company or battalion size, it will in all likelihood be staffed by persons who work as civilian healthcare providers in peacetime. When mobilized to serve in uniform, the Canadian Armed Forces gains another field hospital at the expense of the rest of the country: healthcare systems across Canada will have to operate at a degraded capacity for as long as said reservist healthcare providers are mobilized.

Why Would Canada Mobilize Federal Public Servants For Military Service?

The above can be largely distilled into an argument that Ottawa would do well to very carefully consider who it recruits into a military reserve and whether the country benefits from having one additional person in uniform doing x at the cost of losing one civilian doing y, at least for the duration of mobilization—and perhaps forever, should the mobilized reservist in question be killed or injured—this entire debate only exists because Ottawa is concerned about a major war. All things considered, I am more understanding of the case for mobilizing, say, Canadians who work as medical doctors and school teachers that volunteer to join the Supplementary Reserve—in whatever capacity, including infantry—than I am of mobilizing federal public servants in a war that is significant enough for the mobilization of the proposed 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve to be given much consideration given the economic damage and disruption that the mobilization of so many Canadians in uniform will inherently entail.

The Covid-19 pandemic serves as an instructive recent case in which Canada’s federal government, alongside its provincial and sub-provincial counterparts, had to, in effect, mobilize for an “all hands on deck” type of emergency, notwithstanding the work-from-home provisions. Simply stated, a national emergency, whether a pandemic or a war, is not the time to deprive the machinery of government of the public servants who run it as well as it runs on any given day. A major war in which Canada’s federal government will even consider mobilizing up to 400,000 reservists—some 1% of Canada’s total population and some 1.4% of Canadians aged 18-64—will, by definition, be a very major crisis for the country, one in which the entire federal public service will have to rise to the challenge in an “all hands on deck” type of emergency.

While the Department of National Defence has backtracked on the notion of targeting federal public servants as a source of recruits for a 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve, it is important to consider that there is one very specific scenario in which it actually behooves Canada’s federal government to heavily draw upon the federal public service as a source of recruits for the Supplementary Reserve: a hypothetical American invasion of Canada. This is, in effect, the only plausible scenario in which there is a case for essentially self-sabotaging the administrative capacity of Canada’s federal government so as to bolster the country’s military capabilities. Canada may well require an expanded 100,000-strong Primary Reserve as well as a 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve to meet its NATO commitments, but the country will need its federal administrative apparatus to be working at “110%” in a major war, and simply cannot afford to, in effect, place experienced bureaucrats well-versed in running the machinery of state in uniform—supplying and sustaining up to 400,000 mobilized reservists, who will collectively outnumber the entire federal public service, will be herculean administrative undertaking.

While there are strong arguments against using federal public servants as a pool of labour for the proposed 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve, it nevertheless worth noting that some 40% of Canada’s federal public servants are based in the Ottawa area. That is to say, some 140,000 Canadians of working age, and some 9% of the total population of the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area (and an even larger percentage of the adult population, and of the adult population aged 18-64, in said metropolitan area). By virtue of geography, most Canadians—and most of the Canadian Armed Forces’ regular and primary reserve units and personnel—are nowhere near Ottawa—the nation’s capital and a likely high-priority target for the United States in an unlikely hypothetical invasion scenario—on any given day. If Canadians in the supplementary reserve are going to contribute to the defence of the nation’s capital, they will have to be in and around the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area at the start of a crisis or war.

By virtue of geography, Canada will also have little time to respond to a hypothetical American invasion. A distance of less than 75 kilometers separates Parliament Hill in Ottawa from American territory. For context, that is some sixteen minutes of flight time by helicopter from the United States (CFB Petawawa is, meanwhile, some 135 kilometers from Parliament Hill). Fort Drum, New York, which is home to the United States Army’s active duty/regular force 10th Mountain Division—some 15,000 military personnel, including two permanently assigned transport helicopter battalions, is located some 155 kilometers from Parliament Hill. In the very unlikely event that the proverbial hammer falls, it will likely fall very fast and very hard in the Ottawa area. Beyond whatever grouping of regular force and primary reserve personnel that Canada can rapidly mobilize in and around Ottawa, any Canadians, including everyday citizens not part of a lightly trained and equipped Supplementary Reserve taking up arms in the defence of the country and the nation’s capital, will have to be in and around the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area at the start of a crisis or war.

As explained, mobilizing federal public servants who volunteered to join the federal public service, some 40% of whom are based in the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area, amounts to self-sabotaging the administrative capacities of the federal government precisely when it is most needed during a major crisis or war. If, however, Canada faces the prospect of an American invasion, one that will almost certainly include rapid American movements toward Ottawa in this still unlikely scenario, Canada will face an existential struggle in which the nation’s survival as a sovereign and independent country is at stake, an existential struggle that justifies self-sabotaging the administrative capacities of the federal government as a necessary sacrifice. Canada will need additional military forces in and around the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area to deter American military action by denying Trump—and perhaps future American presidents—a low-cost and low-risk fait accompli type of scenario. Most Canadians do not live anywhere near Ottawa. Most regular force Canadian military personnel are not garrisoned anywhere near Ottawa. Around 15% of the adult population aged 18-64 in the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area works for the federal government. Federal public servants who reside in the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan area are the right people to recruit for a proposed 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve if a hypothetical American invasion is the scenario motivating this proposed policy.

I am mindful that Ottawa’s motivations in expanding the country’s military capabilities are not solely motivated by concerns about the United States under Trump 2.0. I am mindful that the Canadian Armed Forces have their own institutional interests, and that civil-military relations in Canada’s constitutional order mean that it will ultimately be the incumbent prime minister and cabinet who will decide such matters, whether through acts of commission or omission. I am also mindful that there is a future for Canada-United States relations beyond the life of the mere mortal Donald John Trump, and that a hypothetical American invasion of Canada is just that—a hypothetical scenario—and a thankfully still very unlikely one at that. Even so, Canada has shifted from a very long era in which there was essentially a zero percent probability of American military action against Canada to a non-zero percent probability of American military action against Canada. Reporting suggests that Ottawa is giving this grave scenario, however unlikely, some thought at a time when the country is working on enhancing its military capabilities for reasons unrelated to Trump and the United States. Be that as it may, the very fact that Canadian federal public servants were even being considered as a recruiting pool for a proposed 300,000-strong Supplementary Reserve—at the cost of self-sabotaging Canada’s federal administrative capacity at times of mobilization—should alarm Canadians, given how there is only one scenario in which there is a case for essentially sabotaging the administrative capacity of Canada’s federal government so as to arm more Canadians, not least in an around the Ottawa metropolitan area: a hypothetical American invasion of Canada.

NB: Please treat this as a working paper that has been rather hurriedly prepared in light of recent and ongoing events. The following text was also posted on my X/Twitter account.

A lot of ink has been spilled on the Iran nuclear issue over the past thirty or so years, much of it focusing on Iran’s fissile material stockpiles, pathways to weaponization, and breakout times, as well as the possibility of a hypothetical regional proliferation cascade in response to Iran’s nuclearization. It remains exceptionally rare to come across an analysis of the potential implications of a nuclear-armed Iran for Iran itself. The allure of nuclear weapons has perhaps never been greater among Iranian officials and everyday Iranians alike, but obtaining nuclear weapons will likely only be the start of Iran’s problems, even if a hypothetical nuclear breakout attempt succeeds with or without yet another devastating round of fighting with the United States and Israel.

At some level, one must ask whether the proverbial game is worth the candle. Given the challenges that Iran will likely face in operationalizing a notional Iranian nuclear arsenal against Israel and the United States, with which Iran will likely form its two primary nuclear deterrence relationships, I contend that Iran is, all things considered, best off without nuclear weapons. This argument is, of course, contingent upon there not existing a credible threat of nuclear attack from Israel and/or the United States, which there is not at this time, and upon the non-existence of ongoing and escalating efforts to bring about state collapse in Iran. I would be remiss not to underscore that there are, of course, other plausible ways through which policy change can bring Iran, and the Islamic Republic itself, greater security without nuclear weapons, but such matters are beyond the scope of this analysis.

This analysis will sketch out my thinking on this increasingly topical issue based upon various notes and drafts, the most recent revision of which was undertaken in late October 2024, that have been “collecting dust” over the years. I will not touch on every possible issue, but this rather hastily updated draft—which should be treated as a working paper and not a polished final product—will draw attention to several issues that I find to be very important as a military and technology analyst. Before explaining my views on this matter, I stress that I merely presume, not prescribe, policy continuity in Tehran, whether in terms of domestic, foreign, or military policy, and, more to the point, policies with respect to Israel and the United States. Many analysts succumb to the temptation of thinking in terms of “if I were the all-powerful emperor” or “if I could choose the all-powerful emperor,” or “if I could whisper into the ears of the all-powerful emperor, then I would do/recommend policies x, y, z.” I am not the all-powerful emperor, do not select the all-powerful emperor, and do not get to whisper in the ear of an all-powerful emperor. As an analyst, I strive to deal with the world as it is, not as I wish it would be. The current leadership of the Islamic Republic constitute the powers that be in Tehran, and those who collectively sit upon the proverbial peacock throne in Tehran alone have full control over Iran’s nuclear file, no matter what one may think of the Islamic Republic.

For the purposes of this analysis, Iran and the Islamic Republic are necessarily one and the same. Those who contend that the distinction is of practical consequence should note that the central thesis of this analysis is that nuclearization will likely amount to a bad deal for both the Islamic Republic of Iran and the people of Iran, no matter who sits upon the proverbial peacock throne in Tehran and their choice of headgear. As I have explained in the past, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, both material and human, and related areas, including long-range ballistic missile infrastructure, both material and human, are part of Iran’s “crown jewels” and are, as such, part of the patrimony of the Iranian people. Iran’s current leaders, who have, in effect, recently inherited said crown jewels upon taking power in wartime, and Iran’s future leaders—Iran’s current leaders are also mortal men—will have to make fateful decisions about the country’s crown jewels, including its nuclear infrastructure, both material and human. This analysis does not address the question about what should be done with Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including whether it should be traded away in one or more negotiated agreements, and exclusively focuses on the challenges that Iran will likely face in operationalizing a notional nuclear arsenal.

Iran’s Geography, Deterrence Relationships, and Directional Dyads

Let us suppose that Iran becomes a nuclear-weapon state in the following x months or years. The first issue to be addressed concerns how many nuclear deterrence relationships Iran will become a part of. Excluding the nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia share with some of their treaty allies, there are currently nine nuclear-weapon states, Israel included. Iran’s nuclearization will bring the total to ten. Nuclear-weapon states logically cannot be in a nuclear deterrence relationship—part of a nuclear dyad—with themselves, which means that there will be 45 nuclear dyads and 90 directional nuclear dyads if and when Iran becomes a nuclear-weapon state.

A dyad refers to a pairing of countries x and y, such as the United States and North Korea. A directional dyad refers to how x may view its nuclear deterrence relationship with y (x→y) as more important than y views its nuclear deterrence relationship with x (y→x). North Korea is, for example, just one of the United States’ nuclear-armed adversaries, and a relatively minor one—relative to Russia and, increasingly, China—when it comes to matters of nuclear strategy, nuclear posture, capability development, force size, and so forth. The same cannot be said of North Korea with respect to the United States as its nuclear-armed adversary—the United States—including American military forces in South Korea and Japan—is the primary, if not the only, nuclear-armed adversary of North Korea.

For the present purposes, I will refer to the North Korea→United States nuclear dyad as an example of a strong directional nuclear dyad, one that is notably stronger than the United States→North Korea directional nuclear dyad. The North Korea→China and North Korea→Russia nuclear dyads are, by contrast, examples of weak directional dyads. All else being equal, any nuclear-armed state will also want to be in as few strong directional dyads as possible. All else being equal, any nuclear-armed state will also want to be in as few politically salient nuclear dyads—whether strong or weak in directional terms—as possible. Not all nuclear dyads are politically salient, with the France-UK, France-USA, and UK-USA nuclear dyads constituting some of the best examples of this dynamic.

A nuclear-armed Iran will, at the very least, enter into nuclear deterrence relationships with Israel and the United States. I would characterize these directional dyads involving Iran as mutually strong and exceedingly strong with respect to the Israel→Iran directional dyad. I cannot overemphasize how the intensity of the Israel→Iran directional dyad will likely make the Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship an outlier in the current nuclear landscape. The terminology “nuclear deterrence relationship” captures how we are dealing with a two-sided dynamic, one in which the Iran→Israel directional dyad may be very different than the Israel→Iran directional dyad, as is the case in the North Korea-United States nuclear deterrence relationship. Here, as elsewhere, strategic empathy is required, no matter what one thinks of Iran and Israel, insofar as one cares about having a stable nuclear relationship and avoiding the use of nuclear weapons against a nuclear-armed adversary that can retaliate in kind to devastating effect.

It bears emphasis that while nuclear deterrence relationships tend to be primarily bilateral affairs, the Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship may well take on a more or less trilateral form should the United States extend to Israel a “nuclear umbrella,” which is to say nuclear guarantees if Iran ever employs nuclear weapons against Israel, once Iran becomes a nuclear-weapon state. I will touch upon this profoundly complexifying potential dynamic later on. Beyond a potential trilateral or triadic dynamic, Iran will likely enter into a mutually, albeit not symmetrically, strong nuclear deterrence relationship with the United States. The United States will likely view any Iranian nuclear weapons as a threat to itself solely as a result of the threat that Iran can pose to American military bases and forces in the Middle East, even if Iran were to forgo the development and deployment of intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.

A nuclear-armed Iran will, in turn, likely have to more seriously consider the potential of American nuclear weapons being used against it. The best way to deter such an eventuality, including the possibility of American nuclear blackmail against Iran—as a nuclear-weapon state—during a crisis or war, will be to bring the continental United States within range of Iran’s nuclear weapons by developing and deploying intercontinental-range ballistic missiles. Even attempting to do so will, however, likely only intensify the United States→Iran directional dyad, thereby resulting in a likely unstable nuclear deterrence relationship until Iran’s incipient nuclear arsenal matures and/or until Iran and the United States reach a modus vivendi. It bears emphasis that developing intercontinental range ballistic missiles to target the United States, and deploying such missiles in such numbers as to credibly deter the United States, will inherently bring all other nuclear-weapon states within the range of Iran’s nuclear arsenal.

As the range of Iranian nuclear-capable ballistic missiles approaches 3500-4000 kilometers, Iran will likely enter into nuclear deterrence relationships with France and the United Kingdom. I would characterize these directional dyads as mutually weak—my simplified binary strong/weak framing does not, of course, capture all the potential levels of nuance—at the outset of Iran’s nuclearization, but asymmetrically directional, which is to say relatively stronger in the France→Iran and United Kingdom→Iran directional dyads as Paris and London come within the range of Iran’s nuclear arsenal than the Iran→France and Iran→United Kingdom directional dyads. (Iran will, at the time of nuclearization, also enter into a nuclear deterrence relationship with NATO in general and with the United States and Turkiye, which hosts American nuclear bombs at Incirlik airbase as part of a NATO nuclear sharing arrangement, in particular, but this complex issue is best put aside for another time)

Iran already borders a nuclear-weapons state, Pakistan, and will likely enter into at least a mutually weak nuclear dyad with its neighbour. Islamabad is some 1200 kilometers from Iran, and New Delhi is less than 1700 kilometers from Iran. Iran will likely also enter into a mutually weak and, as with Pakistan, not very politically salient nuclear dyad with India, even if it forgoes the longer-range nuclear delivery systems required to target France and the United Kingdom, let alone the United States.

As I have explained in the past, Iran occupies a rather “central” geographic position in the section of the Afro-Eurasian landmass that lies north of the equator. As a result, although North America may be very far from Iran, many countries are close to being Iran’s “neighbours” if and when Iran transitions from its current crop of ~2000-kilometer nominal maximum range ballistic missiles to ~3500-4000-kilometer nominal maximum range ballistic missiles.

Across the Caspian Sea lies another nuclear-weapon state that is functionally another neighbour of Iran. The southernmost parts of Russian territory near the Caucasus lie within 200 kilometers of northwestern Iran, and Moscow is just ~1900 kilometers from northwestern Iran and ~2450 kilometers from Tehran. While Iran and Russia currently have good working relations, Iran will likely enter into a mutually weak nuclear deterrence relationship with Russia that is characterized, at least initially, by low political salience.

Although Beijing is some 4900 kilometers from Iran, the westernmost parts of Chinese territory lie within 1200 or so kilometers of northeastern Iran. While Iran and China currently have good working relations, Iran will likely enter into a mutually weak nuclear deterrence relationship with China. Arguably, the China-Iran nuclear dyad will be politically non-salient to an even greater degree than the Iran-Pakistan, Iran-India, and Iran-Russia nuclear dyads.

Finally, Iran will likely enter into a particularly politically non-salient and mutually weak nuclear deterrence relationship with North Korea. A distance of 5600 kilometers or more separates Iran and North Korea.

In sum, Iran will likely enter into two intense and strong nuclear dyads with both Israel and the United States at the time of its “birth” as a nuclear-weapon state. Iran will, as such, have both a regional/proximate nuclear-armed adversary and a distant nuclear-armed adversary on the other side of the world. The closest analogy is that Iran will, at the time of its “birth” as a nuclear-weapon state, face the challenges faced by both Pakistan and North Korea at the time of their respective “births” as nuclear-weapon states. One can also draw an analogy to the context that China encountered when it became a nuclear-weapon state in 1964. While Moscow was around 4000 kilometers from the more secure parts of China’s western territory bordering the Soviet Union and some 5800 kilometers from a much more secure location in inner China, such as Xian, other parts of the Soviet Union were well within China’s reach. For context, a distance of around 7500 kilometers separates New York and Moscow, and Moscow is around 2500 kilometers from London and Paris.

Among the four more recent nuclear-weapon states, who are, not incidentally, not parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty or permanent members of the UN Security Council, Israel does not, in effect, have any nuclear-armed adversaries at this time, although it does have a latent nuclear deterrence relationship with Pakistan since 1998 and wields its nuclear arsenal as the ultimate deterrent against overwhelming conventional attacks by its neighbours (not limited to Iran).

India is part of two nuclear deterrence relationships involving China and Pakistan, respectively. Beijing is ~3200-3800 kilometers from northern India (south of the Himalayas) and ~4300 kilometers from central India, while Chongqing and Chengdu are less than 2000 kilometers from northern India (south of the Himalayas), and even closer to viable launch positions in India’s northeast (i.e., east of the Siliguri Corridor). This is all to say that India has, in effect, two “regional” nuclear adversaries and no “intercontinental” nuclear adversaries.

Pakistan, meanwhile, has, in effect, a single politically salient nuclear deterrence relationship with India, notwithstanding American recent claims and reports that Pakistan is developing intercontinental-range ballistic missiles so as to bring the continental United States within range of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Notably, the geographies and military realities of the India-Pakistan nuclear dyad are such that there remains a non-zero risk of large-scale ground combat, namely an Indian invasion of parts of Pakistan. Such a scenario has driven Pakistan’s development and deployment of so-called “battlefield nuclear weapons,” including an extremely short-range nuclear-armed ballistic missile that is seemingly intended for use against Indian mechanized formations.

North Korea, which notably borders two nuclear-weapon states that have historically been its allies and which remain its partners, however begrudgingly, has a single nuclear deterrence relationship with the United States. While some 5500 kilometers separates North Korea from Anchorage, 7300 kilometers from Honolulu, 7800 kilometers from Seattle, 10,500 kilometers from New York City, and 10,500 kilometers from Washington, DC, American forces in peninsular South Korea are all within 450 kilometers of North Korea, the entirety of “peninsular” Japan lies within 1300 kilometers of North Korea, with the American island territory of Guam being situated around 3300 kilometers from North Korea. While South Korea and Japan—beyond the American military bases that these countries host—are likely among the targets of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, these are not, of course, nuclear-weapon states themselves, and any nuclear retaliation against North Korea will have to come from the United States as part of a so-called American nuclear umbrella.

An Iranian nuclear-weapon state will be “born” into a very different situation than the other nuclear-weapon states. An Iranian ballistic missile with a maximum range of just 1300 kilometers can essentially bring all of Israel within range, and a ballistic missile with a maximum range of 2400 kilometers can essentially bring all of Israel within range when launched from Iran’s northeastern city of Mashhad. Some 7700 kilometers separates Iran’s northwest—which has notably been heavily bombed by Israel in two wars—from Alaska, with the rest of the continental United States being some 8500 kilometers away. The distance from Tabriz in Iran’s northwest to New York City is 9350 kilometers. To Washington, DC: 9680 kilometers. To Chicago or Seattle: some 10,000 kilometers. The distance from Mashhad in Iran’s northeast to Chicago and Seattle is some 10,700 kilometers. To New York City: 10,250 kilometers. To Washington, DC: 10,500 kilometers.

It bears emphasis that this discussion highlights the effects of geography and not the intensity of a nuclear deterrence relationship. For Israel, Iranian nuclear weapons will likely be viewed and treated as—irrespective of veracity—a truly existential threat in a manner not typically seen in other nuclear dyads. It also bears emphasis that bringing the continental United States within range of Iranian nuclear weapons is not only a question of the qualitative development of Iran’s nuclear arsenal but also its quantitative development. Iran will likely require a quite large arsenal of nuclear-armed intercontinental-range ballistic missiles as well as a quite large arsenal of nuclear-armed shorter-range missiles to target Israel, all in a context in which Israel and the United States have, of course, demonstrated their ability to penetrate and quite readily operate combat aircraft across Iran.

The Iran-Israel Nuclear Deterrence Relationship

While Iran will likely have multiple nuclear deterrence relationships and feature in multiple more or less politically salient nuclear dyads, the Iran-Israel nuclear dyad is likely to be Iran’s most important dyad for the foreseeable future (again, I merely presume, not prescribe, policy continuity in Tehran). While distance and technology will together strain Iran’s ability to operationalize a credible nuclear deterrent vis-a-vis the United States, Iran will paradoxically likely encounter far greater struggles when it comes to operationalizing a credible nuclear deterrent against Israel, even though a “mere” 1000 or so kilometers separates the two countries.

To state what should now be obvious to even the most ardent skeptic, we live in a world in which ballistic missile defence technology, specifically American and Israeli ballistic missile defence technology, is sufficiently advanced and reliable to offer robust protection against shorter-range and medium-range ballistic missiles, even if the longest-range ballistic missiles, namely so-called intercontinental ballistic missiles (i.e., ICBMs), remain more difficult to intercept and, as such, remain more viable as means of reliably delivering nuclear warheads. Israel’s existing ballistic missile defences are evidently not impregnable. Israel will, moreover, be unable to simply let inbound Iranian ballistic missiles set to impact “unimportant dirt” reach its territory if an inbound Iranian ballistic missile may be equipped with a nuclear warhead. Even so, Israel’s existing, let alone future, ballistic missile defences, pose a major challenge to a notional Iranian nuclear-weapon state.

As Iran’s experience in the April and October 2024 exchanges with Israel, the June 2025 Iran-Israel War, and the current American and Israeli war against Iran all indicate, the country’s decidedly heterogeneous arsenal of longer-range (i.e., 1000+ kilometer range) ballistic missiles exhibits quite poor accuracy and precision, as well as reliability. This has allowed Israel to selectively intercept inbound Iranian ballistic missiles, and compounds the low observed penetration rate of Iranian ballistic missiles against their intended targets in Israel. The very existence of Iranian nuclear warheads will, however, likely force Israel to intercept each and every inbound Iranian ballistic missile whenever potential Iranian nuclear use is suspected, which may lead to interception attempts being undertaken against each and every inbound Iranian ballistic missile. While this may appear to be a welcome development for an Iranian nuclear-weapon state, this is not only a question of numbers and resources for Iran, but will also likely create profoundly destabilizing problems in the Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship for reasons that I will cover later in this post. Iran’s leaders presumably want nuclear weapons to enhance their security. As things stand, however, the challenges to operationalizing an Iranian nuclear deterrent may well have the effect of increasing Iran’s insecurity.

Can Iran improve its ballistic missile penetration rates against Israel? In principle, the answer is, of course, yes, although there are major uncertainties as to whether and when Iran can pull it off, how much such qualitatively superior ballistic missiles will cost Iran, and, as such, how many higher (expected) penetration rate ballistic missiles Iran will be able to afford. China’s conventionally-armed ballistic missiles, which are, of course, essentially untested in combat, constitute something of a gold standard in this area of military technology, not least on account of the United States long forgoing the development of such ballistic missiles due to, among other things, the constraints imposed by the now-defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty (INF Treaty). In principle, Iran can aspire to develop a ballistic missile with a maximum range of at least 2500 kilometers in the vein of the Chinese DF-26 to deliver a likely quite large and heavy first-generation Iranian nuclear warhead to essentially any part of Israel from a notional launch position in Iran’s extreme northeast and do so with greater accuracy and precision, as well as a higher expected penetration rate, than Iran’s current ballistic missile arsenal.

Should Iran be able to develop and deploy such a ballistic missile design(s) to deliver nuclear warheads, it will, of course, also be able to employ such a ballistic missile design(s) with conventional high-explosive warheads, and Iran would perhaps be able to deter Israel without becoming a nuclear-weapon state. Be that as it may, the fact remains that Iran is unlikely to be able to develop and then deploy in large numbers such ballistic missiles for the foreseeable future, not least on account of the extensive damage to Iran’s ballistic missile industry over the course of the current war. As a result, an incipient Iranian nuclear-weapon state will likely seek to attempt to overwhelm Israel’s ballistic missile defences, if not compensate for poor accuracy and precision, through numbers alone.

Iran can, in principle, attempt to overwhelm Israel’s ballistic missile defences by launching some number of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles alongside some number of conventionally-armed ballistic missiles. This may take the form of, for example, launching conventionally-armed ballistic missiles alongside nuclear-armed ballistic missiles at a ratio of 99:1, or 24:1, or 9:1, or just 4:1. (If this comes across as insane, consider that an alternative approach entails launching one or more large salvos of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles.) It bears emphasis that an incipient Iranian nuclear-weapon state will likely have a very small number of nuclear warheads at its disposal for, at the very least, the first 5-10 years following nuclearization (during which time Israel’s ballistic missile defences will likely evolve, but that is a topic for another time). With time and resources, however, Iran may be able to build out a sufficiently large arsenal of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and, in so doing, outpace and offset the qualitative and quantitative enhancement of Israel’s ballistic missile defence capabilities that will likely emerge following Iran’s hypothetical nuclearization. Iran will, however, face two fundamental interrelated challenges: that of warhead ambiguity and the fact that its counterpart in its most important nuclear deterrence relationship, Israel, cannot, in effect, absorb an Iranian nuclear strike.

The Vexing Challenge of Warhead Ambiguity

Israel will, for all practical intents and purposes, be unable to discern whether a given inbound Iranian ballistic missile is equipped with a conventional high-explosive warhead or a nuclear warhead, not least in a situation in which Iran may employ a given ballistic missile design to deliver both conventional high-explosive and nuclear warheads. (It must also be said that Iranian planners also have no way of knowing exactly which Iranian ballistic missile reentry vehicle, with or without a nuclear warhead, will penetrate Israel’s ballistic missile defences and exhibit high accuracy and precision to impact near the intended target) Strictly speaking, there are ways through which Iran and Israel can manage this part of their nuclear deterrence relationship. Iran may, for example, only operate nuclear-armed ballistic missiles from certain missile bases, which is to say certain parts of Iran, and perhaps do so exclusively. This may somewhat reassure Israel, but it will not fundamentally address the issue of warhead ambiguity.

In a similar vein, Iran may launch different types of ballistic missiles that follow distinct trajectories to reassure Israel, but this will also not fundamentally address the issue of warhead ambiguity, given that Israel will have no way of knowing whether an Iranian ballistic missile is or is not equipped with nuclear warheads in the manner that, for example, the Soviet Union and the United States could have high confidence that intercontinental-range ballistic missiles launched by the other would be equipped with a nuclear warhead(s) during a crisis or conflict. Note that American and Soviet confidence on such matters did not require “trust,” only simple analytical assumptions. There will likely be no assurances that Iran can offer (via intermediaries) that Israel will readily accept, and there will be little to stop Iran from reneging on any such commitments in times of crisis or war.

Moreover, if Iran attempts to overwhelm Israel’s ballistic missile defences through, in effect, numbers alone, which is to say by launching some number of conventionally-armed ballistic missiles alongside some number of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles at whatever ratio, then warhead ambiguity will be both a bug and a feature of Iran’s nuclear posture-turned-de facto nuclear strategy. If Israel can distinguish Iran’s nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in flight from its conventionally-armed ballistic missiles and thereby selectively prioritize interceptions of the nuclear-armed Iranian ballistic missiles, then Iran’s nuclear-armed ballistic missile launches will, like Iran’s conventionally-armed ballistic missiles, have poor prospects for penetrating Israel’s ballistic missile defences. Stated differently, the more that warhead ambiguity is addressed in the Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship, the greater the scope for robust Israeli ballistic missile defences against Iran, and the greater the challenges that Iran will face in credibly threatening to use nuclear weapons against Israel as a deterrent.

All things considered and in the absence of high expected penetration rate Iranian ballistic missiles, the realities of Israeli ballistic missile defence effectiveness incentivize Iran to attempt to overwhelm Israel’s defences by launching some combination of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles alongside some number of conventionally-armed ballistic missiles so as to exploit warhead ambiguity, even as Iran assumes most of the inherent risks in its nuclear deterrence relationship with Israel. As noted earlier, one of the alternatives is for Iran to launch one or more large salvos of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Such an approach is, of course, both less practical on account of, among other things, the amount of fissile material required to fabricate so many nuclear warheads, but also extraordinarily reckless on account that, given the risk of multiple Iranian nuclear warheads detonating in Israel, there will, in effect, be nothing to distinguish between a small-scale and a large-scale Iranian nuclear attack for reasons independent of the exceedingly important question of whether Israel can and will absorb any nuclear attack at all.

It bears emphasis that Iran had negligible ballistic missile defences going into this war—and going into April 2024—and is unlikely to possess the types of ballistic missile defences required to defend against Israeli nuclear-armed ballistic missiles for the foreseeable future. As a result, without high expected penetration rate ballistic missiles of its own and without a practical and low-risk approach to exploiting warhead ambiguity with the aim of overwhelming Israeli ballistic missile defences, Iran will likely neither be able to credibly deliver a nuclear warhead to Israel nor defend against reciprocal Israeli nuclear attacks. This will likely lead to a functionally paralyzed Iranian nuclear-weapon state—or a cartoonishly reckless one—that functionally derives little security vis-a-vis Israel from possessing nuclear weapons. It should go without saying that inducing, wittingly or otherwise, Israel to contemplate, let alone attempt, preemptive counterforce strikes, including nuclear counterforce strikes, against Iran’s nuclear forces during a crisis or conflict will not enhance Iran’s security.

It is worth noting that Israel is not understood to be limited to a land-based nuclear-armed ballistic missile force but also has a contextually very survivable submarine-based nuclear deterrent. Israel may well also enhance its suspected longstanding air-launched nuclear deterrent by adapting some of Israel’s rather exquisite air-launched ballistic missiles—the conventionally-armed versions have already been used against Iran to devastating effect—for use with nuclear warheads. Such air-launched ballistic missiles are limited in terms of payload size and weight, but one possible Israeli adaptation to an Iranian nuclear-weapon state may entail the development and deployment of more “usable” lower-yield nuclear weapons.

Can Israel Absorb a Nuclear Strike?

As a quite small country—in both geographic and demographic terms—with a densely concentrated and highly urbanized population, if one excludes the sparsely populated Negev Desert, and with the historical experience of the Holocaust forever in the background, Israel is particularly unlikely to absorb a nuclear strike. This may come across as “obvious” to some, but it actually makes Israel an outlier among existing nuclear-weapon states. With the partial and qualified exception of North Korea, the other nuclear-weapon states are, in both geographic and demographic terms, large enough to absorb one or more nuclear detonations and endure as functioning nation-states notwithstanding the terrible devastation brought about by even “limited” nuclear use.

Strictly speaking, the same is, of course, also true of Israel. Israel will endure even in the catastrophic event that, for example, the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, or the Haifa metropolitan area, or the Beersheba metropolitan area—let alone some sparsely populated part of the Negev Desert—is subject to one or more nuclear detonations, but the interplay of geographic and demographic realities, coupled with the shadow of the Holocaust, which, if nothing else, looms large in Israeli politics, result in a situation in which Israel will likely either initiate a—from its vantage point—preemptive nuclear strike against in Iran should I think that Iran will soon undertake a nuclear strike against Israel, and/or undertake wholly disproportionate nuclear retaliatory strikes even against a nuclear-armed Iran that may retain the ability to retaliate in kind. Israeli leaders may well convince themselves that damage limitation, a concept that has lost much of its purchase since the Cold War, is the best approach in a situation in which they cannot—or will not—contemplate absorbing even a limited and, all things considered, small-scale, Iranian nuclear strike. Here, as elsewhere, Israeli thinking on this grave matter will likely be shaped by, among other things, the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of Iran’s nuclear arsenal; Iran’s ability to credibly carry out retaliatory strikes, which encompasses the very issue of ballistic missile penetration rates that is likely to lead Iran to exploit warhead ambiguity out of necessity; and, Iran’s ability to defend against Israeli nuclear strikes, which is primarily, but not exclusively, related to Iran’s functionally non-existent ballistic missile defence capabilities.

Warhead ambiguity—Israel being unable to distinguish nuclear-armed Iranian ballistic missiles from conventionally-armed Iranian ballistic missiles—will be a byproduct of Iran’s most practical, at least in the short-term, approach to addressing the challenge posed by Israel’s formidable ballistic missile defences, but it bears emphasis that warhead ambiguity is not merely a problem for Israel. It is also a challenge—a very grave challenge—for Iran itself, and a profoundly vexing one at that, precisely because Israel is unlike the other nuclear-weapon states.

The other nuclear-weapon states can, in effect, absorb one or more nuclear strikes and lose, say, a million people in the process, without feeling so compelled to give as much consideration to promptly initiating preemptive nuclear strikes in such a scenario and/or launching wholly disproportionate nuclear retaliatory strikes against a nuclear-armed state with a residual nuclear capability. Anyone who thinks Israel is likely to, at a time of devastation and grief, show such composure and magnanimity should pause to reflect on the devastation that Israel has wantonly wrought onto Gaza and Gazans after some 1200 of its inhabitants were killed on and around 7 October 2023, some 30% of whom were military and security personnel. One should also pause to reflect on the devastation that Israel has and, as with Gaza, continues to wreak across Lebanon, as well as, not least, the devastation that Israel has and continues to wreak across Iran. Even a fairly small and low-yield Iranian nuclear weapon used outside a densely populated area—excluding desolate parts of the Negev—in Israel is likely to kill at least several thousand people.

Israel and Israeli leaders do, of course, have agency like other nuclear-weapon states and their respective leaders; Israel’s current leaders are unlikely to be wholly irrational to the level of caricature; and, more to the point, the historical experience of the Holocaust does not force the hand of any particular Israeli leader to act one way or another, much as it does not force the hand of the leader of any of group that has experienced such horrors among its recent generations. Israel’s current crop of political and military leaders nevertheless appear to be fundamentally unwilling to accept mutual vulnerability with a nuclear-armed Iran, or indeed accept much in the way of vulnerability to conventional attacks on the part of Israel’s non-nuclear neighbours and adversaries, including Iran itself. One needs to look no further than how Israel has recently initiated two wars aimed at significantly degrading Iran’s conventional military capabilities, not just Iran’s nuclear industrial base, or even just Iran’s ballistic missile industrial base. It bears emphasis that there is a case to be made that Israel cannot be in a stable mutually politically salient nuclear deterrence relationship with any nuclear-weapon state, even in a situation in which a nuclear-armed Iran may enter into stable nuclear deterrence relationships with other nuclear-weapon states, including the United States.

Israel’s Problems Are Also Iran’s Problems In A Nuclear Deterrence Relationship

Whatever the leaders of the Islamic Republic may think of Israel, they will have to make decisions in the nuclear realm that necessarily reflect unilateral Iranian strategic empathy toward Israel insofar as Iran’s leaders care about their self-interests—including self-preservation—and want a hypothetical nuclear-armed Iran to have a durably stable nuclear deterrence relationship with a nuclear-armed Israel over the years and decades to come. This is, in effect, one of the “burdens” associated with Iran becoming a nuclear-weapon state: the Islamic Republic may well employ its hypothetical “nuclear shield” to sustain its longstanding efforts via proxy against Israel, but it will almost certainly have to drop the always fanciful notion of bringing about the absolute destruction of the Israeli state and the zionist enterprise, which, of course, possesses and operates nuclear weapons of its own.

Once Iran becomes a nuclear-weapon state, it will, in effect, have Israel as a co-pilot with some level of input over the controls of the Iranian state. All states in a nuclear deterrence relationship must, out of self-interest, go out of their way to ensure that their unwanted co-pilot does not act in a reckless and unintended manner. Failing to do so will simply mean that both parties assume the risks, including risks concerning crisis stability and escalation control. Unless we are dealing with truly insane leaders with a death wish, at least a modicum of strategic empathy, tact, and compromise comes with the territory of being a nuclear-weapon state.

Failing to exhibit even a modicum of strategic empathy toward Israel—refusing to accept that Israel’s problems are also Iran’s problems in a nuclear deterrence relationship—will likely result in an extremely dangerous era of instability between two nuclear powers, one in which, Israel, is likely to use every tool at its disposal, including its nuclear weapons, in potential counterforce strikes during a crisis or war, and perhaps even a commit itself to preemptive countervalue strikes, should it perceive a credible threat of Iranian nuclear use. With Israel having conventional military strength over Iran, quite robust ballistic missile defences, decades of experience as a nuclear power, and, above all, the United States behind it, Iran will likely be poorly positioned to respond to such catastrophic scenarios, not unless it adopts an exceptionally aggressive and risk-prone nuclear strategy and posture that places great emphasis on early and asymmetric nuclear use that arguably no sane person would want to pursue, not least as a result of the particular realities of the Iran-Israel dyad hitherto discussed in this analysis.

Lay readers unaccustomed to often macabre thinking on nuclear matters may be wondering whether the primary purpose of nuclear weapons is not to simply deter attacks. In principle, attacks, including nuclear attacks, can be automatically deterred by the mere possession of nuclear weapons. In practice, however, any country in Iran’s position will require a credible nuclear deterrent, which is to say the ability to deliver nuclear warheads against the intended target(s) as and when required, all while possessing a nuclear arsenal that is resilient—survivable—in the event of potential adversary first strike attacks that seek to neutralize Iran’s nuclear arsenal (i.e., a counterforce attack), and ideally while retaining the ability to undertake a credible retaliatory second strike (if not a third strike, at least in a context in which smaller and lower-yield nuclear weapons are likely to be used). Perhaps counterintuitively, a durably stable nuclear relationship requires mutual vulnerability as well as mutual confidence in the credibility and survivability of the respective nuclear forces. In an ideal world, a (conventional) war can break out between two nuclear-weapon states without the use of nuclear weapons being seriously considered on the part of either belligerent, for as long as each side restricts itself to war aims and actions that do not pose an existential threat to the other. When such lofty ideals are not realized in the real world, instability and escalation risks arise, and the more powerful and/or more risk-accepting member of a nuclear deterrence relationship may well come to rue their actions and inactions.

While Israel and Israeli leaders are unlikely to absorb a nuclear strike, which will be Iran’s problem if and when Iran becomes a nuclear-weapon state, it bears emphasis that the other nuclear powers manage the inescapable everyday reality of (some level of) mutual vulnerability—that at least some of their major population centers may be no more within thirty or so minutes, with little satisfaction to be found out of the possibility of retaliating in kind. Can the Iran-Israel nuclear dyad not also navigate this inescapable reality in the same manner as the other nuclear dyads? At this point, it is commonplace to encounter invocations of how the Islamic Republic and its leaders are uniquely different, or even uniquely irrational and, as such, functionally immune to deterrence, whether nuclear or otherwise. I have long maintained that such commentary is typically hysterical, and often instrumentally hysterical at that, in addition to being without much merit. Iran’s leaders have exhibited a great many tendencies over the course of the June 2025 Iran-Israel War and the current American and Israeli war against Iran. Insanity, a death wish, and an inability to instrumentally calibrate coercive and deterrent acts and efforts are not among them.

This analysis has placed considerable emphasis on Israel’s likely unwillingness to absorb an Iranian nuclear strike because this is, at the end of the day, a central challenge for a hypothetical nuclear-armed Iran. Israel’s problems will be Iran’s problems once Iran becomes a nuclear-weapon state, insofar as Iran’s leaders want a durably stable nuclear deterrence relationship with Israel—and the United States. If that is not what Iran’s leaders seek or attempt to bring about through carefully calibrated actions and inactions, then Iran will likely have to navigate an intensely unstable nuclear deterrence relationship with Israel—and the United States—all while possessing negligible ballistic missile defences, and without the ability to credibly deliver nuclear warheads of its own to targets in Israel on account of the poor accuracy and penetration rate exhibited by Iranian ballistic missiles to date in the face of Israeli and American ballistic missile defences. Given the state of Iran’s current and near-term future air defences, Iran will, in the absence of strategic empathy toward Israel and significant compromises on the Israel policy file, likely also have to navigate this intensely unstable nuclear deterrence relationship with Israel without a credible retaliatory nuclear strike capability. In this particular respect and in the absence of strategic empathy toward Israel and major policy compromises on the Israel file, the nuclear game will not be worth the candle for Iran, not least on account of offering neither Iran nor the Islamic Republic greater security.

A Somewhat Brief Aside On Iran’s Ballistic Missile Arsenal and Ballistic Missile Technology

Prior drafts of this rather hastily reformulated text, which were not (re)written during an active war, included a fairly detailed discussion of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and Iranian ballistic missile technology to offer the background required to better appreciate the practical challenges of warhead ambiguity in a hypothetical near-term Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship. For the present purposes, a condensed summary will have to suffice.

Iran operates a decidedly heterogeneous arsenal of longer-range ballistic missiles, which is to say, ballistic missiles with a maximum range of 1000 kilometers or greater. As things stand, some of Iran’s existing ballistic missiles are more likely candidates for use as nuclear delivery systems than others. The large and heavy Khorramshahr ballistic missile family, which employs storable liquid fuel, is perhaps the most likely candidate nuclear delivery system, although Iran may well turn to a solid-propellant design, whether something related to the Sejjil ballistic missile or one of Iran’s larger-diameter multi-stage solid-propellant satellite launch vehicle (SLV) designs.

The Khorramshahr family has been quite extensively used against Israel over the course of the current war, which suggests that it has been operationally deployed and has been built in sizable numbers. Notably, the Khorramshahr design has the range required to target all of Israel when launched from Iran’s northeast, such as a notional base in the general area of the city of Mashhad. While the Sejjil has been used in combat against Israel during the two wars, its production and deployment status remains uncertain, and it may well constitute a legacy design with no future beyond the specimens that have been manufactured to date.

While the much smaller diameter and lighter payload Kheibar Shekan family of solid-propellant ballistic missiles, which encompasses the Fattah-1 and Fattah-2, can, in principle, be used as nuclear delivery systems against Israel, this will require higher levels of nuclear warhead miniaturization. The widely deployed Kheibar Shekan family ballistic missiles, as such, are unlikely candidates for use with nuclear warheads over the first 5-10 years of Iran becoming a nuclear-weapon state. This is, all things considered, likely a welcome development for a hypothetical nuclear-armed Iran, given how the Kheibar Shekan family serves as a critically important conventional strike munition against not only Israel but also the Gulf Arab states and American military forces therein—I will address why Iran will still need its longer-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles in the next section.

The long-standing and widely deployed liquid-fuelled Qadr (i.e., Ghadr) design family, which does not employ a storable liquid fuel, may well be used as a nuclear delivery system, but is far less optimal for nuclear purposes than the much larger and heavier Khorramshahr design family. While I had, before the start of this war, viewed the Khorramshahr family as Iran’s most likely initial nuclear delivery system, the surprisingly large-scale use of Khorramshahr family ballistic missiles over the course of this war and the extensive targeting of Iranian ballistic missile production infrastructure may have the effect of forcing a hypothetical nuclear-armed Iran to place greater reliance on older and decidedly inferior Qadr family ballistic missiles as nuclear delivery systems than would perhaps otherwise be the case, at least in an interim basis. This is a particularly likely eventuality if Iran proceeds to exploit warhead ambiguity by launching nuclear-armed Qadr family ballistic missiles alongside some number of conventionally-armed Qadr family ballistic missiles with the aim of overwhelming Israel’s ballistic missile defences. Iran appears unlikely to possess enough Khorramshahr family ballistic missiles to undertake such an approach with these larger, higher-payload, and broadly more sophisticated ballistic missiles.

Let us suppose that a hypothetical nuclear-armed Iran initially employs Khorramshahr and Qadr family ballistic missiles as its nuclear delivery systems, even as it may work on introducing a new solid-propellant—and perhaps even new liquid-fuelled—ballistic missile(s) to deliver nuclear warheads to Israel. Whatever the benefits of introducing one or more new ballistic missile designs with sufficient range to target any part of Israel with a nuclear warhead, it bears emphasis that Iran can only both benefit from—and assume the risks inherent to—warhead ambiguity for as long as Israel struggles to distinguish Iran’s nuclear-armed ballistic missiles from its conventionally-armed ballistic missiles. Warhead ambiguity applies to the Khorramshahr family and Qadr family ballistic missiles because these are unlikely to be exclusively equipped with nuclear warheads.

If Qadr family ballistic missiles, and, more to the point, Khorramshahr family ballistic missiles—or a notional new Iranian ballistic missile design(s)—is exclusively employed with nuclear warheads, then Israel will be better positioned to selectively intercept said Iranian ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads, with the likely effect of dramatically undermining the credibility of Iran’s nuclear deterrent against Israel. The only way out of this conundrum is for Iran to develop a highly reliable ballistic missile that can consistently achieve a high penetration rate against Israeli—and likely American—ballistic missile defences, which are only set to improve in both qualitative and quantitative terms if and when Iran becomes a nuclear-weapon state. Given this dynamic, a nuclear-armed Iran will likely have little choice but to exploit warhead ambiguity in its nuclear deterrence relationship with Israel (but not in its nuclear deterrence relationship with the United States).

Can A Nuclear-Armed Iran Deploy Both Conventionally-armed and Nuclear-armed Ballistic Missiles Against Israel?

For all the discussion of what Iran may gain from becoming a nuclear-weapon state—I have gone at length to explain why the benefits may be exaggerated why the game may not be worth the candle—strikingly little attention has been given to what Iran will likely have to sacrifice in terms of its conventional military capabilities as part of the price of admission for becoming a nuclear-weapon state. Warhead ambiguity is not merely an Israeli problem-turned-Iranian problem by virtue of the uncomfortable realities of any nuclear deterrence relationship. Iran will, going forward, likely have to forgo some parts of its conventional military capabilities vis-a-vis Israel, and perhaps also the Gulf Arab states, because it is difficult to envisage a scenario in which a regional nuclear power can launch hundreds of longer-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles against its nuclear-armed adversary while maintaining some number of longer-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in reserve without the loss of escalation control. Stated differently, while a post-war Iranian nuclear-weapon state may, for a time, be forced to embrace warhead ambiguity with the aim of quickly developing a credible capability to deliver nuclear weapons to Israel despite Israeli ballistic missile defences, it may, going forward, have to forgo longer-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles that can reach Israel, or at least carefully partition its nuclear-armed longer-range ballistic missiles from its conventionally-armed longer-range ballistic missile arsenal so as to help address the warhead ambiguity issue vis-a-vis Israel, a nuclear-weapon state that is unlikely to absorb a single Iranian nuclear strike.

As explained earlier, there are ways through which Iran and Israel can, in principle, manage this part of their nuclear deterrence relationship. Iran may, for example, only operate nuclear-armed ballistic missiles from certain missile bases, which is to say certain parts of Iran, and perhaps do so exclusively. This may somewhat reassure Israel, especially if “certain parts” of Iran refer to, for example, northeastern Iran, where Iran may forgo deploying longer-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles, but it will not fundamentally address the issue of warhead ambiguity absent some degree of trust in the Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship. In a similar vein, Iran may launch different types of ballistic missiles that follow distinct trajectories to reassure Israel, but this will also not fundamentally address the issue of warhead ambiguity, given that Israel will have no way of knowing whether an Iranian ballistic missile is or is not equipped with nuclear warheads, at least not in the absence of some degree of trust in the Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship. Israel’s problems will be Iran’s problems if and when Iran becomes a nuclear-weapon state.

As Iran’s attacks, including large-scale conventionally-armed ballistic missile attacks, against Israel make clear, nuclear weapons do not automatically deter and, as such, prevent attacks against nuclear-weapon states. Nuclear weapons also do not automatically deter and, as such, prevent attacks on the part of one nuclear-weapon state against another nuclear-weapon state. If nuclear weapons had such inherent properties, Israel’s ballistic missile defences would not be so depleted as a result of sustained Iranian conventionally-armed ballistic missile launches since April 2024, and the May 2025 India-Pakistan War would not have occurred. Given such realities, a hypothetical Iranian nuclear-weapon state will require conventional military capabilities, and strong conventional military capabilities at that. As things stand, Iran’s conventional military capabilities vis-a-vis Israel are largely indistinguishable from its hypothetical near-term nuclear capabilities vis-a-vis Israel. That is, Iran is heavily reliant on its longer-range ballistic missiles, as well as cruise missiles, to deliver both conventional high-explosive and nuclear warheads against Israel. This reliance is unlikely to end anytime soon.

If Iran had a large and capable air force, it could, in effect, readily place a partition between nuclear capabilities and its conventional capabilities and perhaps reduce its reliance on longer-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles. But Iran does not have a large and capable air force and is unlikely to possess such an air force anytime soon, not least vis-a-vis the formidable air combat capabilities of Israel and the United States, as well as the Gulf Arab states. It bears emphasis that no matter who sits upon the proverbial peacock throne in Tehran, putting together a large and capable air force will likely cost several tens of billions of dollars (I would conservatively place the price tag for such an air force in the region of at least US$30-US$40 billion). Iran will, as things stand, likely have to primarily source such an air force from China, which may not want to uncharacteristically so strongly place its proverbial thumb on the scale in light of China’s extensive economic and, increasingly, military-industrial ties with the Gulf Arab states. Russia would ordinarily be the Islamic Republic’s preferred supplier of combat aircraft, but Russia’s aerospace industry simply cannot deliver the required number of aircraft in a reasonable timeframe, given the dislocations brought about by the Russia-Ukraine War and the Russian Air Force’s own needs. Moreover, Russia cannot offer Iran combat aircraft that will be competitive vis-a-vis Israel, whereas present-day China can, should Beijing sign off on such exports to Iran, and should Iran be able to pay for such combat aircraft.

All things considered, Iran is unlikely to possess a large and capable—not least vis-a-vis Israel—air force within the next 5-10 years, even if the Islamic Republic’s new political and military leadership prioritizes the development of a conventional air force in a manner that their predecessors rejected for 47 years. In the interim, Iran cannot fully rely on nuclear weapons to deter conventional attacks. Even nuclear-weapon states in the positions of Pakistan and North Korea, who must counter the larger and/or better-equipped conventional military capabilities of their nuclear-armed adversaries, recognize that they also have to compete in the conventional capabilities arena even more vigorously now that they have more or less credible nuclear deterrents. Stated differently, becoming a nuclear-weapon state does not lead to a “game over” dynamic, but a “game on” dynamic, and, of course, a “game” in which the stakes could not be higher, and which places great demands on constitutional fitness in military and military-technological competitions, not least when faced against formidable adversaries such as Israel and the United States.

As things stand, Iran’s longer-range ballistic missiles, namely those of the Qadr, Kheibar Shekan, and Khorramshahr design families, as well as the orphan Sejjil design, are central to Iran’s conventional strike and, as such, conventional deterrence capabilities, irrespective to how much these leave to be desired in terms of reliability, accuracy and precision, and penetration rates against Israeli, American, and Gulf Arab ballistic missile defences. While an Iranian ballistic missile with a maximum range of just 1300 kilometers can essentially bring all of Israel within range when launched from western Iran, while a ballistic missile with a maximum range of 2400 kilometers can essentially bring all of Israel within range when launched from Iran’s northeastern city of Mashhad, it is important to recognize that Iran’s nominally “Israel-oriented” ballistic missiles do not only exist to target Israel. These are also required to attack targets in the ~western half of Saudi Arabia, including targets along the country’s Red Sea coast, and, more generally, to facilitate attacks against targets across the region from launch positions deeper inside Iran so as to avoid the situation in which Iranian ballistic missiles concentrated in underground missile bases located in the western third of the countries are repeatedly entombed, however temporarily, within said underground missile bases as a result of Israeli and/or American aerial attack.

It is worth considering that while Riyadh is some 600 kilometers from Iran, that is, from the closest section of Iranian territory along the northern shores of the Persian Gulf, it is some 1100 kilometers from the rather centrally positioned Iranian city of Yazd. For context, Tel Aviv is some 1100-1300 kilometers from Iranian territory along the Iran-Iraq border and some 1850 kilometers from Yazd. Jeddah is around 1350 kilometers from Iran, which is to say that it is a more distant target than Tel Aviv, but some 1900 kilometers from Yazd. Tabuk, which is home to a major airbase in northwestern Saudi Arabia, is some 1050 kilometers from the Iran-Iraq border, but some 1600 kilometers from the central part of Iran’s Persian Gulf coastline, and some 1750 kilometers from Yazd. Khamis Mushayt, which is home to a major airbase in southwestern Saudi Arabia, is some 1400 kilometers from Iran’s borders, and some 1900 kilometers from Yazd. Unless Iran restricts itself to holding targets at risk—with conventional weapons—that are located in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, as well as locations near Saudi Arabia’s Persian Gulf coastline, against which it can employ shorter-range ballistic missiles that cannot, in any event, be used to target Israel, Iran will likely require conventionally-armed ballistic missiles with a much greater range than the 1300 kilometers range threshold required to essentially bring all of Israel within range—from increasingly vulnerable launch positions in western Iran.

At some level, there is a case to be made that Iran can, in the long run, either have conventionally-armed ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel or nuclear-armed ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel. While it is hardly impossible to deploy both nuclear-armed and conventionally armed ballistic missiles—as some nuclear-weapon states already do—there tends to be a fairly clear-cut range partition that goes a long way toward addressing adversary concerns about warhead ambiguity. That is, China and Russia may, for example, deploy shorter-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles, but primarily deploy their nuclear warheads with much longer-range so-called intercontinental ballistic missiles. Chinese and Russian intercontinental-range ballistic missiles are, with one publicly known exception, exclusively equipped with nuclear warheads. A Russian Iskander ballistic missile launched toward NATO territory, and a Chinese DF-26 launched toward the American island territory of Guam may, in principle, be equipped with a nuclear warhead and are not, as such, immune to the warhead ambiguity dynamic, but NATO and the United States will still know that the bulk of Russian and Chinese nuclear capabilities are found in nuclear warheads installed on intercontinental range ballistic missiles.

While China is reportedly developing intercontinental range conventionally armed strike munitions such as the DF-27, China can only seriously contemplate targeting the continental United States with conventionally-armed ballistic missiles of this range class now that it has initiated an ongoing large-scale nuclear buildup, which includes a very major expansion of its nuclear-armed intercontinental range ballistic missile force. China’s development and deployment of longer-range conventionally-armed strike munitions, such as the DF-27, is unlikely to be pursued as a way to take advantage of warhead ambiguity, and there is nothing in the public domain to suggest that China intends to launch some combination of conventionally-armed and nuclear-armed intercontinental range ballistic missiles against the continental United States. If anything, China’s distinct nuclear-armed intercontinental range ballistic missiles will function, in part, as a shield that facilitates the use of the likes of the conventionally-armed DF-27 against the United States in the first place. The same cannot be said of Iranian ballistic missiles in the geographically proximate Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship, which will likely be affected by Israeli concerns about warhead ambiguity for as long as Iran deploys both conventionally-armed and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles of the requisite range class.

In principle, an Iranian nuclear-weapon state may be able to exclusively deploy longer-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles in some areas, and its nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in other areas, and do so in a manner in which the former and latter do not have identical trajectories when approaching Israel. It is, for example, possible to envisage a scenario in which Iran establishes new underground missile bases in the northeastern part of its territory that will be garrisoned by units that exclusively operate nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that follow different trajectories toward Israel at that. This will perhaps allow Iran to get away with deploying distinguishable conventionally-armed longer-range ballistic missiles elsewhere in the country. It will, of course, also result in a situation in which Israel will be able to prioritize the interception of inbound Iranian ballistic missiles that are launched from Iran’s northeast, all while leaving Israel uncertain as to whether Iran has not engaged in deception by deploying some number of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles elsewhere in Iran with the aim of including one or more nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in larger salvos of conventionally-armed ballistic missiles. More generally, Israel will confront a situation in which Iran may exclusively launch nuclear-armed ballistic missiles from northeastern Iran while simultaneously launching other, conventionally-armed longer-range ballistic missiles from elsewhere in Iran, all with the aim of overwhelming Israel’s ballistic missile defences so that the nuclear-armed ballistic missiles get through.

Evidently, there are no simple solutions here for as long as an Iranian nuclear-weapon state deploys both nuclear-armed and conventionally-armed ballistic missiles with a nominal maximum range of 1000 or more kilometers—Iranian ballistic missiles with a nominal maximum range of less than 1000 kilometers are not the issue here. At the same time, Iran will require longer-range conventionally-armed ballistic missiles for use against Israel and the Gulf Arab states, irrespective of whether Iran becomes a nuclear-weapon state, for as long as Iran lacks a large and capable air force. Stated differently, a hypothetical nuclear-armed Iran will confront challenges in the nuclear domain that are rooted in the weakness of its conventional military capabilities vis-a-vis Israel and the United States.

The (tempting) notion that a nuclear-weapon state can lean on its nuclear weapons to compensate for conventional military inferiority is hardly novel, but it will likely not bode well for a stable Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship and, as such, does not bode well for a hypothetical nuclear-armed Iran. We have real-world examples in the form of the India-Pakistan nuclear dyad, as well as the North Korea-United States dyad, which also inherently encompasses South Korea and, to a lesser degree, Japan. Needless to say, present-day non-nuclear Iran should not envy either Pakistan or North Korea, and the Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship will likely exhibit extreme levels of instability if Iran heads in such a direction, which can be characterized as an asymmetric escalation nuclear strategy in which Iran will, in effect, rapidly run up the nuclear escalation ladder during a crisis or early in a conflict with the aim of deterring (further) conventional attacks and, more to the point, placing a cap on underway conventional escalation.

All things considered, this is unlikely to be a viable approach vis-a-vis Israel, not least on account of the challenges that Iran will face in terms of penetrating Israel’s current, let alone future, ballistic missile defences, irrespective of whether Iran’s ballistic missiles are equipped with conventional and/or nuclear warheads. It bears emphasis that Pakistan and North Korea either do not face the exact same dynamic that Iran faces vis-a-vis Israel or have managed to develop geographically specific workarounds that are rooted in sharing a border with their counterpart in a nuclear deterrence relationship (in the case of North Korea, this takes the form of of American forces in South Korea and Japan, as well as using South Korea and Japan as punching bags in light of North Korea’s very limited ability to target the continental United States short of what will likely result in an all-out nuclear exchange). The 1000 or so kilometers that separate Iran from Israel is far enough to make it hard for Iran to attack Israel with either nuclear or conventional weapons, but close enough to subject Iran to much of the Israeli air force’s (conventional) combat capabilities.

A Nuclear-Armed Iran’s Problems Will Begin, But Not End, With Israel

It is important to recognize that a hypothetical Iranian nuclear-weapon state’s problems will begin, but not end, with Israel. As explained earlier, a nuclear-armed Iran will likely enter into a nuclear deterrence relationship with the United States, and may well find itself dealing with a triadic Iran-Israel-United States nuclear deterrence relationship, instead of two wholly separate Iran-Israel and Iran-United States nuclear dyads, should the United States extend to Israel a “nuclear umbrella,” which is to say nuclear guarantees, that will activate in the event that Iran ever employs, or threatens to employ, nuclear weapons against Israel. It bears emphasis that this may well, on balance, help stabilize the Iran-Israel nuclear dyad, at least for as long as the United States imposes and strictly enforces constraints on Israel such that Israel does not, once again, treat an American military backstop as a crutch to launch an offensive (non-nuclear) war of choice against Iran, and in so doing take advantage of the United States as either a witting or unwitting enabler of such a war against Iran. Leaving aside such potential triadic nuclear dynamics, the United States will, at the very least, likely view Iranian nuclear weapons as a threat to itself solely as a result of the threat posed to American military bases and forces in the Middle East, even if Iran were to forgo the development and deployment of the intercontinental-range ballistic missiles it will require to bring the continental United States within the reach of its hypothetical nuclear arsenal.

All things considered, including the mutual long-standing animosities encountered in the Iran-United States relationship since 1979, and, not least, the legacies of the ongoing American and Israeli war against Iran, a hypothetical nuclear-armed Iran will have to seriously consider the possibility of American nuclear weapons being used against it. The best way to deter such an eventuality, including the possibility of American nuclear blackmail against a hypothetical Iranian nuclear-weapon state, will be to bring the continental United States within range of Iran’s nuclear weapons by developing and deploying intercontinental-range ballistic missiles. Leaving aside the challenges associated with developing intercontinental-range ballistic missiles with a maximum range of at least 9000-10500 kilometers, even attempting to develop and deploy such nuclear-armed ballistic missiles will likely only have the effect of bringing about a particularly unstable Iran-United States nuclear deterrence relationship—from Iran’s perspective—until Iran’s nuclear arsenal matures and/or until Iran and the United States reach a modus vivendi.

For as long as an Iranian nuclear-weapon state forgoes the development and deployment of intercontinental-range ballistic missiles that will be required to target the continental United States (excluding Alaska), as well as intermediate-range ballistic missiles required to target Western Europe and American military bases therein, Iran’s nuclear requirements vis-a-vis the United States will likely largely overlap with Iran’s nuclear requirements vis-a-vis Israel. A triadic Iran-Israel-United States dynamic will, however, likely force Iran to make even greater exertions toward improving its position in the Iran-United States nuclear deterrence relationship, which is to say developing and deploying intercontinental-range ballistic missiles so as to bring the continental United States within range of Iranian nuclear warheads.

This may well be a dynamic that the Islamic Republic considers to be inevitable and necessary, but it will amount to a massive burden on the Iranian state and dramatically raise the stakes for Iran in the nuclear arena. As things stand, the only nuclear-weapon states in politically salient nuclear deterrent relationships with the United States are Russia, China, and North Korea. Iran risks biting off far more than it can chew in a context in which it can, unlike North Korea, more plausibly carve out a path in which it remains a regional nuclear power without attempting to go head-to-head with the United States’ formidable nuclear arsenal. Iran’s resources are finite and limited, and a necessarily bifurcated nuclear arsenal oriented against both a regional nuclear adversary, Israel, and a nuclear adversary located “on the other side of the world,” the United States, will likely strain Iran’s resources and leave it less well-positioned vis-a-vis Israel, thereby increasing Iran’s insecurity even as nuclear weapons are intended to offer Iran greater security.

Is the Game Worth the Candle—For Iran Itself?

A lot of ink has been spilled on the Iran nuclear issue over the past thirty or so years, much of it focusing on Iran’s fissile material stockpiles, pathways to weaponization, and breakout times, as well as the possibility of a hypothetical regional proliferation cascade in response to Iran’s nuclearization. It remains exceptionally rare to come across an analysis of the potential implications of a nuclear-armed Iran for Iran itself, or the challenges that Iran will likely face in operationalizing a credible nuclear deterrent vis-a-vis not just Israel but also the United States. The allure of nuclear weapons has perhaps never been greater among Iranian officials and everyday Iranians alike, but obtaining nuclear weapons will likely only be the start of Iran’s problems, even if a hypothetical nuclear breakout attempt succeeds with or without yet another devastating round of fighting with the United States and Israel. All things considered, an incipient Iranian nuclear-weapon state will likely face greater challenges in developing, deploying, and sustaining a credible nuclear deterrent against its primary nuclear-armed adversaries than recent entrants to the nuclear-weapon state club. At some level, one must ask whether the proverbial game is worth the candle. Given the challenges that Iran will likely face in operationalizing its notional nuclear arsenal, Iran is, all things considered, best off without nuclear weapons.

One way to interpret this thesis is to think in terms of what Iran still has to gain from remaining at some level of nuclear latency or nuclear threshold state status, something that will likely require a negotiated settlement with the United States and perhaps other countries. Another way to interpret this thesis is to recognize that a nuclear-armed Iran will likely have to, in effect, pursue a brute force approach—beyond a nuclear breakout attempt—by exploiting warhead ambiguity vis-a-vis Israel and assuming all the risks that entails in the inherently unstable Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship. Without any level of trust in the Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship, and with the United States likely to involve itself in said relationship so as to establish a particularly complex and, for Iran, likely quite challenging, triadic Iran-Israel-United States nuclear deterrence relationship, the prospects for a durably stable Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relatioship are poor, especially over the first fiven to ten years years, if not more, of Iran’s nuclearization, during which Iran’s nuclear arsenal will likely be far from mature.

For all of the attention given to the nature of the Islamic Republic and what it may or may not do vis-a-vis Israel, its other neighbours, and the United States once it possesses nuclear weapons, this analysis highlights an important but often underappreciated dynamic: it key issue is not the case that the Turkiye and the Gulf Arab states, and perhaps a country like Egypt, cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran, or that the United States cannot have a more or less stable nuclear deterrence relationship with a nuclear-armed Iran. The fundamental challenge that a hypothetical Iranian nuclear-weapon state poses to the world is rooted in how Iran’s primary nuclear-armed adversary, Israel, is unwilling, and plausibly unable, to absorb even a single nuclear strike. This makes Israel an outlier among nuclear-weapon states and a country that is perhaps uniquely incapable of, in effect, being in a strong nuclear dyad with any nuclear-weapon state, let alone a hypothetical Iranian nuclear-weapon weapon that that is some 1000 kilometers of Israel and with which Israel has a long-standing mutually acrimonious relationship, not least on account of the present American and Israeli war against Iran.

Over the course of the Cold War, the survivability of nuclear arsenals—the existence of more or less secure second strike capabilities—was increasingly treated as a given in many influential circles. The Cold War was not, however, characterized by the existence of widely deployed ballistic missile defences, let alone ballistic missile defence systems that are demonstrably effective against the types of non-intercontinental-range ballistic missiles that Iran can and likely will use for the purpose of holding targets in Israel at risk with nuclear warheads. A nuclear-armed Iran will be born into a very different nuclear world than the existing nuclear-weapon states, with the partial and qualified exception of North Korea. The floor for what amounts to a credible nuclear deterrent in a regional nuclear dyad has risen dramatically, and the question of whether Iran can realistically launch one or more nuclear-armed ballistic missiles against Israel with a high probability of penetration takes precedence over the comparatively more mundane question of whether Iran can develop and deploy a survivable nuclear force, at least vis-a-vis Israel. An incipient nuclear-armed Iran will likely have no option but to exploit warhead ambiguity vis-a-vis Israel, with the result of establishing an exceedingly intense Iran-Israel nuclear deterrence relationship. Iran is unlikely to benefit from an increase in security in such a situation—because Israel’s problems are necessarily also Iran’s problems in a nuclear deterrence relationship—for as long as a hypothetical nuclear-armed Iran wants to have a durably stable nuclear deterrence relationship with Israel, and with the United States, over the years and decades to come. As things stand, the game may not be worth the candle for Iran itself.

Analytical extensions-themed posts expand on material that has appeared in another newsletter/section and other parts of this website more generally.

As explained in a recent post, military media outlet Naval News claims that the nuclear-powered submarine which China recently launched at the Bohai Shipyard near Huludao along the Bohai Sea is not yet another Type 093B-class nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) but the first completed hull of the long-anticipated next-generation Type 095-class SSN.

As explained in the above post, much rests on the maturity and competitiveness of the Type 095-class SSN, and exceedingly little information is publicly available about the Type 095-class design at this time. In the absence of information, the above post identified several important areas of uncertainty and raised questions to be answered as new information becomes available. This post is intended to broach the potential implications of a new Chinese SSN design of currently unknown characteristics and performance for Australia, just as prior posts did with respect to Japan and Taiwan.

As things stand, Australia encounters a very limited threat from Chinese SSNs, with the still minor caveat that Australian warships operating alongside American and/or Japanese warships in the Philippine Sea may encounter a Chinese SSN. With respect to a PLAN presence around the Australian continent, China’s large fleet of diesel-electric submarines (SSKs) lacks the range-endurance to pose much of a (direct) threat to Australia, and the Chinese SSN threat is, at this time, essentially non-existent for want of numbers if nothing else. While China can, in principle, dispatch one, perhaps more, SSNs to operate around Australia, the country’s SSN fleet is simply too small to operate around Australia while also undertaking other, more important missions, a dynamic that exists whatever qualitative judgement one makes about China’s most recently deployed Type 093B-class SSNs. The major expansion of the Bohai Shipyard and the reported introduction of the first of a new generation of Type 095-class SSNs may, however, may result in a very different situation over the next decade or so, one in which a Chinese SSN presence around Australia may go from a near-impossibility on practical grounds to something that is increasingly treated as a given.

Should China build and deploy additional SSNs in large numbers—perhaps ten to twenty, if not more—over the coming decade or so, Australia will likely encounter a very different situation than what it has grown accustomed to and been able to take for granted. A situation in which even a single Chinese SSN undertakes what amounts to a standing deployment around Australia’s ~30,000 kilometer long coastline will pose a major threat to merchant ships along the approaches to major Australian ports. Large ocean-going merchant ships are, in a given part of the world, more limited in terms of throughput than in aggregate numbers, not least in a wartime situation in which a large subset of the world’s fleet of merchant ships is likely to be, in effect, stranded in Chinese ports alongside much of the world’s shipbuilding capacity.

A single Chinese SSN equipped with thirty or so heavyweight torpedoes allowed to freely operate along the approaches to Australian ports and other forms of maritime infrastructure, such as the massive floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) platform off the coast of Western Australia, can wreak havoc on the Australian economy in the event of a major war, particularly a major protracted war.

The closest analogy to such a hypothetical Australia-China dynamic playing out in the 2030s can be found in the Second World War, when the German and Japanese navies, including a small number of German diesel submarines operating from Japanese-occupied ports in Southeast Asia, operated around the Australian continent while attacking and sinking merchant ships in the process.

The Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Defence Force more generally are far from helpless when it comes to countering a potential presence of Chinese SSNs around the Australian continent. If nothing else, the United States can be expected to help bolster Australia’s defences in this and other areas, given how critical Australia is likely to be in the event of a major and likely protracted war between China and the United States. It is nevertheless important not to think about this issue in terms of absolutes. The analytically important question is not whether a Chinese SSN presence—which may well be limited to just a single SSN—around the Australian continent can be countered, but at what cost, specifically at what opportunity cost.

Here, as elsewhere, China encounters strong structural incentives to, in effect, “go on the offensive,” an undertaking for which SSNs with functionally unlimited range—excluding provisions for the crew, torpedoes/missiles, and certain types of supplies—are exceptionally well suited. A single Chinese SSN near the Australian continent is likely to force Australia, and perhaps also the United States, to refrain from deploying some number of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) warships and/or ASW aircraft and/or Australia’s own forthcoming Virginia-class and AUKUS-class SSNs elsewhere in the Western Pacific so as to secure Australia’s maritime approaches—plural—against an undersea threat that, for all practical intents and purposes, did not previously exist. Stated differently, Australia may, in a worst-case scenario, even need to primarily employ its forthcoming SSNs as defensive ASW assets to secure Australia’s maritime approaches—as opposed to operating against the Chinese navy in the South China Sea and Philippine Sea—in the event that China builds and deploys a much larger fleet of more competitive SSNs, which may or may not come in the form of the new Type 095-class SSN design.

It is productive to paraphrase a section of text included in the prior post on the implications of China’s new Type 095-class SSN for Japan:

A significantly expanded Chinese SSN force will constitute a qualitatively new and distinct threat to [Australia], even if China’s new Type 095-class SSNs remain significantly inferior to the latest American Virginia-class SSNs. Here, as elsewhere, the fact remains that China does not always need perfect or world-leading military systems to significantly alter the regional military balance in its favour. Needless to say, the more competitive the new Type 095-class SSN is relative to the latest in American submarine technology, the greater the challenge that [Australia] will face in securing its maritime approaches in times of crisis and war in the 2030s and beyond. [Australia—and the United States have], for decades, been able to use forward-sensor and anti-submarine capability barriers to greatly blunt, if not neutralize, the threat posed [to the Australian continent by Chinese] submarines. The mere prospect of a large fleet of potentially far more competitive Chinese SSNs should raise alarm bells in [Canberra] unless [Australian] officials are aware of some fundamental qualitative shortcomings of the new Chinese Type 095-class SSN design that will significantly constrain its military implications for [Australia] without being sensitive to how many China comes to build and deploy over the coming years. (emphasis added)

As mentioned with respect to Japan, the new Type 095-class and future Chinese nuclear-powered submarines that draw upon, and perhaps expand upon, whatever qualitative advances it encompasses relative to preceding Chinese nuclear-powered submarines, may have a significant land-attack capability. The latest Type 093B-class SSNs are understood to be equipped with a vertical launch system (VLS). Although Chinese SSNs and SSKs alike appear to be increasingly viewed as forward sonar nodes and forward anti-ship missile launchers—as seen in terms of the torpedo-launched YJ-18 and YJ-19 anti-ship missiles, such missiles may well have land-attack modes and, failing that, China has the option of loading the torpedo tubes of its submarines and, where applicable, the VLS cells, with land-attack munitions, whether of the subsonic cruise missile, ballistic missile, or supersonic cruise missile varieties.

While a Chinese SSN deployed near the Australian continent is first and foremost useful as a deployed “fleet in being” that can induce Australia and perhaps the United States to forgo the deployment of scarce ASW assets that will be high in demand elsewhere and, secondarily, to damage, if not sink, merchant ships of various types that the Australian economy cannot do without, there may well be a fairly short list of very high priority terrestrial targets in Australia that China may want to target early on in a war. Although China has other ways to undertake such attacks, one should not discount the possibility of a forward-deployed Chinese SSN being used to either undertake pre-planned strikes or strikes against targets of opportunity, not least as a result of how SSNs constitute an all-aspect threat to Australia in terms of air defence and ballistic missile defence unlike the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force’s (PLARF) land-based missiles. That said, it is important to bear in mind that the virtual attrition that a Chinese SSN near Australia can impose on Australian and American ASW capabilities is likely to be far more consequential than a limited number of SSN-launched strikes against terrestrial targets in Australia.

In the absence of information, observers tend to speculate, but serious analysts endeavour to identify important areas of uncertainty and raise questions to be answered as new information is uncovered and rendered available at a later date. This SPAS Consulting analysis merely presumes that the new Type 095-class will constitute some form of qualitative improvement of some sort over the preceding Type 093B-class SSNs and that China may find the Type 095-class design to be satisfactory enough to make full use of the much-expanded facilities of the Bohai Shipyard, which is the only Chinese shipyard to build “full-size” nuclear-powered submarines. It goes without saying that there are very major analytical uncertainties at play. As with the preceding posts on the implications of the Type 095-class SSN for China, Japan, and Taiwan, this post presumes little about the performance and competitiveness of China’s latest SSN design. For Australia, the single most important unknown concerns how many SSNs China will build and deploy over the next decade or so—a much larger fleet of decidedly imperfect Chinese SSNs will still have the potential to negatively affect Australia.

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While forward-deployed Type 095-class and Type 093B-class SSNs constitute some of the most potent threats to the Australian continent, it bears emphasis that China has other ways to attack terrestrial and maritime targets in and around the Australian continent, as well as militarily important adjacent areas in Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. This dynamic has been the subject of several SPAS Consulting analyses:

Analytical extensions-themed posts expand on material that has appeared in another newsletter/section and other parts of this website more generally.

A previous post explained how the sharp downturn in bilateral relations between China and Japan following the political ascent of Sanae Takaichi, which comes amid an ever-intensifying military-technological competition between China and the United States, may lead China to, in effect, maximally turn the proverbial screws on Japan. One of the approaches that Beijing can undertake entails what is best understood as the activiation of the Sea of Japan threat vector, a dynamic of exceptional military signifiance that has long remained dormant not as a result of anything that Japan or the United States have done or could have done but because Beijing decided—out of self-interest—to restrict the geographic scope of China-Japan and China-United States military competition. While previous SPAS Consulting analyses have broached this topic, this post will offer a concrete example of one way China may activate the long-dormant Sea of Japan threat vector.

As explained in the first of the above posts, Japan is significantly closer to China’s northeast than the rest of the country:

A distance of just ~600 kilometers separates China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province from the northernmost tip of Hokkaido, while just ~700 kilometers separates said Chinese province from the southernmost tip of Hokkaido. Just ~750 kilometers separates China’s northeast from the northernmost tip of Honshu, while just ~810 kilometers separates China’s northeast from the westernmost point of Honshu. Tokyo is just ~1100 kilometers from China’s northeast, while the easternmost part of the Kanto Plain bordering the Pacific Ocean is around 1170 kilometers from China’s northeast. For context, Tokyo is around 1550 kilometers from the easternmost point of China’s Shandong Peninsula, while Tokyo is around 1750 kilometers from Shanghai. Sapporo, meanwhile, is over 1700 kilometers from the easternmost point of China’s Shandong Peninsula, while being over 2170 kilometers from Shanghai.

Given these distances, China can readily employ combat aircraft equipped with standoff land-attack and/or maritime strike munitions to target Japan’s western coast, as well as the rest of the elongated but quite narrow archipelagic country. There is, however, a catch:

China is separated from the Sea of Japan by a distance of just ~10.3 kilometers in orthodromic terms, with the Tumen River flowing for another ~16.5 kilometers from the easternmost point of the China-Russia border until it reaches the Sea of Japan.

By launching ballistic missiles and/or boost-glide vehicles (BGVs, also known as hypersonic glide vehicles, or HGVs) like the DF-17, China can overcome the fairly minor complication of having aircraft very briefly traverse North Korean and/or Russian airspace to reach the Sea of Japan, but China increasingly has an alternative: it can employ low-observable—so-called “stealth”—uncrewed aircraft to undertake such politically sensitive missions without putting at risk a Chinese pilot.

One example of such a Chinese uncrewed aircraft is the GJ-11, which was formally unveiled at a 2019 military parade in Beijing (the carrier-based naval variant, the GJ-21, was one of several large uncrewed aircraft designs displayed at the September 2025 military parade in Beijing).

A reusable armed uncrewed aircraft in the vein of the GJ-11 can be readily used—in time of war—to take off from one of several suitable Chinese airbases in the country’s northeast, transit through North Korean and/or Russian airspace for 2-4 minutes so as to reach international airspace in the Sea of Japan, and transit toward a pre-programmed position from which to launch stand-off munitions against Japan before returning to base and restarting the cycle.

Large uncrewed aircraft such as the GJ-11 can be employed in a manner that is conceptually akin to a reusable cruise missile that launches less expensive shorter-range strike munitions. The GJ-11 has previously been captured on satellite imagery at an airbase in the Himalayas near India, one of several sectors in which the GJ-11 and other Chinese uncrewed aircraft designs are likely to significantly enhance the reach and strike capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) over the coming decade.

The activation of the Sea of Japan threat vector and the use of uncrewed aircraft like the GJ-11 to attack targets across the Japanese archipelago via the Sea of Japan is unlikely to constitute a silver bullet for China. Japan is, in both qualitative and quantitative terms, an immensely capable country, not least when it is allied to the United States, which has forward-deployed military forces in Japan and, as such, tremendous equities in the integrity of Japanese airspace. The activation of the aerial component of the long-dormant Sea of Japan threat vector, which has distinct air-to-air combat, terrestrial strike, and maritime strike components that are beyond the scope of this brief analysis, nevertheless has the potential to profoundly undermine Japanese security.

It bears emphasis that the potential activiation of the Sea of Japan threat vector will come at a time of intensifying military-technological competition between China and the United States, which is already stressing Japan’s ability to keep up in, among areas, air-to-air combat capabilities and naval air defence capabilities, areas in which the potential deployment of uncrewed aircraft such as the GJ-11 above the Sea of Japan is likely to only compound the immense challenges that Japan already faces.

Concepts–themed posts engage in inherently somewhat speculative analysis. I contend that any serious analysis must engage with the world both as it is and as it can be. Avoiding mindless empiricism requires cognizance of what is and what is not within the realm of possibility. Concepts-themed posts engage in this type of analysis.

Maps depicting the maximum range of Chinese maritime strike capabilities, including the country’s anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) and similar, tend to depict range rings that extend from China’s borders or coastline out to a distance of x kilometers for Chinese anti-ship munition y and so forth. Such maps tend to be unrealistic for, if nothing else, two reasons:

• China is unlikely to launch longer-range terrestrial strike or maritime strike munitions from positions along the country’s borders or coastline.

• Attacking a moving target in the form of a ship places immense demands on maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, even in a context in which high-speed short time-to-target maritime strike munitions such as the DF-26 ballistic missile mitigate the inescapable reality of target location error.

While China has developed a dense multi-phenomenology sensor array, including multiple space-based sensor architectures that not only offer redundant coverage but also, with respect to non-geostationary ISR satellites, inherently “global” coverage, China’s ever-improving maritime strike capabilities are primarily oriented toward the Western Pacific. Even so, China is surprisingly well-positioned to target ships—including American warships transiting toward the Western Pacific during a crisis or war—as they traverse two distant but very important maritime chokepoints, the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz, which constitutes a bona fide maritime chokepoint that is the entry and exit to and from the Persian Gulf, is around 2100 kilometers from China and around 2300 kilometers from the western city of Kashgar in Xinjiang. For context, the American island territory of Guam is some 3100 kilometres from China, and Tokyo is some 1750 kilometers from Shanghai. The Suez Canal is some 3900 kilometres from China, and some 4050 kilometers from Kasghar in Xinjiang. Stated differently, both the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz—two of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints—are, in principle, within the nominal maximum range of the Chinese DF-26, which the latest annual American China Military Power Report (CMPR) characterizes as being 3000-4000 kilometers.

A curious fact about what is publicly known about the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force’s (PLARF) order of battle is that there exists a DF-26 launch brigade garrisoned near Korla, also in Xinjiang. The Korla DF-26 garrison, which is likely deployed in Xinjiang to bring Moscow with range—the DF-26 is a nuclear-capable ballistic missile, is “just” ~3200 kilometers from the Persian Gulf, which is to say a shorter distance than DF-26 ballistic missiles targeting Guam from launch positions elsewhere in China are likely to cover. The Korla garrison, which is, of course, equipped with wheeled self-propelled DF-26 launchers that can relocate as required, is, however, situated some 4900 kilometres from the Suez Canal.

Anyone familiar with Iranian maritime strike capabilities and the Iranian-supplied maritime strike capabilities employed by Ansarallah in Yemen will recognize the important role that permissive maritime geography can play in enhancing maritime strike capabilities, including lowering the requirements for effective maritime ISR against moving targets in the form of ships. Maritime chokepoints not only make it easier to discern the presence of ships to target, but also make it easier to directly track the movement of a ship or, at the very least, plot its projected future position. This is how Ansarallah has been able to target ships not only in and around the Bab al-Mandeb—a maritime strait—but also in the open/less confined waters of the Gulf of Aden.

Merchant ships and warships transiting the extremely narrow Suez Canal and even the much wider Strait of Hormuz have, in effect, nowhere to hide should China seek to selectively extend the reach of its maritime strike capabilities in a westward direction.

This is particularly the case with respect to the Suez Canal, as the 2021 obstruction of the canal by the large container ship Ever Given so memorably put on public display.

With respect to targeting ships, including American warships, that may transit the Suez Canal during a crisis or conflict in the Western Pacific, it bears emphasis that China does not need its exquisite and increasingly space-centric multi-phenomenology maritime ISR sensor array. Ground observers—and unattended cameras—with internet access will likely do just fine over a 20 or so minute flight time for the likes of a DF-26 launched from a position to the west of Kasghar.

The intent of this post is not to suggest that China will target ships transiting the Suez Canal and/or the Persian Gulf, but to highlight the importance of grounded but nevertheless creative analysis that deals with the world as it can be and not just as it currently is. China may well enter a crisis or war without having either the desire or the ability to target ships transiting these distant maritime chokepoints, but the highly stylized analysis found in this post suggests that China is likely to face quite low barriers to entry should it proceed in this direction. This post more generally serves as a reminder to observers and military analysts focused on the Western Pacific that the territory of the People’s Republic of China extends some 4500 kilometers west of the country’s coastline—the Earth’s equatorial circumference is “only” ~40,075 kilometers.

Analytical extensions-themed posts expand on material that has appeared in another newsletter/section and other parts of this website more generally.

As explained in a recent post, military media outlet Naval News claims that the nuclear-powered submarine that China recently launched at the Bohai Shipyard near Huludao along the Bohai Sea is not yet another Type 093B-class nuclear-powered attack submarine (SSN) but the first completed hull of the long-anticipated next-generation Type 095-class SSN.

As explained in the above post, much rests on the maturity and competitiveness of the Type 095-class SSN, and exceedingly little information is publicly available about the Type 095-class at this time. In the absence of information, the above post identified several important areas of uncertainty and raised questions to be answered as new information is uncovered and rendered available. This post broaches the potential implications of a new Chinese SSN design of currently unknown characteristics and performance for Taiwan, just as a prior post did with respect to Japan.

Like Japan, Taiwan has much to lose if China experiences a major qualitative and/or major quantitative expansion of its undersea warfare capabilities, something that a new and potentially much-improved SSN design can offer the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN). Many of the implications of the large-scale production of a new Chinese SSN design for Taiwan are indirect in nature. That is, a growth in Chinese naval capabilities vis-a-vis the United States and Japan will inherently affect Taiwan even though Chinese SSNs—whether an SSN of the new Type 095-class or an SSN of the existing Type 093/093B-class—are unlikely to be directly used against Taiwanese warships and merchant ships approaching Taiwanese ports, the targeting of which will likely fall to other areas of China’s expansive maritime strike capability set. That said, the advent of the Type 095-class SSN design does have a direct, albeit not a spatially direct/geographically proximate, implication for Taiwan: an expanded SSN fleet, particularly one composed of an SSN design that is superior to the most recent Type 093B-class SSN variant, will bolster China’s capacity to undertake a distant blockade—as opposed to a close blockade—of the island of Taiwan.

Some may wonder why a potential enhancement of China’s capacity to undertake a distant blockade of Taiwanese ports even matters in a context in which Taiwan’s main ports—which are not concentrated on Taiwan’s eastern coastline and are, therefore, within 300 kilometers of the Chinese mainland—are even relevant. In a 2023 China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) analysis, Lonnie Henley made an insightful argument that the United States and Taiwan, among others, risked a situation in which China’s opponents could potentially win the proverbial first battle but still lose the war in the absence of the capability to resupply Taiwan by sea—using its main ports—by running the proverbial gauntlet of Chinese maritime strike capabilities around the Taiwan Strait in a protracted conflict scenario.

Whatever one thinks of the premise upon which Henley’s analysis rests, and notwithstanding what appear to be very substantial advances in Chinese military capabilities since 2023, the fact remains that there is a non-zero probability scenario in which much of the Chinese surface fleet and many of China’s most capable combat aircraft are heavily damaged, if not destroyed, in the opening phase of what will likely play out as an extremely high-intensity conflict in which neither side will be able to build additional warships and combat aircraft as quickly as these are heavily damaged, if not destroyed, at least in the opening months and perhaps the opening years of major war. In such a hypothetical scenario, the PLA will likely remain capable of targeting not only the ships entering and departing Taiwan’s main ports but also Taiwan’s port infrastructure—the experiences of Iran and Ansarallah in Yemen with respect to the employment of generally low-end maritime strike capabilities in and around confined bodies of water come to mind. The PLA will, however, be more limited in its ability to put in place what amounts to a distant blockade, all in a scenario in which the waters around the island of Taiwan are likely to be high-risk operating areas for Chinese submarines of any type.

A prospective much-enlarged Chinese SSN fleet, particularly one that is centered on a new SSN design(s) that is qualitatively superior to the hitherto latest Type 093B-class design, will inherently offer the PLAN the ability to implement a distant blockade of Taiwan, among others, on the high seas, if and when additional SSNs are deployed in large numbers. The essentially unlimited range of an SSN—excluding provisions for the crew, torpedoes/missiles, and certain types of supplies—means that a Chinese SSN may, for example, operate in the Strait of Malacca, the Gulf of Aden, the waters off the southern coast of Africa, the Aleutian Islands in the North Pacific, and elsewhere in Pacific Ocean and the rest of the World Ocean, with the aim of targeting, among other things, ships that are being sent to resupply Taiwan in a protracted war scenario. Even a single SSN can do a lot of damage to merchant shipping, not least in the context of a war in which a large subset of the world’s fleet of merchant ships is likely to be stranded in Chinese ports—alongside much of the world’s shipbuilding capacity—and in the event that a Chinese SSN lingers near a maritime chokepoint and/or a major port.

Uncertainties about the performance of China’s new Type 095-class SSN design and the number of SSNs that China will build and deploy over the next five to ten years notwithstanding, the very prospect of a significantly enlarged Chinese SSN fleet, particularly one that is increasingly composed of submarines that are more capable than the Type 093B-class variant, has considerable, albeit primarily indirect, implications for Taiwan. Chinese SSNs are unlikely to be involved in targeting ships around the Taiwan Strait, let alone in the Taiwan Strait, but an expanded Chinese SSN fleet—which is presumably why Beijing oversaw the expansion of the Bohai Shipyard in the first place—will offer Beijing a distant blockade capability that it is otherwise unlikely to have in a protracted war scenario. Here, as elsewhere, Taiwan is being assailed on multiple fronts.

https://www.spasconsulting.com/p/report-indicates-that-china-has-launched

As the above post explained, much rests on the maturity and competitiveness of the new Type 095-class SSN, and exceedingly little information is publicly available about the Type 095-class design at this time. In the absence of information, the above post identified several important areas of uncertainty and raised questions to be answered as new information is uncovered and rendered available. This post broaches the potential implications of a new Chinese SSN design of currently unknown characteristics and performance for Japan. Japan has much to lose if China experiences a major qualitative and/or major quantitative expansion of its undersea warfare capabilities, something that a new and potentially much-improved SSN can offer the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) current submarine fleet.

While Japan has long encountered a large fleet of Chinese submarines, China only operated non-competitive diesel-electric submarine (SSK) designs into the 1990s. Although the situation progressively changed over the course of the 1990s and through the ca. 2010 timeframe, the PLAN submarine fleet remained composed of increasingly more capable but nevertheless qualitatively limited SSK designs. The introduction of the Chinese-built Type 039A-class design (U.S. ONI: Yuan-class) amounted to a major qualitative breakthrough for the PLAN, and a major quantitative breakthrough as it was built and deployed versions of this Chinese SSK design in increasing numbers into the 2020s. The Type 039A-class, and its successor, the significantly altered Type 039C-class (U.S. ONI: Yuan-class mod), nevertheless remain large ocean-going SSKs optimized for operations in the deep waters of the western half of the Philippine Sea with the aim of enhancing China’s maritime strike capabilities by serving as forward sensor nodes and anti-ship missile launchers.

To this end, China developed and deployed not only the YJ-18 cruise missile—a primarily subsonic design with a terminal stage rocket-boosted sprint vehicle—but also the recently unveiled YJ-19, which appears to be a scramjet-powered supersonic anti-ship missile that can be launched out of a standard 533 mm diameter torpedo tube.

https://www.spasconsulting.com/p/unveiling-of-six-new-chinese-anti

With public indications that Chinese submarines are increasingly being employed as forward sensor nodes and anti-ship missile launchers by the PLAN, it bears emphasis that the threat that Chinese submarines can pose to the JMSDF, U.S. Navy and others is very different than the torpedo-centric submarine threat of popular imagination. A Chinese submarine may, using external target location data, launch an anti-ship missile at a target ship that is located several hundred kilometers away, which is to say far beyond the maximum detection range of a warship’s sonars and beyond the maximum range of its ship-based anti-submarine armament. This approach amounts to a qualitatively distinct threat to the JMSDF, one that the Japanese surface fleet is not currently optimized to counter in multiple respects:

https://www.spasconsulting.com/p/japans-navy-is-poorly-positioned

Although China has built and deployed a steadily expanding fleet of second-generation Type 093-class (U.S. ONI: Shang-class) nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) over the past twenty or so years, what little information is available in the public domain strongly indicates that even the latest Type 093B-class SSNs leave much to be desired. China and the PLAN seemingly agree, given the development and reported launch of the first Type 095-class SSN hull, which is presumably the successor to the long-running Type 093-class design.

Whatever the presumed qualitative attributes of the Type 093-class, not least vis-a-vis the formidable anti-submarine warfare capabilities of both the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and the U.S. Navy (USN), the fact remains that—uncertainties about the total number of Type 093-class hulls in existence notwithstanding—the Chinese SSN fleet remains very small. This limits how many Chinese SSNs of any given design may be deployed at sea on any given day and, as such, the practical reach of China’s SSN force, which is incomparably better-suited to undertaking long-range and long-endurance deployments, including deployments around the Japanese archipelago and the maritime approaches thereto.

Whatever the presumed—in the absence of credible information—qualitative attributes of China’s new Type 095-class SSN design, which presumably amounts to an improvement over the preceding Type 093B-class design, the advent of a new Chinese SSN design presents a very major potential threat to Japan, even if the Type 095-class remains significantly inferior in terms of various qualitative attributes relative to the latest American Virginia-class SSNs. The reasons for this are straightforward.

• China made major investments toward expanding the Bohai Shipyard, which specializes in building nuclear-powered submarines, in the 2010s—to what end, one must ask.

• SSNs remain a glaring area of both qualitative and quantitative shortcomings for the PLAN, which has closed capability gaps in many important areas vis-a-vis both Japan and the United States.

• The PLAN requires a large fleet of SSNs if for no other reason than to improve the anti-submarine capabilities of China’s expanding number of aircraft carrier groups and surface action groups, let alone to undertake long-range deployments in distant waters or, more to the point of this post, operate around the Japanese archipelago and along the maritime approaches to Japan, particularly for vessels going to/from North America.

China’s new Type 095-class SSN may or may not be very competitive relative to the ever-moving dynamic target set by American submarine technology. The Type 095-class may, however, be good enough for Beijing to allocate the resources required to make full use of the much-expanded production facilities at the Bohai Shipyard. This can result in a situation in which the PLAN may deploy a greatly expanded SSN force over the course of the 2030s.

While one can indulge in speculation as to how many new Type 095-class SSNs the PLAN may come to deploy, for the present purposes, it should suffice to say that the ability to maintain even a single SSN on station around the Japanese archipelago and the maritime approaches thereto will constitute a new type of threat for Japan, which has long staked much on its ability to interdict Chinese endurance-constrained SSKs as these transit the Miyako Strait and other channels along Japan’s Ryukyu Islands Chain to reach the Philippine Sea and, no less importantly given the fact that SSKs do not have nuclear propulsion, return back to port to refuel, resupply, and rearm. An expanded Chinese SSN force will introduce a new dynamic: Chinese submarines that may be detected in the favourable underwater geographic along the Ryukyu Island Chain, along which Japan has long established undersea acoustic sensors, only to break free into the open waters of the Pacific Ocean and, for example, patrol the maritime approaches to Tokyo Bay, or even undertake patrols in the vicinity of the Aleutian Islands in the North Pacific so as to interdict ships transiting to/from the western coast of North America.

A significantly expanded Chinese SSN force will constitute a qualitatively new and distinct threat to Japan, even if China’s new Type 095-class SSNs remain significantly inferior to the latest American Virginia-class SSNs. Here, as elsewhere, the fact remains that China does not always need perfect or world-leading military systems to significantly alter the regional military balance in its favour. Needless to say, the more competitive the new Type 095-class SSN is relative to the latest in American submarine technology, the greater the challenge that Japan will face in securing its maritime approaches in times of crisis and war in the 2030s and beyond. Japan has, for decades, been able to use forward-sensor and anti-submarine capability barriers to greatly blunt, if not neutralize, the threat posed by Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean submarines. The mere prospect of a large fleet of potentially far more competitive Chinese SSNs should raise alarm bells in Tokyo unless Japanese officials are aware of some fundamental qualitative shortcomings of the new Chinese Type 095-class SSN design that will significantly constrain its military implications for Japan without being sensitive to how many China comes to build and deploy over the coming years.

In the absence of information, observers tend to speculate, but serious analysts endeavour to identify important areas of uncertainty and raise questions to be answered as new information is uncovered and rendered available at a later date. This SPAS Consulting analysis merely presumes that the new Type 095-class will constitute a qualitative improvement of some sort over the preceding Type 093B-class SSNs and that China may find the Type 095-class design to be satisfactory enough to make full use of the much-expanded facilities of the Bohai Shipyard, which is the only Chinese shipyard to build “full-size” nuclear-powered submarines. There are very major analytical uncertainties at play, and the fact remains that Japan has the most to lose in the event of any major qualitative and/or quantitative advances in China’s undersea warfare capabilities.

Some additional questions to consider:

• Will the JMSDF be forced to hold its SSKs and anti-submarine warfare aircraft, helicopters, and warships “in the rear,” such as around the approaches to Tokyo Bay and the Seto Inland Sea, in order to counter a prospectively qualitatively and/or quantitatively enhanced Chinese SSN force?

• What implications will such a development have on Japan’s ability to prosecute its preferred war plans alongside the United States? Being forced into a defensive posture while having one of the world’s longest coastlines as an archipelagic nation is unlikely to be a welcome development for Tokyo.

• What implications will the Type 095-class have in other sectors, above all around the Aleutian Islands in the North Pacific, which are part of Alaska? Japan has long been able to take the security of its maritime lines of communication with North America for granted in the absence of a qualitatively and/or quantitatively significant Chinese SSN fleet.

• The Type 095-class and future Chinese nuclear-powered submarines that draw upon, and perhaps expand upon, whatever qualitative advances it encompasses relative to preceding Chinese nuclear-powered submarines, may have a significant land-attack capability. Japan’s current air defence and ballistic missile defence architecture is optimized against threats that approach Japan from the northwest, west, and southwest. Chinese strike munitions that approach Japan from the east may bypass Japan’s current defences, and require significant adjustments and resource allocations. Here also, submarines constitute a lot more than a means of launching torpedoes.

Concepts–themed posts engage in inherently somewhat speculative analysis. I contend that any serious analysis must engage with the world both as it is and as it can be. Avoiding mindless empiricism requires cognizance of what is and what is not within the realm of possibility. Concepts-themed posts engage in this type of analysis.

The Iranian-designed Shahed-136, which is known as the Geran-2 in Russian service, is the prime example of a lower-cost—and lower capability—strike munition design that enables militaries to service dramatically expanded target lists in a manner that was previously unimaginable. The Shahed-136/Geran-2, and similar fixed-wing propeller-driven strike drones—less expensive, less complex, slower, and easier to shoot down counterparts to turbojet/turbofan-powered cruise missiles—have considerable potential in military operations worldwide, notwithstanding the underway measure-countermeasure competition that has resulted in the advent of a new generation of low-cost air defence capabilities, including electrically-powered armed multirotor drones turned budget surface-to-air guided munitions that are capable of intercepting quite slow propeller-driven strike drones powered by modest piston engines.

Taking full advantage of the potential offered by propeller-driven strike drone designs in the vein of the Shahed-136/Geran-2 will likely require, at the very least, a more diverse array of warhead options so as to optimize the effects of a fairly small and lighter warhead against a greater diversity of target types/classes. In its standard configuration, a Shahed-136/Geran-2 is equipped with a 50-kilogram class high explosive warhead. Both Russia and Iran also employ the Shahed-136/Geran-2 in a reduced-range configuration that features a 90-kilogram class high explosive warhead.

Russia has employed a series of Iranian- and Russian-built warheads with its Shahed-136/Geran-2 strike drones. Publicly known warhead types include:

• High explosive-fragmentation warheads with a singular shaped charge.

• A high explosive-fragmentation warhead with multiple explosively formed penetrators (EFPs).

• High explosive-fragmentation warheads that feature incendiary material.

• A pure thermobaric warhead.

While Russia informally unveiled Shahed-136/Geran-2 strike drones equipped with an airburst fusing mode around the autumn of 2025, the Shahed-136/Geran-2 has not to date been seen with two very useful warhead types.

Submunition-dispensing warhead

The first is a submunition-dispensing warhead (i.e., cluster munition-dispensing) warhead, which will require a modified airframe that incorporates a submunition release/ejection mechanism. This should be a fairly straightforward undertaking when it comes to a very slow propeller-driven strike drone design that can be subject to major modifications without onerous aerodynamic penalties. Consider how a typical 155 mm submunition dispensing artillery shell weighing around 40 kilograms can dispense 60-80 submunitions over a radius of 100 or more meters. The likes of a Shahed-136/Geran-2—particularly an airframe in the higher payload reduced-range configuration which can be equipped with a 90-kilogram class warhead—can not only dispense a larger number/heavier load of submunitions—a thick casing is not required in the manner of an artillery shell subject to extreme chamber pressures—but also dispense said munitions over a larger surface area. The advent of a submunition-dispensing low-cost propeller-driven strike drone design will have major implications in the interrelated areas of air base attack and air base resilience.

Penetrator Warhead Optimized For Use Against Runways

Another approach concerns the use of a penetrating warhead design that is optimized to create (fairly small/shallow) craters in runways, so as to develop a low-cost means to disrupting flight operations at distant airfields—craters/holes in the ground can be filled in and runways can be repaired, so cratering runways is primarily a means of buying time and disrupting adversary opereations rather than a likely approach to securing military victory. While the Shahed-136/Geran-2 has been used with penetrating warheads that are optimized to maximize damage to structures such as electricity substations and heavy-duty industrial machinery in power stations, these are not the same as a warhead that is intended to create a single crater/hole of maximum possible depth. A useful reference design to have in mind is the late Cold War French BAP-100 bomb, which was explicitly designed to crater runways and complement the larger, heavier, and better-known Durandal. The air-dropped BAP-100, which featured both a parachute and a solid-propellant rocket booster, had a total weight of 32.5 kilograms while equipped with a 18.5 kilogram warhead. Through the use of the rocket booster, the air-dropped BAP-100’s shaped charge warhead could reportedly penetrate up to 30 centimeters of reinforced concrete when equipped with a time-delay fuse.

It bears emphasis that even a propeller-driven and piston engine-powered Shahed-136/Geran-2 and similar undertaking a terminal dive will struggle to reach a top speed equivalent to one-fifth that of the air-dropped and rocket-boosted BAP-100. The BAP-100 is, as such, merely invoked in this post to illustrate the potential for a penetrator warhead for use against runways as well as other structures, such as bridges. A low-cost low-payload turbojet-powered cruise missile design will have a much higher cruise speed and top speed during a terminal dive and will be much more suitable as a means of delivering a penetrator warhead. See, for example:

All things considered, propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones are unlikely to disappear even with the intensifying measure-countermeasure competition that has resulted in the increasingly widespread deployment of low-cost air defence capabilities, including electrically-powered interceptor drones. Propeller-driven strike drones are an incredibly inexpensive means of delivering a given payload per kilogram-kilometer. The availability of additional warhead options will likely only increase the appeal of low-cost propeller-driven strike drone designs, which inherently offer militaries the ability to service dramatically expanded target lists in a manner that was previously unimaginable.

Minimal comment-themed posts are used to introduce data points for use in other posts going forward. Posts of this theme will typically feature minimal analysis and commentary.

Japan’s Sakishima Islands, which refer to a subset of the larger grouping of the Ryukyu Islands Chain, constitute prime “real estate” in the Western Pacific. These Japanese islands are home to expanding Japanese military garrisons, and Tokyo is working on plans to evacuate the 100,000 or so civilians who reside in the Sakishima Islands during a crisis before these far-flung outposts of Japanese military power become war zones.

As explained with respect to China’s possible activation of the Sea of Japan threat vector, geography plays a key and often underappreciated role in the fast-evolving China-Japan and China-United States military balance. Technological change is, in effect, making the far-flung Sakishima Islands “increasingly proximate” to China.

The Sakishima Islands are just ~400-550 kilometers from mainland China, 270-510 kilometers from the southern tip of Okinawa island, and ~850-1050 kilometers from the southern tip of Kyushu. Military facilities and militarily relevant infrastructure on the far-flung Sakishima Islands are increasingly exposed to Chinese attack. These small islands, the largest of which is Miyako Island, are not and will never be garrisoned by a fairly dense array of air defence and ballistic missile defence capabilities in the manner of Kadena airbase and other military facilities on Okinawa Island.

An orthodromic distance of just ~400-550 kilometers from mainland China places the Sakishima Islands within range of a wide range of existing Chinese strike capabilities, including stand-off munitions launched from Chinese combat aircraft. It also places the Sakishima Islands within range of a diverse array of “new” strike capabilities, whether propeller-driven fixed-wing strike drones in the vein of the Iranian Shahed-136, low-cost cruise missiles, powered guided glide bombs, and even armed uncrewed surface vessels (USVs).

The isolated Japanese military outposts in the Sakishima Islands are likely to be subject to intense and regular bombardment both at the outset and over the course of a major war. Chinese and Japanese military planners, as well as their American counterparts, are likely to recognize how important it is for Japan to occupy this real estate, which offers land on which to position a wide range of both lower-end and higher-end sensors that can be used to detect Chinese aircraft, surface ships, and even submarines. While the military value of the Sakishima Islands is not in question, the fact remains that these far-flung outposts of Japanese military power are exceptionally and increasingly vulnerable to Chinese strike capabilities.

Commentary-themed posts are intended to broach or highlight a specific issue, not limited to recent and ongoing events. These posts will typically be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.

Something very unusual transpired on 30 March 2024. Japan’s Joint Staff Office announced that a Chinese military aircraft, which in this case happened to be an uncrewed aircraft design, was observed flying in international airspace over the Sea of Japan.

The Chinese uncrewed aircraft in question is reported to have been a WZ-7, a high-altitude jet-powered high-end fixed-wing uncrewed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft design operated by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) that is broadly analogous to the American RQ-4 Global Hawk, three specimens of which have been ordered for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF).

While Japan’s Joint Staff Office has disclosed what appear to be exceptionally irregular WZ-7 flights in the international airspace above the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea both before and after 30 March 2024, the 30 March 2024 flight of a WZ-7 remains exceptionally notable as the sole publicly documented case of a Chinese large fixed-wing military aircraft flying in the Sea of Japan outside the specific and highly transient context of bilateral China-Russia bomber aircraft training flights.

The ascent of Sanae Takaichi to the position of Prime Minister of Japan has been accompanied by a very sharp downturn in bilateral relations between China and Japan. While Japan has experienced an ever-worsening security environment vis-a-vis China over the past fifteen or so years, it is only accurate to state that China has, to date, not played all its cards so as to maximally turn the proverbial screws on Japan. One of the approaches that Beijing can undertake entails what is best understood as the activiation of the Sea of Japan threat vector, a dynamic of exceptional military signifiance that has long remained dormant not as a result of anything that Japan or the United States have done or could have done but because Beijing decided—out of self-interest—to restrict the geographic scope of China-Japan and China-United States military dynamics.

Chinese naval activity in the Sea of Japan remains exceptionally rare, with the deployments of People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels into the Sea of Japan being primarily undertaken so as to facilitate transits to Russian ports that host bilateral China-Russia naval exercises.

With the exception of the 30 March 2024 incident involving a WZ-7 uncrewed aircraft flying in international airspace over the Sea of Japan, the few instances of publicly disclosed PLAAF aircraft activity over the Sea of Japan can be tied to bilateral China-Russia aerial exercises.

As highlighted in an October 2025 SPAS Consulting analysis that examined the military implications of the hypothetical collapse of the Russian state on the China-United States military balance—and, by association, the China-Japan military balance, a very small amount of land separates China from the Sea of Japan. Specifically, China is separated from the Sea of Japan by a distance of just ~10.3 kilometers in orthodromic terms/as the crow flies, with the Tumen River flowing for another ~16.5 kilometers from the easternmost point of the China-Russia border until it reaches the Sea of Japan. In other words, China may not border the Sea of Japan and has no direct port access to the Sea of Japan, but just a very small amount of land determines this.

The 30 March 2024 flight of a PLAAF WZ-7 uncrewed aircraft over the Sea of Japan could not have taken place with a very brief overflight of North Korea and/or Russian territory. Although the answer to the obvious question of whether Beijing formally sought and received permission to undertake such a flight from Pyongyang and/or Moscow is not public knowledge, the seminal incident from March 2024 should highlight a simple truth: Beijing can activate the Sea of Japan threat vector if and when Chinese decision-makers wish to do so.

It bears emphasis that the activation of the Sea of Japan threat vector is not merely about potential PLAAF aircraft flights over the Sea of Japan. A “full-activation” of this long-dormant threat axis/threat vector may also entail the deployment of People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) missile launch brigades across the PLA’s Northern Theater Command (NTC), a sector that Beijing has long deprioritized largely out of self-interest.

Given the longstanding dispositions of the PLARF’s conventionally-armed missile launch brigades, many observers appear to understandably conceptualize the threat posed by said Chinese missiles as being one that approaches Japan from the west and southwest. Should Beijing activate the Sea of Japan threat vector, however, Chinese ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and boost-glide vehicles (BGVs, also known as hypersonic glide vehicles or HGVs) will approach Japan from the northwest.

A distance of just ~600 kilometers separates China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province from the northernmost tip of Hokkaido, while just ~700 kilometers separates said Chinese province from the southernmost tip of Hokkaido. Just ~750 kilometers separates China’s northeast from the northernmost tip of Honshu, while just ~810 kilometers separates China’s northeast from the westernmost point of Honshu. Tokyo is just ~1100 kilometers from China’s northeast, while the easternmost part of the Kanto Plain bordering the Pacific Ocean is around 1170 kilometers from China’s northeast. For context, Tokyo is around 1550 kilometers from the easternmost point of China’s Shandong Peninsula, while Tokyo is around 1750 kilometers from Shanghai. Sapporo, meanwhile, is over 1700 kilometers from the easternmost point of China’s Shandong Peninsula, while being over 2170 kilometers from Shanghai.

Simply stated, the entirety of Hokkaido and Honshu are much closer to China if and when Beijing decides to activate the long-dormant Sea of Japan threat vector. Should China decide to do so, it will be able to launch shorter-range—and, all else being equal, less expensive and, as such, more plentiful—missiles against targets across the primary landmasses of the Japanese archipelago. As China-Japan relations further detioriate, the seemingly one-off 30 March 2024 incident in which a Chinese WZ-7 uncrewed aircraft flew in international airspace over the Sea of Japan may come to be seen as a harbinger of a new normal that has the potential to profoundly undermine Japanese security and greatly expand the challenges that both Japan and the United States face in terms of air defence and ballistic missile defence.

Commentary-themed posts are intended to broach or highlight a specific issue, not limited to recent and ongoing events. These posts will typically be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.

Japan intends to evacuate civilians residing in the Sakishima Islands in the event of a major cross-Taiwan Strait crisis or conflict. Relocating some 100,000 civilians of all age groups from the Sakishima Islands—which constitute a subset of the larger grouping of the Ryukyu Islands Chain and notably do not encompass the heavily populated island of Okinawa—to the primary landmasses of the Japanese archipelago will likely require what amounts to an all-of-government effort supported by the privately-owned shipping and aviation sectors. Tokyo will, however, likely also require support from another unexpected source: cooperation, whether tacit or explicit, on the part of Beijing, which will inherently be capable of taking full advantage of Japan’s moment of great vulnerability should it wish to do so.

Evacuating some 100,000 civilians from Japan’s Sakishima Islands will be no easy feat, even if these small islands featured airport facilities large enough to accommodate multiple wide-body aircraft, each capable of seating some 300 persons per flight. The Japanese government will almost certainly have to charter, if not requisition, ferries and other civilian-operated merchant vessels, not limited to those operating in the Sakishima Islands and the broader grouping of the Ryukyu Islands. While the Japan Martime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), as well as the civilian Japan Coast Guard (JCG), will doubtless be called upon to both facilitate such an undertaking and, no less importantly, to escort the vessels of various sizes full of civilians undergoing evacuation, the fact remains that the “evacuation ship” will be an enticing target for Beijing both as it approaches the Sakishima Islands to embark civilians being evacuated, and, more grimly, as said vessels with embarked civilians depart the Sakishima Islands.

All things considered, this envisaged evacuation operation will be a very high-stakes undertaking for Japan. The politcal and humanitarian imperatives of evacuating civilian non-combatants from small islands that are likely to become warzones is wholly understandable, but Tokyo will be assuming considerable operational risk should it decide to task a significant portion of the Japanese surface fleet and combat aircraft fleet toward suporting said evacuation operation in a context in which the military incentives will be to disperse and stay further away from China during what could rapidly transition into the opening phase of the China-Japan portion of a larger war.

The Sakishima Islands are just ~400-550 kilometers from mainland China, 270-510 kilometers from the southern tip of Okinawa island, and ~850-1050 kilometers from the southern tip of Kyushu. Unlike American and Japanese military facilities on Okinawa Island, the Sakishima Islands are highly exposed to Chinese attack. As a result, there is a case to be made that Japan requires at least Beijing’s tacit cooperation to carry out the evacuation of civilians from the Sakishima Islands, let alone from Okinawa Island and elsewhere in the Ryukyu Islands Chain.

It bears emphasis that the evacuation of civilians from the Sakishima Islands appears set to simultaneously take place alongside the deployment of military reinforcements to the Sakishima Islands. Beijing may well decide to press its advantage in Japan’s moment of great vulnerability, not least if the Japanese vessels heading toward the Sakishima Islands to evacuate the civilian population will also be delivering military reinforcements to these islands.

It is only fair for observers to ask why Beijing would decide to be magnanimous and not take full military advantage of Japan’s moment of great vulnerability. The civilians inhabiting the Sakishima Islands and the rest of the Ryukyu Island Chain more generally are, in effect, automatically hostage to Beijing’s mercy, and Beijing will, in the lead up to, let alone during, a war, have free reign to choose between being merciful or taking full advantage of an excellent opportunity to sink a great many Japanese ships and aircraft, whether military or civilian. It bears emphasis that even the mere possibility of China targeting the Japanese evacuation operation will inherently raise the potential cost that Japan will pay for intervening in a cross-strait conflict. Here, it is worth considering that more than 1.5 million civilians inhabit the Ryukyu Island Chain, which is to say some 1.2% of Japan’s total population.

While Japan’s plans to evacuate its civilian population from the Sakishima Islands have caught the attention of news media and foreign observers, the fact that Japan will inherently require at least China’s tacit cooperation has not. Beijing may well decide to press its advantage in Japan’s moment of great vulnerability, and the political and humanitarian imperative of evacuating civilians from what will likely become a warzone may end up becoming a military disaster for Japan, one that may shape the course of a war.

It should be noted that military and non-military vessels used to evacuate civilians from the Sakishima Islands will require naval escorts in a context in which the Japanese surface fleet has considerable qualitative and quantitative deficiencies vis-a-vis China’s ever-evolving and increasingly formidable maritime strike capabilities. The Sakishima Islands are just ~400-550 kilometers from mainland China, 270-510 kilometers from the southern tip of Okinawa island, and ~850-1050 kilometers from the southern tip of Kyushu.

Minimal comment-themed posts are used to introduce data points for use in other posts going forward. Posts of this theme will typically feature minimal analysis and commentary.

Japan intends to evacuate civilians residing in the Sakishima Islands in the event of a major cross-Taiwan Strait crisis or conflict. Relocating some 100,000 civilians of all age groups from the Sakishima Islands—which constitute a subset of the larger grouping of the Ryukyu Islands Chain and notably do not encompass the heavily populated island of Okinawa—to the primary landmasses of the Japanese archipelago will likely require what amounts to an all-of-government effort supported by the privately-owned shipping and aviation sectors.

Transport and amphibious warfare ships operated by both the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) are likely to not only be tasked with supporting the evacuation of civilians from the Sakishima Islands but also transporting military reinforcements from elsewhere in the Japanese archipelago to the Sakishima Islands—public indicators suggest that the recently expanded Japanese military garrisons in the Sakishima Islands will remain in place in the lead up to and during a major conflict.

While the Japanese government will almost certainly have to charter, if not requisition, ferries and other civilian-operated merchant vessels, not limited to those operating in the Sakishima Islands and the broader grouping of the Ryukyu Islands, it will likely also draw upon a series of new vessels built for and operated by the JGSDF, namely the Nihonbare-class medium landing ships and the larger Yoko-class transport ships.

These gray-hulled military vessels are notably operated by the JGSDF rather than the JMSDF, but are subordinate to a joint JMSDF and JGSDF Maritime Transport Group based at Kure. These and other military and civilian/merchant vessels flying the Japanese flag will likely be tasked with delivering larger and heavier types of equipment to military garrisons across the Ryukyu Islands Chain, including the Sakishima Islands, in the event of a cross-Taiwan Strait crisis that may be a prelude to a major war that involves Japan.

While these JGSDF-operated ships will likely be used to transport important types of military equipment, such as a Type 03 Chu-SAM medium-range air defence system to the Sakishima Islands, it bears emphasis that the gray-hulled Nihonbare-class and Yoko-class are essentially defenceless against any form of aerial or subsurface attack. These vessels will require naval escorts in a context in which the Japanese surface fleet has considerable qualitative and quantitative deficiencies vis-a-vis China’s ever-evolving and increasingly formidable maritime strike capabilities. It should be noted that the Sakishima Islands are just ~400-550 kilometers from mainland China, 270-510 kilometers from the southern tip of Okinawa island, and ~850-1050 kilometers from the southern tip of Kyushu.

The evacuation of civilians from the Sakishima Islands appears set to simultaneously take place alongside the deployment of military reinforcements to the Sakishima Islands. As explained in another post, Beijing may well decide to press its advantage in Japan’s moment of great vulnerability, not least if Japanese vessels heading toward the Sakishima Islands to evacuate the civilian population will also be delivering military reinforcements to these islands.

Commentary-themed posts are intended to broach or highlight a specific issue, not limited to recent and ongoing events. These posts will typically be much shorter and less detailed than analysis-themed posts.

This post is intended to broach a specific question: what will the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) do in the event of a major conflict in the Indo-Pacific that involves China, Taiwan, Japan, and, presumably, the United States? Tokyo cannot afford to overlook the potential wartime role(s) that an organization home to more than 14,000 trained, able-bodied personnel—including many mariners and aviators—can play during a hypothetical major conflict in which Japan will likely have to muster all of its sources of national strength.

The JCG, which was established as the Maritime Safety Agency in 1948, emerged from the proverbial ashes of the Imperial Japan Navy. Coast guard-type organizations exist in a variety of flavours. The JCG is formally a civilian coast guard organization subordinate to Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. In this important respect, the JCG differs from the explicitly paramilitary U.S. Coast Guard (USCG)—which is subordinate to the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and the Department of Defense in times of war—and the explicitly paramilitary China Coast Guard (CCG)—an organization that is part of the paramilitary People’s Armed Police (PAP) and reports to China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) in the same manner as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

While formally a civilian organization that is neither administratively subordinate to Japan’s Ministry of Defense nor under the operational control of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, the JCG nevertheless operates a non-trivial number of (very modestly) armed patrol ships—a development that notably long predates more recent tensions with China over Japanese-controlled features in the East China Sea that China now actively disputes. In the event of a major war in the Indo-Pacific, even the largest and most—relative to other JCG vessels—“heavily-armed” JCG patrol ships are unlikely to directly participate in naval operations in the Philippine Sea and around the Japan’s Ryukyu Island Chain, but can nevertheless fulfill roles of non-zero importance in terms of bolstering maritime defences and, no less importantly, and air defences around the Japanese archipelago. JCG vessels are likely to also help facilitate what will likely amount to an all-of-government effort—supported by the privately-owned shipping and aviation sectors—to evacuate civilians from Japan’s Sakishima Islands in the event of a major cross-Taiwan Strait crisis. The JCG may, in time of war, also be stripped of some of its more militarily useful assets, as well as some of its trained personnel, to bolster the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF).

It is productive take a moment to highlight some of the more militarily useful JCG assets. These include:

• 19 larger JCG patrol vessels that can embark at least one helicopter.

• 10 medium-to-large surface search radar-equipped maritime patrol aircraft.

• 3 MQ-9B SeaGuardian surface search radar-equipped large uncrewed fixed-wing maritime patrol aircraft, which are a variant of the American MQ-9 Reaper.

• ~60 helicopters of various types, most of which exist to provide maritime search and rescue (SAR) services to civilians that will still be required in time of war.

• The JCG’s land-based coastal (surface search) radar network.

In the event of war, the aforementioned JCG assets and associated personnel can be used to bolster JSDF units tasked with:

• Patrolling Japan’s coastline so as to provide early warning of approaching (potentially armed) uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and (potentially armed) fixed-wing strike drones, and potentially intercept such threats either independently or in concert with the JASDF and/or JMSDF, as well as the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF), which plays an important role in coastal defence.

• Support JMSDF convoying measures to secure merchant ships operating from one Japanese port to another, including vessels used to transport critically important fuels and chemicals from import hubs to industrial facilities across the Japanese archipelago.

• Support JMSDF and JASDF military search and rescue efforts, which will doubtless take place in coordination with American search and rescue efforts.

• Being home to a pool of Japanese persons trained in the operation of small arms and, in some cases, ship-mounted autocannons, the JCG may also be called upon to help bolster wartime Japan’s ground-based short-range air defences to intercept the likes of a Chinese analogue to the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 single-use propeller-driven fixed wing strike drone design that Russia uses against Ukraine under the designation Geran-2.

It bears emphasis that Japanese decision-makers will need to decide—if they have not already done so—when they will pull back JCG vessels and aircraft from “frontline sectors” in the event of a major crisis with China. This includes operations around the Ryukyu Island Chain, given how JCG vessels and aircraft that continue to patrol in this sector are likely to be treated as militarily relevant targets by the PLA, not least when we are discussing JCG vessels—some of which are armed—and aircraft that are equipped with radars that can detect Chinese warships and, in some cases, Chinese aircraft. JCG vessels and aircraft are not equipped with defensive countermeasures and/or defensive armament to have any chance of surviving PLA attacks, a dynamic in which the JCG fleet is notably unlike a specific subset of both the USCG and CCG fleets.

Given the above, JCG operations during a crisis will likely be closely coordinated with the JASDF and JMSDF, and Tokyo may well decide to pull back JCG vessels and aircraft from the Ryukyu Island Chain to the Japanese archipelago as the shadow of war approaches. There is a caveat to be made with respect to an all-of-government effort to evacuate civilians from the Sakishima Islands, but JCG vessels and aircraft have no business being anywhere near the Ryukyu Islands in the event of war with China and are, more to the point, far more useful to Japan’s war effort when located elsewhere.