I came across this term in a video from “Belle of the Ranch”. She just mentioned that “France has a warning shot (plan) with nuclear weapons”.
Internet searching gives me descriptions of French nuclear weapons and only vague explanations of the “warning shot” plans.
What is this plan? They will fire a single nuke at the opponent? Surely that would cause the opponent to shoot back, with many missiles instead of another warning shot.
I don’t know anything about that vlogger. Do you have any reason to think she has any idea what she’s talking about?
She seems well versed in political science, and was a member of the military for what that is worth.
She took over from Beau of the Fifth Column when he stepped down from his channel last year. I think she’s his wife.
I believe she is.
So we’re assuming the other country has nukes also, like Russia or China? France would be wiped off the face of the earth in short order. I really don’t understand their strategy.
Well, I’m a USSTRATCOM veteran, and I can tell you that I don’t know anything about France’s nuclear strategy because they always made a point of holding their nuclear assets and plans in isolation from the rest of NATO. So that would give them the freedom to indulge in the ridiculous fantasy of a “warning shot”, and it wouldn’t matter to us all that much.
And if they fly their little nuke-armed Dassault into the laydown of our submarine-launched W76 warheads, that’s on them too.
A warning shot in other contexts is targeted to miss the opponent; perhaps the plan would be to nuke something else?
Nuke the Moon! Nothing lesser would demonstrate both our power and insanity!
Googling around a bit, it seems that the warning shot would be detonated away from critical targets, with minimal impact, but close enough to be treated seriously - so I guess that means nuking a bit of wilderness in the enemy territory or maybe detonating at high altitude over it (not sure about that bit though).
Seems like a risky play if the opponent is a nuclear power.
Won’t work with any launch-on-warning opponent, as the Russians are widely presumed to be. The calculus of nuclear planning is that any detected launch or detonation event requires a complete response in order to avoid losing weapons in a “use it or lose it” situation. In other words, any first strike is assumed to aimed at disarming or decapitating, and the only counter is the guarantee that every weapon in hazard would be launched rather than risk letting them be destroyed in the silo or on the aircraft.
Even a public claim of a “warning shot” would probably be disregarded as a ruse to prevent a launch-on-warning attack.
Given that the Orange Menace managed to insult President Macron at least three times during the latter’s visit to the White House, including basically calling him a liar in a press conference, relations have definitely soured between the US and France, as indeed they have between the US and most other countries except Russia. So military-type things that France might do – not necessarily nuclear – should maybe be taken a little more seriously than they were in happier, more peaceful times when the US was considered a reliable ally.
I told them we’ve already got one.
snicker, twitter tee hee
Can we come up and have a look?
Of course not! You are English types! Go and boil your bottoms! Son of a silly person!
This is almost certainly a reference to the Air-Sol Moyenne Portée (ASMP-A), a medium range nuclear armed cruise missile. Because the range is not sufficient to effectively strike at Moscow, it was regarded as a ‘sub-strategic’ weapon even though it has an estimated 300 kT TNTeq yield. It would be used presumably to strike at front line military formations and critical logistical hubs as a ‘warning’ against further incursion, but as @gnoitall says, the French maintained this as an independent capability which was not integrated with NATO (i.e. American and British) nuclear assets, so actual deterrence or response strategy is largely guesswork.
In the case of any real or perceived launch of nuclear weapons the US response is “launch-on-warning”; that is, before enemy strike can destroy nuclear retaliatory capability. The same is almost certainly true for Russian nuclear forces, and the Soviets actually had a semi-automated system—the Myortvaya Ruka (“Dead Hand”) detection and launch order system and Sistema "Perimetr rocket-based communication system—that would send out launch orders if it detected signs of a strike within the Russian interior. Whether this system was ever fully activated is in dispute, andthere are conflicting reports as to the operational status of these systems are still functional and in use. A preemptive ‘warning’ shot could be extremely destabilizing even if it were clearly not intended to strike at a strategic target just because it would escalate tensions and contribute to a potential to incorrectly assess an apparent threat.
Stranger
Maybe it’s a call back to before 1997 when France had short range nuclear missiles (Hades and Pluton) that were to be used against the Red Army just before they crossed the Rhine… So on German territory…That was intended to show the serious of the situation and the threat to use strategic warheads in case of further advance.
Since then doctrine evolved: President Macron stayed deliberatly vague with the “unique warning shot”, that is not even mandatory. It’s the vagueness but certainty of the threat that counts.
If Macron fires a warning shot at Russia, will they fire back at France, or all of NATO?
Based upon review of numerous wargaming scenarios run over many decades from the ‘Sixties onward, once missiles start flying things just escalate because ‘players’ become fearful about losing retaliatory capability. Even initial use of ‘tactical’ weapons against non-hardened military formations tends to escalate because players lose their unprotected conventional forces and the only effective response is counterstrike. A multipolar ‘game’ just increases the propensity for instability.
Stranger
Does it matter once Paris gets hit?
France is going to nuke the Vatican as a warning to the US/Russia