Though your assumption that only 5 are at sea is also a poor one. Look at the satellite photos of Kings Bay and Bangor sometime and count the boats.
Any nuclear war is crazy --- but so is the idea of inviting a nuclear strike by doing away with ICBMs and incentivizing an adversary to strike early to destroy everything we have that isn't actively at-sea at the time.
The idea is to never put the President in a position where they have to choose to respond to an attack on the US with only 5 tactical nukes with a full all out attack by our surviving nuclear forces.
But again it isn't 8 - it's an average of 4.4.
Though your assumption that only 5 are at sea is also a poor one. Look at the satellite photos of Kings Bay and Bangor sometime and count the boats.
Any nuclear war is crazy --- but so is the idea of inviting a nuclear strike by doing away with ICBMs and incentivizing an adversary to strike early to destroy everything we have that isn't actively at-sea at the time.
The idea is to never put the President in a position where they have to choose to respond to an attack on the US with only 5 tactical nukes with a full all out attack by our surviving nuclear forces.