🪖 1. Vertical vs. Horizontal Triads
- Cold War vertical triad: USA & USSR owned all three legs land, sea, air inside its borders. Allies hosted weapons but didn’t own them.
- 2025 horizontal triad: Four sovereign states now hold complementary triad legs, linked by shared C3I, early-warning data, and missile-defence coordination.
| Country | 🚀 Land System & Range | 🌊 Sea System & Range | ✈️ Air System & Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇨🇳 China | DF-41 road-mobile ICBM — 12–15 k km, 10–12 MIRVs + decoys | JL-3 SLBM on Type 096 SSBN — 10 k km+, 3 MIRVs each, 12 missiles/boat | H-20 stealth bomber + JL-1 ALBM — 8.5 k km un-refuelled, 6–8 nuclear ALCMs/ALBMs |
| 🇷🇺 Russia | RS-28 Sarmat silo ICBM — 18 k km, 10–15 MIRVs or Avangard HGV | RSM-56 Bulava SLBM on Borei-A SSBN — 9.3 k km, 6–10 MIRVs, 16 missiles/boat | Tu-160M2 & PAK-DA bombers — 12.3 k km, 12 × Kh-102 ALCMs (5 k km stand-off) |
| 🇰🇵 North Korea | Hwasong-18 solid-fuel ICBM — 15 k km claimed, 3–4 MIRVs | Pukguksong-5 SLBM on Sinpo-C SSBN — 2.5–4 k km, single warhead, 3–4 tubes | Il-76 / An-2 + KN-09 ALCM — tactical gravity bombs or ALCM (dev) |
| 🇵🇰 Pakistan | Ababeel MIRVed IRBM/ICBM — 2.2 k km, 3–4 MIRVs | Babur-3 SLCM on Agosta-90B SSK — 450–700 km, single 10–20 kt warhead | Ra’ad-II ALCM on Mirage-V / JF-17 Block-III — 600 km, low-yield warhead |
📡 3. C3I Fusion — What the USSR Never Solved
- Soviets (then): Centralized launch authority inside Moscow’s ring road.
- 2025 (now):
- BeiDou + GLONASS + PakSat-MM1 constellations
- Gwadar–Kashgar fibre corridor & VLF/HF arrays on Hainan, Vladivostok, Karachi
- Result: Multi-capital resilience — a decapitation strike on one capital no longer neutralises the bloc.
- Each state keeps its own arsenal, but joint Shaheen-IX, Vostok-2024, and Sibu-Peace 2025 drills + shared early-warning deliver de facto extended deterrence.
🔑 Bottom Line
The USSR projected nuclear power globally but never distributed a survivable triad across allies. Beijing has. This is the first distributed nuclear deterrent in history:
- 🔁 Redundant across sovereign borders
- 🌍 Encircling U.S. defenses from multiple azimuths
- 🛰️ Networked by shared command & sensing
It raises the threshold for any U.S. first-strike scenario far above what the single-state Soviet triad ever could.
