First Strike

See Also: Mutually Assured Destruction

In military strategy, a first strike is a preemptive surprise attack against another state and its military-industrial capacity with the intention of crippling the opposing state’s ability to retaliate in a short period of time (usually defined as within three days). It is named after the planetary nuclear strategy of the same name due to the roughly equivalent orders of magnitude between the weapons used and their intended targets in both cases.

Background
The concept of the First Strike and its theoretical execution relies on the existence of weapons capable of threatening entire planets and their inhabitants and delivery mechanisms capable of transporting these weapons across thousands of light years and the Interstitial Void to their target. Due to the ability of all sides to withstand tactical fission, fusion, and combination warheads, the weapons of a First Strike must be able to totally incapacitate or destroy the planet, station, or megastructure targeted by one or more such weapons. Due to the size scale of the various state actors in the Local Cluster, stretching across thousands of light years and sometimes across realities, the delivery mechanisms of First Strike weapons must be able to cross both normal reality and the poorly understood Interstitial Void.

Over the course of the Sapient Proliferation, the Collective Security Union and the Accord of Free Nations created vast arsenals of First Strike capable munitions and their delivery mechanisms as offensive or defensive deterrents respectively. The Union uses its arsenal to intimidate lesser nations against opposition or interference and provide for a tactical resolution to particularly hardened defenses in an active war. The Accord uses its arsenal to deter attacks and invasions launched against its signatories, promising massive retaliation against any power that may seek to destroy its people and ideals.

Though there was no overt hostility between the two superpowers, both sides considered the possibility of a First Strike and corresponding massive retaliation between the twin superpowers of the Local Cluster. Though the Union and the Accord are theoretically capable of surviving a First Strike with sufficient remaining capacity to wage conventional warfare against each other, the incalculable devastation that will inevitably result from such an exchange will cripple both sides for a long time to come. The deterrence of civilian and military loss great enough to potentially lead to state collapse thus prevented either side from using First Strike weapons in anger against each other or against an aligned state.

However, despite knowing the unpayable price of a full First Strike exchange and thus having no desire of enacting such an event, both superpowers privately feared that the other may believe itself to be capable of enduring the consequences and proceed with a First Strike. This caused both sides to invest heavily in both expanding the existing arsenal and developing new offensive or defensive branches of the First Strike doctrine. Both sides hoped that they would be able to create such a vast and credible threat that a theoretical First Strike event would guarantee nothing less than mutually assured destruction. In conjunction, both superpowers invested greatly in defense countermeasures of all types intended to lessen the material costs of a First Strike event.

Deterrence Planning
The Union and the Accord each maintains deterrence plans that provide its leaders with a series of response options, ranging from limited counter-force attacks to indiscriminate desperation strikes, that can be enacted in the event of conventional war or other event that may justify the use of First Strike munitions. These deterrence plans are summarized under the designations "XK DEAD HAND" and "Operational Plan 8044-Black" for the Union and the Accord respectively.

Weapons
Because of the scale of civilian and military infrastructures employed by both the Union and the Accord, First Strike payloads must be capable of causing crippling damage to a wide variety of targets.


 * Atmospheric Incinerators: A family of super-heavy multiple stage fission-fusion warheads, utilizing the Teller-Ulam design to achieve the equivalent power of many gigatons of TNT, designed to ignite the atmosphere of the targeted planet and cause a runaway nuclear fusion reaction. They are effective against other types of targets as well due to the raw power of the warhead(s) in question. They are used as countervalue weapons to target civilian infrastructure of both planet-bound and free orbiting variety.
 * Cobalt Bombs: A family of fission-fusion or pure fission “dirty bombs” designed to scatter large quantities of radioactive fallout over an area in order to deny civil and military usage in the long term. They are used as countervalue weapons objects with significant gravity wells and developed civil infrastructure. Their name references the isotope cobalt-60, one of the several used in first-generation bombs of this type.
 * Conventional Nuclear Weapons: Large quantities of nuclear weapons in the kiloton to megaton range deployed from one or more launch vehicles to destroy vital targets on the surface of a world or megastructure in a relatively conventional way.
 * Radium Bombs: A family of fission-fusion or pure fission bombs designed to maximise generation of direct radiation (especially of gamma and neutron variety). They are used as counterforce and countervalue weapons against a wide variety of targets.
 * Super-heavy Lances: Powerful direct energy weapons used by some super-capitals and attack moons. They are used as decapitation weapons against high value targets whose destruction must be guaranteed by overwhelming and direct firepower.
 * Bioweapons: Various engineered infectious diseases with long incubation times, high transmissibility, and highly incapacitating symptoms designed to cripple a targeted state’s civil and military structure. Unlike other First Strike munitions, these diseases are often delivered by individual agents striking directly at the heart of population centers and logistical crossroads. Many nations consider the use of these weapons to be morally unjustifiable and the Accord of Free Nations has outlawed possession or usage of biological weapons in response to this. Rumors claim that the Collective Security Union maintains a stockpile of engineered diseases; the Union denies all such claims and evidence supporting or denying these rumors are lacking.
 * Other: Various other First Strike weapons that are considered to be anomalous or esoteric are placed under this category. There is little information on instances of such esoteric weapons, if any exist, and neither superpower has revealed any information on this topic.

Delivery Systems
* The Union employs the 15A962 “Judgment” (Accord reporting name: SSC-09 “Skyfall”) and the Accord employs the UGM-135 “Spearhead”. * Cruise torpedoes may carry a single oversized warhead or up to 8 or 12 independently maneuvering sub-missiles. The 15A962 and the UGM-135 can carry the 9M986 “Strontian” and K-12 “Pluto” nuclear salt-water missiles respectively, each of which can carry enough still smaller warheads to, as the creators of the 9M986 described, “reduce everything from Gibraltar to the Urals into an irradiated and blasted wasteland uninhabitable for all eternity”. * The Union Armada employs the Projects 11520, 11521, and 11522 “Electron”, “Neutron”, and “Neutrino” kill-ships as a part of its First Strike arm. * The Union Armada deploys the Angel of the Apocalypse, a Terminus class dreadnought, as an arsenal ship. The Accord Home Navy deploys the Arsenal of Democracy, a modified Daybreak class torpedo boat carrier, as its equivalent.
 * Cruise Torpedoes: Oversized torpedoes equipped with torch engines and a Superluminal Drive that allows it to target intraversal targets within varying ranges. Few cruise torpedoes are equipped with Jump Drives due to the difficulty involved in producing the latter in large quantities.
 * Kill Ships: Various patterns of repurposed torpedo cruisers equipped with Jump Drives and partial stealth technology designed to carry a number of cruise torpedoes on interversal attacks. Each kill-ship will transport its cargo of lethal payloads into the home setting of a targeted state, deploy the torpedoes, and allow the torpedoes to deliver the First Strike payloads to their targets under their own power.
 * Arsenal Ships: Various patterns of super-capital warships designed to carry large numbers of cruise torpedoes on interversal attacks. Each Arsenal Ship carries the equivalent First Strike capacity of dozens of Kill Ships and will usually be the first to launch in the event of a First Strike. By packing a quantity of cruise torpedoes into a single well-protected ship with a single Jump Drive instead of multiple lesser ships each with their own Jump Drives, proponents of the arsenal ship claim that a prospective nation can free up Jump Drives for more useful purposes.
 * Torpedo Barges: Large transport craft equipped with a Jump Drive and designed to carry a number of kill-ships within its cavernous holds. A fully loaded torpedo barge can rival smaller arsenal ships in attack capacity. Proponents of the torpedo barge claim that, instead of wasting copious time and effort reloading arsenal ships at naval yards that would surely be prime First Strike targets, a prospective nation can instead use barges to quickly gather up already loaded kill-ships on the move and carry out secondary or retaliatory strikes with less delay.
 * Jump Gate: It is possible to use one-way Jump Gate funnels to deliver large quantities of payloads into a target universe. The effectiveness of such a tactic in flooding an enemy with cruise torpedoes is undermined by the nature of Jump Gates as first priority First Strike targets, meaning that any Gate used for such a purpose will almost definitely come under attack.

Countermeasures
* Active measures, such as in-system point / area defense networks, directly destroy or incapacitate incoming munitions. * Passive measures, such as planetary shields, allow the target to withstand and survive a limited number of incoming munitions. * Some measures such as interdiction fields can be categorized as either passive or active depending on the role they are used in.
 * Terminal defenses: Any localized mechanism that allows a target of a First Strike to prevent any number of incoming munitions from scoring a mission kill.
 * Early warning: Any method, whether it be tactical, strategic, or diplomatic, of detecting an imminent First Strike or hostile intentions of carrying out such an attack that allows a state to ready its countermeasures, deterrence mechanisms, and/or retaliatory capacity.

Deterrence Mechanisms
In order to prevent hostile states from considering a First Strike, a properly equipped state must be able to establish itself to be able to credibly survive said First Strike and reply with massive retaliation.

* Strike platform mobility: By activating kill ships, arsenal ships, and torpedo barges and sending them away from their usual home docks during a high readiness scenario, a state greatly increases the chance of each delivery platform surviving or evading a counterforce attack. * Automated response: An interversal strike capable state may choose to establish a dead man’s switch that will allow the destruction of its civilian or military leadership in combination with a detected First Strike to immediately set off massive retaliation. The existence of such a system, in combination with redundancy and readiness, can almost guarantee a state’s ability to respond in force against a hostile First Strike even if its leadership is destroyed prior to the process. * The Union claims to have implemented a dead man’s switch system that would preserve their capacity for retaliation even after the total destruction of its civilian and military leadership. The validity of this claim is unknown.
 * Readiness states: By maintaining a heightened readiness state during times of increased tension, a state presents itself to be capable of surviving a First Strike via mobilization of its own interversal strike capacity. This presents a credible threat to a possible hostile state who may choose to refrain from launching an attack if it perceives its enemy to be too dangerous to safely attack.
 * Strategic and operational redundancy: By establishing multiple layers of command of control intended to survive the opening salvos of a First Strike, a state presents itself to be capable of surviving a decapitation strike and issuing orders for immediate and massive retaliation.