On a tangent: it occurred to me recently that we also don't see much use of ICBMs with non-nuclear payloads, despite these being a fairly-obvious "dominant strategy" for warfare — and one that
isn't banned by any global treaties.
I'm guessing the problem with these is that, in practice, a country can't use any weapons system that could potentially be used to "safely" deliver a nuclear payload (i.e. to deliver one far-enough away that the attacking country would not, itself, be affected by the fallout) without other countries' anti-nuke defenses activating. After all, you could always say you're shooting ICBMs full of regular explosive payloads, but then slip a nuke in. There is no honor in realpolitik.
So, because of this game-theoretic equilibrium, any use of the stratosphere for ballistic weapons delivery is effectively forbidden — even though nobody's explicitly asking for it to be.
It's interesting to consider how much scarier war could be right now, if we hadn't invented nuclear weapons... random missiles just dropping down from the sky for precision strikes, in countries whose borders have never even been penetrated.
I'm guessing the problem with these is that, in practice, a country can't use any weapons system that could potentially be used to "safely" deliver a nuclear payload (i.e. to deliver one far-enough away that the attacking country would not, itself, be affected by the fallout) without other countries' anti-nuke defenses activating. After all, you could always say you're shooting ICBMs full of regular explosive payloads, but then slip a nuke in. There is no honor in realpolitik.
So, because of this game-theoretic equilibrium, any use of the stratosphere for ballistic weapons delivery is effectively forbidden — even though nobody's explicitly asking for it to be.
It's interesting to consider how much scarier war could be right now, if we hadn't invented nuclear weapons... random missiles just dropping down from the sky for precision strikes, in countries whose borders have never even been penetrated.