Decapitation strike

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In the theory of nuclear warfare, a decapitation strike is a first strike attack that aims to remove the command and control mechanisms of the opponent, in the hope that it will severely degrade or destroy its capacity for nuclear retaliation.

Strategies against decapitation strikes include:

distributed command and control structures
dispersal of political and military leadership in times of tension
delegation of the ability to fire to local commanders in the event of a decapitation strike

A failed decapitation strike carries the risk of immediate massive retaliation undertaken by the targeted opponent.

Other nuclear warfare doctrines explicitly exclude decapitation strikes, on the basis that it is better to preserve the adversary's command and control structures so that a single authority remains which is capable of negotiating a surrender or ceasefire.

Implementing fail-deadly mechanisms can be a way to deter decapitation strikes, and cope with a successful decapitation strike.

[edit] In fiction

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In the movie Dr. Strangelove, Senator Buford complains that the US nuclear deterrent lacks credibility. If the President were killed in a decapitation strike, retaliation would be impossible. Wing Attack Plan R is devised to close this loophole.

In The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust, an Alternative History in which the 1962 crisis developed into war, the Soviets manage to destroy Washington D.C. and kill Kennedy, Johnson and most of their political and military advisors. This coup, however, works disastrously against the Soviet Union. Had Kennedy survived, he might have ordered a measured response. Since he didn't, surviving American generals order a total attack, which continues long past the breaking of any Soviet military capacity and results in killing some 80% of the entire Soviet population, and later gets the US accused of genocide.

In the Tom Clancy novel Debt of Honor, a Japan Air Lines pilot flies a fully fueled, passengerless Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol, during a Joint Session of Congress: The pilot was distraught after watching the deaths of his brother and his son in a short-lived war between the United States and Japan. This is not an attack by a government, but it has the effect of removing the top tier of each branch of the United States Government: all of Congress, the President, the Cabinet, The Supreme Court, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The only survivors are two men each claiming to have been the Vice President, and therefore President by succession. This dispute is resolved in the next novel, Executive Orders.