Is the U.S. safe from nuclear attack? (2024)

With tensions rising around the world, including some discussing the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons in Russia's war on Ukraine, the question is: How safe is the U.S. from a nuclear attack?

The answer, unfortunately, is it's complicated. The U.S. does have an anti-nuclear weapon defense system, called the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), which might be able to knock out an incoming North Korean nuclear missile. However, it would easily be overwhelmed by a mass launch by either Russia or China, which have far larger and more advanced nuclear arsenals.

The U.S. has a huge nuclear stockpile of its own, which is designed to deter nuclear attacks on America via the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, or MAD. Any country that launches a nuclear weapon at the U.S. can expect a swift and overwhelming response in kind, that it would find impossible to block. Neither Russia nor China has seriously threatened to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. though there are fears that, as tensions mount over Ukraine and Taiwan, this could change in the future.

Is the U.S. under threat of nuclear attack?

There is no indication that any foreign power is currently planning a nuclear attack on the United States, nor have any explicitly threatened one over the past few years. Both China and India have a no-first-use policy for their nuclear weapons, meaning they have pledged not to deploy them except in response to a nuclear attack.

However, Russia and North Korea have not made a similar pledge, and both have implicitly or explicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons in recent months.

In July, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un claimed the U.S. is "in pursuit of military confrontation" with his country, adding "our state's nuclear war deterrent is also fully ready to demonstrate its absolute power."

The exact range of North Korea's ballistic missiles is unclear, though the Hwasong-15 is reported to have a range of 13,000 km (8,077 miles), putting most of the continental United States at risk. Whether it could actually achieve this range in practice is not known.

Russia has 5,977 nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists, more than any other country. Moscow has become increasingly belligerent since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February. This has extended to Putin making threats about using nuclear weapons.

Moscow put its nuclear arsenal on alert on February 27, days after the attack on Ukraine began, in a clear threat to the West.

In September, a propagandist on Russian state TV said nuclear war was "a given" if the West "pushes us into a corner," adding this would mean "everyone will be destroyed."

However, most of Russia's nuclear threats have been aimed at Ukraine, rather than the U.S. itself.

On October 1 Ramzan Kadyrov, a close Putin ally who runs Russia's Chechen Republic, suggested "low-yield nuclear weapons" could be used against Ukrainian targets.

Polymarket, a cryptocurrency betting site, is currently taking bets on "Will Russia use a nuclear weapon before 2023?"

Is the U.S. able to stop a nuclear attack?

David Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington who has written about preventing nuclear war, told Newsweek the chance of the U.S. intercepting a nuclear-armed Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) is "extremely low."

"We shouldn't be fooled by the moderate success that 'anti-missile defense systems' have been having in Ukraine," Barash said. "The missiles in question have been mostly cruise missiles of one sort or other; they fly about 500 mph, whereas ballistic missiles re-entering the atmosphere are about 15,000 mph."

"Intercepting them is an order of magnitude more difficult: Khrushchev likened it to 'hitting a bullet with a bullet,' and although anti-missile technology has evolved since then, so has offensive tech. The prospects of the U.S., or anyone, successfully intercepting ICBMs are extremely low," he said.

"When the US has tested its own ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] systems, the success rate has been considerably less than 50 percent, and that's with the ABM operators knowing in advance when and where 'incomings' will occur, and their route. [The] offense has an immense advantage in this arena," Barash said.

"A single ICBM can be outfitted with multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles" (MIRVs), thus overwhelming the defense. Those warheads can be maneuverable. They can be accompanied by "chaff" — clouds of what is essentially tin foil, to confuse defensive radar. Most important, only a tiny proportion of attackers need to get through to cause disaster. The only safety lies in making sure that nuclear weapons are never used."

How protected is the U.S. from a nuclear attack?

The primary American defense against nuclear attack is the ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD). However, it has a limited number of missiles, and according to The Verge failed at least eight of the 18 tests it has taken part in since 1999.

A study published earlier this year by the American Physical Society concluded the GMD can't be relied on to "counter even a limited nuclear strike."

Laura Grego, a nuclear expert at MIT who co-chaired the study, said: "This idea of an impenetrable shield against an enormous arsenal of Russian missiles is just a fantasy."

According to the 2019 Department of Defense missile defense review, the U.S. "relies on nuclear deterrence to address the large and more sophisticated Russian and Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities."