alt Hacker NewsAdd multiple decoys and the missile math tends to become an argument for the importance of preemption. Han shot first for a good reason.
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Decoys are greatly over-rated in ballistic missile systems. Sensors are so good at discriminating decoys from warheads that decoys are largely ineffective and have been for decades. This has borne out in Ukraine.
A decoy sufficiently sophisticated to look real to good sensors will have weight and characteristics that approach that of a real warhead, at which point you might as well add another warhead. Decoys only make sense if the marginal cost of adding them is low.
If you haven't, I'm going to recommend you to listen to an episode of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, specifically The Destroyer of Worlds [1].
Why? Because it goes into the change in strategic thinking brought on by the atomic age (and, soon thereafter, the thermonuclear age). And there was an element of US strategic thinking that argued for a preemptive strike against the USSR.
The episode also goes into the arguments for and against the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon that could never really be used and arguably not even necessary when we already had the atomic bomb.
The outcome of those debates shaped American foreign policy from 1945 to the present day.
[1]:https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-...
Careful. Preemption takes many forms, some of them many would find unpalatable.
The game theory of it is the prisoner's dilemma.
Preemtive betrayal is a terrible strategy if there are more than two parties in the game, and they are allowed to cooperate.
You have to be one heck of a smooth conversationalist to convince them to take a number and patiently wait in line to be the ones to be attacked next.
If you're the guy that the others in the room know shoots first, you're also the guy the others in the room will shoot when he's reaching for something in his jacket pocket.