> Magazine depths will be so limited that they'll only be used for the highest priority targets. They won't be enough to end any major conflict by themselves.
I'm probably being incredibly naive in saying this, but what about "non-wartime" decapitation strikes — where instead of going to war, you just lob some well-timed hypersonic missiles at your enemy's capitol building / parliament / etc. while all key players are inside; presumably not as a way to leave the enemy nation leaderless, but rather to aid an insurgent faction that favors you to take advantage of the chaos to grab power? I.e., why doesn't the CIA bring ICBMs along to their staged coups?
If you do this, the enemy's nuclear-weapons services will look in the playbook under "what to do if someone kills the government", see, "launch everything as a counterattack", and press the button.
A key advantage of a hypersonic weapon is the possibility of first-strikes to disable the enemy's retaliation systems before they have the ability to launch more-traditional retaliatory responses. Only submarines are likely to be mostly-immune to them.
Sure that type of decapitation strike might be attempted on occasion against weaker countries. The US basically tried to take out Saddam Hussein and his inner circle using precision strikes at the beginning of the 2003 Iraq invasion but they mostly missed.
I'm probably being incredibly naive in saying this, but what about "non-wartime" decapitation strikes — where instead of going to war, you just lob some well-timed hypersonic missiles at your enemy's capitol building / parliament / etc. while all key players are inside; presumably not as a way to leave the enemy nation leaderless, but rather to aid an insurgent faction that favors you to take advantage of the chaos to grab power? I.e., why doesn't the CIA bring ICBMs along to their staged coups?