> The difference between having 1,000 and 10,000 nuclear weapons is fairly meaningless from a MAD standpoint, but the second still costs ~10 times as much.
Forget about MAD, that was an interim doctrine that faded out in the late 1960s.
Once delivery systems demonstrated sufficient accuracy to hit point targets the doctrine changed to counterforce.
For counterforce, targeting individual weapons and enablers, you need lots of lower-yield warheads. The total yield of the nuclear aresenals actually declined as a result.
Counterforce is a strategy for pre-emptive nuclear strike aka starting a nuclear war when retaliation could occur during transit. Even at the peak of our nuclear capacity we had zero ability to prevent retaliation or a first strike. Thus MAD was the still the core defensive strategy.
At best it was a fig leaf enabling ~10 Trillion dollars in pork spending, but counterforce was hardly a useful military doctrine.
Forget about MAD, that was an interim doctrine that faded out in the late 1960s.
Once delivery systems demonstrated sufficient accuracy to hit point targets the doctrine changed to counterforce.
For counterforce, targeting individual weapons and enablers, you need lots of lower-yield warheads. The total yield of the nuclear aresenals actually declined as a result.