Editing First strike (nuclear strategy) (section)

===Increasing alert state and readiness===
{{See also|Launch on warning|Fail-safe|Fail-deadly}}
The effectiveness of a first strike is contingent upon the aggressor's ability to deplete its enemy's retaliatory capacity immediately to a level that would make a second strike impossible, mitigable, or strategically undesirable. Intelligence and early warning systems increase the probability that the enemy has the time to launch its own strike before its warmaking capacity has been significantly reduced, which renders a first strike pointless. Alert states such as [[DEFCON]] conditions, apart from serving a purpose in the internal management of a country's military, can have the effect of advising a potential aggressor that an escalation towards first strike has been detected and therefore that effective retaliatory strikes could be made in the event of an attack.