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When your strategic opponent has an arsenal of nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles numbering in the thousands, it is beyond foolish to presume that a mere 300 warheads would be a credible deterrent.

Let us suppose hypothetically in a world where the U.S. arsenal is no more than 300 warheads, that the Ohio-class boomer that you served in, carrying 192 warheads total, ends up being located, identified and sunk by hostile forces, and/or suffers some kind of catastrophic failure (think SSN-589/USS Scorpion), guess what?

You have just lost damn near 2/3rds of your already weakened deterrent.

Now the argument will be made that we would have to more widely distribute those 300 warheads to avoid just such a calamity but the fact remains that you cannot consider such a numerically small number of warheads as having any effective and true deterrence due to the reasons I've already posted. And a small number like that means that you have just simplified the targeting challenges for Russian nuclear strategists, and that is definitely not something we should want to do.

I've heard this rationale too many times about how much nuclear destruction can be wrought by just one Ohio-class sub, or one B-52 (or B-2), or a wing of Minuteman III ICBMs, but what is overlooked is that you need to allow for mechanical malfunction, human error, or some Russian sonuvabitch getting off a lucky shot. Your nuclear weapons must be numerous, with massive redundancy (meaning that if you think 300 warheads will do the job, you need to have at least 900 in inventory in case any given nuke for whatever reason, fails to reach or destroy the target), and to allow for periodic replacement of the warheads, maintenance, etc.