Shenzhou has landed

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
never really subscribed to the idea of threatening the other side's
cities; they always aimed for a counterforce strike, taking out the other
side's weapons and military capabilities.

...At the end of the cold war, at least some data leaked on the former
Soviet nuclear targeting doctrine; including IIRC their intention to
destroy any U.S. production infrastructure with military capabilities,
as well as all 50 state capitals, in an attempt to decapitate the
command and control abilities of the U.S. Government.

Note that I said "military capabilities", not just "military bases" --
that definitely includes command and control, and militarily-relevant
industries and facilities. (One example, which gets a lot of cities
clobbered as collateral damage, is that any major airport is a potential
dispersal base for bombers.)

Their version of deterrence was
not to convince the US that a nuclear war had to be avoided because it
would be unthinkably horrible, but to convince the US that a nuclear war
had to be avoided because the Soviets would win it.

I don't know about that; the government may have said as much, but when
I was over there in 1978, the people acted like WW-II had occurred last
year, and they never wanted to see another one any way shape or form...

Note carefully what I said: the goal was not to fight a war, but to
convince the US that war had to be avoided. They merely had a somewhat
different perspective on how to do this most effectively.
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

Pat Flannery wrote in message ...

This will, unfortunately, be my last post on the subject. Pressures
from school work. Sorry. Please do feel welcome to respond.

The key words are "most likely" and in the case of the Delta that
collided with the Agusta, there was a undetected Victor class attack sub
following our attack sub.

I am extremely doubtful that the story as presented in Hostile Waters
matches reality in any way, shape, or form. First of all, s.m.n. used
to have a torpedoman who was on the Augusta during the incident, and
he swore up and down that no collision ever happened (though providing
no information as to what actually did happen). Even if you don't
believe him, however, the Augusta was a smaller submarine which
suffered no visible damage (or any lengthy dry-dock time, she stayed
in drydock for normal lengths of time after that voyage) from a
supposed collision with a larger submarine that caused the larger
boat's missile tubes to pop open and then started a fire which sank
the boat. Something is not right there.

You can see a similar pattern with the Kursk- at first the Russians
blamed a NATO submarine for sinking the much larger Russian submarine
with out suffering any visible damage. Eventually, when pressed, the
Russian admirals admitted that perhaps the torpedo might have been at
fault. Then, when pressed still more they admitted that yes, indeed,
the torpedo did cause the problem. K-219 was at the very beginning of
Glasnost, just a few months after the complete silence in reporting
Chernobyl. Even the minimal and tardy truthfulness that the Russian
admirals expressed after the Kursk incident didn't happen here, and we
shouldn't be surprised.

So the first thing that might happen in a war
scenario is our trailing attack sub getting a torpedo in its stern,
followed by the boomer starting launch operations.

Except that we are postulating an AMERICAN bolt-from-the-blue attack.
Why would the American submarine not know that the American missiles
are about to be launched? Indeed, what you would actually expect is
the torpedo spread to go into the water just after the initial missile
launch. Long before the Soviets have a chance to alert the two
submarines that their early warning radars are seeing a missile launch
and that it is time to prepare for missile launch. Sure, the escorting
attack submarines could return fire after the fish are in the water,
but it isn't going to help the boomer in the slightest.

In a Soviet bolt-from-the-blue attack, yes, SSBN's would be more
useful. However, the Soviets had vastly less luck tracking American
boomers, so a Soviet bolt-from-the-blue attack would be more likely to
be deterred by SSBN's.

Again, all it takes is one to create doubt in an enemy's mind.

Doubt is a long long long way from influencing decisions. Tell the USN
ASW and SSN drivers that finding and killing all Soviet boomers on a
day four months from now within 20 minutes and kill them, and they
would have a pretty good shot (I think that OPSEC would be the biggest
worry, not the acutal hunting process). If you had a reason to go to
war in the first place, I don't think that Soviet boomer deployments
are going to change your mind. (And for most of the Cold War, that was
what really kept the peace, IMO, lack of reasons for direct violent
conflict, not any sort of deterrance or what not.)

The one that _really_ got the massive expenditure on it was the R-113
(SA-1 "Guild") system; over 3000 of this primitive surface-to-air
missile were eventually deployed at big fixed bases, and consumed around
a year's worth of the Soviet Union's annual concrete production.

I'm writing my undergraduate history research paper on the Tallinn
System (in fact, it's what I should be working on right now). In the
mid to late 1960's the Soviets deployed massive numbers of a missile
eventually called the SA-5. American military intelligence groups were
sure that this missile had ABM capability, because there was no way
that the Soviets were deploying that many new, high altitude, high
performance SAM's to fight off a threat (the B-70) that the US had
canceled years earlier. As more was learned about the sytem it was
discovered that indeed, the SA-5 was only capable of shooting down
athmospheric targets and not even marginally capable of hitting
missiles. That meant that the Soviets had deployed over 2000 missiles
of this system, to stop massed attacks by an airplane that was
canceled, at a time when the US was shifting focus to low-level
attacks and ICBM's that the SA-5 was not even minimally capable of
defeating.


But
like the Galosh, by the time they were deployed they were already
largely obsolete (increased performance of jet bombers nailed the Guild;
Galosh was rendered largely ineffective by MIRV's, and the possible
follow-on MARV's).

The Galosh/Gorgon/Gazelle has several problems. Chief among them is
that its battle-management radar is not protected against EMP. Since
the Galosh/Gorgon and the Gazelle each use nuclear weapons in their
kill system, every engagement will blind the battle-management radar
for several minutes at a time. This is, I believe, technically known
as a "design flaw".

Say you attack the Soviet ICBM force; and you are confident that you can
destroy 95% percent of the force- at the end of 1983, the Soviets had
1398 operational ICBMs; so that the 5% that escape destruction leaves
you with about 70 ICBM's intact...the 1398 Soviet ICBMs carried a total
of 5678 warheads between them- or in other words, averaged around 4
warheads apiece; the 5678 warheads had a total megatonage of 5481*...or
around 950 kilotons per warhead average...these are clunky Soviet
missiles, so let's assume that only around 3/4 of them work as they are
designed to- in that case, and assuming that the Soviets don't just
launch on warning, or when your warheads begin to hit (and remember,
time-on-target attack won't work...it would mean that the warheads
heading toward the most distant targets would show up first on radar;
this would actually increase the launch opportunity time for the
Soviets.) you are going to have around 50 or so missiles carrying
around 200 950 kiloton warheads arriving in your country around a hour
after you push the button; the vast majority of these will be ground
bursts aimed at your now-empty missile silos, these will generate one
hell of a lot of fallout

Your calculations have missed one thing. Those silos will not be
empty; in the brave new world after the American development of MIRV,
you start to see a major performance advantage for first strikes.

Assuming that each US missile also had 4 MIRV's, and that the ratio of
warhead size to CEP to Soviet missile silo blast hardening is such
that it takes two warheads to achieve .95 pK, well, then after this
first strike the US has 50% of its warheads remaining, the Soviets
only 5%. The point of a disarming strike is that you don't target a
single city, so no city has been hurt yet, only silo fields. Now the
Soviets face a choice. They can launch their missiles against US
cities, ensuring the total and complete destruction of their
civilization for "only" severe harm to American cities. Or they can
not. Now the logic of MAD works against the Soviets, if they launch
their missiles it brings down an assured rain of nuclear destruction
on their cities, which hasn't happened yet. Why should they take an
action that they know will only destroy their own civilization?

I chose the Soviets as the recievers of this first strike for the
reasons outlined above, their inability to reliably operate SSBN's
without them being tracked. Not because I am advocating premptive
nuclear first strikes.

... but probably around ten or so will be coming
down on some of your major cities- with an average detonation force of
around 45 times as great as the ones that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Given that scenario, would you ever dare attack the Soviet Union?
Do you think the Soviets would study the same math, and arrive at the
same conclusion?

Remember that the massively MIRV'd environment changes a lot of the
equations. There is also the use-it-or-lose-it penalty. The widespread
deployment of MIRV's makes each individual missile a greater part of
the national deterrance. That means each missile that gets lost in the
silo from an enemy first strike is even more important. That means
that the military commanders are going to be putting even more
pressure on their political masters to launch, so they don't get
caught on the ground. And those are bad pressures in a crisis
situation.

Well, let's see, Moscow has a population of 13 million;

And protected by the Galosh/Gazelle/Gorgon system. Sure, it can be
beat, but only by reducing the number of warheads hitting the target
(e.g. Chevaline or manuevering reentry vehicles or overloading the
system). American planners figured, conservatively, that they would
kill off about fifty of the first hundred missiles fired at them (and
then be useless afterwards). You will probably see better results then
that (as near to certain as anything is in hypothetical war games),
but we're using this for planning. Because Moscow is by far the most
important target, I'd want at least 40 warheads for that city, to make
sure that I hurt it badly. I'd evenly divide on the other targets.

But do remember that Leningrad, Odessa, and Kiev were shattered in the
2nd World War. They were blasted, twisted, shelled, and two of them
fought over in brutal house by battles several times. You are going to
do some more damage to the Soviet union then was done using
conventional explosives in WW2, but not much more. Moscow only saw
combat on its suburbs, so you will be inflicting more damage then in
WW2 here; however, you will be doing far less damage to the Soviet
army or countryside. I'd say that the Soviets would be better off
after this nuclear strike then after WW2.

so I should be able to get you over 20 million dead
inside of a half hour from the word go.

Very "optimistic" numbers here. I would not be confident of them. You
simply can't get better then a few tens of percentage points of
casulties out of aerial bombardment. Call it 60%. 60% of the four
cities listed would be "only" 12 million or so.

Let me get this straight- you are actually trusting that The Officially
Stated Soviet Doctrine, and what the Soviet's actually intended to do,
would bear the slightest relationship to each other?

No. I was supporting it with an actual Soviet nuclear plan which I
read several years ago (when it was released- think it was from Cold
War History Project but I don't remember exactly, sorry for the poor
cite). They did not target cities merely for the sake of targeting
cities. In fact, their plans for Europe (about 40% of their missiles
were targeted for Europe, about 40% for the US, and the remainder for
China, with the exact numbers varrying depending on plan (this is why
the INF treaty was such a win for NATO, before that the IRBM's and
MRBM's handled most of the European targets, after INF ICBM's had to
be used)) scrupulusly avoided targeting cities at all. For the US they
would target cities if they major important military value (DC, San
Diego, etc.) but not if they didn't (Chicago, Twin Cities, St. Louis,
etc.). As I said, they were not really following a countervalue
strategy. They would target military installations near cities
(Hanscom AFB near Boston, for example), of course, but only the cities
themselves when they had major military targets. They were NOT using
countervalue to guide their targeting decisions.

Chris Manteuffel

Herb Schaltegger wrote:

We did 'em even better than used cars - we gave 'em McDonalds, cheap
blue jeans and MTV. In return, they gave us the fall of the Berlin
Wall, part of the ISS and lots of cheap, bad porn.

So, via Honest Johns....we got Russian prostitutes? Now that's more bang
for your buck!

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
The key words are "most likely" and in the case of the Delta that
collided with the Agusta, there was a undetected Victor class attack sub
following our attack sub.

ROTFLMAO.

So the first thing that might happen in a war scenario is our trailing attack sub
getting a torpedo in its stern, followed by the boomer starting launch operations.

ROTFLMAO.

There is also the Soviet inflatable submarine decoy to contend with, which came
as quite a surprise to us when we first saw one blown up into its naval base's tree
line by a storm- because that meant that there was one more submarine at
sea, rather than in dock, than we knew about, and you won't be tracking
11 if you only think there are 10 at sea.

ROTFLMAO. You think satellite photos are the only way we know a sub
is at sea?

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
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Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

(Chris Manteuffel) wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote in message ...

This will, unfortunately, be my last post on the subject. Pressures
from school work. Sorry. Please do feel welcome to respond.

The key words are "most likely" and in the case of the Delta that
collided with the Agusta, there was a undetected Victor class attack sub
following our attack sub.

I am extremely doubtful that the story as presented in Hostile Waters
matches reality in any way, shape, or form.

Hostile Waters is an extremely poorly written bit of fiction with only
a nodding aquantince with anything even remotely resembling a fact or
a clue.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 07:18:12 GMT, (Derek
Lyons) wrote:

Hostile Waters is an extremely poorly written bit of fiction with only
a nodding aquantince with anything even remotely resembling a fact or
a clue.

....Not totally correct. The debate regarding the Silver Surfer was
rather accurate.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 07:10:04 GMT, (Derek
Lyons) wrote:

ROTFLMAO. You think satellite photos are the only way we know a sub
is at sea?

....Well, we do have that radio-equipped kraken program, but I'm not
sure if that's been declassified yet. I mean, Greenpeace would be
screaming bloody murder about it by now.


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

In article ,
James Nicoll wrote:
It seems to me that laser-launchers could be dual purpose,
sending payloads up in peace time and knocking stuff out of the air
during wartime, at least until the national grid went down...

Unfortunately, the laser characteristics that you want for the two jobs
turn out to be very different. In particular, the antimissile guys want
short wavelengths to damage targets more effectively, while the launch
guys want long wavelengths to make the engineering easier.

Isn't there a similar arrangement with civilian airplanes?

Sort of. Some US airlines are part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, in
which the government pays them a modest retainer to have some of their
aircraft reinforced for heavy cargo and available to the government on
request in time of emergency. (If memory serves, the popularity of this
dropped substantially after the Gulf War -- the first time the CRAF
aircraft were actually called up. Before that, it hadn't really occurred
to the airlines that their aircraft might be called up for anything less
than World War Three. Once the possibility became real, some of them
decided that it was too much hassle for too little money.)
--
MOST launched 30 June; first light, 29 July; 5arcsec | Henry Spencer
pointing, 10 Sept; first science, early Oct; all well. |

Chris Manteuffel wrote:

I am extremely doubtful that the story as presented in Hostile Waters
matches reality in any way, shape, or form. First of all, s.m.n. used
to have a torpedoman who was on the Augusta during the incident, and
he swore up and down that no collision ever happened (though providing
no information as to what actually did happen). Even if you don't
believe him, however, the Augusta was a smaller submarine which
suffered no visible damage (or any lengthy dry-dock time, she stayed
in drydock for normal lengths of time after that voyage) from a
supposed collision with a larger submarine that caused the larger
boat's missile tubes to pop open and then started a fire which sank
the boat. Something is not right there.


That was the first rumored collision, not the later one with the Delta,
which came nosing around to find out what exactly had happened to the
K-219 (which was a "Yankee" class) with a Victor in tow; it was the
supposed underwater three ring circus that resulted between the Augusta,
Delta, and Victor class that led to somebody running over the Delta's
upper hull between it's sail and bow, The Soviets released a picture of
this, and there is one hell of a dent in the thing (I'm still trying to
find this photo on the web, it's in the "Hostile Waters" book). "Blind
Man's Bluff" also states that the collision was with a Delta, not the
Yankee-class K-219; and that the collision occurred while Augusta was
testing out a new sonar system that would allow it to track Soviet
submarines better.

You can see a similar pattern with the Kursk- at first the Russians
blamed a NATO submarine for sinking the much larger Russian submarine
with out suffering any visible damage. Eventually, when pressed, the
Russian admirals admitted that perhaps the torpedo might have been at
fault. Then, when pressed still more they admitted that yes, indeed,
the torpedo did cause the problem. K-219 was at the very beginning of
Glasnost, just a few months after the complete silence in reporting
Chernobyl. Even the minimal and tardy truthfulness that the Russian
admirals expressed after the Kursk incident didn't happen here, and we
shouldn't be surprised.


There have been a lot of sub/sub and sub/ship collisions over the years,
("Blind Man's Bluff" lists 19) and I think the concept of "plausible
deniability" comes up on both sides regarding these- we didn't nail the
Kursk, but we have bumped a few other ones over the years.


Except that we are postulating an AMERICAN bolt-from-the-blue attack.
Why would the American submarine not know that the American missiles
are about to be launched?


I was arguing that neither side could launch a preemptive nuclear strike
without realizing that even in a best-case scenario, enough of the
enemy's nuclear force would be likely to survive that the attacking
power would suffer unacceptable damage in return; and hence, the concept
of MAD was still a very workable one.

Indeed, what you would actually expect is
the torpedo spread to go into the water just after the initial missile
launch. Long before the Soviets have a chance to alert the two
submarines that their early warning radars are seeing a missile launch
and that it is time to prepare for missile launch. Sure, the escorting
attack submarines could return fire after the fish are in the water,
but it isn't going to help the boomer in the slightest.

In a Soviet bolt-from-the-blue attack, yes, SSBN's would be more
useful. However, the Soviets had vastly less luck tracking American
boomers, so a Soviet bolt-from-the-blue attack would be more likely to
be deterred by SSBN's.


I assume you mean a retaliatory attack by our SSBNs; if we have a
situation where a Soviet boomer is being tracked by an American attack
sub (such as was probably the case in the majority of Soviet SSBN
deployments) and that the American sub is itself being tracked by the
SSBN's escort attack sub, then the American submarine could fall prey to
the Soviet attack sub before the Soviet SSBN starts launch operations
via a coordinated operation to begin at a preset time. We also have a
hard time tracking what is in our sub's baffles, and that is where the
unexpected Victor was supposed to have emerged from in the Augusta/Delta
incident.





Again, all it takes is one to create doubt in an enemy's mind.



Doubt is a long long long way from influencing decisions. Tell the USN
ASW and SSN drivers that finding and killing all Soviet boomers on a
day four months from now within 20 minutes and kill them, and they
would have a pretty good shot (I think that OPSEC would be the biggest
worry, not the actual hunting process).



This isn't as easy as it sounds- the Soviet were subs were noisier than
ours, but apparently the only time we ever tracked one during its entire
cruise was Whitey Mack's 47 day trail of a Yankee class boat with the
U.S.S. Lapon; and even he lost it from time to time early in the trail.
That event was so outstanding that it earned him a Distinguished Service
Medal, and the Lapon's crew a Presidential Unit Citation.


If you had a reason to go to
war in the first place, I don't think that Soviet boomer deployments
are going to change your mind. (And for most of the Cold War, that was
what really kept the peace, IMO, lack of reasons for direct violent
conflict, not any sort of deterrance or what not.)


It would have to be one hell of a provocation to make you risk the
consequences of this course of action.
So great in fact, that little other than a surprise nuclear attack by
the opposing side on your country would rise to the level where it
becomes reasonable to attempt. Even the NATO countries had their deep
suspicions about the U.S. attacking the Soviet Union with nuclear
weapons if they were invaded by the Soviets.




The one that _really_ got the massive expenditure on it was the R-113
(SA-1 "Guild") system; over 3000 of this primitive surface-to-air
missile were eventually deployed at big fixed bases, and consumed around
a year's worth of the Soviet Union's annual concrete production.



I'm writing my undergraduate history research paper on the Tallinn
System (in fact, it's what I should be working on right now). In the
mid to late 1960's the Soviets deployed massive numbers of a missile
eventually called the SA-5.

American military intelligence groups were

sure that this missile had ABM capability, because there was no way
that the Soviets were deploying that many new, high altitude, high
performance SAM's to fight off a threat (the B-70) that the US had
canceled years earlier. As more was learned about the sytem it was
discovered that indeed, the SA-5 was only capable of shooting down
athmospheric targets and not even marginally capable of hitting
missiles. That meant that the Soviets had deployed over 2000 missiles
of this system, to stop massed attacks by an airplane that was
canceled, at a time when the US was shifting focus to low-level
attacks and ICBM's that the SA-5 was not even minimally capable of
defeating.



Although they could still shoot them at SR-71's; and the missiles long
range gave it good reach against stand-off missiles such as the Hound
Dog flying a high altitude attack profile. They could also be used to
nail AWACs aircraft, which need to fly at higher altitude than
ground-hugging B-52's and B-1's. With a 300 km slant range, the missile
has the legs for area, as opposed to point, defense.




But
like the Galosh, by the time they were deployed they were already
largely obsolete (increased performance of jet bombers nailed the Guild;
Galosh was rendered largely ineffective by MIRV's, and the possible
follow-on MARV's).



The Galosh/Gorgon/Gazelle has several problems. Chief among them is
that its battle-management radar is not protected against EMP. Since
the Galosh/Gorgon and the Gazelle each use nuclear weapons in their
kill system, every engagement will blind the battle-management radar
for several minutes at a time. This is, I believe, technically known
as a "design flaw".


Also, they still suffer from any end-of-trajectory type ABM system's key
weakness- you can only destroy one warhead per missile, and it's a hell
of a lot cheaper to build some more MIRV'd ICBMs than the missiles to
destroy them - I always thought that Galosh was pretty much done to show
the citizens of Moscow that they weren't completely open to a ICBM
attack, and that its effectiveness was mainly in the propaganda rather
than operational sphere.




Say you attack the Soviet ICBM force; and you are confident that you can
destroy 95% percent of the force- at the end of 1983, the Soviets had
1398 operational ICBMs; so that the 5% that escape destruction leaves
you with about 70 ICBM's intact...the 1398 Soviet ICBMs carried a total
of 5678 warheads between them- or in other words, averaged around 4
warheads apiece; the 5678 warheads had a total megatonage of 5481*...or
around 950 kilotons per warhead average...these are clunky Soviet
missiles, so let's assume that only around 3/4 of them work as they are
designed to- in that case, and assuming that the Soviets don't just
launch on warning, or when your warheads begin to hit (and remember,
time-on-target attack won't work...it would mean that the warheads
heading toward the most distant targets would show up first on radar;
this would actually increase the launch opportunity time for the
Soviets.) you are going to have around 50 or so missiles carrying
around 200 950 kiloton warheads arriving in your country around a hour
after you push the button; the vast majority of these will be ground
bursts aimed at your now-empty missile silos, these will generate one
hell of a lot of fallout



Your calculations have missed one thing. Those silos will not be
empty; in the brave new world after the American development of MIRV,
you start to see a major performance advantage for first strikes.

Assuming that each US missile also had 4 MIRV's, and that the ratio of
warhead size to CEP to Soviet missile silo blast hardening is such
that it takes two warheads to achieve .95 pK, well, then after this
first strike the US has 50% of its warheads remaining, the Soviets
only 5%. The point of a disarming strike is that you don't target a
single city, so no city has been hurt yet, only silo fields. Now the
Soviets face a choice. They can launch their missiles against US
cities, ensuring the total and complete destruction of their
civilization for "only" severe harm to American cities. Or they can
not. Now the logic of MAD works against the Soviets, if they launch
their missiles it brings down an assured rain of nuclear destruction
on their cities, which hasn't happened yet. Why should they take an
action that they know will only destroy their own civilization?


I hope you never start writing our government's military strategy; you
are counting on a rationale response by an enemy who is under nuclear
attack and has under 1/2 hour to try to decide how they are going to
respond; they will pick up the launches via their satellites and
over-the-horizon radar, and I rather doubt they are going to take the
time to compute enough of the incoming missiles points of impact to
allow them to say with certainty that the ICBM fields that surround
Moscow at Yedrovo, Kostroma, Teykovo, and Kozel'sk are under attack but
that Moscow isn't which is a pretty moot point anyway as the amount of
fallout that is generated by the ground bursts to destroy those sites,
all of them within 200 miles of Moscow, is going to make Moscow itself a
very unhealthy place to be.


I chose the Soviets as the recievers of this first strike for the
reasons outlined above, their inability to reliably operate SSBN's
without them being tracked. Not because I am advocating premptive
nuclear first strikes.



The ability to reliably and consistently operate SSBNs without having
them tracked doesn't take into account what is going to happen if even
one of them were to launch it's missiles at the U.S. in regards to the
death toll.
You state that it should be possible to destroy all of them before they
were able to launch- exactly how many lives are you willing to wager on
everything going exactly right in a war scenario that has never been
fought before?




... but probably around ten or so will be coming
down on some of your major cities- with an average detonation force of
around 45 times as great as the ones that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Given that scenario, would you ever dare attack the Soviet Union?
Do you think the Soviets would study the same math, and arrive at the
same conclusion?



Remember that the massively MIRV'd environment changes a lot of the
equations. There is also the use-it-or-lose-it penalty. The widespread
deployment of MIRV's makes each individual missile a greater part of
the national deterrance. That means each missile that gets lost in the
silo from an enemy first strike is even more important. That means
that the military commanders are going to be putting even more
pressure on their political masters to launch, so they don't get
caught on the ground. And those are bad pressures in a crisis
situation.


But when you had as many Minutemen as we did at our peak deployment, you
could actually afford to lose hundreds of them, and still have many
hundreds ready to go I always assumed that the ones around her at the
northern border would be sacrificed in a nuclear exchange to make sure
you were really under attack, as the more southerly emplaced ones were
launched in response to that attack.




Well, let's see, Moscow has a population of 13 million;



And protected by the Galosh/Gazelle/Gorgon system. Sure, it can be
beat, but only by reducing the number of warheads hitting the target
(e.g. Chevaline or maneuvering reentry vehicles or overloading the
system). American planners figured, conservatively, that they would
kill off about fifty of the first hundred missiles fired at them (and
then be useless afterwards). You will probably see better results then
that (as near to certain as anything is in hypothetical war games),
but we're using this for planning. Because Moscow is by far the most
important target, I'd want at least 40 warheads for that city, to make
sure that I hurt it badly. I'd evenly divide on the other targets.



Well if what George Kistiakowsky was able to pry out of a reluctant SAC
is any indication of what was being planned, Moscow was going to be a
hot hole in the ground- ABM system, or no ABM system.



But do remember that Leningrad, Odessa, and Kiev were shattered in the
2nd World War. They were blasted, twisted, shelled, and two of them
fought over in brutal house by battles several times. You are going to
do some more damage to the Soviet union then was done using
conventional explosives in WW2, but not much more.


You seem to be consistently ignoring the radioactive fallout from the
large number of nuclear ground bursts from attacks on ICBM silos in such
a scenario. The death toll from the post attack fallout is going to be
very large.



Moscow only saw
combat on its suburbs, so you will be inflicting more damage then in
WW2 here; however, you will be doing far less damage to the Soviet
army or countryside. I'd say that the Soviets would be better off
after this nuclear strike then after WW2.


And would then have the advantage that they could easily locate food for
midnight snacks, as it would all be glowing...




so I should be able to get you over 20 million dead
inside of a half hour from the word go.



Very "optimistic" numbers here. I would not be confident of them. You
simply can't get better then a few tens of percentage points of
casulties out of aerial bombardment. Call it 60%. 60% of the four
cities listed would be "only" 12 million or so.


Well, I'm pretty sure I can muss their hair up big time and your 12
million doesn't include deaths by disease, radiation sickness,
contaminated food and water, and collapse of the national infrastructure
that such an attack would lead to. There are going to be a _lot_ of
scorched unburied bodies laying around in the ruins.




Let me get this straight- you are actually trusting that The Officially
Stated Soviet Doctrine, and what the Soviet's actually intended to do,
would bear the slightest relationship to each other?



No. I was supporting it with an actual Soviet nuclear plan which I
read several years ago (when it was released- think it was from Cold
War History Project but I don't remember exactly, sorry for the poor
cite). They did not target cities merely for the sake of targeting
cities. In fact, their plans for Europe (about 40% of their missiles
were targeted for Europe, about 40% for the US, and the remainder for
China, with the exact numbers varrying depending on plan (this is why
the INF treaty was such a win for NATO, before that the IRBM's and
MRBM's handled most of the European targets, after INF ICBM's had to
be used)) scrupulusly avoided targeting cities at all. For the US they
would target cities if they major important military value (DC, San
Diego, etc.) but not if they didn't (Chicago, Twin Cities, St. Louis,
etc.). As I said, they were not really following a countervalue
strategy. They would target military installations near cities
(Hanscom AFB near Boston, for example), of course, but only the cities
themselves when they had major military targets. They were NOT using
countervalue to guide their targeting decisions.

I'll have to look up this report.

Pat

Derek Lyons wrote:

Pat Flannery wrote:


The key words are "most likely" and in the case of the Delta that
collided with the Agusta, there was a undetected Victor class attack sub
following our attack sub.



ROTFLMAO.



So the first thing that might happen in a war scenario is our trailing attack sub
getting a torpedo in its stern, followed by the boomer starting launch operations.



ROTFLMAO.



There is also the Soviet inflatable submarine decoy to contend with, which came
as quite a surprise to us when we first saw one blown up into its naval base's tree
line by a storm- because that meant that there was one more submarine at
sea, rather than in dock, than we knew about, and you won't be tracking
11 if you only think there are 10 at sea.



ROTFLMAO. You think satellite photos are the only way we know a sub
is at sea?

D.


I always appreciate the specificity of your criticism...
P.