Who could effectively win in a nuclear war. US or Russia.

All this talk about Soviet ABM capability really is moot. People talk about the USSR using high altitude nuke bursts for EMP, why wouldn't the US do the same. That would knock out Soviet radars used to guide ABM. I haven't heard any information that they were especially hardened against EMP.
Also, Soviets radars were some of the first targets to be hit by nuclear weapons.
Also Stellar, you talk about the SOviets having 10 000 SAM/ABM missiles/launchers, what number were actually sites capable of taking out an ICBM ?

Also, one of the main reasons the Soviets built so many nuclear warheads is because they didn't recycle their old warheads to nearly the same extent as the US did. Many US warheads have used the same fissile materials that were produced in the 50's and 60's. Whereas the Soviets tended to leave their old warheads and build completely new ones. Hence the large disparity between plutonium and HEU produced by both countries.

Good points. I believe the US did many athmospheric high altitude tests to examine the effects of this very technique of EMP strikes. I would bet it is part of the SIOP. I think Radars can be hardened against being dammaged or destroyed by EMP, but even if they still work the radar is blinded for up to several hours after the EMP attack. Effectively the same thing.
Also, in my 'tounge in cheak' suggestion of the 'doomsday' device, the article posted has some interesting points about midway through it.

trace.ntu.ac.uk...

"These many types of deterrence, variations on possible escalation scenarios, along with many other variables, were calculated. Using this data in a modified Prisoner's Dilemma simulation (based on von Neumann's game theory), Kahn modeled nuclear wars to determine US nuclear vulnerability: "If the Soviet aggressor is reasonable, he will avoid the defender's cities, civilians, and recuperative capability in order to maximize his post-attack blackmail threats" (Kaplan, 1983, p. 224). For example, given a Type I deterrence, a rational competitor would most likely attack military bases while keeping a reserve as a threat to destroy cities afterwards."

Basically, civil defense might be a moot point for another reason, if not even counterproductive;
In any realistic nuclear war scenario, the effort to avoid 'countervalue' losses would burden the attacker to bend over backwards to avoid civilian casualties in his strikes. This would mean that in order for the SU for example, to strike the US without a spasm response to SU cities, then US civilian losses would have to be small. A difficult task indeed when you are trying to dig out hardeded silos and undergrond command bunkers. A total lack of civil defense, which would seem irresponsible at first glance, in fact ties together the two major theories of nuclear attack; countervalue and counterforce, thus making any attack more unlikely since it burdens the attacker with the casualty count of the attacked. The more vulnerable the civilian population of the attacked, the more difficult the counterforce strike to keep from escalating to countervalue. Otherwise, you might as well go directly to countervalue, instead of counterforce first.. Conversly, the more civil defense a country has the more nuclear abuse from a counterforce attack it can absorb prior to the attacked leadership feeling it has to attack countervalue targets, and end his countries existence in the following countervalue attacks on his cities. Thus, civil defense could be argued to increase the chances of a counterforce attack on a country with the best civil defence.


[edit on 6-1-2006 by Sandman11]

A nuclear exchange(s) between the Russia and the US would equate to a nuclear holocaust on an unprecedented level resulting in a dark, cold, desolate, and broken world.






seekerof

Originally posted by Seekerof
A nuclear exchange(s) between the Russia and the US would equate to a nuclear holocaust on an unprecedented level resulting in a dark, cold, desolate, and broken world.

seekerof

Without a doubt. Some make the mistake however, especially in the US college campuses, that you can reduce the potential conflict to 'tick tack toe' with no possible winners and thus no possible way to 'lose' relative to the adversary, which is incorrect. More like a game of Chess, which can be 'lost' if not thoruoghly thought out, but the best we can hope for is to avoid it by making the price of such a conflict impossibly high to our potential enemies. In this case "Overkill" is a good thing. As long as everyone believes it would cause a broken world, and as long as we don't give our potential adversaries a reason to believe they could succeed, it won't happen.

This of course assumes "rational" actors. Iran might not be considered to be limited to the world of ration. So this model only applies to the superpower standoff and for the most part, the Cold War.



[edit on 6-1-2006 by Sandman11]

[edit on 6-1-2006 by Sandman11]

I do think that IF russia believe they will be attacked , then they will launch a FOBS ready and able to EMP the USA.

for the love of Mulder, is this thread freakin hypothetical or what?!?!?!?!/?

Sounds like a child hood novelty. My gun is bigger and better. In an all out nuclear Exchange no one wins. I mean NO ONE! Its all out kill all and ask question latter.

^^^ Yeah well, that's the view of a simpleton. We are discussing all the factors which would have contributed to whatever outcome. Have you ever bothered to look at them yourself ?

I keep saying I am done responding, but keep getting drawn into more discussion. Well it is not a bad thing.
In general, I believe the decisions to or not to proceed or continue certain defensive systems in the US arsenal go much beyond our security clearances,

Wich makes it impossible for us to continue on this point. I provided the evidence and then you promptly decided to move the point out of my reach.

and I have a very strong feeling that the majority of that story extends well into the "classified" arena.

Why exactly do you have this feeling when it was the Sec of Defense who resisted the ABm and Civil defense program instead of the military establishment? I just do not see why you wnat to move this point beyond my means.

I don't have a source for this "feeling" but the US armed forces are not incompetent,

I never suggested the US armed forces were anything of the sort. What i suggested is that the political establishment made decisions not in the best interest of the country. Dont assume that we disagree because i don't think American forces would have made even more of what they had than most other countries could.

and in fact have shown quite a prowess in the area of warfare, and increadable reasources are spent on nuclear strategy.

Not unknown prowess as much as superior means and strategy. The USSR also spent incredible resources on nuclear strategy and is to this very day pumping most of their arms budget into strategic nuclear forces.

Certainly an 'armchair admiral' like ourselves without the clearance cannot know the whole story.

Well this guy is no aircharm warrior so feel free to read his opinion www.oism.org...

But we should go with what we do know and consider what it means. To introduce unknowns to suit your beliefs is not helpfull and i for one is willing and interested to stick to what we DO know. If you want to rest your defense on a belief that all information that shows up possible errors in US strategy and deployment are somehow mistaken and incorrect there is no reason for either of us to continue this discussion.

Indeed, many installations and types of equipment are highly classified, and like the Stealth Fightr F-117, we might not hear about it until it is or has been deployed for some time.

But the Russians managed to deploy thousands of tanks of a new design before the US finally noticed them on operational manouvers. All i am suggesting is that the USA is not the only country that could managed massive secret weapons programs. The Russians clearly had a edge there as their society and research systems were created to enforce secrecy and keep it from western spies who rarely if ever managed to penetrate the cloak of secrecy the USSR could drape over it's weapons programs. You self interested assumption that US secret weapons could turn the tide manages to exclude the possibility that the USSR had a bigger chance of managing such a strategy effectively.

In any event, the goal of US strategic warfare is to prevent the war.

That is not backed up by fact as the best way to stage a defense is to convince the enemy he can not win by attacking. To regard your attack your only defense is foolhardy and a criminal idea spawned by minds who should not have been allowed into office. The primary task of any government is protect as many of their own people as they can and that is done not be risking everything on killing other people but by trying to protect your own the best you can. Would you leave your family and kids at home to be killed while you go try the killers family? Now imagine the killer armed his wife and kids or built hidden shelters for them? MAD IS mad since it's based on the assumption that the enemy is absolutely mindless and will not do everything in his power to protect his own interest by passive defense.

Russia is planning on fighting the war. I was just thinking, it is in fact more stable to not have a defense, because then your intentions are clear that you don't want to fight one.

As i said above stability is assuming your enemy wants stability and do not want to win by any means possible. A government is supposed to protect it's people as best it can irregardless of wether it leads to world war five or six.

Then nuclear conflict is nothing but a suicide weapon, for you and your adversary.

Unless the enemy protects himself in the way your own generals suggested you protect yourself? According to most strategist i know not making your intentions known is the best policy. If you can not give yourself options you are well on your way to losing as you will be known while the enemy will remain unknown.

The SU never adhered to this notion, but that doesn't mean the US was in any way inferior strategically.

Well it does not logically lead that the US was in an inferior strategical position but that happens to be what i think when looking at the information i have found.

And it wasn't. In fact it is essential that the offense in this strategic thought be massive and total, because your offensive forces are then your only defense.

In my opinion the US was as it had no option but massive retaliation or no response at all in case of SOviet Nuclear first strike. Since the USSR knew this they could plan accordingly and was thus in a better strategic position. They simply had more options even if they were not always usefull or practical one's. Since they knew the US had to overwhelm them with the first blow they prepared as best they could to survive it while they tried to build up a structure that could support a overwhelming response in the long term. If your offense is your only defense you really have no defense and bargain your survival on the fact that no attack will dare attack you. This is not the way i would want my government to gamble with my survival.

I see that as clearly logical. To expend on civil defense and missile defense is in fact showing your intention to consider such a war as rational.

Wich then seems to be what the American government considered nuclear war for the first decade or so. To spend on civil defense like the Soviet Union did is nothing but doing what any government should be doing.

Strategically, numbers of "strategic" weapons have favored the US for the majority if not all the cold war and after. I don't particularly like the political agenda of this site but they do seem to have some good information, and seems to be consistent with other sources;
www.thebulletin.org...

www.oism.org... Yes the numbers did but they were not very usefull in comparison.

Top brass in any military will say they want more than they have, but it is up to somebody to draw the line to keep from breaking the bank.

That is true but why not spend the funds that go get allocated to defense forces to defend the country first and then build forces to project force? Fact is the money that were allocated should not have gone to the CIA to stage revolutions and interventions all over the world but to protecting American citizens first and foremost.

During the Reagan administration, the Joint Chiefs were asked regularly by the administration if they could trade armed forces with the Soviet Union, and take their place, would they?The answer was allways "no".

Well you fight with what you are familiar with and military men tend to be conservative when it comes to changing their methods and means of fighting so that sort of statement is to be expected.

Also asked if the Soviets had any usable advantage, and the same answer. I will try to find a link but that one may be a tough one to find.

Well i would like to see a source to that if you can find it without losing too much sleep. What timeframe are we talking as by the middile 70's NATO wargaming showed Russian ground forces reaching the coast of france before much Allies reinforcements could arrive to stop them. A nuclear exchange did not stop them from happening btw.

Better sit down, I don't want you to be too shocked, but I do agree with you one one issue.

I am shocked! You only agree with me on one issue? If you do not like my claims you need to explain why you find the DIa questionable as source material is where my specific claims about weapons systems and deployment numbers comes from.

McNamara may have been good at running a car company, but he had no tallent for the Defense Department. I read a book about him a while back, and the controdictions about the Viet Nam war he made were astounding, although the details are not fresh in my mind.

He and a few others got America into a war wich they then proceeded to make sure America could not win by placing restraints on American forces. Why anyone would do such a thing is beyond me but that is what the information leads me to believe. My question to you is how he could then be qualified to decided that American should not have a ABM system over the objections of his qualified advisors.

His views today were controdictory to what happened and what he even claimed back then. He also was, as your article pointed out, against an ABM system, and I wonder what went on between McNamara and the CIA, as I have posted with William T. Lee's book about that conflict within the CIA over "dual use" SAMS, here it is again so you don't have to search for it;
www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org...

The conflict was not as much internal ( as i remember reading at least) in the CIA as between the CIA and the DIA over weather the SA-5 ( not the first series) was a SAM system or in fact a DUAL use ABm system that could do serious damage to American SLBM's. The DIA lost the fight and the defense CiA went right along and called it a strait SAm system with "marginal or no" capability against BM's.

Russia, I think we both also agree, cheated on the ABM treaty, as it did on the BIO WEapons treaty of 1974, and others I am sure.

Well they obviously cheated on the treaties you mentioned but there was alot of cheating on both sides so it's to be expected. Why the USA chose not to cheat on the ABM treaty is kind of what this is all about for me. Why did the Us government stick to this one treaty when they violated so many other international agreements at the same time? Why does protecting your own, to the best of your abilities, not warrent breaking a specific treaty? Why sign the damn thing in the first place and expect a known cheater to stick to something that will deter his own aims of a first strike?

What just blows me away is that there are idiots who believe we can trust them with our lives like that, and if we sign a piece of paper with the Russians then we can unilaterally disarm, sing koombaya, and dance in the fields with flowers in our hair, and be safe. -Amazing, simply amazing...

I think we are making progress towards agreement.

DIA links huh? Well I am looking at your past posts, and there are some interesting ones I have browsed before, like FAS, Defenselink,
Encyclopedia Astronautica is something new to me, and I will enjoy looking at that site, but I don't see anything new as yet.

Well i went over the ATS rules again and it seems i can actually quote far more than the recent rule clarifcations led me to believe at first. I will slap down more links and numbers now that i know i can quote them directly as i used to. You made many specific statements in your previous post wich were quite clearly not accurate according to the DIA. Since their the Defense Intelligence Agency i expect you will bring more credible adn accurate information to back up your claims in that post or accept the DIA numbers. It is rather hard to make progress when you do not respond to my clarifications but type up new and indedepent points mostly restating numbers and ideas thati just tried to address. Please try to respond in the same manner as i do so that we can sort out our differences when it comes to numbers so that we can move on to the more interesting strategic aspects.

For every link there is another source that shows an opposite opinion. For Soviet or Russian favored opinions you can try this forum and database, but I question the patriotic agenda might be a little strong. I do find it interesting and informative;
warfare.ru...
warfare.ru...
warfare.ru...

Well since i am trying my best to avoid confrontation with the pro-American mafia ( you know who you are) i am actually using the DIA as source material. I could certainly consider using Soviet sources but i doubt that will get me anythint but shouted at. What issue do you have with DIA numbers and statements?

For a pro-US bias, try;
www.thebulletin.org...
"The Bulletin" is a good source, but very liberal in their perspective. They show a opinion favoring the US in nuclear prowess over Russia/SU, but for their disarmement agenda, not patriotism.

I would rather stick with the DIA if you have no objections

I don't think the US puts so much faith in SAMs as you do.

The politicians or the defense establishment? They did build and deploy them and it took the actions of politicians to shut it down.

Sams can be countered, whether by strategic weapons systems countermeasures, to the tactical.

Anything can be countered. The point of having countermeasures ( or defending at all ) is to gain at least temporary tactical,operational or strategic advantage.

Clearly if Viet Nam was any lesson, it looks as though hundreds of SAMs were fired for each aircraft shot down.

Although the SA-2 had a probability of kill of only 10 percent, the rising losses due to this
missile were mounting. The United States lost about 160 aircraft by the end of 1972 ( wich does not seem accurate),the
majority due to the SA-2.

www.globalsecurity.org...

By 1968 the effectiveness of the SA-2 was seriously limited and it took on average 30 missiles ( deployed, fired?) to hit an aircraft. By 1972 the deployment had continued until 300 sites were operational, but effectiveness dropped even more because of the powerful jammers that blinded radars control center of SA-2 lauch point, so much so that the USAF was able to fly the B-52 "downtown" Hanoi with impunity.

en.wikipedia.org...[/url]

I am rather unsure of the total numbers shot down by AA fire and SAM"S ( since sources do not agree with each other) but your numbers of "hundreds" is clearly not accurate. If you want to make an argument that the USSR had to sell North Korea dozens of missiles for each plane brought down that may be closer to the truth.

I think that 'race' to counter aircraft and then to counter the SAM, will continue for some time.

Well it has till now and if you remember the Germans spent 8000-10000 88 mm and 100 mm shells at the end of the war to bring down a Allied bomber. At the start of the war it was 16000 88mm shells and if you add up the weight of that it does not compare badly with the lauch weight of even the Sa-2. 2300 Kg for the SA-2 and about 10 kg for the 88' shell wich gives us 70 tons and 80-100 tons. If one then adds the resources needed to get that 70 or 80-100 tons into the air i think air defense was getting more efficient and not less so. Planes were also getting far more complex to construct compared to the technology needed to bring them down. No need to argue the math as it certainly can not be used as a rigorous argument.

The latest SAMs are increadable, but so are the counters to them.

Well it's a constant battle between the defense and offense and the point here is to decided how much impact even marginal SAM/ABM success rates could have had on US warhead allotments. If you know there is 10 000 Sam/ABM launchers where do you send your missiles to make sure certain targets get's destroyed? Why would the USA send hundreds of warheads just to destroy Moscow? Do they know something you will not admit to or simple do not know? My questions stands.

The most relevent anti-aircraft weapon IMHO is the AWACs, since it can see hundreds of miles right down to the ground, including low level aircraft and cruise missiles.

The Awacs can not stop Sam's from firing and can at best help point out where Active Sam radards and missiles are coming from. The USSR deployed "more than 7,000 radars of various types located at about 1,200 sites" ( from those DIA pages) in 1984 wich would make dealing or jamming all of them rather problematic.

"The USSR has a strong research and development program to produce new early warning and other air surveillance radars, as well as to improve existing systems. More than 20 types of these radars are currently in development. In addition, the Soviets are continuing to deploy improved air surveillance data systems that can rapidly pass data from outlying radars through the air surveillance network to ground-controlled intercept sites and SAM command posts. These systems will continue to be deployed until all areas are equipped with them."

Same pages.

Awac planes will also have to keep their distance to avoid the massively long range anti radiation missiles that will be launched from the ground or from the hundreds of interceptor planes that will be sent to block American strategic bombing. How much use they can be to their own bombers hundreds of km's behind the bomber strike groups is a open question wich you might want to risk an opinion on if you like.

Russian AWACs probably are the most relevent threat to bombers, along with the MIG-31 and their phased array AESA like radars.

Mig-31? What year are you in? They were not operational in the time frame we are currently talking about. There were however plenty of other interceptors so yes, they would have constituted a large threat. By 1985 DIA made clear that they did not expect American strategic bombers to constitute an effective strike force; whatever the hell that means in reality. I will take it to mean the bombers would not have managed their assigned missions in deliviring their ALCM or other nuclear weapons in effective numbers.

Otherwise for the most part it doesn't matter what range a SAM has if a B-52 no less can fly low and get within 10 miles just by being under the radar horizon, and then it isn't much of a standoff for a SRAM, cruise missile, or even "over the shoulder" lob. (maybe not the B-52 doing that maneuver though...) I probably have posted it, but here is the calculator again;
radarproblems.com...

We are talking hundreds of SAm launchers and hundreds of Radar's. You can not fly past them and you can not knock them out with conventional means either. American strategic bombing just lacked the capacity to penetrate Russian air defenses in numbers that would have affected the war.That is a given even if non of the hundreds of Russian strategic defense interceptor/fighters could join the fight.

Back to the basic premise, at the hight of the Cold War, the US had by some accounts, about 12500 strategic warheads. (by the way, you are incorrect about US having fewer MIRV warheads on SLBMs, the posidon could carry 14, and the Trident could carry 12).

And more warheads reduced the range of the missile as far as i know. You are however right as i did state something along the lines off them having more warheads and i must have gotten confused with the fact that they had many more MIRv's on ICBM's than American ICBm forces. Not a good excuse anyways so i apologise for that mistake. The Soviet union had about half as many mirv's on SLBM,at peak deployment,but they had always had 30% more launchers with on average longer range missiles that could hit most strategic targets in the US from Soviet territorial waters under the safety cloak provided by extensive anti submarine forces. US SSBN's in the 1970-late 1980's timeframe were still relying mostly on shorter range Poseidon (4600km) wich would have forced the much smaller US SSBN force to get much closer to launch on the USSR. Half of the US SSBN fleet would have been destroyed in port either way as they were not hardened like Soviet port. The US risked most of their strategic edge in 30% fewer submarines with rather shorter range missiles than their Soviet counterparts. This is the exact situation the USSR prepared for.

"First, the SA-5 system was tested and developed at the officially declared ABM test range, Sary-Shagan.28 Second, medium- and intermediate-range missiles were fired to impact areas located at Sary-Shagan. Senators John "Jake" Garn and Gordon J. Humphrey have charged that many of these missiles could have served as the targets for ABM intercept programs.29 If so, the target most closely approximated in terms of range, radar cross section, and trajectory would be SLBMs. Third, if such a system as the SA-5 were to act as a terminal atmospheric defense weapon, it would require all-azimuth radar data for warning, acquisition, and pointing inputs to the SA-5 intercept radar. The Hen House long-range radar deployment was coincident in time with initiation of the SA-5 deployment.30 Hen House radars are deployed (in accordance with the ABM treaty) on the periphery of the U.S.S.R., scanninig outward over U.S. SLBM launch areas.31 As a linear array radar, Hen House can handle multiple targets limited only by internal computer configurations that can never be physically seen or assessed directly by U.S. intelligence.32 Acknowledged ABM radars such as the Dog House and Cat House also possess the capability to be used by the SA-5 in an ABM role as does a new class of large ABM capable phased-array radars publicly announced by Senator Garn.33 Fourth, and most important, the assessed technical characteristics of the SA-5 system itself indicated a clear capability to perform as a terminal ABM system to destroy ballistic missile targets of the SLBM variety given adequate radar acquisition data.34

Because of this relative wealth of uncertainty, the final ABM treaty included an explicit obligation in Article VI not to test SAMs "in an ABM mode." Since the ABM testing of the SA-5 could have been completed for some years prior to 1972, the treaty’s impact on an SA-5 ABM capability would be slight. Even at that, the reported repeated violations of the treaty after 1972 by the use of the SA-5 radar in tracking ballistic missiles resulted in Soviet tests against missiles similar in range to a normal SLBM trajectory.35 The Soviets claimed (and the administration) accepted) that the SA-5 radar was not being tested in an ABM mode, but rather was being used in a "legitimate range instrumentation role."36 Whether it is designated as a "range instrumentation radar" does not alter the fact that it has been used in a missile-tracking role. Its ability to track missile warheads on the range is therefore prima facie evidence of its ABM capability. Former Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird claims that thousands of SA-5 interceptors have been deployed in hundreds of sites around some 110 Soviet urban areas, principally in the European U.S.S.R.37 Such a deployment could play havoc with the surviving 1440 SLBM RVs.

The SA-5 anti-SLBM defenses are unorthodox and even "sneaky" in that they exist in the context of an ABM treaty under which the United States officially assumes they do not exist and takes no actions or precautions to counteract the capability. And an SA-5 ABM capability only makes sense in an overall damage-denial scheme which negates ICBMs some other way and reduces the number of SLBM RVs by ASW efforts to levels which can be countered by active SA-5 defenses, civil defense, and hardening of key targets.38"

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

With that many warheads active and part of the SIOP to be delivered to the SU, you can shood down a lot, you can evacuate your cities (to where I am not sure, and then to be exposed to the radiation in the open),

www.piedmontcommunities.us...=page&gid=01303001151018293682662999

www.globalsecurity.org...

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

www.globalsecurity.org...

Spend a few hours and tell me they are not serious about surviving a nuclear exchange even today. Tell me that all those resources being spent on hundreds of square kilometers of underground work space does not worry you.Tell me dispersal of industry to population 100 000 and below is something you would willing do to your economy if you did not consider it a economy priority in the long run? City design to minimize damage and to make dispersal of population easier?

attempt a first strike and hope the US doesn't launch the land based portion to keep from losing them, you can try to sink the SLBMs, shoot down the bombers if they are not launching their cruise missiles from 1500 miles away, and take every countermeasure you can possibly think of.

That is what they apparently did as best they could as extreme economic cost. If your willing to think that they would invest so much without imagining it would change anything i can not consider you objective. The DIA and other sources tell us the SLBM not destroyed aboard their submarines in home ports might very well have been destroyed at sea by almost 200 Russian atattack submarines or anti submarines forces. Whatever survived might very well have been stopped by the dual use sam defenses. The strategic air campaign would not only have had to deal with the Russian strategic airforce but also with that same Sam screen and huge numbers of anti aircraft guns for low level approach. The DIA tells us clearly that it did not expect the American strategic airforce to be able to stay effective beyond the mid early 80's.

The Russian ICBM's were expressly designed to target American Silo's so that ALL would have had to be launched in one massive strike to prevent their destruction. How much mobile ICBM's did the USA deploy and how many did the USSR? In one lauch most American ICBM's would have been lost many in the effort to ensure target destruction as it really was not know just how effective Soviet ABm capability was. Remember that we are working with what the DIA could find out and not what the USSR may have actually deployed.They managed to miss the deployment of about 200 Bm's in one instance and only discovered their mistake after the cold war ended. How many of those mistakes did they really make?

The end result will be roughly the same though, every port, city, base, airfield, railroad junction, depot, major command bunker, major radar facility, and any other significant military or industrial target will be wasted.

This may still have happened but is really just pure conjecture on your part. You are assuming that the USSR spent all the resources they did on an entirely ineffective system when the US military commanders wanted to build the same thing based on their own studies. They were prevented by politicians and not by practicality as the evidence you accept clearly shows.

"The Army groups's last major briefing to McNamara in the Fall of 1966, included three major new findings based on this research and experience. First, contrary to the NIEs, the Soviets had a nuclear war fighting, damage limiting strategy; hence they would target their missiles to destroy as many of our missiles and bombers as possible on the ground in order to reduce the threat to their own air and missile defenses.(10)

Second, contrary to the NIEs, the intelligence evidence indicated that the Politburo had approved engineering development of MIRV systems emphasizing counterforce rather than population targeting. The MIRVed successor to the SS-9 (eventually designated "SS-18") would open the "window of vulnerability" of MM silos (at 300 psi) by 1975, so that few MM could be expected to survive a Soviet attack by 1980. By the same token, allocating most of their ICBMs to counterforce attacks would reduce the number of warheads targeted on U.S.urban areas, hence NIKE-X defenses (and fall out shelters) would reduce U.S. population fatalities to far less than McNamara's "assured destruction" minimum of some 50 million, even against an all out Soviet attack.

Third NIKE-X would be cost-effective against a 15 year projection of the Soviet threat that, in retrospect, closely approximated the strategic ballistic missile arsenal actually deployed through 1980. The advances in NIKE-X technologies, combined with realistic costing of FSU missile responses, had brought the cost-exchange ratios down to approximate parity, ranging from 4:1 in favor of the
offense to 4:1 in favor of the defense depending upon various initial assumptions.(11)

Thus the Army team had demonstrated that NIKE-X would meet both of McNamarals criteria for national deployment: greatly reduced population fatalities against a massive Soviet arsenal; and, cost- effectiveness, but in the context of Soviet nuclear war fighting strategy, not the MAD mirror image of McNamara and the NIES.

At the end of the briefing McNamara accepted the cost-exchange ratios as being no more than 4: 1 in favor of the offense (down from 100:1), which made NIKE-X cost-effective by the standards he had prescribed. (12) However, in an emotional outburst during the briefing McNamara rejected the evidence that the Soviets put first priority on destroying MM silos in order to limit damage to the USSR, saying that as a Soviet Marshal he would target the entire arsenal on U.S. cities. Hence he refused to approve NIKE-X deployment to protect U.S. citizens from the FSU on the grounds of MAD theology--U. S. ABM defenses would be "destabilizing" by forcing the Soviets to respond with a massive MIRVed ICBM buildup.

The Joint Chiefs used a version of that 1966 NIKE-X briefing to ambush McNamara when they met with President Johnson at his ranch in December 1966, persuading Johnson to overrule McNamara and order deployment of U.S. national ABM, although not the defense against the FSU that the Chiefs proposed.(13) While the Chief's briefing is not available, a memo for the record prepared by W. W. Rostow, then President Johnson's national security adviser, is.(14)

According to Mr. Rostow's memo, the Chiefs recommended MIKE-X deployment at 25 cities to save the lives of 30 to 50 million U.S. citizens, if attacked. McMamara opposed the Chiefs' proposal on the grounds of MAD theology and simplistic "action-reaction":

* it was "inconceivable" that the Soviets would react in any other way but to restore the status quo ante, i.e. 120 million U.S. population fatalities;
* both sides would spend a lot of money and end up where they started, but we would waste the most because offensive weapons were so much cheaper than ABM systems;
* the danger of war would not be reduced;
* the FSU had "been wrong in its nuclear defense policy for a decade" because everything spent on all types of defenses (air and missile) had been wasted.(15)

The Chiefs saw it quite differently:

* NIKE-X would save tens of millions of lives against a Soviet population attack, and that was a worthwhile objective;
* while they could not predict with confidence how the Soviets would react, all likely reactions had a substantial price and would divert funds from other military programs--no free lunches;
* the risk of nuclear attack would be reduced"

As I mentioned before, over 400 warheads were suppose to go to Moscow alone, and other major targets like naval facilities might have been hit by 30 or more.

Why so many? Why the overkill if not because the SOviet union had a clear defensive capability or well known shelter networks and evacuation plans? Did they have to target so many of Moscow just to ensure that a few would reach it possibly?

"Overkill" for the US was to overwhelm the defenses.

Well you have been saying that ABM's and defenses could not work so why target 400 at one city? Either the defenses works well enough to stop at least 350 of those ( i reckon 50 could take Moscow apart block by block) or what? I can not think of an alternative scenario really.

"Overkill" for the SU was to 'keep up with the neighbors' in world opinion and status, because they didn't have to overwhelm any defenses.

There were apparently no defenses to overwhelm but they still prepared reloads for almost all their ICBM's and SLBM. Why on earth bother unless you know the war will be extended? They had that many ICBM's to ensure they had a good chance of destroying American capability for a second land based strike.

They could have done with much less, but at that level of warfare, it didn't matter.

I do not understand your reasoning. Please clarify.

Both sides are pretty much wiped out, and whoever is left will die of disease, strontium 90, cancer, lack of food from a decimated infrastructure, contaminated food, lingering radiation, and little potable water. Not the world I would want to "survive" in.

All assumption based on other assumptions based on speculation. The best scientist of the day could not agree on what would happen if even all the nuclear weapons exploded at ground level. I have links but i will give you the oppertunity to present your case that American should have risked everything on MAD instead of doing their best to keep as many citizens as possible alive.

www.oism.org...

www.oism.org...

There are many more i can go dig out of my archive if you are unconvinced that the world will go on as we know it.

"Dr. Strangelove" the movie involved in it's plot, a "doomsday" device, which is both technocally possible, but maybe even preferable as the ultimate deterrence force. Using Colbalt jacketed thermonuclear bombs to contaminate the athmosphere, it would wipe out all life on the plannet. trace.ntu.ac.uk...
Maybe we should just make one of those and give everyone on the plannet a button to it?

You seem to have a real defeatist attitude and should consider investigating wether reality really is as bad as you perception of it.
Why do you support this notion of National suicide to prevent attack? Did that not go out of fashion even in Japan? Feel free to bring me some more information to support your claims and please respond in a properly structured post as your using your current method to avoid having to address your mistakes and my answers in general. I will keep on posting whatever you do but we would arrive at a conclusion sooner if we could sort out what we agree from one post to another.

Stellar

[edit on 7-1-2006 by StellarX]

You are a very good debator, if not a little abrasive at times. Your information is also good, but like I said it is one sided. I just don't have the hours to sit and reasearch for the arguement, sorry. But I will say that my view isn't "defeatist" as you claim. The game isn't so simple as that, although it does require 'rational' leaders to be in the Kremlin, as we could assume in the cold war, for the most part.

[edit on 10-1-2006 by Sandman11]

Originally posted by Sandman11
You are a very good debator, if not a little abrasive at times. Your information is also good, but like I said it is one sided. I just don't have the hours to sit and reasearch for the arguement, sorry. But I will say that my view isn't "defeatist" as you claim. The game isn't so simple as that, although it does require 'rational' leaders to be in the Kremlin, as we could assume in the cold war, for the most part.

[edit on 10-1-2006 by Sandman11]

Well i am going to take that as a compliment anyways. I can only show you what i have found and you must decide what to make of it as you compare what you know with what i suggested according to my sources.

I am sure you have more to add and i do understand that real life tends to intrude on our ambition to talk all day. I try to believe ( however alluring the alternative) that i did not change a mind because it chose to stop responding so your always welcome to resume or ad to the discussion as you come across more or new information.

I can also do questions as they tend to show me what i know or dont know and how much sense it actually makes.

/me waves ( for now).

Stellar

That is a HUGE post, so I will try to stick to the major concepts. Timeframe of mid 1970s to 1980s which is what I assume we are talking about.

Deterrence requires credibility in the offensive. It would only require that I can kill you for example. It does not require that I survive as well. The US always had at least a couple thousand more strategic warheads than the Soviets,, so while they (US)may not have been superior, they were not inferior. I know we disagree. The Soviets went for throw weight, ABMs, air defense. The US specialized in solid fuel, cruise missiles, and SRAMs, diversifying its force. (You think Soviet technology was superior, I think US was, and we both have our sources so don't bother, lets stick to concepts)

The US answered the 'window of vulnerability' from Soviet superiority in throw weight with a hair trigger. Two independent sensors, like a satellite early warning system and then a BMEWs, would be enough confirmation of an incomming counterforce strike to launch a return counterforce attack in order to keep from losing the weapons, and letting the SU get the resuiting strategic advantage. (and reload it's ICBMs) At that point, the entire US ICBM force has been fired, and bomber fields have been flushed. Subs in port able to get underway would be doing so as well. This is before the first warheads detonate on the US.


The lack of Civil Defense in the US complicates the SU counterforce attack. Any use of Civil defense in the SU to prepare for such a conflict would only warn the US. Bombers on the ground would go on airborne alert, and Ballistic Missile Subs would be manned and put to sea as quickly as possible, however in either case some would be lost due to being too deaply in maintenance. ,,, however most would make it to sea/air. More warheads would be available as a result from the US from that warning which counters the passive defense efforts to some degree.

Otherwise we are talking about a "bolt from the blue". In this case Russian civilians would be vulnerable since it could probably be assumed that it would take many hours to evacuate all SU cities. (I am also sure US target assignments could accomodate this as well) At that point strategic thought will require any conflict remain "rational", thus the concept of "counterforce" which then in turn requires that the threshold of "countervalue" is not crossed. That in itself is quite a burden on the attacker in the counterforce scenario, especially when the attacked has no passive defenses like civil defense. It requires that you NOT kill any more civilians than is absolutely necessary to the counterforce, otherwise it could trigger the countervalue response from the attacked. Then the US only has to protect its ICBMs and deep command posts only enough to require that the SU counterforce strike dig up enough radioactive dirt in the required ground bursts that the countervalue casualty threshold is passed.

Do ABMs work? Will the "Dual Use" SAMS account for many warhead kills? How will they work agaisnt the plethera of countermeasures, from decoys, jamming, and EMP bursts? Bombers will be arriving over target about 12 hours after the first blows are in, will they have such a hard time getting through what is left of Russian air defenses? How well will counterforce work? The USSR may have had a moment in history where they were "superior" by many accounts, but it evidently wasn't usable, and prefered to collapse than risk so much on technology and concepts that have to work perfectly for any possible success. I suspect that moment has passed.
I admit I am only an armchair admiral. Anyone who really knows about this sort of thing can't talk about it. We can really only speculate, but we should also keep in mind the agenda's of those who do talk of "vulnerabilities", and "bomber gaps". Thus, don't take everything you read on the internet seriously, including me.

Thank god we never found out who would win, and hopefully will never have to.

Cheers!

Sandman

Niether side would win, and we would be taking alot of others with us. That was the madness/genuis behind Mutually Assured Destruction.

It is not the Russians that worry me, it is the Chinese, who it seems cares not for the long term nor human cost. The Russians were pretty rational and really didnt want to fight a straight on war.

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
It is not the Russians that worry me, it is the Chinese, who it seems cares not for the long term nor human cost. The Russians were pretty rational and really didnt want to fight a straight on war.

Neither side wanted a nuclear war, hence why it never eventuated. A war during the 70's and 80's would have been catasrophic. The arsenals of teh superpowers was enourmous almost an order of magnitude bigger than now.

I also wonder with all this talk about radiation, what destroying the many nuclear reactors each country has would do. We saw the devastation with Chenerbyl, imagine hundreds of situations like that.

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
Niether side would win, and we would be taking alot of others with us. That was the madness/genuis behind Mutually Assured Destruction.

Did you read anything posted in this thread or did you just thought you would add your opinion without checking what has been said?

It is not the Russians that worry me, it is the Chinese, who it seems cares not for the long term nor human cost. The Russians were pretty rational and really didnt want to fight a straight on war.

The Russians ( according to the Dia) prepared for a full scale nuclear war for four decades so i do not understand how you can make that claim. The Chinese are happy with the current state of affairs and will only move against the US if the US forgets who is currently funding it's continued spending on weapons and practicall everything else.

Stellar

[edit on 12-1-2006 by StellarX]

Originally posted by Seekerof
A nuclear exchange(s) between the Russia and the US would equate to a nuclear holocaust on an unprecedented level resulting in a dark, cold, desolate, and broken world.
seekerof

I have shown in links here that there is no hard science to seriously indicate that would in fact happen. If this is your opinion please state it as such or ask so i can repost the links in question. Nuclear winter is not even worth calling speculation as it's that far removed from everything we know about global weather systems.

Stellar

Originally posted by StellarX
The United States will be destroyed in case of a nuclear war with Russia( To be fair that's just my opinion). Russia has a fair chance of surviving as a national entity considering the vast underground industrial base and civil defense shelters.

Stellar

Originally posted by Sandman11
That is a HUGE post, so I will try to stick to the major concepts. Timeframe of mid 1970s to 1980s which is what I assume we are talking about.

You should have seen me when i had time on my hands. Those DIA documents covers the 80's and that is where most of my source material comes from. I do however think that the Russian advantage was larger in the 70's.

Deterrence requires credibility in the offensive.

Deterence is either making the enemy doubt that his attack will be successful OR that you could gain a strategic edge by staying on the defensive. Deterrence requires no more than preventing the enemy from reaching his objectives. The offense idea is given air time since it is a great excuse for producing offensive weapons wich can be used anywhere the state likes.

It would only require that I can kill you for example. It does not require that I survive as well.

That does not logically follow. It is based on a large number of assumptions including that the 200 000 top party officials in the Soviet Union cared for any lives but their own. Mutual assured destruction ( 50 - 120 millions civilians dead on both sides) assumes that the enemy thinks he needs those 50 - 120 million citizens. It is in fact all based on assumption and no reason for planning national suicide to prevent enemy attack.

The US always had at least a couple thousand more strategic warheads than the Soviets,, so while they (US)may not have been superior, they were not inferior.

The Soviets have a first strike arsenal: at least 5000 warheads of sufficient yield and accuracy to destroy any US military target.The US has 900 comparable warheads.
(Although the total number of US warheads is impressive, Jastrow pointed out that the majority are carried by the "air-breathing" part of our strategic triad -- B-52s and
cruise missiles -- which would be unable to penetrate Soviet air defenses.)

www.oism.org...

I believe i posted that in the last response but there it is again.

I know we disagree. The Soviets went for throw weight, ABMs, air defense.

The Soviets also went for SLBM's wich could mostly be fired from safety of home water protected by their ASW forces and for superior space based weapon systems. They went for numerous other things aswell as my links so far would have indicated. The massive expenditure on civil defense is something you have not bothered responding to.

The US specialized in solid fuel, cruise missiles, and SRAMs, diversifying its force. (You think Soviet technology was superior, I think US was, and we both have our sources so don't bother, lets stick to concepts)

The USSR diversified it's strategic forces better as they had a defense. Nothing similar existed in the US;

The vast Soviet network of shelters and command facilities, under construction for four decades, was recently
described in detail by Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci.The shelters are designed to house the entire Politburo,
the Central Committee, and the key leadership of the Ministryof Defense and the KGB. Some are located hundreds of yards
beneath the surface, and are connected by secret subway lines,tunnels, and sophisticated communications systems.
"These facilities contradict in steel and concrete Soviet protestations that they share President Reagan's view that
nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought,"Carlucci said (Ariwna Republic, April 3, 1988). These
facilities reveal that they are preparing themselves for just the opposite."
The shelters are also protected against chemical warfare agents, and stocked with sufficient supplies to allow the
leadership to survive and wage war for months.In contrast, the limited US shelter system begun in the
1950s has mostly been abandoned."To have something comparable, we'd have to have
facilities where we could put every governor, mayor, every Cabinet official, and our whole command structure underground
with subways running here and there," Carlucci said. "There's just no comparison between the two."

www.oism.org...

I do not think US technology is in any way inferior( and it certainly does not have inferior capabilities) as such so why assume that? As i said when you involve politicians in war planning your technological lead might not matter much as they will probably come up with a way to make it ineffective or too expensive to deploy.

The US answered the 'window of vulnerability' from Soviet superiority in throw weight with a hair trigger.

Current Systems and Force Levels. The Soviets maintain the world's most extensive early warning system for both ballistic missile and air defense. Their operational ballistic missile early-warning system includes a launch detection satellite network, over-the-horizon radars and a series of large phased-array radars located primarily on the periphery of the USSR. Their early-warning air surveillance system is composed of an extensive network of ground-based radars linked operationally with those of their Warsaw Pact Allies.

The current Soviet launch detection satellite network is capable of providing about 30 minutes warning of any US ICBM launch, and of determining the area from which it originated. The two over-the-horizon radars The Soviets have directed at the US ICBM fields also could provide them with 30 minutes warning of an ICBM strike launched from the United States, but with somewhat less precision than the satellite network. Working together, these two early-warning systems can provide more reliable warning than either working alone.

The next layer of operational ballistic missile early warning consists of 11 large HENHOUSE detection and tracking radars at six locations on the periphery of the USSR. These radars can distinguish the size of an attack, confirm the warning from the satellite and over-the-horizon radar systems and provide some target-tracking data in support of ABM deployments.

Current Soviet air surveillance radar deployments include more than 7,000 radars of various types located at about 1,200 sites. These deployments provide virtually complete coverage at medium to high altitudes over the USSR and in some areas extends hundreds of kilometers beyond the borders. Limited coverage against low-altitude targets is concentrated in the western USSR and in high-priority areas elsewhere. Since 1983, The Soviets have begun to deploy two new air surveillance radars. These radars assist in the early warning of cruise missile and bomber attacks and enhance air defense electronic warfare capabilities.

www.fas.org...

Mabye the Dia is wrong and the US detection system is not inferior but it is clearly, in their opinion, not better either.

Two independent sensors, like a satellite early warning system and then a BMEWs, would be enough confirmation of an incomming counterforce strike to launch a return counterforce attack in order to keep from losing the weapons, and letting the SU get the resuiting strategic advantage. (and reload it's ICBMs)

The Soviets have now progressed beyond technology research, in some cases to the development of prototype laser weapons. They already have ground-based lasers that could be used to interfere with US satellites. In the late 1980s, they could have prototype space based laser weapons for use against satellites. In addition, ongoing Soviet programs have progressed to the point where they could include construction of ground-based laser antisatellite(ASAT) facilities at operational sites. These could be available by the end of the 1980s and would greatly increase the Soviets' laser ASAT capability beyond that currently at their test site at Sary Shagan. They may deploy operational systems of space-based lasers for antisatellite purposes in the l990s, if their technology developments prove successful, and they can be expected to pursue development of space-based laser systems for ballistic missile defense for possible deployment after the year 2000.

www.fas.org...

One potential method might be a powerfull ground-based laser
(why was the infrared sensor on one of our satellites suddenly blinded as it passed over the USSR?) A laser on the Mir space station recently "illuminated" an ICBM during the cruise phase of its flight in space, demonstrating Soviet ability to detect and track a missile, according t o Pentagon sources (Washington Inquirer , July 24, 1987).
The purpose of Mir may indeed include bringing about "peace" -- Soviet style,
implies absence of opposition.

www.oism.org...

If those satellites were still orbiting, to detect Soviet ICBM's, they certainly would give enough warning to launch all US ICBM's. The fact that no reserve could be kept to evaluate the result of the first strike would not have helped imo.

The operational Soviet ICBM force is made up of 1,398 silo launchers. Some 818 of these launchers have been rebuilt since 1972. Nearly half of these silos are new versions of the original designs and have been reconstructed or modified in the past 5 years. All of these 818 silos have been hardened, better to withstand attack by currently operational US ICBMs, and house the world's most modern deployed ICBMs - the SS-17 Mod 3 (150 silos), the SS-18 Mod 4 (308) and the SS-19 Mod 3 (360). Deployment of these ICBMs began only 5 years ago. The SS-18 and SS-19 ICBMs are at least as accurate and possibly more accurate and carry more Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) than the MINUTEMAN III, the most modern operational US ICBM. The SS-18 Mod 4 carries 10 MIRVs, and the SS-19 Mod 3 carries six whereas the MINUTEMAN III carries only three. The SS-18 Mod 4 was specifically designed to attack and destroy ICBM silos and other hardened targets in the United States. Each of its 10 warheads has more than 20 times the destructive power of the nuclear devices developed during World War II. The force of SS-18 Mod 4s currently deployed has the capability to destroy more than 80 percent of the US ICBM silo launchers using two nuclear warheads against each US silo.

www.fas.org...

I did not suggest that US ICBM's would be destroyed on the ground but that they might if they were somehow not launched in time. That was my point as the US had no declared reserve or reload capacity.

At that point, the entire US ICBM force has been fired, and bomber fields have been flushed. Subs in port able to get underway would be doing so as well. This is before the first warheads detonate on the US.

At present, Jastrow said, our deterrent rests primarily upon our Trident submarines. Soviet attack could destroy submarines in port (about 2/3 of our force), and the 200
Soviet killer subs could probably stalk and destroy some of those that were on station. Because of difficulties in communications, about half the surviving submarines (maybe six)
would launch their missiles. A single submarine carries enough warheads to destroy the 200 largest Soviet cities.

www.oism.org...

Former Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird claims that thousands of SA-5 interceptors have been deployed in hundreds of sites around some 110 Soviet urban areas, principally in the European U.S.S.R.37 Such a deployment could play havoc with the surviving 1440 SLBM RVs.

The SA-5 anti-SLBM defenses are unorthodox and even "sneaky" in that they exist in the context of an ABM treaty under which the United States officially assumes they do not exist and takes no actions or precautions to counteract the capability. And an SA-5 ABM capability only makes sense in an overall damage-denial scheme which negates ICBMs some other way and reduces the number of SLBM RVs by ASW efforts to levels which can be countered by active SA-5 defenses, civil defense, and hardening of key targets.38"

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

The lack of Civil Defense in the US complicates the SU counterforce attack. Any use of Civil defense in the SU to prepare for such a conflict would only warn the US.

I do not see why tens of millions of US citizens must needlessly die so that the defense efforts are less complicated. You are assuming the Soviet Union wanted to evacuate entire cities to the detriment of any strategic edge they had. Clearly their evacaution efforts ( they built all new large industrial cities on this scheme since 1960) were designed to empty the small industrial cities they were building in 30 minutes or less. Anyone who could not get to their evacuation area would have used a local shelter instead of being moved outside the lethal radius of the single warhead strike. Many of the major cities would obviously not have been possible to evacuate on a 30 minute type timescale but they could probably still evacaute all critical personal some hours before. The idea is not to save everyone but to also help convince Soviet Citizens that a nuclear war IS survivable and that there is no giving up or quiting.

Industrial dispersal. The Soviets have been involved in an industrial dispersal program for more than 15 years. Their approach to the program has been and continues to be the siting of new industrial complexes in towns and settlements with populations of 100,000 people or less. The program has several advantages for the Soviets. First, it is of great economic importance from the standpoint of accelerating and expanding their economic development; this is especially true regarding growth of such sparsely developed areas as Siberia. Second, it prevents high concentrations of industry in a small number of large industrial centers and helps the Soviets make better use of their abundant natural resources. Third, dispersal creates a proliferation of aimpoints for U.S. strategic planners and greatly complicates targeting tasks.

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

Industrial hardening. The Soviets have an ongoing program designed to harden their industrial base. Included in this program are underground facilities, new plant construction techniques, construction of duplicate plants, retrofit hardening of existing facilities, and expedient techniques. The first three hardening methods can be productively utilized only for new facilities and require a long lead time for fruition. The fourth method, retrofit hardening of existing facilities, has near-term implications but is expensive. The fifth means, expedient techniques, is relatively inexpensive and has short-term implications; it will be the focus of this discussion.

If current Soviet expedient hardening preparations for protection of their industrial base are implemented on a large scale, the effectiveness of a U.S. retaliatory capability could be significantly degraded. By utilizing relatively inexpensive and simple expedient techniques such as packing machinery in sandbags, the Soviets could make their industry relatively invulnerable to overpressures of a few pounds per square inch (psi). Depending on the specific precautions taken in mounting and protecting machines, they can be made to survive overpressures in the range of 40 to 300 psi. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate specific hardening techniques.7

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

Peter Pry, a former CIA analyst and author of a new book on Russian nuclear operations, said the continued construction of the Russian strategic defense sites is ominous and cannot be dismissed by U.S. officials as "inertia" from Cold War-era strategic policies. "It shows they take the threat of nuclear war so seriously that they're willing to spend scarce resources on it," Mr. Pry said, adding that he was not familiar with the CIA report. "These things are tying down billions of dollars in rubles that could go into other enterprises the Russians need - for example, providing housing for Russian military officers." Mr. Pry said Russian press reports say the underground facility at Yamantau Mountain covers an area as large as the Capital Beltway.

www.globalsecurity.org...

This dispersal plan had a huge impact on city planning in the Soviet Union. When new cities were built, they were planned as dispersed cities with suburban populations instead of centralized towns (see above).
Changes to existing cities included constructing wide streets, artificial reservoirs, and a network of highways around the city, as well as reducing building density to reduce the possibility of blast and fire damage.
The Soviets, therefore, assumed that they would have enough advance warning of an American attack to implement the aforementioned evacuation and dispersal exercises. Through the use of these removals, pre-attack warning systems, and improved city planning, Soviet military leaders hoped to reduce the number of civilian and economic (industrial) losses.

www.piedmontcommunities.us...=page&GID=
01303001151018293682662999&PG=01304001151018318529636575

Bombers on the ground would go on airborne alert, and Ballistic Missile Subs would be manned and put to sea as quickly as possible, however in either case some would be lost due to being too deaply in maintenance. ,,, however most would make it to sea/air. More warheads would be available as a result from the US from that warning which counters the passive defense efforts to some degree.

At the end of the briefing McNamara accepted the cost-exchange ratios as being no more than 4: 1 in favor of the offense (down from 100:1), which made NIKE-X cost-effective by the standards he had prescribed. (12) However, in an emotional outburst during the briefing McNamara rejected the evidence that the Soviets put first priority on destroying MM silos in order to limit damage to the USSR, saying that as a Soviet Marshal he would target the entire arsenal on U.S. cities. Hence he refused to approve NIKE-X deployment to protect U.S. citizens from the FSU on the grounds of MAD theology--U. S. ABM defenses would be "destabilizing" by forcing the Soviets to respond with a massive MIRVed ICBM buildup.

The Joint Chiefs used a version of that 1966 NIKE-X briefing to ambush McNamara when they met with President Johnson at his ranch in December 1966, persuading Johnson to overrule McNamara and order deployment of U.S. national ABM, although not the defense against the FSU that the Chiefs proposed.(13) While the Chief's briefing is not available, a memo for the record prepared by W. W. Rostow, then President Johnson's national security adviser, is.(14)

According to Mr. Rostow's memo, the Chiefs recommended MIKE-X deployment at 25 cities to save the lives of 30 to 50 million U.S. citizens, if attacked. McMamara opposed the Chiefs' proposal on the grounds of MAD theology and simplistic "action-reaction":

* it was "inconceivable" that the Soviets would react in any other way but to restore the status quo ante, i.e. 120 million U.S. population fatalities;
* both sides would spend a lot of money and end up where they started, but we would waste the most because offensive weapons were so much cheaper than ABM systems;
* the danger of war would not be reduced;
* the FSU had "been wrong in its nuclear defense policy for a decade" because everything spent on all types of defenses (air and missile) had been wasted.(15)

The Chiefs saw it quite differently:

* NIKE-X would save tens of millions of lives against a Soviet population attack, and that was a worthwhile objective;
* while they could not predict with confidence how the Soviets would react, all likely reactions had a substantial price and would divert funds from other military programs--no free lunches;
* the risk of nuclear attack would be reduced

www.fas.org...

Ironically, the Soviet force forecast that McNamara rejected in 1966 proved to be conservative, without the stimulation of U.S. national ABM. Flight testing of MIRVed Soviet ICBMs began in 1972- 73 followed by deployment in 1975-76. All three of these new ICBMS, not just the SS-18, were designed for damage limiting, counierforce strikes, and by 1980 constituted some 90 percent of the total Soviet ICBM arsenal. Too support its nuclear war fighting, damage limiting strategy the Politburo funded a larger and more formidable strategic nuclear arsenal than McNamara thought he would provoke by approving U.S. ABM defenses.

The counterforce arsenal that the Soviets actually deployed in 1975-80 was only 10-20 percent larger than my 1966 forecast. The "window of vulnerability" of U.S. land based strategic missiles opened on schedule, and became one of the major issues in U.S. strategic debates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Furthermore, the total ICBM/SLBM warhead arsenal the Soviets negotiated and deployed under SALT was not significantly different than the 1966 forecast against which even McNamara admitted NIKE-X would be cost- effective.

www.fas.org...

Otherwise we are talking about a "bolt from the blue". In this case Russian civilians would be vulnerable since it could probably be assumed that it would take many hours to evacuate all SU cities.

They would not sacrifice their whole system and governmeny just to lose more lives. An American bolt from the Blue was rather less likely considering the advantages the Dia suggest the USSR had. Bolt from the blue type attack would obviously cause more Soviet casualties but they did design entire new cities to facilitate rapid evacuation.

In 1968, Radio Moscow reported that the most reliable protection available against nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological weapons was "evacuation from large cities and industrial areas". Soviet leaders assumed that American attacks would be centered around cities and industrial centers, so with proper warning time, Soviet citizens could escape to rural and suburban areas without harm.
In the event of an American nuclear attack, there were nine (9) different warning signals that could be broadcast throughout the city. One of these signals (which corresponded to different levels of urgency) would be played all over the city using sirens, loudspeakers, whistles, and radios.
When citizens heard the signal, they were instructed to move to a pre-assigned location, or "collection point", from which they would be evacuated to rural or suburban areas, out of harm's way. Every available mode of transportation (including trucks, cars, trains and buses) would be used to get as many people as possible away from the city center in the shortest amount of time.

www.piedmontcommunities.us...=page&GID=
01303001151018293682662999&PG=01304001151018318529636575

(I am also sure US target assignments could accomodate this as well)

Not enough warheads to saturate the numerous dispersed Soviet industrial complex and especially not if you needed 5-10 to destroy one city by sending warheads to destroy build up areas around it aswell.

At that point strategic thought will require any conflict remain "rational", thus the concept of "counterforce" which then in turn requires that the threshold of "countervalue" is not crossed.

Rationality is doublespeak for assuming the enemy will fight in the way that you prepared to counter. Soviet strategy was ALWAYS counterforce while American stratgy was aimed at killing people for the sake of killing people hoping that the Soviot Union cared enough about it's civilians to prevent them from winning the actual nuclear war. This was the type of logic employed to prevent a "evil empire" from acting evil?

That in itself is quite a burden on the attacker in the counterforce scenario, especially when the attacked has no passive defenses like civil defense.

This idea makes no sense to me. So being able to defend yourself is a burden? I am sorry but i have never read anything suggesting that.

It requires that you NOT kill any more civilians than is absolutely necessary to the counterforce, otherwise it could trigger the countervalue response from the attacked. Then the US only has to protect its ICBMs and deep command posts only enough to require that the SU counterforce strike dig up enough radioactive dirt in the required ground bursts that the countervalue casualty threshold is passed.

As my previous links indicated the SU cared nothing for countervalue as they were trying to WIN and not just kill civilians in spite. It's this crazy type of logic that has made America defenseless for decades.

Do ABMs work? Will the "Dual Use" SAMS account for many warhead kills?

Well the US managed to make them work in the 60's and the Generals believed in them so yeah, i believe they would have been effective if deployed in sufficient numbers.

The George C. Marshall Institute recently released a study concluding that a 93% effective, three-layered defense based on "smart" kinetic energy weapons, could be deployed by the mid-1990s at a cost of $121 billion (or an annual cost of 3 to 4% of probable Department of Defense budgets). This figure is about 12% of the $1 trillion cost estimate of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is widely quoted in the news media.I also saw it in a videotape that is shown by PSR on visits to Tucson schools. I asked about the basis forthe figure, and was assured that it was "documented." Some investigators at the Center for Peace and Freedom in Washington tried to find the "documentation."Peter Clausen of the UCS said that he was "not sure much lies behind it analytically."Some anti-SDI groups credited former Secretaries of Defense Harold Brown and James Schlesinger. Brown stated that the question was "not susceptible to [a]...detailed and documented approach." Schlesinger repeatedly refused to answer his mail or his telephone.

www.oism.org...

The fact that the dual use Sam's is based on the V-100, wich was successfully tested against an IRBM in 1961, should give us some reason for pause imo.

V-1000:First Soviet anti-ballistic missile system. Development began in 1956 and the system was tested at Sary Shagan 1960 to 1961. It was clear that enormous development work was needed to achieve an operational anti-ballistic missile system. Therefore work began on the successor A-35 system, although the Americans were led to believe that an operational system was deployed around Moscow. The System A anti-ballistic missile equipped with the V-1000 rocket made the first intercept and destruction in the world using a conventional warhead of an intermediate range ballistic missile warhead coming in at 3 km/s on 4 May 1961.

www.astronautix.com...

The V-1000 ABM was first seen in the public in 1963 when it was paraded on the Red Square and was retired from active service in the following year from yet undefined reasons, but It should be noted that the 5V28 "Volga" missile from the S-200 (SA-5 Gammon) SAM system, which was also developed by Grushin's OKB, is considered to be a highly modified version of it.

warfare.ru...

How will they work agaisnt the plethera of countermeasures, from decoys, jamming, and EMP bursts?

]Building on the ABRES experience, the NIKE-X system that emerged in 1963-64 was a revolutionary advance in ABM technologies combining a powerful, multi-aperture phased array radar (MAR), an IBM 360 type computer, and a high acceleration missile (SPRINT) for low altitude intercepts. NIKE-X was designed against MIRVs with high performance RVs, while the computer and the SPRINT interceptor took advantage of atmospheric filtering to discriminate precision engineered decoys and other countermeasures. The MAR radar combined battle management, target and interceptor tracking functions and was highly resistant to nuclear effects. The only high confidence way to overcome the NIKE-X system was to exhaust the stock of interceptors with real RVs

www.fas.org...

Bombers will be arriving over target about 12 hours after the first blows are in, will they have such a hard time getting through what is left of Russian air defenses?

The air defense and radar sites are widely dispersed to trying to nuke them will use up the entire ICBM and SLBM force anyways. The Bombers will probably not penetrate as the DIA said and this is not taking into account all those hundreds of interceptors at their widely dispersed airfields.

How well will counterforce work? The USSR may have had a moment in history where they were "superior" by many accounts, but it evidently wasn't usable, and prefered to collapse than risk so much on technology and concepts that have to work perfectly for any possible success.

That moment has in my opinion been 3 1/2 decades long. By usable you mean " why did they not try take over the world" with my response being that they were trying to survive and not trying to take over the world. Their massive land army was needed to ward of China and others anyways and it certainly would make the Europeans think twice about a war considering how they would have been overun in a matter of weeks. You can call the Soviet army the Soviet unions "counterforce" weapon if you like but their Nuclear weapon forces were never designed for counterforce or mindlessly killing civilians.

I suspect that moment has passed.

Ongoing imo but that is a massive topic in itself. If your interested we can make a new thread.

I admit I am only an armchair admiral.

And since i am much the same ( However cool having 1300 planet empires online might make me feel) i source my claims so you may refute or disagree with them and not with me.

Anyone who really knows about this sort of thing can't talk about it.

I quoted a couple who do know and did.

We can really only speculate, but we should also keep in mind the agenda's of those who do talk of "vulnerabilities", and "bomber gaps". Thus, don't take everything you read on the internet seriously, including me.

Thanks for the advice. Mabye those people were right all along and just tried to protect American civilians with passive defenses instead of building aircraft carriers and a massive navy to go intimidate third world countries with?

Thank god we never found out who would win, and hopefully will never have to.

Cheers!
Sandman

Well you know who i think would have reached their objectives ( wich is winning in strategic planning) in a nuclear exchange. The fact that they could reload almost everything means they would not only have survived but would have still been a global power unlike the US wich would have been devastated whatever damage could be inflicted on the USSR in the mindless countervalue launching.

Stellar

[edit on 12-1-2006 by StellarX]

no one wins in an nuclear war but one side loses more than the other. A nuclear weapons policy during the cold war was mad (mutually assured distruction) which in effect was, if you launch nukes at us we'll nuke you back and sums up the nuclear detterrant perfectly. Unless a nation has a 100% effective icbm shield and an unpenetrable air space which no one does and no one ever will, then the entire world will lose in the event of a nuclear war.

Originally posted by justin_barton3
no one wins in an nuclear war but one side loses more than the other. A nuclear weapons policy during the cold war was mad (mutually assured distruction) which in effect was, if you launch nukes at us we'll nuke you back and sums up the nuclear detterrant perfectly. [/quot

Well you assuming everyone has the same standards of winning when winning is in fact just reaching the objective you set for yourself. MAD proponents are assuming a great many things ( that the USSR will shrink from taking tens of millions of casualties for instance) when they declare that no one can win a nuclear exchange.

Unless a nation has a 100% effective icbm shield and an unpenetrable air space which no one does and no one ever will, then the entire world will lose in the event of a nuclear war.

Nothing has ever been 100% effective ( note people getting shot in the head and living) 100% of the time so no one in their right mind sets out with that idea when they design a new weapons systems. The idea with defense is to make the attacker allocate resources differently than he would have if there was no defense. The entire world will not lose in case of niuclear war as you would have started questioning if you read trough my last post. Please read what has been said before and tell me what was unconvincing about my arguments and sources.

Stellar