On Mar 4, 5:38*am, " wrote:

Surprisingly (to me), the most expensive weapon system America
developed during World War II was not the atomic bomb. *It was the
B-29 that dropped it.

Phil

Per unit, or overall? That doesn't seem right -- there were tens of
thousands working at Oak Ridge....


I was just talking about the development costs, not the production
costs. It was 2 billion for the atomic bomb versus 3 billion for the
B-29.

Atomic bombs were dropped on those two Japanese cities, but MAD was
not yet a strategic consideration --- the Japanese couldn't retaliate
in kind.


You're right. We probably wouldn't have used them if the Japanese
could have done the same in response.

MAD doctrine evolved as the US and USSR realized the potential within
each arsenal (MAD wasn't formulated as a doctrine until McNamara in
the 60s).

Dan

MAD has been pretty successful in preventing large hot wars so far.
Still, if you look out across the next thousand years, it is hard to
imagine that nuclear weapons won't still exist on this planet, if not
something even worse. What are the odds that they will never be used?

Phil