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#41
February 25th 04, 07:19 PM
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#42
February 25th 04, 07:31 PM
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In article . net,
"Carey Sublette" wrote: "WaltBJ" wrote in message om... Comments: 1) It is true that there is no theoretical limit to the size of a TNW. The practical limit is when the bomb vents to space rather than expanding across the surface of the earth. Big bombs are impractical since they blow the hell out of the hypocenter (spot directly under the bomb) but the radius of destruction increases as the cube root of the bomb's yield. One could take the same amount of critical material and make numerous smaller bombs and achieve a much greater area of destruction by carefully distributing them over the target zone. The fundamental reason why 'Ivan', the Tsar Bomba, had no relevance to the strategic balance was that it was undeliverable against the U.S. The weight of this bomb - 27 tonnes - was nearly equal to the Tu-95's maximum payload, and two and a half times its normal weapon load. Range of the Tu-95 was already marginal for attacking the U.S. even with a normal bomb load. Even worse, since the bomb's dimensions - 2 meters wide and 8 meters long - were larger than the bomb bay could accommodate part of the fuselage had to be cut away, and the bomb bay doors removed. The bomb was partially recessed in the plane, but not enclosed, with over half of it protruding in flight. A deployed version of a Tsar Bomba carrier would of course had a bulging bomb bay enclosure added, but this would have further reduced range from the drag. Clearly, it was unsuitable as an aircraft-delivered weapon. While I tend to think the motivations were propaganda and perhaps some technologists gone wild, I would not, however, dismiss it is unusable. Impractical and fraught with risks? Of course. Ship or submarine delivery systems, probably sacrificing the delivery platform, certainly wouldn't have the same restrictions on cubage and weight. Would we have been as alert then to a third-country tramp steamer? Conceivably, there might be some prepositioned ground options, perhaps in Germany, as an ultimate deterrent against a NATO counterstrike. Even nastier would be placement on seabeds.
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#43
February 25th 04, 07:52 PM
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Peter Skelton wrote in message . ..
MacNamarra stated in his book that the US was deterred from a strike by the Soviets 550 warheads in 1962 (Cuban crisis), so MAD was operating at that time, although not named yet. If he is not correct, the 1963 test ban treaty is further evidence that the situation was recognized. I would say that MacNamara, as usual, is not correct. In 1962 the decision-makers in the West (UK-USA) knew from Oleg Penkovsky that the Soviet Union had only 10 or so ICBMs and they would take 10-12 hours to get ready for launch. The Soviet documents from the period under discussion remain inaccessible to historians and create gaps that can only be filled in with conjecture. Even the reasons for the Cuban missile gambit are very clouded. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b4a11.htm Soviet Cold War Military Strategy: Using Declassified History By William Burr "The history of the Soviet strategic program is at the same time a history of U.S. perceptions."1 So wrote a team of historians and political scientists in a once highly classified Pentagon history of the Cold War strategic arms race. The authors were describing an important problem: so long as primary sources were unavailable, academic and government analysts interested in explaining Soviet military policy had to resort to "inferences drawn by long chains of logic" to interpret the scattered data available to them.2 And to a great extent, that data, whether leaked/declassified or not, had been filtered through the U.S. intelligence system. Under those circumstances, interpretive efforts were always constrained; the relative opacity of Soviet defense policymaking made it difficult to ascertain, much less evaluate, the relevant "facts." This made it easy for analysts to fall back on Cold War ideology and habits such as "mirror imaging," which could easily lead to misunderstanding. Thus, educated guesswork and perceptions alone, severed from the deeper understanding that primary sources can provide, shaped the American public's understanding of Soviet military decision- making, policies, and programs for the entire Cold War period. more
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#44
February 25th 04, 08:23 PM
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(Peter Stickney) wrote in message ...
In article , "George Z. Bush" writes: Peter Stickney wrote: BMEWS was the response to the threat of ICBMs coming over the Pole. But, in some ways, we were still further along than the Soviets wer in building and deploying useful ICBMs and SLBMs. Kruschev was great at showing off spactacular feats of missilery, and veiled, and not so veiled threats to use his missiles, but that wasn't backed up by what was in the field. Consider, if you will, that if the Soviets had had a viable ICBM or SLBM force in 1962, they wouldn't have tried putting the short-range missiles in Cuba. That whole business grew out of the Soviet's knowledge that they couldn't effectively strike. (Either First Strike or Second Strike) That was all very interesting, and certainly did much to refresh flagging memories. However, it still didn't resolve the starting date for MAD, because it ignored the ongoing SAC airborne alerts and the nuclear armed subs roaming the oceans. I personally have the feeling that the MAD doctrine evolved from recognition of those SAC policies by the Soviets, which would place the date at or before construction of the DEW line. All guesswork on my part. What do you think? Well, just my opinion, of course, but I think that the MAD thinking didn't occur until the mid '60s. It really didn't get set in stone until it was decided to limit the deployment of the Spartan/Safeguard ABM system, which occurred before the negotiation of the ABM Treaty which occurred in 1972. The Soviets, of course, had been trying with all possible strength to get systems in place to deliver their nukes all through the 1950s. As I pointed out before, air-breathers - Bombers and Cruise Missiles, weren't going to cut it, at least in our mutual perceptions. (Since it never got tried for real) The Soviets put more efforts into their ICBM projects than we did, but their progress wasn't as fast as they wished, so they propagandized the hell out of it, making themselves look much more powerful than they were, and hoped that we either wouldn't find out, or wouldn't call the bluff. (All that Missile Gap stuff in the 1960 election, for example.) So the Soviets had been trying to present a credible force for quite a while, but weren't really there. All through the 1950s, the Soviets didn't have any confidence in their ability to put bombs on target, The idea of MAD, which is more a Western conceit, rather than a bilateral policy, didn't come about until the Soviets had a significant and reliable ICBM force. This didn't happen until the mid '60s, at best, with their development of storable-fuel ICBMs, and the Yankee Class Ballistic Missile Subs. That feeling of inferiority, after all, was what drove Kruschev to try to put the short and medium range missiles in Cuba in 1962. They knew that they were going to come off second best against what we had, and counted on holding the initialtive and being agressive to make the differnece. It didn't work that way, and that's the main reason why Khruschev was chucked out - he scared the Supreme Soviet more than he scared us. (And mind you, he was plenty scarey) There's no definite indication tha the Soviet Heirarchy ever really bought into the idea of MAD. The Soviets, don't forget, were perfectly willing to trade vast numbers of their population for their system's survival. The communization of the Ukraine, and the scorched-earch strategies used in WW 2 are ample examples of that. But then, this is one of those things that is really a matter of trying to nail Jello to the wall - since it was never a stated, formal, policy, but more an attitude and set of perceptions. http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol09/91/91krep.pdf which argues MAD came about after the various treaties had established offensive missiles but prohibited defensive missiles. Everyone tries to put a date on MAD but I would argue that once Herman Kahn starting having his little briefings on winning thermonuclear war the idea was fertilized and the gestation period a matter of how you determine whether an idea is born in the brain or on paper. and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Assured_Destruction Mutual assured destruction (Redirected from Mutual Assured Destruction) Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is the doctrine of a situation in which any use of nuclear weapons by either of two opposing sides would result in the destruction of both the attacker and the defender. The doctrine assumes that each side has enough weaponry to destroy the other side and that either side, if attacked for any reason by the other, would retaliate with equal or greater force. The expected result is that the battle would escalate to the point where each side brought about the other's total and assured destruction - and, potentially, those of allies as well. Assuming that neither side would be so irrational as to risk its own destruction, neither side would dare to launch a first strike as the other would launch on warning (also called fail deadly). The payoff of this doctrine was expected to be tense but stable peace. The primary application of this doctrine occurred during the Cold War (1950s to 1990s) between the United States and Soviet Union, in which MAD was seen as helping to prevent any direct full-scale conflicts between the two nations while they engaged in smaller proxy wars around the world. MAD was part of U.S. strategic doctrine which believed that nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States could best be prevented if neither side could defend itself against the other's nuclear missiles (see Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty). The credibility of the threat being critical to such assurance, each side had to invest substantial capital in weapons, even those not intended for use. This MAD scenario was often known by the less frightening euphemism "nuclear deterrence". Critics of the MAD doctrine noted that the acronym MAD fits the word mad (meaning insane) because it depended on several challengable assumptions: Perfect detection No false positives in the equipment and/or procedures that must identify a launch by the other side No possibility of camoflaging a launch No alternate means of delivery other than a missile (no hiding warheads in an ice cream truck) The weaker version of MAD also depends on perfect attribution of the launch. (If you see a launch on the Sino-Russian border, who do you retaliate against?) The stronger version of MAD does not depend on attribution. (If someone launches at you, end the world.) Perfect rationality No rogue states will develop nuclear weapons (or, if they do, they will stop behaving as rogue states and start to subject themselves to the logic of MAD) No rogue commanders on either side at any time with the ability to corrupt the launch decision process All leaders with launch capability care about the survival of their subjects While MAD does not depend on the assumption that the retaliatory launch system will work perfectly, it does depend on the challengable assumption that no leader with launch capability would strike first and gamble that the opponent's response system would fail Inability to defend No shelters sufficient to protect population and/or industry No development of anti-missile technology or deployment of remedial protective gear The doctrine was satirized in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. In the film, the Soviets have a doomsday machine which automatically detects any nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, whereupon it destroys all life on earth by fallout. The film also has the rogue commander who (ignorant of the Russian doomsday machine) orders his wing on a (preemtive) nuclear strike, betting that the high command has to back him by launching all their nuclear arsenal to survive the Russian counterattack. The film mirrored life in that the nuclear strategist Herman Kahn had actually contemplated such a machine as one strategy in ensuring mutual assured destruction. In fact, the film represents an interesting phenomenon explored by certain theorists: contrary to the assumptions of MAD, a threat fulfilling strategy --in which one promises to act on one's threats, regardless of the rationality of doing so-- could be used by one side to subdue the other. To have a chance of working, however, the strategy must be known by the enemy --a condition that is not satisfied in Kubrick's film. It is not entirely clear, though, whether adopting such a risky strategy can be classified as a a rational act at all. The fall of the Soviet Union has reduced tensions between Russia and the United States and between the United States and China. MAD has been replaced as a model for stability between Russia and the United States as well as between the United States and China. Although the administration of George W. Bush has abrogated the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the limited national missile defense system proposed by the Bush administration is designed to prevent nuclear blackmail by a state with limited nuclear capability and is not planned to alter the nuclear posture between Russia and the United States. MAD's replacement (asymmetric warfare) is designed to take advantage of years of analysis that focussed on finding a concept for stability that did not rely on holding civilian populations hostage. The Bush administration has approached Russia with the idea of moving away from MAD to a different nuclear policy of total weaponry escalation. Russia has thus far been rather unreceptive to these approaches largely out of fear that a different defense posture would be more advantageous to the United States than to Russia. Some argue that MAD was abandoned on 25 July 1980 when US President Jimmy Carter adopted the countervailing strategy in Presidential Directive 59. From this date onwards US policy was to win a nuclear war. The planned response to a Soviet attack was no longer to bomb Russian cities and assure their destruction. American nuclear weapons were first to kill the Soviet leadership, then attack military targets, in the hope of a Russian surrender before total destruction of the USSR (and the USA). This policy was further developed by President Ronald Reagan with the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars), aimed at destroying Russian missiles before they reached the US. If SDI had been operational it would have undermined the "assured destruction" required for MAD. The Bush administration also proposed the use of small nuclear weapons to be used against terrorists in caves. The implication was that nobody would militarily object to this preemptive usage of nuclear weapons, as the US was the only superpower with both nuclear weapons and strong world policy ambitions.
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#45
February 25th 04, 08:24 PM
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"Jim Knoyle" wrote in message news  "Carey Sublette" wrote in message ink.net... "WaltBJ" wrote in message om... Comments: 1) It is true that there is no theoretical limit to the size of a TNW. The practical limit is when the bomb vents to space rather than expanding across the surface of the earth. Big bombs are impractical since they blow the hell out of the hypocenter (spot directly under the bomb) but the radius of destruction increases as the cube root of the bomb's yield. One could take the same amount of critical material and make numerous smaller bombs and achieve a much greater area of destruction by carefully distributing them over the target zone. The fundamental reason why 'Ivan', the Tsar Bomba, had no relevance to the strategic balance was that it was undeliverable against the U.S. The weight of this bomb - 27 tonnes - was nearly equal to the Tu-95's maximum payload, and two and a half times its normal weapon load. Range of the Tu-95 was already marginal for attacking the U.S. even with a normal bomb load. Even worse, since the bomb's dimensions - 2 meters wide and 8 meters long - were larger than the bomb bay could accommodate part of the fuselage had to be cut away, and the bomb bay doors removed. The bomb was partially recessed in the plane, but not enclosed, with over half of it protruding in flight. A deployed version of a Tsar Bomba carrier would of course had a bulging bomb bay enclosure added, but this would have further reduced range from the drag. 2) I should think doctrine on the possible use of nuclear weapons took a serious hit when a real sober look was taken of the two nuclear accidents the USSR experienced - Chelyabinsk and Chernobyl. The USSR never ever achieved the capability to feed all its people from its own resources and what fallout from numerous nuclear weapons would do to the arable lands of the Ukraine really doesn't bear thinking about. The U.S. similarly vulnerable to this effect from the eastward fallout plumes of strikes on the Montana and Wyoming missile fields. What the heck! Back in the '50s you could buy tickets and go sit in abandoned uranium mines in Montana and elsewhere. It was supposed to help cure 'What ails you.' snip There still there, but now its the radon doing the curing: http://cnts.wpi.edu/RSH/Docs/Radon/Index_RadSpas.htm http://www.outwestnewspaper.com/radon.html I guess suckers are still being born every minute. Joe Carey Sublette -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =----- http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----
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#46
February 25th 04, 08:34 PM
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Jack Linthicum muttered....
Peter Skelton wrote in message . .. MacNamarra stated in his book that the US was deterred from a strike by the Soviets 550 warheads in 1962 (Cuban crisis), so MAD was operating at that time, although not named yet. If he is not correct, the 1963 test ban treaty is further evidence that the situation was recognized. I would say that MacNamara, as usual, is not correct. In 1962 the decision-makers in the West (UK-USA) knew from Oleg Penkovsky that the Soviet Union had only 10 or so ICBMs and they would take 10-12 hours to get ready for launch. The Soviet documents from the period under discussion remain inaccessible to historians and create gaps that can only be filled in with conjecture. Even the reasons for the Cuban missile gambit are very clouded. At the same moment US INTEL, US Political (and Western European and the NATO "consensus") opinions were clouded (and the four often quite different, 4 conclusions from 4 perspectives), what the Soviet "leasdership" actually "thought" and upon which factors they might base actions and reactions remained equally if not more clouded. Nor was the machinery within the Soviet organs of the state and the military near so monolithic as we all would have liked to conclude (since it made predictions so much easier and justifiable). On "our" side, junior, company and field grade officers and low level commanders tended to view the various Soviet weapons systems as far less well developed and potentially effective than they seemed to be viewed at the highest military and political levels, leading many of us to believe that some exaggeration was employed at those levels to justify policy and war plans. Obviously, the modern parallel may be found as relates to the WMD issue...that the risk in "denying" their potential existence may have seemed so great that to do so seemed unwise. Meanwhile, a "re-look" at the Soviet policy during the period signals that the Soviet leaders were misled by their own military who, in a traditional (for militaries and their suppliers throughout history) panegyric oversold systems and capabilities to an even greater extent than we in the West did. Perhaps, in the final analysis, better that both sides over-rated the other and at the same time were over-sold as to their own capabilities, thus staying a longer step away from some almost accidental petty confrontation screwing the pooch. TMO
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#47
February 25th 04, 08:43 PM
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In article ,
Greg Hennessy wrote: On 25 Feb 2004 08:31:03 -0800, (John Schilling) wrote: Wouldn't a deployed Tsar Bomba carrier have been a militarized Proton, aka UR-500 aka 8K82? The space launch version uses only storable propellants, can put twenty tons into low orbit with the smallest fairing easily holding a 2 x 8 meter payload, and my references on the space launch side claim that it was developed with the ICBM role and the Tsar Bomba payload in mind from the start (1961). The airburst footprint of 100MT delivered that way would indeed be scary. Hadnt realised that an ICBM was a viable delivery platform for it. Weapons effects from: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Nuke.html 100 MT 1 MT 100 KT 77.1 km 11.7 km 4.5 km Thermal radiation radius (3rd degree burns) 33 km 7.2 km 3.4 km Air blast radius (widespread destruction) 12.5 km 2.7 km 1.3 km Air blast radius (near-total fatalities) 7.5 km 3.1 km 2.0 km Ionizing radiation radius (500 rem) 35.7 sec 4.5 sec 1.6 sec Fireball duration 2.7 km 430 m 170 m Fireball radius (minimum) 3.3 km 530 m 210 m Fireball radius (airburst) 4.4 km 700 m 280 m Fireball radius (ground-contact airburst) Of course, with that same payload, you could put up a couple of dozen 1 MT bombs of the same vintage. Looking at effective destruction, you only get: 100 MT 1 MT 100 KT 3421 km^2 163 km^2 64 km^2 21 times the "widespread destruction" area, for 100 times the power, when comparing the 100 MT versus a 1 MT, and 53 times the effect for *1000* times the power of a standard-issue 100 KT weapon. -- cirby at cfl.rr.com Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations. Slam on brakes accordingly.
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#48
February 25th 04, 11:07 PM
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#49
February 25th 04, 11:28 PM
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(Jack Linthicum) wrote:
I would say that MacNamara, as usual, is not correct. MacNamara is busily trying to re-invent his role and his place in history. 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.
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