Reagan would be elected in an even bigger landslide, on a platform of "Democrats Threw Europe to the Soviet Wolves". Massive military buildup, saber rattling, probably ends with full-exchange WWIII in the mid-80s.
WW3 in the 70s?
- Thread starter Joseph Weaver
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Reagan would be elected in an even bigger landslide, on a platform of "Democrats Threw Europe to the Soviet Wolves". Massive military buildup, saber rattling, probably ends with full-exchange WWIII in the mid-80s.
It would accomplish nothing of much military significance other than rallying the soviet public behind a otherwise unpopular regime
IMHO mines are a much bigger threat than AshM don’t you think ?
So another words the badgers can stay within the envelope of their friendly air defenses and still hit naval vessels almost 250 miles out?
And F4 trying to perform aggressive CAP missions to pursue them Would have to run the gauntlet of soviet air defense missiles
A Soviet assault could face nuclear strikes carried out by field officers without NCA.
And what about the tens of thousands of US dead? Carter just writes them off and calls it a day?
No, that's politically impossible, and Carter wouldn't have done that anyway.
No, that's politically impossible, and Carter wouldn't have done that anyway.
Then why do you keep pushing the idea?
Well, I wasn’t so much thinking about a friendly air envelope so much that they’d be launching missiles outside of Sparrow range.
I just suggested it as a possible scenario, alternative outcome of such invasion could be ussr leadership losing confidence of people and armed forces completely demoralized and collapsing from within.
Even at the Phantom's top speed the Kingfish has enough range that Phantoms are unlikely to get to the bombers fast enough. At best the bombers can be detected 450nm by the Hawkeyes; the Kingfish's max range is 380nm. The Badger can close that gap in ten minutes or less. At its 150-nm patrol distance, a Phantom is going to take a lot more than that to kick on its afterburners and close nearly 200 nautical miles given its need to accelerate from its subsonic patrol speed.
A J or N-Phantom might manage that, though I have my doubts. A slower S-Phantom has little chance.
I seriously doubt that, given any invasion force is going to be smashed flat in short order by Soviet reserve divisions.
So?
Firstly I was in error, an air-launched Kingfish has a range of 550 to 700km, depending on warhead and launch altitude.
Assuming the launch aircraft were detected at, say, 750km, a Phantom at full reheat might cover the distance to engagement range in twenty minutes. A Tu-16 would cover 200km in less than fifteen minutes, then launch, turn away and depart.
At which point the aircraft are (by some quick estimations) 180km apart and (assuming the Phantom is still making Mach 2 and the Badger is running full throttle) the gap is closing at around 400m/s, i.e. about six minutes to engagement range. While the carrier that launched the Phantom has a pair of missiles incoming at Mach 3.5 with 350kt nuclear warheads.
Assuming it has the fuel for such an engagement the Phantom may well kill the Badger, but the crew will have the pressing concern of where to land (or eject).
Until NATO ran out of missiles and ammo. It came to light in the late 70s that there were less than 3 load outs of AIM-7s and AIM-9s for the fighters. And it was lower after October '73 when stocks were stripped to resupply Israel. Those were replaced very slowly and after 75 the resupply rate was slowed even more to keep budget numbers low.
Or someone makes a mistake. Able Archer 83 comes to mind. Or there was an instance sometime in the 70s where an RN task group in the North Sea saw a shadowing Soviet destroyer launch a torpedo towards the Ark Royal. The RN escorts were turning to open fire when an observant staff officer reacted and had everyone stand down. He had been watching the Soviet DD and noticed a small fire break out near the torpedo tubes and realized they were jettisoning the weapons to keep them from exploding due to the heat.
Given the short reaction times of the era (Soviet SSGs of the U.S. east coast was a fear at this time when the media realized that there was a less than 15 minute flight time between surfacing and missiles hitting targets.) there was no time for anyone to allow for explanations before reacting. everyone was in 'use it or lose it' mode.
In a snow storm a truck hits a transformer along US 1 in Northern VA. Because of the large electrical load in the North East this causes a cascade of electrical shutdown in the DC area. The Pentagon command center starts to switch over to its internal backups when a $10 relay in the switchover control circuit fails.
No problem command switches to an airborne command post orbiting over Ohio and a backup command post taxis to take off from Langley AFB 'just in case'. As the EC-135 picks up speed on the runway two deer dart across the runway. One strikes the starboard landing gear, the other gets sucked into an engine. The EC-135 attempts to abort but slides off the end of the 10,000 ft runway and ends up in Back River. As the staff on the active airborne command post becomes more stressed they get reports from a radar site in Germany that a flight of WarPac aircraft over the eastern Baltic didn't turn back at its usual point and is still flying towards Denmark. Then an alarm goes off because a satellite warning system has seen flashes in central Asia indicating ICBM launches. So in less tha ten minutes you have had the primary command post taken out, the backup is in control but its emergency backup just went dark. You have at least one incoming attack in Europe and have an indicated strategic launch. What do you do?
If anyone survives there will be books written about why, but right now why doesn't matter.
It doesn't have a pair of missiles it has 8 (a flight of 4 badgers) with two more flights of 4 approaching the launch point
Oh and your escort just said 'torpedoes in the water!' just as the shadowing Soviet destroyer starts jamming wide sections of the radio spectrum
You don't get one threat at a time to deal with
Nice scenario.
It always blew my mind how Stanislav Petrov spoke of his titular incident as casually as you or I would talk about our day.
What about mid 80s ? How was the AAM situation in Europe?
most Badgers flew with just one missile
Short range yes maybe 2
But there is not an infinite number of badgers and kingfish
Probably the easiest POD. Just have the US and Soviet navies "bump" into each other in the Mediterranean. Soviet's get wary of an American recon flight and shoot down a plane. Americans sink a Soviet destroyer in response. I'll let others take it from there on the mushroom cloud farms that start to pop up later.