Recent content by Simon_1969

Thanks, makes MIRVs much less useful for counter-force than I had thought. Need to sit back now and reassess my thoughts on the strategic balance in 1983.

Thanks for this, no technical knowledge myself at all so this is interesting (for instance I never thought of the possibility of multiple buses - is it publicly known if any missiles were designed this way?). I also hadn't thought of the problem of increasing error for later targets of a single...

I thought that MIRV's had could be steered up to 100-150km apart from a single missile, more than enough to avoid having to target one missile per silo. (an example of a US ICBM base http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:319th_Missile_Squadron_-_MAF_-_LC.png More generally that is a good point...

The point about war leading to key technologies getting heavy funding is true. And the necessity of finding a solution to a specific tactical problem will probably help to concentrate minds. But on the other hand the need for the research to be done really, really quickly and in secret will...

This brings up a philosophical question. It is easy to point to progress made because of the world war but what about all the civilian advances that those scientists would have made working for more prosperous civilian firms? Plus would there have been more basic science from better funded...

Post war would have been interesting as well - an economically strong US with a growing military but more isolationist than OTL, US and France financially exhausted but thinking pretty well of themselves in military terms, Germany?? how does it fit in, Soviets much better off economically and by...

And then the Soviets step in as Germany is collapsing, take over the Latvia, Lithuania, Besarabia and everything East of the Curzon line in Poland, and set up some type of sympathetic/communist state in the rest of Poland - all without any serious fighting. Hard to believe that the Western...

Your point is very good, but .... the Soviets did have a LOT of nukes to start with. Just counting ICBMs in 1983, 3000 x SS-18 warheads, 1800 x SS-19, 900 x SS-17. Real numbers will be lower, (some warheads not having the maximum number of MIRV warheads, some missiles off for maintenance etc)...

I agree that some cities would survive by chance. And the Soviets would have trouble identifying missed targets, communicating that to their surviving missile units and taking those remaining cities out (though this problem was predictable so would they not bother with a large missile reserve...

And I agree with your main point too, I don't think a Carter administration would have made a different decision than a Reagan administration on whether or not to use the nukes under these circumstances. And the origin of this mess is a Soviet invasion of Germany which must have pretty...

Hmmm, but the Soviets did respond to the US tactical use with a tactical response on US forces in Germany. Presumably both sides over this six hour period were attempting to control the escalation but it escalated so much towards the end of this period that the US were using large warheads on...

About airbursts, groundbursts and runways, Russian CEPs were not great but I am surprised that they were not tight enough to reasonably reliably put a grounbursts crater across a runway. If the Russian missiles were that inaccurate wouldn't they have almost no counterforce capacity against...

I think Oklahoma City is probably gone too. The runways at Tinker AFB are 16 km (10 miles) from the centre of Oklahoma City and are sure to be targeted. Two large runways (so multiple ground strikes to be sure to put them out of order), 25,000 air force and civilian personnel and one of the...

I agree that it is obviously Australia, in particular the landscapes are specifically Australian. I just found it interesting I can't remember the word Australia being used - maybe I am mistaken it has been a while since I read the book. By comparison think of the number of times the words...

I haven't seen the movie but the book is a good young adult novel. While not helpful for an AH discussion, in the book the author tried very hard to limit consideration of the the political, strategic or military factors of the story. The invaders remain carefully unamed and while the...