Challenge: No Missile GAP

Your Challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make without ASB the USSR and the USA have an equal supply of nuclear weapons, with neither ever being able to get a significant lead. One condition for this is it can't destroy the Soviet Union through expenses, for after all, this has to be from day 1 almost.
 
Easy have the CIA do its job correctly, then it will be revealed that the USA had more missiles than the Russians all along and that such a gap was a figment of Cold War Paranoia
 
Well, okay, not quite what I had in mind, but clever all the same.:p

Okay, they both must have literally the same supply of nuclear weapons at any time(post WW2), with neither side ever being able to take the lead.
 
Well then the USA "sells" some of its supply of nukes to Britain and France once they develop nuclear tech on their own. USA has only the Strategic Deterrent, everything else is under British or French control
 
For both to have literally the same size requires some sort of strict nuclear treaty being signed, which sorta ends the Cold War on it's own.
 
There's no way early on for the Soviets to catch up without wrecking their economy? Okay, not exact perhaps, but close enough that the USA can't throw its weight around as much.
 
Easy have the CIA do its job correctly, then it will be revealed that the USA had more missiles than the Russians all along and that such a gap was a figment of Cold War Paranoia

I thought the CIA did know. It's just it was classified so Nixon couldn't do squat to counter JFK.

You could try having the US pour even more resources into the no go Navajo, a long range cruise missile that never really went anywhere. Eventually it was scrapped when people figured out that ICBMs were easier but if for some reason it remained favored for political reasons you maybe could see US ICBM development slowed.
 
There's no way early on for the Soviets to catch up without wrecking their economy? Okay, not exact perhaps, but close enough that the USA can't throw its weight around as much.

The best shout is to have some sort of accident occurring with Manhattan, whilst an even longer war in Europe further damages the Soviet economy, leaving both sides to get the bomb around the early fifties.
 
Wait... what if missile shield development took precedence? The ability to shoot down missiles instead of launching better ones? Or was that never a viable concept as a main one?
 
There's no way early on for the Soviets to catch up without wrecking their economy? Okay, not exact perhaps, but close enough that the USA can't throw its weight around as much.

I think the only way to do that is not to improve the Soviets' efforts, but to retard the American program. The Soviets were basically going flat-out on the bomb, I don't think they could go any faster than they were, but that doesn't change the fact the US had a four year head start.

There might be some way to delay the US bomb program. Things were kind of a mess between 1945 and 1948. The Army was running things from 45 to 47 but everyone knew that control was going to be handed over to a civilian agency, so the Army didn't feel it could commit to any long-term projects. From 47 to 48, the new commission was running around trying to do everything at once without the manpower and administrative structure that they needed.

Morale was in the crapper at most of the labs. Personnel, especially scientists, were leaving for the civilian sector. There was some labor unrest, including at least one threatened strike. There were tens of thousands of people who'd been hired without proper background checks during the war and had to be rechecked. And there was a certain naivete in the officialdom, at least outside the AEC itself, believing our atomic shield was stronger than it actually was.

A lot of this was just the inevitable problems of any new agency, but there might be a way to really gum up the works long enough for the Soviets to catch up by the early 50s. But it would not be easy. A good start would be reducing international tensions so that the AEC is a lower budgeting priority, but that's only a start. Another thing would be keeping the McMahon Bill from passing in the 1947 legislative season - there was quite a fight over it in congress, particularly over the question of civilian versus military control. Another year without the bill means another year of the Army holding down the fort without a mandate to do anything long-term.

Honestly, though, I don't know if it could be done. The bomb was the US' big advantage, our ace, and we were going to exploit it as best we could.
 
Wait... what if missile shield development took precedence? The ability to shoot down missiles instead of launching better ones? Or was that never a viable concept as a main one?

By the time such technology was even possibly available arsenals were already in the tens of thousands, there was little argument for continuing them. You'd need faster scientific development, of course this would likely lead ot nukes being developed much faster than OTL as well...
 
By the time such technology was even possibly available arsenals were already in the tens of thousands, there was little argument for continuing them. You'd need faster scientific development, of course this would likely lead ot nukes being developed much faster than OTL as well...
Well it was really a political thing, ABM's were developed in the 60's, McNamara just did not like them and did his best to kill them, and pretty much succeeded. Some limited ABM is possible around 1970 if pushed starting in 1960, though by that time MIRV's start showing up and things get interesting
 
Top