Dispelling some fallacies of "what if's" and nuclear war

TheKinkster

Banned
First and foremost, I want to say that this is NOT, repeat, NOT, a slap at the couple of nuclear war threads we've had here recently, especially Macragge's, which I consider probably the single best-written piece of alternate history I've ever seen that wasn't written by a professional writer.
While they were brilliantly written, however, I've taken disagreement with some of the positions he and others have taken in that and other threads.
Speaking from my personal knowledge and of unclassified sources (retired Colonel, USAF, most of my career in SAC) I wanted to address a few of these things.

(1) The Soviets viewed their arsenal as defensive and never would have attacked/used nuclear weapons unless the United States/NATO had already done so.

Sorry kids, but not true. While the bolt-from-the-blue "OK, this seems like a good day to launch an all-out nuclear attack on the United States" attack was always very, very, very unlikely, the Soviet idea of what is "defensive", and ours, were two different things. For example, if circumstances had led to a NATO-Warsaw Pact war in Europe, and the Soviets felt that they were on the edge of victory, and either felt or got intelligence that the US/NATO were about to use nuclear weapons, it is VERY likely that the Soviets would have struck with those weapons first.
Also, the Soviets did not share our beliefs/illusions about such an exchange stopping at a tactical level...it is quite possible, and even more that their initial use of tactical nuclear weapons in Western Europe would have been combined with a strategic nuclear attack against the US and other nuclear powers in NATO, at least in the case of the USA an attempt to take out our land-based deterrent.

Note that I'm not saying these would have been wise actions, or guaranteed of success, by the Soviets...but that was their strategic thinking at the time (~1980-85).

(2) "The Soviets wouldn't have launched a first strike because only half or so of their missiles would have worked/not malfunctioned/etc."

Sorry, not so. While Soviet technology in these, and many other areas at the time, wasn't the equal of ours, it was quite capable of functioning at more than an adequate level under those circumstances. I believe Macragge used a figure of 75% in his thread, which is a little more like it but is still on the low side. The figure we most often used among ourselves in strategic thought and planning during that time period as an estimate was 80-85 percent for Soviet missiles, and 90 percent for ours, or strategic weapons operated by NATO allies (Britain/France). Personally, I feel the Soviet figure would have been around 85 pct, with ours between 90-95, but I would have been on the high end of what other people were thinking at the time.

I've got a lot more, but I want to split this up into easily digestible-responed to chunks :). I'll be back with more in a bit.
 
I quite agree on (1). We know now that until the late '80s Soviet war planning assumed full use of the nuclear arsenal from Day One. NATO made a distinction between tactical and strategic weapons, but I don't think that the USSR did.

On the reliability issue I guess we'll never know for absolutely sure.
 
While I welcome this thread, I'd like to throw in a few words of caution:

1. Politicians and plans don't get along.
2. No plan survives contact with the enemy.
3. Every large military has lots of plans, of all kinds, many of which they never expect to use.
4. People who would be used to carry out a plan aren't always told that in advance, which means when the time comes they often don't do what the plan intended them to do, even if they would do it if they knew about the plan.
5. Plans change over time.

A lot of people seem to assume that because they found one reference to a translated Soviet plan from 1962 that it accurately depicts what would really happen in 1985. In all probability it has all the relationship to what would really happen in 1985 as if it had been composed by monkeys on typewriters.
 
On the Soviet plans, like every other military they had a number of plans and options. The idea that basically they go from conventional to all-out nuclear in one go is as unlikely as following the SAC escalation ladder...

Plans have to be varied and flexible, because any sane military knows that as soon as it all hits the fan plans never fit whats actually going on. But if they have a nice fat briefcase full, at least they can offer the politicians something. Hopefully something that lets them survive and win, Generals are as unlikely as anyone to want to become a floating cloud of radioactive dust. So its not outrageous really to have scenarios which vary from the main (ie best-known) planning and resposnes, particularly if you put in some reasons why people are thinking the way they are....


As to reliability. Anyone whos been in defence or the military knows that the less often you test or use a system, the more likely it is to go wrong/do as it damn well pleases. Nuclear delivery systems are the least tested (for rather obvious reasons.....). Noone actually knows the true reliability of a complete nuke delivery system, because AFAIK noones actually tested one (well, actually the US has tested 2 - on Japan :)
Individual bits are tested, but because its so expensive the tests are carefully controlled and everything is checked multiple times to make sure it all works (very embaressing to do a £50M test shot and having it fail...:)
These are not the rl working systems operated by squaddies...and you really dont want to know how they treat some of their systems....!!

Of course, you have some idea. You can believe what the weapon maker tells you (foolish). You can believe what the branch of the services operating/lobbying for it tells you (even more foolish). You always assume your systems are less reliable then estimated (if you are sensible), and the enemies are better. But by how much....?? Noone knows the real numbers.
 
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