Non American/European targets that would definitely be hit in a 1980s nuclear exchange?

What are some non American/European targets that would definitely be hit if a full nuclear exchange broke out between the US and USSR in the 1980s when they had over 50,000 nuclear weapons combined?

My pick are the major oil fields in the Middle East and various ports that either side could use in the aftermath.

How far would the US/USSR go in targeting areas simply to deny their use/resources to their opponent?
 
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It's been often said on the board the Soviets planned to bring the entire down world with them... but I don't know if we've ever had an actual source.

I would imagine any allies in the southern hemisphere would be on the list. Australia, New Zealand in particular. Israel, Korea as well in the northern. China would be... dealt with by Soviet missiles.
 
Hitting targets in the Southern Hemisphere with missiles from north of the equator causes some guidance issues, as well as range issues. It is 12-14,000 km from USSR to Australia, longer to New Zealand. In spite of NZ being a declared non-nuke zone they might get hit. I expect Israel will get hit, and some Saudi bases or others in the Gulf that the US might use. Hitting oilfields in the Gulf would depend on whether the USSR wants them intact to be seized after the war. IMHO the basic idea would be hit targets that could help the US/west prosecute the wart or recover afterwards, or countries that could grow to be challenges to the USSR.

As far as the US goes, I imagine Cuba would take a nuke or two. Otherwise maybe Nicaragua gets one on the capitol, depending on when the war is. N Korea gets some. China will get some from the USA, how many depending. None of the Arab countries are worth hitting for the USA, even Libya. The USSR might hit South Africa, if it is pre-Mandela.

The big issue for targets outside of Europe for the USSR is long range delivery systems rather than actual bombs/warheads. They only have so many missiles and bombers, so expending some on New Zealand is way down the list. Targets in the Middle East/Gulf (and of course China) they can hit with short range missiles or tactical aircraft is another question.

The USA has the advantage of world wide bases, and also aircraft carriers so strikes outside of USSR/WP/China don't need to use up long range assets. Again the issue is delivery systems - and both the USA and USSR don't want to use all their weapons, because he who has the most toys at the end wins.
 

SsgtC

Banned
I'd put my money on both Korea's, Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines, both China and Taiwan, possibly Thailand, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Malta, Australia. Then, if anything is left, we might start seeing more southern hemisphere targets like South Africa, Argentina, the Falklands, Brazil, Angola.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Why would anybody ever hit the Falklands?

It's British, has a decent harbor, a military airfield with a runway long enough for strategic bombers (barely) to land, refuel and continue in their way. In no way would it be anywhere near anyone's first strike list. Prob not even on their second strike list. But it's one of those targets that gets hit because everything else of higher value has already been hit
 

CalBear

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Middle Eastern oil fields, Nigerian fields/embarkation points, Cuba (both sides are going to zap that poor island), Israel (at least the reactor, probably more than that) Cam Ranh Bay (whoever isn't holding is going to blow the pougies out of it), Subic Bay/Clark AFB Philippines, Yokosuka Japan, ROK, etc.

RE: Soviet targeting lists - Probably never going to be revealed, at least short of yet another real democratic reblossoming in the Russian Republic. AFAIK, the last U.S. targeting list released to the public dated back to Ike's first term. SIOP/target planning is the crown jewels, even if the actual plan has changed you can figure out the planners intentions by seeing the targeting list.
 
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My guess is that every significant oil refinery and oil loading facility is hit. No matter where it is. The oilfields are harder to target (and wellheads are scattered pretty thinly across a broad landscape) but the refineries and oil terminals are relatively few.

So they would almost certainly all be targeted.

(yes I know this is from the old game Twilight 2000, in this case I think they were dead on)

Major military facilities have already been mentioned.
 
Why would the USSR nuke Cuba?

Also for non European/American targets would the USSR be forced to rely mostly on gravity bombs and tactical missiles/artillery instead of ICBMs/SLBMs?

Same question goes for the US of course since they had a smaller arsenal than the Soviets in the 1980s.
 
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CalBear

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Why would the USSR nuke Cuba?

Also for non European/American targets would the USSR be forced to rely mostly on gravity bombs and tactical missiles/artillery instead of ICBMs/SLBMs?

Same question goes for the US of course since they had a smaller arsenal than the Soviets in the 1980s.
Gitmo would be a target. USN had sub hinters based out of there, the port facilities could handle anything smaller than a CVN, a MASSIVE SIGINT facility, and there was small, but quite potent, USMC GDF (effectively a reinforced company heavy on crew served weapons). For most of the Cold War the U.S. also maintained a Marine light attack squadron (A-7s for most of the period, Hornets toward the end of the Cold War) at the facility. It was a fairly small force, but fighting from prepared defensive positions would have gutted the Cuban ground forces in the case of an attack. As long as the U.S. held Gitmo, the Soviets would have been denied use of Cuban facilities, both port facilities and air bases.

The U.S. interest would be the exact mirror of the Soviet. Destroy and deny Soviet forces any facilities in the Western Hemisphere.
 
Well in 1983: Doomsday, many major Canadian cities were nuked, Japan was nuked for having US bases, China was nuked, South Korea, and Australia lost Sydney, Perth and Melbourne but surprisingly its capital Canberra was never nuked.
 
Well in 1983: Doomsday, many major Canadian cities were nuked, Japan was nuked for having US bases, China was nuked, South Korea, and Australia lost Sydney, Perth and Melbourne but surprisingly its capital Canberra was never nuked.

It was an Austrailian wank but yeah it should have been destroyed most capitals especially American allies I would expect would have multiple ICBMs and the MIRVs targeted at them
 
It was an Austrailian wank but yeah it should have been destroyed most capitals especially American allies I would expect would have multiple ICBMs and the MIRVs targeted at them
As sloreck notes, hitting targets in the Southern Hemisphere starts running into issues with delivery systems--neither side, especially the Soviets, actually has all that many missiles that can reach that far, so the Soviets hitting any target that's not actually American or nearby to the Soviet Union has this big question associated with it: Is this actually something we want to use one of these ~500 or so missiles on, or would we rather hit something of more immediate importance? Now, maybe the Soviets found enough targets for shorter range missiles that when they got around to targeting their long-range missiles they figured, yeah, actually we do want to use one up on Perth instead of plastering Diego Garcia, and we'd rather hit Brasilia than Ascension, and so on and so forth, but I'm honestly skeptical.
 
As sloreck notes, hitting targets in the Southern Hemisphere starts running into issues with delivery systems--neither side, especially the Soviets, actually has all that many missiles that can reach that far, so the Soviets hitting any target that's not actually American or nearby to the Soviet Union has this big question associated with it: Is this actually something we want to use one of these ~500 or so missiles on, or would we rather hit something of more immediate importance? Now, maybe the Soviets found enough targets for shorter range missiles that when they got around to targeting their long-range missiles they figured, yeah, actually we do want to use one up on Perth instead of plastering Diego Garcia, and we'd rather hit Brasilia than Ascension, and so on and so forth, but I'm honestly skeptical.

Yes the Soviets wouldn't plaster every major town in Austrailia that's a given but the capital and all major cities will have at least one if not more missiles targeted the Soviets had roughly a thousand ICBMs and the MIRV missiles at least a couple with being targeted to destroy the capitals and major cities of Key American allies which in this case in Austrailia due to the ANZUS treaty So yes every major city in Aussie is almost guaranteed to bite the dust in global nuclear war
 

SsgtC

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Yes the Soviets wouldn't plaster every major town in Austrailia that's a given but the capital and all major cities will have at least one if not more missiles targeted the Soviets had roughly a thousand ICBMs and the MIRV missiles at least a couple with being targeted to destroy the capitals and major cities of Key American allies which in this case in Austrailia due to the ANZUS treaty So yes every major city in Aussie is almost guaranteed to bite the dust in global nuclear war

But not all ICBMs are equal. How many of those thousand missiles had the range to hit Aus?
 
Yes the Soviets wouldn't plaster every major town in Austrailia that's a given but the capital and all major cities will have at least one if not more missiles targeted the Soviets had roughly a thousand ICBMs and the MIRV missiles
Only a subset of those ICBMs would be able to reach Australia.

More importantly, consider what else those ICBMs are doing:
  • Killing the American ICBM force dead. This absorbs a big portion of the force, since SLBMs capable of precisely hitting super-hard targets were rather late, especially with the range to hit the American silo fields in the Great Plains. This is absolutely the top priority target, and every silo will probably have several warheads targeted on it to make sure that it's dead--after all, you have to account for missile and warhead failure when you're doing the planning.
  • Killing as many SSBNs as possible. This means Naval Submarine Base King's Bay and Naval Submarine Base Bangor, basically. A few missiles each, most likely.
  • Taking out at least the main SAC bomber bases. The bombers might be able to return to any long landing strip to refuel (and there were basically an unlimited number of them...thousands, at least, far too many to realistically wipe out even with '80s-era stockpiles), but you can at least make their weapons inaccessible. Again, a few missiles each.
  • Killing NORAD. Again, big hard target, so they need ICBM precision to take it down. Given how tough NORAD was, I'm not sure how many missiles they would have targeted on it.
  • Killing Offut (the bunker there). Again, one or two missiles.
  • Probably killing Mount Weather and Raven Rock. Once again, a few missiles each.
  • Now that you've taken out American C&C and nuclear capability, at least as much as you can with ICBMs, you can start moving on to merely military targets...and oh god there are so many of these. Military bases and facilities, as many as there are (hundreds, in the 1980s, though many of those are fairly minor) are just the start of it. Afterwards you have rail yards, major highway interchanges, big dams, large power plants, major manufacturing facilities, important refineries, major ports...you can easily find enough targets in just the United States to occupy a thousand ICBMs, even MIRVed. Of course, many, many of these targets aren't hardened, and could be taken out with SLBMs. But it's not like the Soviets had unlimited numbers of those, either, so some of them are going to be hit by ICBMs.
That's why I'm skeptical. There are just so many targets for the Soviets to deal with in the United States (and I haven't even started on Canada!) that I strongly suspect that they would run out of ICBMs and SLBMs for American targets before they could possibly get to such remote podunk countries as Australia and New Zealand. Maybe they decide that Canberra is a more important target than, say, El Paso or something, but it's not obvious that they would make that decision. There's pretty much always more American targets to slag if you want to knock down their nuclear fighting capability, whereas Australia (certainly New Zealand) is probably never going to be a threat to the Soviet Union, even after a nuclear war.
 
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