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

Would Soviet bombers and SLBMs be able to hit targets that ICBMs couldn't due to unavailability?
As I said, SLBMs could be used for some targets. Anything that's not hardened could certainly be hit by SLBMs. But they didn't have an unlimited number of those, either, and anything hardened, especially anything which is hardened and well away from the sea, is likely to require an ICBM. The Soviets had very few long-range bombers compared to the United States; they would have used them, but they could only realistically hit a handful of targets on this scale and anyway wouldn't get anywhere until long after the dust's settled (at least on round one).

There's also considerations of keeping a reserve. IIRC (@asnys knows more about this), there were in the United States proponents of a "long war" concept where the issue would not be decided in the first thirty minutes, but rather a nuclear war might last for months or even years. In such cases, you wouldn't want to shoot off everything at the beginning. Obviously, the weapons you wouldn't shoot off would be your most survivable, meaning SLBMs or road-mobile ICBMs. So they might have overtasked their ICBM force in the interest of preserving their SLBMs in the bastion for second-wave or later attacks, which again would make it a little hard for them to hit Southern Hemisphere targets (at least at first; they could always decide that nuking Canberra was now a good option, after all).
 
For a Able Archer type incident, and not a longer war, would a sub even be off the coast of Canberra?
No, almost certainly not. SLBMs were mostly not that long-range, so you'd expect to find them fairly close to the United States...being in the South Pacific would mean taking that sub off the table for attacking the US.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
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.
  • .
I grew up in a missile field. It was widely believe the standard Soviet doctrine was two warhead aimed at each silo. Not sure it is true, but it makes sense.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
For a Able Archer type incident, and not a longer war, would a sub even be off the coast of Canberra?

In Able Archer, they sortied the SSBN into just deep enough water to fire. Now it is mostly a guess of mine, this means they plan to fire all the SSBN missiles. If you wanted to hold them for a second strike, it would seem you would want to move them to their assigned and defended bastions, not have them hovering around the port.
 
Several important points:
1. MIRV'd missiles carry multiple warheads but they can't go hither, thither, and yon. The warheads can hit in an ellipse, limits depend on a number of factors but basically it is a relatively small area (you can't hit New York and Chicago with the same missile).
2. The Soviets could use bombers for tertiary targets, where destruction is not time critical, but they had a limited number of long range bombers and to hit South America, Australia/New Zealand, South Africa from the USSR they would need refueling and would almost 100% be missions where they could not return to Soviet territory.
3. Depending on when this happens, SLBMs are an issue. With Yankee class boats to hit targets in the locations noted in (2), they require long transits to get in range. This not only exposes them to getting sunk but also deploying like this is so far out of the ordinary it would be noticed. Once Deltas came in with longer range missiles they normally operated in "bastions" not far from Soviet waters, to reach these targets they would need to deploy well outside these bastions even with the longer range missiles. again, this would expose them to interception and be a huge red flag.
4. Expending long range bombers on one way missions for tertiary (not primary) targets, sending SSBNs well out of normal operating areas for the same purpose is a bad idea. As noted, both sides are going to want to keep weapons and delivery systems in hand for further use. This means expending bombers, which are highly flexible, and risking SSBNs for very marginal targets is foolish.

Basically to analyze this, you need to look at the weapons systems on both sides and see how many they had to use on targets away from Europe/USSR/China/USA-Canada. The advantage here goes to the USA which had more long range bombers (and tankers), more SSBNs, world wide bases, and aircraft carriers for tactical aircraft with nukes.
 
As I said, SLBMs could be used for some targets. Anything that's not hardened could certainly be hit by SLBMs. But they didn't have an unlimited number of those, either, and anything hardened, especially anything which is hardened and well away from the sea, is likely to require an ICBM. The Soviets had very few long-range bombers compared to the United States; they would have used them, but they could only realistically hit a handful of targets on this scale and anyway wouldn't get anywhere until long after the dust's settled (at least on round one).

There's also considerations of keeping a reserve. IIRC (@asnys knows more about this), there were in the United States proponents of a "long war" concept where the issue would not be decided in the first thirty minutes, but rather a nuclear war might last for months or even years. In such cases, you wouldn't want to shoot off everything at the beginning. Obviously, the weapons you wouldn't shoot off would be your most survivable, meaning SLBMs or road-mobile ICBMs. So they might have overtasked their ICBM force in the interest of preserving their SLBMs in the bastion for second-wave or later attacks, which again would make it a little hard for them to hit Southern Hemisphere targets (at least at first; they could always decide that nuking Canberra was now a good option, after all).

So the Soviet Union would just leave Austrailia a major American ally unmolested? Because I really really don't see that happening?
 
With the soviet Bastion area subs they would probably add their missiles to those heading towards the USA whilst SRBMs and IRBMs would go after Europe and the Mid/near east. They had missiles in the far east so they'd be used against China/Japan/Phillipines/Pearl. Whilst any SSBN's with shorter ranged missiles would probably fire at targets off the US again But those in the far east would probably be lobbing missiles at other targets (Singapore for example would probably get hit as its a huge port, Hong Kong too).
 
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So the Soviet Union would just leave Austrailia a major American ally unmolested? Because I really really don't see that happening?
A minor American ally, at best. It's far away from the Soviet Union and doesn't have a whole lot of population or industry. Good food and mineral producer, but not much else. It's not putting an army corps on the Fulda Gap or anything of that sort. The most important military installation people bring up in these threads located in Australia was a SIGINT facility, which is...well, SIGINT is worth about a wooden nickel after the balloon goes up. Something you hit if you've run out of more important targets.

So yes, I do see it happening. Are you going to hit some remote minor ally of your main enemy, or your main enemy? That's basically the question that was facing the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1980s. In some cases, this is easy: with SRBMs or IRBMs, the Soviets and Americans could easily hit allied targets like Britain, Japan, or Cuba without wasting weapons that could be used on the other guy (especially the Soviets, since they had a smaller alliance network). In the case of Australia and New Zealand, it's harder. Now, like I said, maybe the Soviets thought that they had killed the United States so hard that they could safely start allocating missiles to secondary or tertiary targets in the Southern Hemisphere. But it certainly isn't obvious that they would have thought that.
 
Japan would be MASSIVELY hit by a Soviet first strike. Not only because of the US military bases there (primarily Misawa AB, Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Yokota AB, Naval Air Facility Atsugi, Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Fleet Activities Sasebo, and all those bases on Okinawa) but because of the massive industrial capacity of Japan itself. And Japan is within striking distance of Soviet Air Force Frontal Aviation and Long-Range Aviation aircraft carrying nuclear weapons.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
A minor American ally, at best. It's far away from the Soviet Union and doesn't have a whole lot of population or industry. Good food and mineral producer, but not much else. It's not putting an army corps on the Fulda Gap or anything of that sort. The most important military installation people bring up in these threads located in Australia was a SIGINT facility, which is...well, SIGINT is worth about a wooden nickel after the balloon goes up. Something you hit if you've run out of more important targets.

So yes, I do see it happening. Are you going to hit some remote minor ally of your main enemy, or your main enemy? That's basically the question that was facing the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1980s. In some cases, this is easy: with SRBMs or IRBMs, the Soviets and Americans could easily hit allied targets like Britain, Japan, or Cuba without wasting weapons that could be used on the other guy (especially the Soviets, since they had a smaller alliance network). In the case of Australia and New Zealand, it's harder. Now, like I said, maybe the Soviets thought that they had killed the United States so hard that they could safely start allocating missiles to secondary or tertiary targets in the Southern Hemisphere. But it certainly isn't obvious that they would have thought that.

I have been thinking about this one. If the Soviet's War Plans involved a big strike against Australia and New Zealand, there would be a tell. The Soviets would have assets deployed in a sustained way that could hit Australia. The only easy way I can see doing this is by regular SSBN patrols in the Pacific well away from the Soviet coast. Did the Soviets do this?

And it would not be something that could arrive in a few weeks. The Soviets had an attack in 48 hour plan for the land forces, so the SSBN should be within 2 days easy travel of the launch zone. And seems like the Soviets lost a submarine with nuclear missiles that we tried to bring up from the floor of the ocean.
 
I have been thinking about this one. If the Soviet's War Plans involved a big strike against Australia and New Zealand, there would be a tell. The Soviets would have assets deployed in a sustained way that could hit Australia. The only easy way I can see doing this is by regular SSBN patrols in the Pacific well away from the Soviet coast. Did the Soviets do this?

And it would not be something that could arrive in a few weeks. The Soviets had an attack in 48 hour plan for the land forces, so the SSBN should be within 2 days easy travel of the launch zone. And seems like the Soviets lost a submarine with nuclear missiles that we tried to bring up from the floor of the ocean.
Yes, K-129 in Project Azorian. However, Soviet missile submarines had a perfectly valid reason for Pacific patrols: to hit targets on the West Coast! Additionally, the best evidence seems to indicate that K-129 sunk well north of Midway, far away from Australia. To the extent that its sinking location represents anything, it tends to argue more that the Soviets routinely deployed SSBNs along both coasts of the United States, as you would expect, and less for a Soviet plan to strike Australia and New Zealand.

However, the Soviets did possess ICBMs capable of hitting Australia from Soviet territory, at least by the 1980s. There would not, of course, be any indication that the ICBM in this silo was aimed at Canberra while the ICBM in that silo was aimed at Chicago, or vice versa, so there's no real way of disproving the hypothesis that the Soviets intended to strike Australia or other Southern Hemisphere targets short of an improbable opening of the military planning archives of that period.
 
By 1983, the Soviet Union had small missiles such as the MR-UR-100 (NATO code name SS-17 Spanker) and UR-100N (NATO code name SS-19 Stiletto) that could reach Australia and New Zealand from eastern Siberia. I'm not sure if either missile were based at ICBM silos in eastern Siberia, though.
 
So the Soviet Union would just leave Austrailia a major American ally unmolested? Because I really really don't see that happening?

Wouldn't it depend on the POD? If it's Able Archer, wouldn't most of the first strike be Counterforce, so maybe you try to hit the base (blanking on the name) at Sydney, but most effort would seem to go towards degrading at the retaliatory options of the US/NATO. Canberra isn't a port, so it's not useful in that sense and it's more countervalue. If the POD is a longer war that went nuclear, maybe they've planned a wider scale assault?

But it's possible I'm using incorrect thinking here.
 
To be fair I don't see why the Soviets would want to nuke Chile, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, or Argentina. South America really would be ignored at most honestly unless the Soviets had interests in South America by spreading communist influence. But other than that it is extremely doubtful anyone who throw a single nuke towards South America (except the Falklands).
 
When the newer classes of SSBNs came on line, with longer range missiles which could not be retrofitted in the older boats. As this happened the older boats were taken out of service - Hotels replaced by Yankees, Yankees replaced by Deltas. Unlike older tanks which can be stored and brought back to service relatively quickly (if properly stored), or even the aircraft stored in the boneyard, you can't "park" nuclear powered submarines somewhere, and then bring them back online. The USSR had limits in how many SSBNs they could have active at any time due to maintenance needs, staffing issues, and so forth so it is not like they hand a bunch of Yankees with shorter range missiles lying around ready to deploy as Deltas came on line - during the transition period the older SSBNs and their missiles were still needed for targeting against primary targets or stashing for later use. You could use SSGNs, both diesel (Juliett ) or nuke (Charlie) could use their missiles against land targets. The issue with that is that the usual loadout of missiles had, at most, one nuke the rest conventional. That could change, but then they are not available for conventional missions which are their primary job (anti-shipping). Furthermore the range of those missiles is relatively short requiring them to deploy well out of any normal area and relatively close to shore and land based ASW efforts. Finally any Soviet submarine could carry nuclear warhead torpedoes. Again the normal loadout was one nuke at most, like the SSGNs this could change but again this diverts them from their primary mission and the yield of nuclear torpedoes is relatively low, and the range is very short so basically the subs would literally have to be in the harbor to do this.

Another issue of using SSGNs/SSGs and SSNs/SSs in a nuclear strike role, basically arming them mostly or completely with nuclear warheads is that you've now lowered the threshold for using nukes - if the only missile/torpedo available is with a nuclear warhead then a sub may use it in self defense letting the genie out of the bottle too soon. Even if nukes are not used too soon, these classes of submarines have primary missions other than nuclear strike against far away targets. Their doctrine, training, and operational patterns for decades shows what their primary missions were: anti CVBG operations, anti-shipping, protection of SSBN bastions, etc.

I can't continue to state often enough hat the important factor is NOT how many nuclear weapons the Soviets have, it is how many delivery systems they have on the day the button is pushed. No matter what is done to tweak the system, 100% of missiles, bombers, SSBNs will not be available on button day. Some of the warheads fired will malfunction, some of the bombers that fly will be shot down or have mechanical issues and not hit the target, and even when everything works well every delivery system has a CEP defining accuracy, so some targets won't be hit in the sense that the warhead won't go off close enough to do the desired damage. When you are doing nuclear targeting, there are a bunch of mathematical formulae you use to take these factors in to account and come to a determination of what delivery systems/weapons need to be used (including how many) to ensure a given level of destruction of the target with a given probability.

In a nuclear exchange both sides know that the number of delivery systems they have won't be added to until well after the shooting stops (if then). If a target outside of Europe/USA/USSR is important (like an overseas base), then it is worth expending a warhead and delivery systems. If it is not so important, like Canberra, hitting it would be something to do later, maybe.
 
To be fair I don't see why the Soviets would want to nuke Chile, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, or Argentina. South America really would be ignored at most honestly unless the Soviets had interests in South America by spreading communist influence. But other than that it is extremely doubtful anyone who throw a single nuke towards South America (except the Falklands).

Aruba and this facility in Venezuala are certainly going to be hit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguaná_Refinery_Complex

Colombia also has a sizeable oil refinery complex. All are within range of Soviet submarines based out of Cuba as well as SSBNs in the Atlantic and ICBMs in the Soviet Union.

I agree that hitting other targets just to spread the horror seems unlikely
 

BlondieBC

Banned
By 1983, the Soviet Union had small missiles such as the MR-UR-100 (NATO code name SS-17 Spanker) and UR-100N (NATO code name SS-19 Stiletto) that could reach Australia and New Zealand from eastern Siberia. I'm not sure if either missile were based at ICBM silos in eastern Siberia, though.

SS-16 to SS -19

Sinner, Spanker, Satan, Stilletto. We had some lonely, conflicted guys in our military intel.
 
In the unlikely event that the Soviets would go after New Zealand, there's the consideration that New Zealand was no longer a US ally after 1985.
 
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