Plausibility Check: No Polaris SLBM

To be honest, being the OP, I've concluded it would be simpler and more efficient to delay all ballistic missiles for 5-10 years by eliminating the V2. It will get the same results in the end without having to explain why the Navy isn't deploying a weapons system with such obvious utility.
 
f1b0nacc1

I wasn't saying the solids issue would stop SLBMs entire, necessarily. It seems to me the issue becomes, does the Navy accept storables & the attendant hazards? The consequent question, do solids devlop eventually, IDK enough to say; enough disbelief at the top, maybe not.

That said, all I really had in mind was this issue delaying development of *Polaris.

Something else comes to mind, too: does the Navy refuse to fund SLBM programs & nukes out of its own budget? IIRC, USAF gets its nukes separate, funded by an outside agency, while USN has to pay for its own. A budget fight over this (however it's arranged IRL:rolleyes:) could be a stopper til it's settled.

Personally, I kind of like the missile ships idea, especially converted freighters or Libertys. The thought of a tramp steamer with a battery of ICMs...:cool:
 
Personally, I kind of like the missile ships idea, especially converted freighters or Libertys. The thought of a tramp steamer with a battery of ICMs...:cool:

Maybe something along the lines of the NATO Multilateral Force. This was a US proposal in the 60s to build a fleet of surface ships carrying Polaris missiles manned by international crews, to allow the European countries to participate in deterrence (and keep them from building their own bombs). There was even hope in Washington that the UK might eventually decide to scrap its own deterrent in favor of the MLF.

MLF got as far as modifying an Italian cruiser to carry Polaris, and sending a US destroyer on a cruise with an international crew. It foundered for a lot of reasons, but in part because the Europeans wanted to use submarines instead of ships, which the US didn't like because with subs we would have had to do the lions share of the ship building and crew training. If the USN is building missile ships instead of subs...
 
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If US SLBM's get canned, wouldn't the Soviets still push ahead with their own? And if the Soviets push ahead with their own, wouldn't that force the US into getting its own as well?
 
It would. As soon as the Zulus, Golfs, and Hotels hit the water, the USN and RN will be hollering very loud for missile boats of their own. Throw in the fact that the A-5 had its own trouble with the bomb release with that cartridge ejection of the bomb out the aft end of the weapons bay (and increasingly effective Soviet air defenses (SA-2, for example), and missiles begin to appear as a more effective way to deliver strategic weapons to target.

SECDEF and his advisors make their budget requests. And this is the first time ever in any forum I've heard someone defending RSM. And Aspin, for that matter. Johnson's failure was to assume that all future wars would be nuclear, and that ground forces weren't really needed. Wrong on both counts. MacNamara's folly (and there were many)....a lot of good men got killed in SEA because of restrictive ROE, especially in the air war over North Vietnam, and because of excessive micromanagment. He and his Whiz Kids thought they knew everything, and could fight a war like one ran a corporation (he was CEO of Ford before becoming SECDEF). He wasn't known as the "Edsel Mechanic" for nothing in DOD....Aspin and Rumsfeld committed another MacNamara sin: overriding generals when the generals know the ground situation or what is going to be the ground situation.
 
To be honest, being the OP, I've concluded it would be simpler and more efficient to delay all ballistic missiles for 5-10 years by eliminating the V2. It will get the same results in the end without having to explain why the Navy isn't deploying a weapons system with such obvious utility.

Won't that also stop the ALBMs from entering service in the right timeframe?
 
Won't that also stop the ALBMs from entering service in the right timeframe?

Yes, but that's not the only possible mission for the system. And it's the system I'm interested in, not the ALBMs.

Sorry for being so obscure, but the whole thing's a weird idea and I want to do more research before discussing it openly. I'm not sure it would have worked at all, and even if I can convince myself, if I don't have all my 't's crossed and 'i's dotted, y'all are going to rip it to shreds.
 
Here's how I rank SECDEFs in terms of the worst:

1) Louis Johnson (Truman, 1949-1950): Main qualification for the job: he contributed $4 million (in 1948 money) to Truman's campaign. Cut the Army and Marine Corps to the bone, cut Naval Aviation, and sided with the USAF in the B-36 v. Carrier controversy, which provoked "The Admrials' Revolt." His cuts left the military unprepared for conventional war, and after the initial failures in Korea, was told by Truman to either quit or be fired. He quit, and there was cheering on troopships headed to Korea when that was announced.

To be fair, losing the United States led to the Navy getting the Forrestals by and by, and those were much better carriers due to incorporating post-United States developments in carrier design and having a rather larger air group (if Wikipedia can be believed) despite being of similar size. I also have to point out that if putting Polarises on surface ships is a bad job, putting bombers on carriers is worse. Not only due you stand the risk of them getting sunk before they can do anything, but even when they do get their bombers off the bombers run a significant risk of being shot down before they can deliver their payload, which is probably half the reason (despite carrier aviation still being powerful in the Navy) the Navy's strategic nukes are underwater instead of in the air.

I also have to slightly defend McNamara in terms of space projects. I know it's practically heresy to say this, but him killing the X-20 and Blue Gemini was probably a good thing. Blue Gemini in particular offered very little to the Air Force, but even the X-20 was of questionable value (as was seen later with the much more capable Shuttle).

Now, if I were choosing bad SecDefs, I'd mostly agree with your list but add on Cheney, due to his unreasonable cuts in the early 1990s. In particular, as I've mentioned elsewhere, cutting the A-12 (which was reasonable) without providing funding for development of a true replacement project, either the A-6F or the various Tomcat upgrade proposals Grumman put forth. Or did you stick him in #5 and just not go that far?
 
Given the size of the Soviet submarine force in the late '50s and beyond, the concern about carrier survivability is a valid one. Especially for forward-deployed carriers in the Med and Far Eastern waters. Both Sixth Fleet and the Soviet 5th Eskadra (Med Squadron) were intermingled at times, with both the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War being two of 'em. Now, with the older Essexes being ASW carriers, that helps, along with P-2 and (later on) P-3, but still....one Echo II or Juliet with SS-N-3 or a Foxtrot with a nuclear-tipped torpedo getting through....not good. Then there's Soviet air defenses-which the carrier strike birds would have to face after launch.

I'd throw in Cheney after those four. Said it before in other threads, but killing the A-12 and not reviving the A-6F was a big mistake. If John Tower had been confirmed (he was rejected by the Senate), that may have worked out differently, and A-6Fs would be on today's flight decks. Along with F-14Ds (new-builds) and Super Hornets.
 
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