Relatively limited USA nuke arsenal

During the Cold War, the USA had a massive nuclear arsenal capable of destroying its enemies many times over. What if it didn't bother, and only retained the ability to destroy them 2 or 3 times to save money? This is not posing the question: what if the military money was spend on X, but if it was just saved.
 
It depends on what you mean by 'destroying it's enemies many times over'.

For example the USSR had about 1400 ICBM silos and given the likely reliability of US nuclear missiles each silo would need 2 or 3 warheads. So that alone is about 4000 warheads of the power and accuracy that can crack open a silo designed to withstand 2000psi overpressure.

Then there are the airfields on which long range nuclear aircraft are based, dozens if we are only counting intercontinental bombers but hundreds if we get down to Tu16s and Su22s both of which are a theatre threat. Again these aircraft are protected and their weapons are in hardened bunkers so these airfields will need multiple warheads, so maybe another 1000 warheads.

Then there are the naval bases where ships and subs with nuclear weapons are based, there would be maybe a dozen or more which will also require multiple warheads, big ones for these 'area' targets, so there's another 100 megaton warheads.

Nuclear weapons require a considerable amount if servicing, to replace decaying tritium and the like. So with a bunch of warheads in these repair/service pipelines these facilities will have to be hit, as well as nuclear warhead production facilities, so hundreds more warheads are required.

So before we even get into the limited war bullshit the US needs maybe 5000 warheads just to cover the basic most threatening targets in the Soviet Union. If we bring in other possible targets and broader contingencies the requirement goes up and up and up.

Sigh!:(
 
During the Cold War, the USA had a massive nuclear arsenal capable of destroying its enemies many times over. What if it didn't bother, and only retained the ability to destroy them 2 or 3 times to save money? This is not posing the question: what if the military money was spend on X, but if it was just saved.


In terms of costs. A quick internet search turned up that the US is estimated to have spent approx 5.5 Trillion dollars on Nuclear weapons from 1940 thru 1996 (See http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/schwartz )
(I didn't drill into this to review what was considered to be a "nuclear weapon.")

Pricing a cheaper nuclear force is a bit complicated as some of money spent historically would have been spent on basic research vs weapons procurement. Some nuclear weapons delivery systems also have non nuclear roles as well which complicates this further.

You probably need to define the number of warheads, and types of weapon systems this limited nuke arsenal would have before one can take a stab at estimating out what the lower costs would have been.

There is some some data from various historical studies that can be found on line such as:

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/111xx/doc11183/80doc14c.pdf

That can give some insight into possible cost savings (in this case re the SLBM force..)

I suspect cost estimates for systems such as the ALCM, B1, MX etc are also available.

Looking at other nations (ie. France and China ?) may also give you some ideas for smaller nuclear forces that presumably were intended to pose a threat to the USSR but I'd be cautious in using their costs as a guide line for what the US would have had to spend.

Maybe as very rough guess a few trillion could be saved over several decades if the US made substantive cuts ???

Hope this helps.
 
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Probably need a POD in the 50s to prevent the "massive retaliation" strategy from taking hold to keep the arsenal size down. Maybe something that butterflies the need to go straight to nukes to defend Europe from conventional assault?

I can see one potential issue with keeping the nuclear arsenal at the "just enough" size based on nuclear deterrence theory as I understand it.

Let's assume the goal is an arsenal big enough to perform a counterforce strike as posited by Riain's post, though as they showed that may stretch the definition of a "limited" arsenal! The alternative is an arsenal sized for a direct escalation to countervalue, i.e city-busting. I think that would be unlikely; the pretense that the decision makers could stop somewhere along Kahn's escalation pathway short of full MAD-level exchange is lost (even though the so-called "counterforce" scenarios would still cause massive collateral damage to civilian populations). Even if you did go pure countervalue, you'd probably still be dealing with arsenals of 1500-2000 deployable warheads just to compensate for warhead and device reliability as well as Moscow's ABM shield.

Anyways, the big risk in either "just enough" scenarios is that you'd have to move to a launch on warning posture. Assuming you kept the triad, a surprise attack could potentially lead to the loss of the bomber and ICBM force before you could retaliate, leaving you dependent on the SLBMs. That might be okay now with Trident, but back with Polaris/Poseidon you might not have enough to guarantee MAD. I could see this paradoxically increasing the risk for nuclear war because there is a lot less leeway in the system to deal with something like the training tapes incident!

If the US was committed to the minimum possible arsenal, I wonder if you would see space-based second strike systems to eliminate vulnerability to a first strike? In that case you may not end up saving any money compared to OTL!
 
Probably need a POD in the 50s to prevent the "massive retaliation" strategy from taking hold to keep the arsenal size down. Maybe something that butterflies the need to go straight to nukes to defend Europe from conventional assault?

Perhaps during the cold war era US could simply keep their strategic systems more or less as they were historically deployed and simply not develop many of their tactical nuclear weapon systems intended for use in Europe as a cost savings measure ??? That would still preserve the strategic balance and keep the MAD concept more or less intact. Not sure how much money this would save but it would allow entire programs to be cut which would save both R&D and deployment funds. Not sure if this really fits the OP's criteria though.
 
Perhaps not have the communist paranoia and the bomber, missile gap and sputnik scares in the 50s. A couple less paranoid kneejerk reactions replaced by more level headed analysis might lead to a more measured nuclear buildup under more influence from the budgeteers.
 

Tovarich

Banned
I think there's a case for saying that nothing less than a change in American capitalism will prevent the massive stockpiling of nukes.

There never was a missile gap, the USSR missiles were fractional compared to the US stock, but it was in the interests of the industry/military complex to keep the Soviet bogeyman in the public mind in order to get as much profit/product as possible.

Is there any way, within US capitalism, for the dark arts of PR & political lobbying to be kept out of it?
 
I think there's a case for saying that nothing less than a change in American capitalism will prevent the massive stockpiling of nukes.

There never was a missile gap, the USSR missiles were fractional compared to the US stock, but it was in the interests of the industry/military complex to keep the Soviet bogeyman in the public mind in order to get as much profit/product as possible.

Is there any way, within US capitalism, for the dark arts of PR & political lobbying to be kept out of it?

The missile gap just happened later. USSR had more Warheads than the USA after 1978

Was it Soviet Capitalism that got their arsenal so large after the USA stared to reduce the number of nukes in the '70s?
 

Tovarich

Banned
The missile gap just happened later. USSR had more Warheads than the USA after 1978

Was it Soviet Capitalism that got their arsenal so large after the USA stared to reduce the number of nukes in the '70s?

Heh, well the USSR were State Capitalists, after all.
If anything their military/industrial complex (with all the political machinations that entails) was even more blatant than the US's.

But I don't think that late '70s blip can be held responsible for the otherwise constant US lead in numbers - those new missile & bombers Reagan brought in weren't developed from scratch after 1980.
 
Remember "warheads" means everything from "backpack" nukes to large bombs/missile loads. You have nuclear mines, torpedoes, and depth charges for the navy. You have nuclear landmines, atomic artillery shells, and tactical nukes from the Davy Crockett to the battlefield short range missiles for the army. In addition to the strategic missiles and bombs (AF & navy), the AF has nuclear tipped air to air missiles (genie), and don't forget nuclear warheads for Nike anti-aircraft missiles and ship based SAMS. As you can see, well beyond strategic warheads you have lots of nukes of various sizes. Another reason for the proliferation of numbers was that you started out with high yield warheads, but its more efficient to use 2 or 3 smaller ones for the same target, so once you had mirv's the number of weapons went up, but the overall yield per missile may have remained the same or even decreased as the gain for bigger yields really only counts against severely hardened targets.
 

jahenders

Banned
The missile gap arguments may have been in accurate and those arguments did serve some peoples'/company's political/budgetary interests. However, that doesn't prove that it was all a fraud. If your main adversary shoots a few things into orbit with rockets that can just as easily carry a nuke and then loudly proclaims that his country is mass producing them "like sausages," you're foolish if you don't worry at least a bit. When your existence is potentially on the line, it pays to be careful.

Determining the true state of the Russia nuke arsenal was the main focus of the U-2 flights. Those flights showed that many suspected areas were NOT actually missile fields, but they never saw all. Had Gary Powers been able to finish his flight it would have ruled out one of the last suspected sites, but he didn't. So, even after he was shot down we couldn't truly be sure.

There never was a missile gap, the USSR missiles were fractional compared to the US stock, but it was in the interests of the industry/military complex to keep the Soviet bogeyman in the public mind in order to get as much profit/product as possible.

Is there any way, within US capitalism, for the dark arts of PR & political lobbying to be kept out of it?
 
Assuming that the USA is able to keep track of all of the targets that would need to be destroyed, and have a comfortable margin of error, how many nukes are necessary? And what is the exact number that they had OTL? I am counting strategic and tactical nukes here, to be clear, not nuclear landmines, depth charges, ect. Good posts so far.
 

Tovarich

Banned
The missile gap arguments may have been in accurate and those arguments did serve some peoples'/company's political/budgetary interests. However, that doesn't prove that it was all a fraud.
Look, when you say "fraud".......I'm not suggesting some deliberate conspiracy went on.

Just that during WWII those sections of US industry concerned with creating The Bomb became used to the idea of "Here's as many dollars as you want, just don't breathe a word to anyone."
Is it any wonder they wanted to keep that sweet deal going forever?

And tackling that post-WWII doesn't mean an abandoning of capitalism, anymore than Teddy Roosavelt tackling the Trusts (or have I got that totally wrong?) :confused:
 
Assuming that the USA is able to keep track of all of the targets that would need to be destroyed, and have a comfortable margin of error, how many nukes are necessary?

Curtiss LeMay supposedly had a scale something like
Boulders
Gravel
Dust

for the size of the rubble after SAC was done
 
Look, when you say "fraud".......I'm not suggesting some deliberate conspiracy went on.

Just that during WWII those sections of US industry concerned with creating The Bomb became used to the idea of "Here's as many dollars as you want, just don't breathe a word to anyone."
Is it any wonder they wanted to keep that sweet deal going forever?

And tackling that post-WWII doesn't mean an abandoning of capitalism, anymore than Teddy Roosavelt tackling the Trusts (or have I got that totally wrong?) :confused:

The Manhattan Project was a government program.
 
The area would have been nuked so many times that everything would have been turned to dust.

I think at one point, Moscow and surrounding areas had around 1000 Megatons allocated.

Fratricide among incoming waves of bombers thought to be a real problem, leading to scheduling timeframes.

Supposedly when asked on all this Overkill, a just invented term, and LeMay replied ' didn't the just want the Rubble to bounce, but to bounce twice'
 

Delta Force

Banned
The offensive nuclear arsenal would by necessity be smaller if nuclear armed interceptor missiles were deployed to defend population centers and strategic sites. Prior to President Kennedy's decision to pursue parity with the Soviets, the United States/NATO had such nuclear supremacy that it would have been feasible to produce both offensive and defensive nuclear devices.
 
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