WI: The US Nukes the USSR

The entire U.S. nuclear arsenal in 1948 consisted of several dozen air-dropped fission weapons in the 10-50kt range, for what it's worth.
 
I don't think the US really has a large enough arsenal yet to obliterate Russia. You probably get something like Operation Unthinkable.
 
The entire U.S. nuclear arsenal in 1948 consisted of several dozen air-dropped fission weapons in the 10-50kt range, for what it's worth.

Minor correction: the entire US nuclear arsenal at the start of 1948 consisted of 0 operational fissionable weapons. It had the components for 7 such bombs at the start of the year, and 50 by the end, but those aren't the same thing. The following video (and the associated book) does a good job at explaining how hollow a threat the US nuclear arsenal in the late-40's actually was. In the early-50's it would evolve into something truly potent, but that won't do much for the US in 1948.

 
If the US nuclear arsenal is really that weak, a pre emptive strike would be so ill conceived as to be madness. I don't know the exact balance of land forces, but I can guarantee the lead time necessary for assembly and deployment would tip off the Soviets. Wasn't Soviet penetration of British intelligence pretty thorough?
 
I don't know the exact balance of land forces,

The quantity of Soviet troops in Eastern Germany alone were almost as large as the entire US army worldwide and the only combat-ready division in the whole US military is in the CONUS. US war planning in 1948 didn't envision that they had any chance of halting the Red Army short of the Pryrenee's and they were probably right.
 
So, either they achieve complete strategic surprise and obliterate the USSR land forces with an overwhelming alpha strike, or lose Europe to the Channel.

I just can't see it. If they draw up their forces the USSR will notice and make preparations to hide their formations. If they rely entirely on nukes, they have to assemble their nukes over a period of weeks and warn allies, who will NOT want to do this, and may well tell the Soviets to form a diplomatic block. If they don't warn their allies, the confusion and shock are going to severely nerf the advantages of surprise, if not completely nullify them.

It's just not the time or the place.
 

kernals12

Banned
I don't think the US really has a large enough arsenal yet to obliterate Russia. You probably get something like Operation Unthinkable.
They could've obliderated most of it, especially once factories were mass producing nukes.
 
They could've obliderated most of it, especially once factories were mass producing nukes.

Maybe you should watch the video I posted. The US wasn’t even sure they could do something as basic as successfully assemble the bomb components they had at the time, much less deliver them to their targets. Your spouting bravado based on pure wishful thinking, not objective analysis based on evidence.
 
Yes, and the domestic implications would be terrifying for Democrats even if the attack was successful. A haphazard surprise attack launched on a recent ally, without serious provocation. Millions dead, more starving, and our nation burdened with the invasion and occupation of a territory larger than the continental USA. And that's if this attack succeeded, against all odds! If it failed, Truman may well end up impeached and put on trial for war crimes.

The likely GOP line would be that the Democrats have gone power mad after nearly 20 years in control, and need to be booted out before they got us all killed. 1948 would be an absolute bloodbath ending with Dewey in the white house. Peace negotiations to follow, and NATO is destroyed before it really gets going. Who would trust us after this?
 
They could've obliderated most of it, especially once factories were mass producing nukes.
Not really, it's not like they have ICBMs yet and as stated in other posts the US is still building it's arsenal, with the superior numbers of the Red Army in Europe, I doubt by the time the nuclear arsenal is built up the US would have air fields within striking range of major Russian targets. At that point any use of nuclear weapons would probably be done to try to stop the advancement of the Red Army, unless Truman is understandably worried about dropping a-bombs on the territory of allied countries. Maybe they could use them against Soviet Satellites or in the Far East. They just don't have a strong enough arsenal for a preliminary strike to cripple the Soviets, and by the time they would, they wouldn't be able to strike the Russian heartland.
 
Not really, it's not like they have ICBMs yet and as stated in other posts the US is still building it's arsenal, with the superior numbers of the Red Army in Europe, I doubt by the time the nuclear arsenal is built up the US would have air fields within striking range of major Russian targets. At that point any use of nuclear weapons would probably be done to try to stop the advancement of the Red Army, unless Truman is understandably worried about dropping a-bombs on the territory of allied countries. Maybe they could use them against Soviet Satellites or in the Far East. They just don't have a strong enough arsenal for a preliminary strike to cripple the Soviets, and by the time they would, they wouldn't be able to strike the Russian heartland.

The B-36 can strike quite deep inside Russia and it was in service since 1948.
 
Wasn’t MacArthur fired because he foolishly suggested that nukes could tip the scales in the Korean War while the rest of the Pentagon argued very thoroughly and successfully to the Senate that it would just lead to a massive and global defeat for the US military?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...ns-why-general-macarthur-was-fired-180960622/
Other excised testimony revealed a fundamental reason for the administration’s reluctance to escalate in northeast Asia: There was precious little for the United States to escalate with. American air power, in particular, was stretched very thin. Hoyt Vandenberg, the Air Force chief of staff, told the committee that Korea was already claiming a large part of America’s available air strength. “The Air Force part that is engaged in Korea is roughly 85 percent—80 to 85 percent—of the tactical capacity of the United States,” he said. “The strategic portion, which is used tactically, is roughly between one-fourth and one-fifth. The air defense forces are, I would judge, about 20 percent.”

Many Americans, and much of the world, imagined the United States had boundless military capacity. MacArthur had suggested as much, regarding air power, when he had told the committee that the U.S. Air Force could take on China without diminishing America’s capacity to check the Soviets.

Vandenberg wasn’t going to disabuse America’s enemies of such notions, but he needed for the senators to hear, behind closed doors, that this was far from the case. “I am sure Admiral Davis will take this off the record,” Vandenberg said, referring to the officer overseeing the excisions, who did indeed take his remarks off the record. “The air force of the United States, as I have said, is really a shoestring air force.” Vandenberg had used the phrase in open testimony; now he provided details. One small, intrinsically insignificant country—Korea—was absorbing an alarming portion of America’s air resources. “These groups that we have over there now doing this tactical job are really about a fourth of our total effort that we could muster today.” To escalate against China, even if only from the air, would be reckless in the extreme. “Four times that amount of groups in that area over that vast expanse of China would be a drop in the bucket.”
One would need to be a serious fool to believe that the US was all-powerful in that period. If it was, it wouldn’t have lost the vast majority of its wars from 1945 to 1991.
 
Wasn’t MacArthur fired because he foolishly suggested that nukes could tip the scales in the Korean War while the rest of the Pentagon argued very thoroughly and successfully to the Senate that it would just lead to a massive and global defeat for the US military?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...ns-why-general-macarthur-was-fired-180960622/

One would need to be a serious fool to believe that the US was all-powerful in that period. If it was, it wouldn’t have lost the vast majority of its wars from 1945 to 1991.

The US was very powerful and would probably come out winning in both conventional and nuclear conflict, but the price that the US would pay is not political tolerable.
 
The US was very powerful and would probably come out winning in both conventional and nuclear conflict, but the price that the US would pay is not political tolerable.
That is a very debatable question and the US leadership strongly disagreed with your estimate, as I showed. If the US wasn’t capable of winning in Korea or in Vietnam, I seriously doubt it could win against the USSR.
 
That is a very debatable question and the US leadership strongly disagreed with your estimate, as I showed. If the US wasn’t capable of winning in Korea or in Vietnam, I seriously doubt it could win against the USSR.

The US Armed Forces was at their nadir during the Korean War due to rapid post WWII demobilization. The Army deflated from a 8 million man force in 1944/45 to about 590000 in 1950, with the consequential loss of effectiveness.

Also, the US forces and their opponents actually were fighting with more or less equal level of technology in the Korean War, something that would not be seen in later conflicts.

The US Forces wasn't engaged in a conventional conflict most of the time in Vietnam and its effectiveness in conventional conflict can be seen in North Vietnam's rapid change of stance after the Linebacker bombings.

One thing to note is that US actually had better nuclear capacity in both quantity and quality than USSR until at least mid-1970s. While USSR nuclear technology caught up in the 1980s and the size of USSR arsenal increased, the Soviets were very concerned about a USA first strike with the Trident SLBMs (first SLBM that is precise enough to do counter-force strikes), Pershing IIs IRBM and GLCMs that reduce Soviet reaction time. USA conventional capacity also improved to the point in the 1980s that NATO was confident in holding against a USSR/WP attack without using nukes.

At the end of day, military forces is a blunt tool for achieving political objectives and most of the reverse sustained by the USA were political. What political good would it USA gain invade North Vietnam and then fight PRC? US can win the battle, but the political price would be too heavy to pay.

One must be very careful in discussing the combat power of US Armed Forces during the Cold War due to frequent changes in size, doctrine and introduction of new technology. The Army that fought in Korea is a very different org than the one that fought in Vietnem and the force that was deployed to Desert Storm would be unrecongizable for the soldiers that fought in Korea.

@Matt Wiser @Matt @CalBear
 
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The US Armed Forces was at their nadir during the Korean War due to rapid post WWII demobilization. The Army deflated from a 8 million man force in 1944/45 to about 590000 in 1950, with the consequential loss of effectiveness.

One must be very careful in discussing the combat power of US Armed Forces during the Cold War due to frequent changes in size, doctrine and introduction of new technology. The Army that fought in Korea is a very different org than the one that fought in Vietnem and the force that was deployed to Desert Storm would be unrecongizable for the soldiers that fought in Korea.

@Matt Wiser @Matt @CalBear
The effectiveness still remains pretty questionable given its record during the Cold War. And as far as the Gulf War is concerned, the Iraqi incompetence reached such absurd levels that it would be an insult to the Soviets to consider their slaughter as representative of a NATO/WP fight (understanding the warfighting nadir that the Iraqi, Syrian and such represented turned the perception of the Israeli military from ’’best in the world’’ to ’’adequately trained to modern standards and surrounded by dead weights’’). Frankly, I would rather refrain from making any clear assumption on the winner of such a war, though if one thing is pretty sure given the history of warfare, it’s that technology has been a very secondary or tertiary parameters in wars. Logistics, political will, training and leadership have trumped technology more often than not. And when one looks beyond the complete bullshit that was the claim that Soviets/Chinese relied on human waves of conscripts (it’s astonishing to see that some people still believe the ahistorical nonsense of Enemy at the Gates), a war with the Soviets would seriously not look attractive. Particularly because it would most likely end with nuclear, biological and chemical hell being unleashed on everyone anyway.
 
The effectiveness still remains pretty questionable given its record during the Cold War. And as far as the Gulf War is concerned, the Iraqi incompetence reached such absurd levels that it would be an insult to the Soviets to consider their slaughter as representative of a NATO/WP fight (understanding the warfighting nadir that the Iraqi, Syrian and such represented turned the perception of the Israeli military from ’’best in the world’’ to ’’adequately trained to modern standards and surrounded by dead weights’’). Frankly, I would rather refrain from making any clear assumption on the winner of such a war, though if one thing is pretty sure given the history of warfare, it’s that technology has been a very secondary or tertiary parameters in wars. Logistics, political will, training and leadership have trumped technology more often than not. And when one looks beyond the complete bullshit that was the claim that Soviets/Chinese relied on human waves of conscripts (it’s astonishing to see that some people still believe the ahistorical nonsense of Enemy at the Gates), a war with the Soviets would seriously not look attractive. Particularly because it would most likely end with nuclear, biological and chemical hell being unleashed on everyone anyway.

My post above was not based on the Iraq war. Contemporaneous research and wargame is widely available.

Most of time, the US forces was deployed with restrictions and the sole conventional war that the US forces was the Desert Storm operation. That's why over-reliance of Cold War record is problematic.

The political will to use lethal technology enabled by sophisticated logistics is an issue.
The USA can win against North Vietnam, PRC and Soviet at the same time in the 1960s if it is willing to accept minor losses to continental USA, mid-serious loss to its allies and overseas garrison and the eradication of its enemies by doing a nuclear first strike of which the Soviet would have difficulty to counter. However, most people cannot stomach such strategy.
 
Minor correction: the entire US nuclear arsenal at the start of 1948 consisted of 0 operational fissionable weapons. It had the components for 7 such bombs at the start of the year, and 50 by the end, but those aren't the same thing.
Actually the US had the components for seventeen fission bombs at the beginning of 1948; forty three were built and six retired during that year. The available stockpile at the time of the Airlift was approximately thirty five weapons, mostly MK3MOD0 designs.
If the US had felt the requirement the production rate could have been significantly higher.

A war fought in 1948 would have started with Soviet advances across Europe but these would have been rapidly slowed by the tactical and operational use of nuclear weapons on force concentrations, rail junctions, stockpiles and production centres. Once more long range bombers (B-50 and B-36) were available Societ factory complexes, transport infrastructure and cities would have been attacked until the country fell apart.
 
The political will to use lethal technology enabled by sophisticated logistics is an issue.
The USA can win against North Vietnam, PRC and Soviet at the same time in the 1960s if it is willing to accept minor losses to continental USA, mid-serious loss to its allies and overseas garrison and the eradication of its enemies by doing a nuclear first strike of which the Soviet would have difficulty to counter. However, most people cannot stomach such strategy.
Ah, the idea of "winning" a nuclear/biological/chemical war. Yes. It just assumes that war is decided through Orders of Battle, something that hasn't happened often in History. And if your political/military structure is structurally incapable of acting on a "strategy", then it is not a strategy but intellectual masturbation. Like when people start ignoring what war is when they claim that the US could have won Vietnam but just lacked political will: they ignore what war is because political will is the cornerstone of war rather than a parameter to dismiss. So, any theory that requires a massive shift in political will is even less realistic than theories requiring seventy armoured divisions to appear from nowhere.

After all, looking at Orders of Battle and ignoring political will, Germany should have been crushed in 1940.
 
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