Augustine Sedira
Banned
What if following the Berlin Blockade incident, the US uses all of their nukes to obliterate western Russia?
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 know the exact balance of land forces,
They could've obliderated most of it, especially once factories were mass producing nukes.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.
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.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.
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.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.”
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.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.
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.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.