Russians claim bomber flights over US territory went undetected

Refusals to acknowledge these Soviet treaty violations point to the perennial dilemma of what to do after detecting cheating. The Administra -. tion is doingitself and the country no favor by refusing to acknowledge the mounting evidence that the Soviets are developing a capability which seriously erodes strategic stability and will soon permit the Soviet Union to break out of the ABM Treaty. The Administration should document and publicize Soviet ABM activities and Treaty violations. It should accele- rate the U.S. ballistic missile defense (BDM) program. Unless Moscow can refute the evidence that its radar and weapons programs are not de- signed for an ABM role, the U.S. should abrogate the ABM Treaty.

www.heritage.org...

Immediately prior to the signing of the ABM treaty, the Soviets had developed a surface-to-air missile, the SA-5, which was observed to have a peculiar trajectory. The SA-5 was fired high above the atmosphere and then would descend to intercept and destroy enemy bombers. While technically such a trajectory could not be ruled out, logically, however, it could not be accepted as this type of trajectory represents the least efficient way to shoot down enemy aircraft. On the other hand, the SA-5?s trajectory would be just the ticket for shooting down incoming ballistic missiles which themselves travel above the atmosphere. Taking this into account, the SA-5 had to be an ABM weapon. But with the ABM treaty almost in hand, this fact was ignored and the treaty went into effect. The treaty remains in effect, limiting development of a U.S. ABM system. Meanwhile, Russian dual-purpose (anti-aircraft/anti-missile) missile systems like the SA-5 continue to exist.

www.thenewamerican.com...

SA-10 GRUMBLE (S-300P/PMU - 1/2/3, 5V55, 48N6, 9M96E2)
1,800 missiles per year, 10,000 by 1990, still in production
warhead 130kg HE or nuclear
speed 7500km/h

www.aeronautics.ru...

Washington, D.C.): Today's Wall Street Journal features an extraordinarily timely column by the newspaper's highly respected Assistant Editorial Page Editor, Melanie Kirkpatrick. Thanks to Ms. Kirkpatrick, a dirty little secret is now in the public domain: Even as Russian President Vladimir Putin goes to great lengths to denounce President Bush's commitment to defend the American people against ballistic missile attack, railing about the threat thus posed to the sacrosanct 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and seeking to divide United States from its allies, Russia is maintaining a national missile defense of its own that is clearly inconsistent with the terms of the ABM Treaty.

This revelation demands several responses: 1) President Bush should task his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board or some other independent blue-ribbon group to perform an immediate and rigorous assessment of former Defense Intelligence Officer William Lee's work on the Soviet/Russian NMD system and the classified official analyses that have, to date, minimized its strategic capabilities and significance. 2) Present the findings of such a study to the American people and U.S. allies. And 3) end the official U.S. practice inherited by Mr. Bush of allowing the United States to be the only nation whose missile defense programs are encumbered by the outdated and increasingly dangerous ABM Treaty, thereby clearing the way for deployment as soon as possible of effective anti-missile protection for this country, as well as Russia.

www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org...

And the only reason i don't post another dozen is because i do not want to take up that many pages.

Their EW radars are extremely vulnerable and are defiantly not as capable as they once were.

ALL radars are vulnerable in that they can be destroyed; what exactly is your point by suggesting that the Russians one's are by no means supernatural? At least a few of my previous quotes suggests that reports of the demise of the old Soviet EW system has been GREATLY exaggerated.

The combat ready and capability status of the remaining ones is also questionable. Most Russian EW radar sites are in former soviet states, some are still used by the Russians and other aren't.

MOST Russian early warning ( meaning all but one at the time of that report) are still there and still doing what they were designed to do as most Soviet built things tend to do long after they were built. They have also replaced the one in question.

Regardless they are vulnerable to a preemptive strike whether it be conventional or nuclear.

Even if their early warning fails completely ( which there is no reason to suspect it will) they at least have the capacity, all around the country, to shoot down the missiles in question with their dual use Sam/ABm's. Even if American early warning sees a missile coming there is absolutly nothing they can do about it ( at least not something they have admitted to) beside shooting back and thus 'avenging the dead' instead of protecting them before they died. America is FAR FAR more vulnerable as they have NO passive defensive options and will always have to escalate.

Gaps do exist in Russian ground radar converge and in Russian satellite coverage. This gap puts their remaining radar sites in danger and put their interceptors and nuclear sites in danger of being destroyed in a first strike.

Gaps that the Russians would be well aware of and have thus chosen to leave in place if they really exsists. If they think they can get away with it why assume their wrong? Why would you believe Russian and American civilians who will say anything, to diminish the threat Russia poses, to help them in their agenda of disarming America at all cost?

Continued.....

*

By November 1997, 68% of SPRN satellites and 48% of ground systems had exhausted their nominal service lives,

So American ICMB's will be spotted by satellites that are not in the 'nominal' part of their service lives? Tell me how that changes anything? It's this kind of deception that arms control groups are so famous for.

State Department spokesman James Rubin told a news conference that it would be difficult to assess the current situation over Russia's missile defense system because of its classified nature. "...Nevertheless, it's fair to say that we are concerned about the potential deterioration of Russia's ballistic missile attack warning capabilities without referencing any specific systems,..." Rubin said.
Yadernaya Bezopasnost magazine

Major General Vladimir Dvorkin, the Head of the 4-th Central Research Institute of the Defense Ministry gave some comments on the Post's publication in an interview to the Russian NTV (a TV company). However, he refused to talk about the current status of the Russian EW system. "...I am unable to speak or confirm how many hours we can or can not watch, because this matter is a state secret. Regardless of what I'll say, if these figures are good or not - I'll have to give my next interview being in jail somewhere in Siberia..." (NTV News, 22:00, February 10, 1999)

www.armscontrol.ru...

So the arms control 'experts' knows but the government has trouble figuring it out? Who's lying and who do you trust most in this case?

*

and the number of satellites dropped considerably.

And that is assumed to be a horrible unfrogivable thing in a system designed for redundancy?

*

By early 1998, only four to five satellites were still functioning instead of the optimum nine, barely enough to provide continuous coverage.[39,40]

The system was designed with redundancy in mind and it never required as many as is suggested anyways . At any time they needed ONLY ONE Geostationary EW Sat or at least 3-4 ( probably 4) Heo's to provide 24 hour coverage and if you look at page 47 of the following link you will find that they always had that and that is only looking at what they admitted to.

www.princeton.edu...

*

The SPRN satellite network was particularly hard hit in 1996, when not a single early warning satellite was launched. Some Russian sources have alleged that gaps in coverage sometimes last six hours at a time, rendering the satellite network nearly useless.

Ivan Safronov ( the source of this claim )is a correspondent of the newspaper Kommersant and beside that i do not know how he is qualified to make such a claim or who he is quoting. The satellite network could never be 'useless' and that sort of stupid claim is what has me concerned about his first one. Either way this is a classified matter and we do not REALLY know how many sat's they have or what each of them does.

Most Russian military payloads reaching the orbit would be identified only as Cosmos satellites with particular numbers. Any civilian satellites, whose purpose the government would not want to explain, would also receive Cosmos names. It was up to independent observers and historians around the world to struggle with a puzzle of secret space programs. They based their analysis on a combination of available official data and satellite tracking information.

The post-Soviet Russia adopted somewhat "westernized" approach to information policy on military space: the military launches are identified as such and receive traditional Cosmos names.

www.russianspaceweb.com...

*

The drop in the number of geostationary satellites in orbit meant that coverage had to be limited only to North America, and there was a brief period in late 1998 when there was not a single satellite in geostationary orbit, following the premature failure of the Kosmos-2350 after only three months in orbit.

The coverage only has to be of North America for the following reason

While the lack of sensors certainly was one of the factors in the choice of
the configuration for the first-generation US-KS (Oko) system, other factors
seem to have played an equally important role. First of all, the system was
apparently not required to provide complete coverage of the Earth surface.
Instead, the system was expected to provide much more limited capability of
detecting ICBM launches from U.S. territory. Launches of sea-based missiles
were deliberately left outside of the system’s scope, since they alone did not
pose a serious threat to the Soviet strategic forces. The SLBM threat was not
considered significant enough to warrant the efforts required to provide reliable
detection of sea-based missile launches.

Then, practical considerations precluded the choice of geostationary satellites.
First, a geostationary satellite that would be able to monitor U.S. territory
would be out of sight of any ground control station located on the Soviet territory.
Unlike the United States, the Soviet Union either was unable to deploy
ground relay stations on the territories of its allies or was unwilling to do so
(or both). Finally, despite the fact that an HEO constellation required more
satellites than a geostationary earth-orbit (GEO) one, GEO satellites would
have been less cost-effective, since early Soviet early-warning satellites had
very short nominal lifetimes (about two years on average). Launching shortlived
satellites in geosynchronous orbit would have been more expensive than
placing them onto HEO orbits.

www.princeton.edu...

As i said before they were still Heo's in orbit at that time and they provided coverage , if not redundancy, in the absence of the Geo one.

Continued......

*

Although the situation has improved somewhat in the late 1990s, the satellite early warning network was still well short of its full potential.

They never required a 'full potential' and ever part of the system contributes even in the absence of the others. The minimum requirement of being able to observe launches from American land based ICBM's was NEVER seriously compromised in part or even at all. Even with open source material ( and the truth of how many is in orbit is classified) there seems to be little if any reason for panick.

*

In the first half of 1999, SPRN's satellite fleet consisted of only three early warning satellites in high elliptical orbits (out of nine planned) and of only two satellites in geostationary orbit.

Link

Which is more than enough ( in fact redundant capacity) to ensure that the launch of American land based ICBM's can be detected. The Russians do not seem to fear American SLBM's much and probably so because they are fairly confident they can shoot down most of those considering how dispersed they will be. Some of the earlier source links indicates as much.

*

Having reached near-complete coverage of Soviet borders by 1991, SPRN ground radar network suffered serious breaches in coverage following the fall of the Soviet Union which left many of the stations outside of Russia's national borders.

And American early warning systems are all inside American borders?

*

The Russian government sought to rebuild the fragmented network. These efforts included the signing by CIS countries of the Agreement on Missile Warning and Space Monitoring Systems on 6 July 1992. However, only three out of nine SPRN stations remained on the territory of the Russian Federation.

And they retained rights to use all the facilities outside since the whole mess was staged to start with; that is however another topic entirely and i can show you my source material to back that claim if your interested later on.

*

The early warning system's situation was further complicated by the CIS states' rejection of Russia's proposals to develop some sort of "dual-use" role for the stations and to use them in the interests of their host countries. Nearly all work on completing unfinished radars stopped.

The unfinshed radars were not critical and American submarines could hardly all patrol in those small areas even if their missiles were a serious threat with their requirement for airbursting. Feel free to try spot the 'massive' holes in Russian defences that could be 'somehow' exploited

fas.org...
fas.org...
fas.org...
www.princeton.edu... page 32.

Do remember that these are not SINGLE radars either but complexes containing half a dozen or more spread out over the local area.

*

The multilateral 1992 agreement was followed by bilateral negotiations between Russia and other CIS countries to further regulate the status of the early warning stations. These negotiations have had mixed results, and Russia's dependence on other CIS countries for operating ground-based early warning radars has introduced an additional element of uncertainty about the system's effectiveness.

It would only cause uncertainty when the author does not do proper research or tries to obscure the truth. The negotiations did not have 'mixed' results as the system still provides all round early warning and that can not be considered 'uncertain' or a 'failure'

*

However, without the means to create a new network of radars based entirely on its own territory, Russia is left with no other option.

It would seem they do not need it as they DO have the means to build such if required.

*

The results of Russia's efforts to preserve the early warning radar network varied from country to country. Although Russia and Latvia signed a lease agreement in 1994 on the Skrunda station, the agreement expired in August 1998 and the station's two Dnestr-M radars ceased operation at the end of the month and were dismantled by the end of October 1999. The unfinished Daryal-UM radar at Skrunda was dismantled even earlier, in 1995.

And this was actually the only case where they did not reach a settlement but the author pretends it happened more often with his deceptive wording.

*

The SPRN stations' gradual obsolescence has also begun to threaten the system's effectiveness. This issue is especially relevant to the remaining older types of radars, such as the Dnepr and Dnestr-M stations.[11] Dnepr radars, in particular, exhausted their service lives in the mid-1990s, and aging has led to decreasing operational readiness and even occasional false signals.[3]

The Mir was also 'obsolescent' and it just kept going and going and then some. "Gradual' , 'threaten , 'effectiveness', 'older' , 'exhausted' , 'service lives' , 'aging', 'decreasing operational readiness' and 'occasional false signals' are all terms that could do with extensive qualification but considering the clear intent of the author i doubt he could get away with such claims when speaking to a informed audiance so his not even bothering to take a chance in this instance. Taking into account that Russian sources are used we may even pause and take note of the great press freedoms that exsists in that country......

Continued....

[edit on 20-5-2006 by StellarX]

*

By 1998, 48% of SPRN's ground systems had exhausted their nominal service lives.[39,40] Modernization of the aging radars, with the goal of extending their service life, has progressed slowly due to the low level of financing.

Link

They have the money and if they choose not to spend it on these system the systems either do not require it, in great Russian tradition, or they are simply not rated important in the overal scheme of ensuring Russian security.

Look, neither Russia nor the US can ‘win’ a full out nuclear exchange, both countries will be devastate to an unsustainable and unacceptable level.

If you read the sources i provided in my very first response you would have known better than to suggest this but it's clear that you just proceeded promptly to assuming that i MUST be ignorant for saying anything different than what you have convinced/chosen to believe. 'Winning a nuclear war is not only possible but exactly what the USSR/Russia were planning to do for decades and if you do not understand how such a thing is possible it's because you refused to do your homework as i asked you to.

Consider the size and nature of the effort involved: In the mid-1970s U.S. intelligence satellites revealed massive underground constructions in Russia. According to Major General George Keegan, former chief of U.S. Air Force intelligence, there were "incredible photographs of civil defenses of all types going up all over the Soviet Union."

In the 39 largest cities of the former USSR every apartment house built after 1955 had a nuclear blast and fallout shelter built into the foundation. Every new factory also had a shelter system. Underneath Moscow there were 75 huge underground command posts, each one as large as the Pentagon. According to Gen. Keegan, these were protected from nuclear assault by four hundred feet of earth fill and a hundred feet of reinforced concrete. Huge storage containers were also detected by USAF intelligence These contained water and diesel fuel.

At present, Jastrow said, our deterrent rests primarily upon our Trident submarines.
Soviet attack could destroy submarines in port (about 2/3 of our force), and the 200
Soviet killer subs could probably stalk and destroy some of those that were on station.
Because of difficulties in communications, about half the surviving submarines (maybe six)
would launch their missiles.

laissez-fairerepublic.com...

The vast Soviet network of shelters and command facilities, under construction for four decades, was recently described in detail by Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci.The shelters are designed to house the entire Politburo, the Central Committee, and the key leadership of the Ministryof Defense and the KGB. Some are located hundreds of yards beneath the surface, and are connected by secret subway lines,tunnels, and sophisticated communications systems. "These facilities contradict in steel and concrete Soviet protestations that they share President Reagan's view that nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought,"Carlucci said (Ariwna Republic, April 3, 1988). These
facilities reveal that they are preparing themselves for just the opposite." The shelters are also protected against chemical warfare agents, and stocked with sufficient supplies to allow the leadership to survive and wage war for months.In contrast, the limited US shelter system begun in the 1950s has mostly been abandoned."To have something comparable, we'd have to have facilities where we could put every governor, mayor, every Cabinet official, and our whole command structure underground with subways running here and there," Carlucci said. "There's just no comparison between the two."

www.oism.org...

Russia inherited most of the Soviet empire's illegal national ABM defenses. Although the Hen Houses and LPARs located in the successor states created significant gaps in coverage, Russia still controls 12 or 13 of those radars. Consequently, SAM/ABMs still defend most of the Russian Federation from U.S. ICBMs, much of the SLBM threat, and Chinese missiles. Scheduled completion of the LPAR in Belorus will restore complete threat coverage, except for the gap left by the dismantled Krasnoyarsk LPAR. Granted, the Hen Houses are old, but the United States has been operating similar radars for 40 years.

Despite its economic difficulties, Russia continued development and production of the SA-10, adding (in 1992-1993 and 1997) two models with new missiles and electronics and replacing more than 1000 SA-5 missiles with late model SA-10s having greatly improved performance against ballistic missiles of all ranges. Russia is protected by as at least as many (about 8500) SAM/ABMs as in 1991, and they are more effective. No wonder Russia shows little concern for its proliferation of missile and nuclear technology.

Even more impressively, Russia has begun flight-testing the fourth generation "S-400" ("Triumph") SAM/ABM designed not only to end the "absolute superiority" of air assault demonstrated by the United States in the 1992 Gulf War and the 1999 Kosovo operation, but also to improve Russia's illegal ABM defenses against strategic ballistic missiles. The S-400 is scheduled to begin deployment in 2000, more testimony to Russia's commitment to maintaining its national ABM defenses in violation of the ABM Treaty.

www.security-policy.org...

I have taken part in threads on Russian air defenses and checking those out would probably help.

Continued......

Mr. Lee's analysis is complex. To vastly simplify, he says he has evidence that Russia's surface-to-air interceptor missiles carry nuclear warheads and therefore are capable of bringing down long-range ballistic missiles, not just aircraft and shorter-range missiles, which is their stated purpose. Russia has 8,000 of these missiles scattered around the country, and Mr. Lee says he has found numerous Russian sources that describe how successive generations of SAMs were in fact designed with the express intention of shooting down ballistic missiles, which is illegal under the treaty.

www.opinionjournal.com...

The SS-18 was deployed in modified SS-9 silos, and employed a cold-launch technique with the missile being ejected from the silo prior to main engine ignition. The rocket was placed in a transport-launch canister made of fiberglass composites. The container was placed into an adapted R-36 silo. The specially hardened silo was 39 meters deep and had a diameter of 5.9 m. Prior to main engine ignition the missile was ejected from the container with the help of a solid-propellant gas generator located in the lower unit of the transport-launch canister. According to Western estimates, the SS-18 was deployed in a silo with a hardness of at least 4,000 psi (281 kg/sq. cm; 287 bar), and possibly as high as 6,000 psi (422 kg/sq. cm; 430 bar).

www.fas.org...

American silo's is ( as far as i know) designed to survive 300 psi only and if these numbers are correct ( they have been contested) it means airbursting ( all SLBM's) just wont do much if anything.

Industrial dispersal: The Soviets have been involved in an industrial dispersal program for more than 15 years. Their approach to the program has been and continues to be the siting of new industrial complexes in towns and settlements with populations of 100,000 people or less. The program has several advantages for the Soviets. First, it is of great economic importance from the standpoint of accelerating and expanding their economic development; this is especially true regarding growth of such sparsely developed areas as Siberia. Second, it prevents high concentrations of industry in a small number of large industrial centers and helps the Soviets make better use of their abundant natural resources. Third, dispersal creates a proliferation of aimpoints for U.S. strategic planners and greatly complicates targeting tasks.

Industrial hardening: The Soviets have an ongoing program designed to harden their industrial base. Included in this program are underground facilities, new plant construction techniques, construction of duplicate plants, retrofit hardening of existing facilities, and expedient techniques. The first three hardening methods can be productively utilized only for new facilities and require a long lead time for fruition. The fourth method, retrofit hardening of existing facilities, has near-term implications but is expensive. The fifth means, expedient techniques, is relatively inexpensive and has short-term implications; it will be the focus of this discussion.

If current Soviet expedient hardening preparations for protection of their industrial base are implemented on a large scale, the effectiveness of a U.S. retaliatory capability could be significantly degraded. By utilizing relatively inexpensive and simple expedient techniques such as packing machinery in sandbags, the Soviets could make their industry relatively invulnerable to overpressures of a few pounds per square inch (psi). Depending on the specific precautions taken in mounting and protecting machines, they can be made to survive overpressures in the range of 40 to 300 psi. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate specific hardening techniques.7

www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil...

I have another three dozen bits and pieces like these, JUST on the passive measures they took to fight and win a nuclear war, but i would rather not get banned just yet.

Neither country at the moment has a sufficient ABM capability to defend against full nuclear exchange.

America has NO ABM declared ABM capability but from open source we know Russia deploys thousands of read to launch missiles that will likely destroy most all the planes and ACLM', a large percentage of SLBM's and good part of the ICBM trying to deliver nuclear warheads on Russian strategic targets. If you studied the topic you would know this.

I don't even know why we are discussing this?

Because you had a chance to hide your ignorance by checking out if i were more , or less, ignorant than you were. Since you did not make use of the opportunity to educate yourself i decided to help you with the process.
Stellar

StellarX i see you are doing the work that some of us (Russians) should be doing and i appreciate that. However my knowledge,research methods and sourses cannot be compared to yours in any field so i would rather just enjoy reading your posts . Beside at the moment i am pretty busy with my uni exams to do any kind of research.

Part 1

For almost half a century, the world's most powerful nuclear states have been locked in a military stalemate known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). By the early 1960s, the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union had grown so large and sophisticated that neither country could entirely destroy the other's retaliatory force by launching first, even with a surprise attack. Starting a nuclear war was therefore tantamount to committing suicide.

www.foreignaffairs.org...

Despite the improvements, US military and intelligence reports say the Moscow system would still be relatively easy to defeat. The Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces told the House Armed Services Committee in 1987 that although the Soviets had spent over 10 years and billions of dollars developing an ABM system, the United States could penetrate it with a small number of Minuteman ICBMs equipped with "highly effective chaff and decoys," he went on to say that, "if the Soviets should deploy more advanced or proliferated defenses we have new penetration aids as counters."2 The Department of Defense has said that the Soviet system is no more advanced than was the US Safeguard system, which was developed in the early 1970's, but deactivated as soon as it was deployed in 1975 because of its military ineffectiveness and high cost.3 A 1989 report on Soviet Military Power also concluded that "with only 100 interceptor missiles, the system can be saturated, and with only the single Pillbox radar at Pushkino providing support to these missiles, the system is highly vulnerable to suppression."

www.ucsusa.org...

Many radars no longer operate or suffer power outages. Only three of the nine modern large phased-array radars wre in service as of the late 1990s. Three have been deactivated or never completed, and three are inoperable or barely functional. Seven of the ten older, less capable Hen House radars are outside Russia in former Soviet republics, and some may be shut down for political reasons. The Soviet radar system was being modernized when the country fell apart. One of the new replacement radars, in Latvia, was torn down in May 1995. Russia won a temporary reprieve against closing two older Hen House radars in Latvia, but that agreement expired in August 1998. The radar was one of those covering the critical northwestern direction. Other radars used by Russia were in Ukraine, at Sevastopol and Mukachevo; in Azerbaijan, at Qabala; and Kazakhstan, at Balkash. Some are functioning, but there have been disputes over finances and personnel.

www.globalsecurity.org...

This shows that it would require at least two W78 warheads from a Minuteman III, detonated at 225 meters, to achieve a kill probability greater than 80 percent for each interceptor silo. For the softer radar installations, a single W76 warhead detonated at 700 meters would have a kill probability of 74 percent. We have therefore assumed that each silo would be targeted with one ICBM with at least two W78 warheads at surface or shallow burst (approximately 200 meters), and that each radar would be targeted with two airburst W76 warheads from an SLBM.

www.thebulletin.org...

Russia must now confront the theoretical possibility that a future U.S. national missile defense (NMD) system would be the straw that breaks the back of Russia's nuclear deterrent. Russia today can barely cope with U.S. offensive power, let alone a combination of offense and defense, a one-two punch they fear could deliver a knock-out blow to their strategic forces.

The Pentagon argues that its proposed 250 interceptor NMD system is so limited that it could protect only against a threat from a few dozen warheads. Under the proposed START III Treaty, the Russians would still possess 1,000 to 2,000 warheads over the next decade and beyond. The Administration contends that such a large force gives Russia "the certain ability to carry out an annihilating counterattack on the other side regardless of the conditions under which the war began."

In reality, a surprise offensive U.S. strike could, under some conditions today, destroy all but a few tens of Russian warheads, and Moscow's control over those surviving weapons might be lost. In the event of such an attack on Russia, all the rest of its strategic forces would be vulnerable to quick destruction.

www.cdi.org...

It is essential to consider Russia's shocking calculation of the adverse effect of U.S. national missile defense on its national security. Russia today can barely cope with U.S. offensive power alone. On paper, a sudden U.S. strategic missile attack, an implausible but still basic scenario for Russian planning, could decimate Russia's strategic retaliatory forces. Today, fewer than 100 and perhaps as few as nine Russian warheads (out of an arsenal of 6,000) might survive (compared to 2,000 invulnerable weapons for the United States). Through Russian eyes, a U.S. missile shield around U.S. territory would threaten to mop up this residual force once it launched in retaliation.

www.cdi.org...

The Trident D-5 is a strategic system designed to strengthen and secure the US nuclear force. It has the capability to destroy hardened targets, as well as being highly effective against civilian population centers. The use of Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) warheads enables the Trident D-5 to destroy a large number of silo-based missiles in a first strike. However, the Russian and Communist Chinese reliance on mobile systems makes any such attack futile. For this reason, it is likely the targeting follows official US doctrine of retaliation strikes following a nuclear attack. The submarines carrying the Trident D-5 missile have sufficient range to attack from the safety of US territorial waters, as well as being numerous and nearly impossible to find while deployed. The combination of countermeasures and multiple warheads would overwhelm enemy missile defense, striking many vital population centers.

missilethreat.com...

LGM-118 Peacekeeper is an intercontinental-range, silo-based, solid propellant ballistic missile. It is currently the only truly modern missile defending the United States from foreign aggression. The program began as the MX system in the late 1970s, as a way to increase the US counterstrike capabilities against the Soviet Union, which was focusing on hardened shelters and a highly capable missile defense. The MX was designed with an advanced guidance system and a large number of warheads. It was the first US surface missile to use a cold-launch system, meaning it is ejected from the silo before the engine ignites, as the large size of the Peacekeeper prevents it from being launched out of Minuteman silos in the normal fashion. Like the Minuteman III, the Peacekeeper is technically a four-stage missile, due to propulsion on the Post-Boost Vehicle (PBV), but it is not referred to as such because of treaty restrictions. Multiple contractors were used to develop the Peacekeeper, but the primary coordinator for the program was Lockheed Martin.

missilethreat.com...

The Peacekeeper is the most advanced strategic asset developed by the United States. The system easily has the range to reach its primary targets in Russia and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). With its Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) warheads, powerful payload, extremely high accuracy, and modern penetration aids, the Peacekeeper is highly effective against multiple hardened targets, which is its main function. The original 50 Peacekeeper missiles could theoretically destroy as many as 500 Soviet missile silos. However, the Soviet deployment of road mobile systems, missile submarines, and early warning radars would render such an attack futile. For this reason, it is likely that the Peacekeeper missiles were targeted at Soviet cities, in keeping with official US doctrine.

The Peacekeeper is deployed purely out of Minuteman missile silos, although it was originally planned to deploy another 50 in railcars. The missile can be launched within several minutes of a nuclear strike, has emergency airborne launch controllers, and is protected from nuclear strikes with its hardened silo and shock-protected launch canister. In the worst case scenario, only a handful of Peacekeeper missiles could do a tremendous amount of damage to an enemy nation, greatly increasing the risk of a failed first strike. Its high reliability and survivability makes it extremely effective as a counterstrike weapon. Its cold-launch system allows for a sustained nuclear conflict, as silos could be refurbished and reloaded with another missile.

missilethreat.com...

No nation would survive. Russia is not invulnerable and while the US is CURRENTLY more vulnerable still no one would win.

[edit on 21-5-2006 by urmomma158]

Originally posted by ADVISOR
Not that I care about impressing you,

Few do so don't worry about that.

but the challenge to deny ignorance was tempting.

I think your trying to lead the wrong worse to a empty pond.

How about the Iranians, is the horses mouth enough?

Yeah, we all make a habit of believing everything they say.

But tensions between Washington and Tehran are high, and Iran is seeking any leverage it can use against the U.S. Yesterday, Iran's intelligence chief accused the U.S. of flying unmanned drones over Iranian territory to gather intelligence on the country's nuclear sites, echoing reports by U.S. news agencies in recent days that such flights are happening.

From your source

Iran's intelligence chief accused the U.S. of flying unmanned drones over Iranian territory to gather intelligence on the country's nuclear sites, echoing reports by U.S. news agencies in recent days that such flights are happening.

So America ran out of spy satellites and want to risk drones ( targets that they are) getting shot down just to make the American armed forces look even more incompetent than they currently do?

Is a few months current enough?
Perhaps more details such as this would help settle matters;

As long as someone is willing to link me to what they base their ideas/thinking on i am happy...

Hmm, typical statement isn't it. For a deflective stance that is, denial is often said in loose terms so as to not openly confirm or deny. Word game, read between the lines.

Well i have seen how highly intelligent people say very stupid things when a hundred camera's are pointed at them so i try not make so much of that. He said from the start that his department was NOT involved , in such activities, and since we can assume him to be a reasonably smart guy ( you don't get where he has by making sweeping statements very often) why not for arguments sake assume that his department really is not involved? Considering how many intelligence agencies America has there is still a few dozen left who could be if you would choose to assume the claims accurate.

I just happen to think that static nuclear/weapon related facilities do not move around very easily ( or at all really) so satellites really should work and can not be shot down making everyone look like the fools some imagine they are...

So in closing thanks for the work but i expect ( i hope really) America can do better than send drones for the Iranians to shoot down and brag about while dancing on the wreckage.

Anyways!

Stellar

[edit on 21-5-2006 by StellarX]

Boeing's Phantom Works is leading the effort to demonstrate the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The three-phase technology demonstration builds on design studies that Boeing had conducted for the laboratory. Flight testing is envisaged around 2006. The 6 m [20 feet] long MOP features short-span wings and trellis-type tails. The 13,600 kg [30,000 lb] weapon contains a 2,700 kg [6,000 lb] explosive charge. MOP is designed to go deeper than any nuclear bunker buster and take out 25 percent of the underground and deeply buried targets. It is expected to penetrate as much as 60 meters [200 feet] through 5,000 psi reinforced concrete. It will burrow 8 meters into the ground through 10,000 psi reinforced concrete. Northrop Grumman is working on with Boeing to develop this conventional bunker buster. They are under contract to Air Force Research Laboratory's Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

www.globalsecurity.org...

In the Summer of 1991, a team of Los Alamos nuclear weapons scientists delivered a briefing to the Defense Science Board, provocatively titled "Potential Uses for Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons in the New World Order."

Shortly after Bill Clinton entered the White House, Representatives John Spratt (D-S.C.) and Elizabeth Furse (D-Ore.) introduced an attachment to the FY 1994 defense authorization bill, prohibiting U.S. weapons labs from conducting any research and development on low-yield nuclear weapons. The measure, which was passed and signed into law by President Clinton, defined low-yield nukes as having a yield of five kilotons or less.

Destroying a target buried 1,000 feet into rock would require a nuclear weapon with the yield of 100 kilotons. That is 10 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Even the effects of a small bomb would be dramatic. A 1-kiloton nuclear weapon detonated 20 to 50 feet underground would dig a crater the size of Ground Zero in New York and eject 1 million cubic feet of radioactive debris into the air. Detonating a similar weapon on the surface of a city would kill a quarter of a million people and injure hundreds of thousands more.

www.globalsecurity.org...

Originally posted by StellarX
So in closing thanks for the work but i expect ( i hope really) America can do better than send drones for the Iranians to shoot down and brag about while dancing on the wreckage.

Your welcome, but I'm pretty sure that is how it will go. We all hope they could, or would do better, but the contrary is obvious.

The chances they would risk a drone is easy. It can be flown from around the world, and probably was easier to get permission to use, than a sat that may have been busy. Besides, if they shoot down a drone or enough of them, the Bush admin will have alame escuse to invade.

But it will probably have nothing to do with "sensitive material".

Overall, the Russian early-warning system seems to have reached the point
at which it has virtually lost its importance as an integral component of the
command and control system of nuclear forces. The quality of information about
missile launches that the system can provide and its reliability seem to be so
low that it is highly unlikely that this information will ever be used as a basis for
a decision to initiate a launch-on-warning strike. The only marginal capability
the system seems to provide is detection of a massive missile attack.

www.princeton.edu...

The number of strategic nuclear weapons that Russia deploys will dramatically decline over the course of this decade regardless of whether an agreement is reached with the United States. Most of Russia’s missiles and submarines will reach the end of their service lives by 2007. Projections show that Russia could deploy as few as 300 missiles and perhaps 20 strategic bombers by the end of the decade, with no more than 1,350 strategic nuclear warheads.8 This means that about 3,500 warheads in Russia, containing roughly 84 metric tons of fissile material, will be removed from deployment over the next decade.9 The question from a nonproliferation standpoint is, what will happen to Russia’s warheads and fissile material?

www.armscontrol.org...

"...While [its] nuclear shield is shrinking, Russian leaders have decided to rely on the deterrent power of the nuclear weapons more than ever -- to compensate for their even weaker and more chaotic conventional forces. President Boris Yeltsin recently signed a new national security doctrine that enshrines this idea. Russia also has dropped its pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons.

"'All we have is the nuclear stick,' said Lev Volkov, a prominent Russian military strategist. 'Of course, we should all together decrease this nuclear danger. But right now, we have nothing else. We're naked.'"

www.security-policy.org...

The Washington Post series suggests, though, that Russia is on the threshold of being stripped as well of much of its nuclear arsenal as a result of its inability to halt or compensate for block obsolescence of its present inventory. Importantly, this decline is expected to occur over the next few years -- with or without further arms control agreements. The Post reported:

* On 15 March: "The degradation of Russia's early-warning system comes as its strategic forces are also shrinking. The forces made up of nuclear-armed submarines, long-range bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles built by the Soviets during the Cold War are declining dramatically in both numbers and quality. Within a decade, experts predict, Russia will have a nuclear arsenal just one-tenth the size of the Soviet Union's at the peak of the superpower rivalry, because of arms control treaties, looming obsolescence and Russia's economic depression."

* On 16 March: "Independent estimates by authoritative Russian and Western experts show the same outcome in the next 10 to 15 years -- movement toward a drastically reduced nuclear force .... According to the estimates, Russia's nuclear forces are shrinking even faster than the START II treaty will require .... More likely, Russian and Western specialists said, Russia will wind up with an arsenal of 1,000 to 1,500 warheads a decade from now. However, it could fall to half that if the economy does not recover."

www.security-policy.org...

WASHINGTON -- The rationale for the United States keeping thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert is decreasing every day. Whether by treaty or unilateral action, President Bill Clinton could agree today to dramatic nuclear arms cuts for one simple reason: Russia's forces are declining rapidly. Economic and physical limitations will reduce Russia's strategic nuclear weapons from thousands to hundreds over the next ten years.

The START II treaty limits each side to 3000-3500 deployed strategic warheads. In 1997, Clinton and former President Boris Yeltsin agreed that the next treaty's limits should be 2000-2500 warheads. Now, Russia is proposing even deeper reductions, to 1000-1500 warheads. Why? Because, absent a sudden and costly military buildup, that is the likely future size of Russia's strategic forces.

In 1985, the Soviet Union deployed 10,000 strategic nuclear weapons. Today, Russia has fewer than 6,000. By 2010, it will likely have just over 1,000.

www.bu.edu...


[edit on 22-5-2006 by urmomma158]

Another key U.S. program with a strong negative effect on Russian nuclear control is the ballistic missile defense program. At this time the program, designed to enable the United States to destroy incoming warheads, poses a larger political than strategic problem for Russian leaders. But Russian war-planners cannot and do not ignore the prospect that even a modest anti-missile program — an interceptor system capable only of shielding U.S. territory from very limited nuclear strikes — could doom their already feeble deterrent force. The logic goes like this: The U.S. could decimate Russia's nuclear forces with a first strike; Russia could then only fire off a few missiles — which the U.S. ballistic missile system could intercept.

www.brook.edu...

No one winds in a nuclear war everyone dies.

The THAAD (Theatre High Altitude Area Defense) missile system is an easily transportable defensive weapon system to protect against hostile incoming threats such as tactical and theatre ballistic missiles at ranges of 200km and at altitudes up to 150km.

The THAAD system provides the upper tier of a "layered defensive shield" to protect high value strategic or tactical sites such as airfields or populations centers. The THAAD missile intercepts exo-atmospheric and endo-atmospheric threats. The sites would also be protected with lower and medium tier defensive shield systems such as the Patriot PAC-3 which intercepts hostile incoming missiles at 20 to 100 times lower altitudes.

www.army-technology.com... As of now no one winds and Nuclear stockpiles of both countries are decreasing.


[edit on 23-5-2006 by urmomma158]

[edit on 23-5-2006 by urmomma158]

[edit on 23-5-2006 by urmomma158]

Small nuclear weapons do not provide the proverbial broom with which to sweep the skies clean of attacking ballistic missiles and their accompanying decoys. Nuclear interceptors turn out not to be a panacea to make a ballistic missile defense practical.

High-yield warheads, which would destroy a warhead and an entire cluster of decoys, are risky because they would also destroy satellites on which the United States depends and would probably cause unacceptable EMP damage to the civilian infrastructure.

Low-yield warheads would reduce the requirements for interceptor guidance and make the endgame almost trivial if the proper target could be identified. They also are unlikely to inject too much radiation into the Van Allen belts, sparing the deterioration of LEO satellites. If discrimination fails, however, missile defense command must shoot at every probable target and even some improbable ones. And dozens of detonations of 1-kiloton interceptors would impair commercial satellites.

A simple model of radiation effects on satellites would lead to the suspicion that the damage depends primarily on the total nuclear yield in space due to all explosions, rather than on the size of either the average warhead or the biggest one used. If that is so, multiple low-yield interceptors are as bad for the space environment as a single larger-yield device.

Mini-nuclear warheads offer some advantages to defense, but they don't provide much of an edge. The gap between a nuclear defense being effective and being suicidal is too small to give useful encouragement to the fans of small nuclear weapons for missile defenses.

These are, of course, technical arguments. They do not prove that a nuclear missile defense system would not work, nor even that it would not work better than the Safeguard system from the 1970s, but they do show that nuclear-tipped interceptors don't do much better than hit-to-kill and other conventional systems.

These arguments do not even begin to engage the enormous political liabilities attending the development of a nuclear missile defense. If a practical and politically palatable missile defense is a national requirement, nuclear-tipped missile interceptors probably aren't the way to go.

www.thebulletin.org...

Nuclear explosives of the kind developed for Safeguard included the six-kiloton Sprint, which could effectively take out attacking missiles within a radius of tens of yards, and the megaton Spartan, which could reach out to a radius of several miles to destroy missiles. These or similar systems could be launched from the ground, sea, air, or space, and a genuine ABM program would utilize a combination of these launch options to provide in-depth defense.

www.thenewamerican.com...

The Pentagon experimented with nuclear-armed interceptors in the 1950s and 1960s and, for a short time in the mid-1970s, deployed an anti-missile system that relied on them. But the notion of nuclear explosions going off high overhead to block incoming missiles proved unsettling for many people. And the prospect that ionized clouds and electromagnetic shock waves associated with the explosions could end up blinding radar on the ground and scrambling electronic equipment eventually helped kill the plan.

When you actually look at the question, you find that it takes a very large warhead -- more than a megaton -- to destroy anthrax spores in bomblets that may be spread over a distance of five kilometers or more," he said.

"Worse, there are hundreds of civilian satellites as well as many U.S. military satellites vital to our national security that would be imperiled by nuclear explosions. And there are electromagnetic pulse vulnerabilities in an advanced society such as ours that would occur to any point within line-of-sight of the nuclear explosions."

www.washingtonpost.com...

Nuclear tipped interceptors don't solve all problems. Low yield ones cant only take out warheads within tens of yards and large yields will blind your own radars and not to mentiona a bunch of low yeilds will still blind you for a few hours.

Even if American early warning sees a missile coming there is absolutly nothing they can do about it ( at least not something they have admitted to) beside shooting back and thus 'avenging the dead' instead of protecting them before they died.

I thought the US had Patriot Missile sites were capable of shooting down such missiles...Maybe I'm wrong.

I thought the US had Patriot Missile sites were capable of shooting down such missiles...Maybe I'm wrong.

Those are only for TBM's not ICBMs which the THAAD and GMD will do.

anyways.............

The Pentagon experimented with nuclear-armed interceptors in the 1950s and 1960s and, for a short time in the mid-1970s, deployed an anti-missile system that relied on them. But the notion of nuclear explosions going off high overhead to block incoming missiles proved unsettling for many people. And the prospect that ionized clouds and electromagnetic shock waves associated with the explosions could end up blinding radar on the ground and scrambling electronic equipment eventually helped kill the plan.

"Worse, there are hundreds of civilian satellites as well as many U.S. military satellites vital to our national security that would be imperiled by nuclear explosions. And there are electromagnetic pulse vulnerabilities in an advanced society such as ours that would occur to any point within line-of-sight of the nuclear explosions."

www.washingtonpost.com...

Nuclear tipped one's aren't the final soultions with all those intereceptions you will blind yourself and not be able to attack for a while. I however don't think they should be completely ignored. However they need to accompied with kinectic and HE interceptors to balance out the side effects.

Two quotes from Arms Control Association press release, April 17, 2002

"Arming missile defense interceptors with nuclear warheads will almost certainly create more problems than it will solve," said Steve Fetter, a physicist at the University of Maryland who served as special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense for international security policy during the first Clinton administration. One problem Fetter noted is that employing nuclear-armed interceptors would actually impair the U.S. ability to defend against missile attacks. "High-altitude nuclear explosions would blind the radars and infrared sensors that track incoming warheads," he stated.

Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, a physicist and director emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, observed that nuclear explosions in space would "blackout communications on Earth within line of sight and produce long-lasting lethal effects on

satellites." Prior to entry into force of the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water, U.S. nuclear testing in space disrupted U.S. civilian radio and television signals and crippled some U.S. reconnaissance and communications satellites. Panofsky pointed out that a late 1950s series of small nuclear test explosions in space "generated interference with radio astronomy for a decade."

www.armscontrolcenter.org...

First, nuclear-tipped kill vehicles would most likely intercept an incoming missile in low earth orbit (LEO). At this height, it is still possible for radiation produced by a nuclear detonation to fall back to earth. If this intercept were to occur over American soil, the missile defense system would create a serious risk of the homeland being exposed to unnaturally high amounts of dangerous radiation. It is precisely this concern that inspired Representatives John Spratt of South Carolina and Tom Allen of Maine to mandate a study by the National Academy of Sciences of the effects of such an incident.

Unfortunately, in its rush to deploy a workable NMD system, the administration appears to be studying a form of treatment that will cure the disease but kill the patient. In seeking to prevent one ballistic missile from striking an American target, a nuclear kill vehicle could do serious harm to the very people it seeks to protect. Members of Congress are right to raise concerns about the implications of this system. One hopes they will convince the Pentagon's Defense Science Board to fully consider these costs by going beyond narrow technical considerations and assessing the overall effect of a nuclear-tipped interceptor on U.S. national security.

www.irc-online.org...

No NMD is perfect especially nuclear ones but those that use a balance should be the most effective.You can't stop a full nuke strike. Each side has enough to fry the other side. The new earth penetrators are also great for taking out bomb shelters in air strikes.Laos nuclear tipped interceptors will not do aswell gainst a chemical or biologicla attack. What if the missile carries a combination of 3 types then what are you going to do.Also cruise missiles are becoming big threats on the global market and they can be used in a decapitating nuclear strike. Even with advanced defenses it's still difficult. www.thebulletin.org...


[edit on 25-5-2006 by urmomma158]

[edit on 25-5-2006 by urmomma15

[edit on 25-5-2006 by urmomma158]

If an enemy missile is carrying a biological agent, however, destroying all of the agent could require “a very large warhead — more than a megaton — to destroy anthrax spores in bomblets that may be spread over a distance of five kilometers or more,” said Richard Garwin of the Council on Foreign Relations.

More importantly, a nuclear interceptor could emit an electromagnetic pulse that would pose a serious threat to a technologically integrated society like the United States that relies on RADAR and ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT, Garwin said.

A nuclear explosion in space could also endanger many U.S. civilian and military satellites, he added (Bradley Graham, Washington Post, April 11).

www.nti.org... Nuclear tipped interceptors have their own problems and the argument for them is only made because some people belive hit to kill won't work.

urmomma158:

urmomma158:
*

For almost half a century, the world's most powerful nuclear states have been locked in a military stalemate known as mutual assured destruction (MAD).

This is the fiction that the USSR never subscribed to but did their best to make the USA believe.

In most cases i could include far more source material but given that you do not seem interested in dealing with what i do provide i would rather not spam more than i have to make a point.

Consider the size and nature of the effort involved: In the mid-1970s U.S. intelligence satellites revealed massive underground constructions in Russia. According to Major General George Keegan, former chief of U.S. Air Force intelligence, there were "incredible photographs of civil defenses of all types going up all over the Soviet Union."

In the 39 largest cities of the former USSR every apartment house built after 1955 had a nuclear blast and fallout shelter built into the foundation. Every new factory also had a shelter system. Underneath Moscow there were 75 huge underground command posts, each one as large as the Pentagon. According to Gen. Keegan, these were protected from nuclear assault by four hundred feet of earth fill and a hundred feet of reinforced concrete. Huge storage containers were also detected by USAF intelligence These contained water and diesel fuel.

At present, Jastrow said, our deterrent rests primarily upon our Trident submarines.
Soviet attack could destroy submarines in port (about 2/3 of our force), and the 200
Soviet killer subs could probably stalk and destroy some of those that were on station.
Because of difficulties in communications, about half the surviving submarines (maybe six)
would launch their missiles.

laissez-fairerepublic.com...

The vast Soviet network of shelters and command facilities, under construction for four decades, was recently described in detail by Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci.The shelters are designed to house the entire Politburo, the Central Committee, and the key leadership of the Ministryof Defense and the KGB. Some are located hundreds of yards beneath the surface, and are connected by secret subway lines,tunnels, and sophisticated communications systems. "These facilities contradict in steel and concrete Soviet protestations that they share President Reagan's view that nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought,"Carlucci said (Ariwna Republic, April 3, 1988). These
facilities reveal that they are preparing themselves for just the opposite." The shelters are also protected against chemical warfare agents, and stocked with sufficient supplies to allow the leadership to survive and wage war for months.In contrast, the limited US shelter system begun in the 1950s has mostly been abandoned."To have something comparable, we'd have to have facilities where we could put every governor, mayor, every Cabinet official, and our whole command structure underground with subways running here and there," Carlucci said. "There's just no comparison between the two."

www.oism.org...

They may not have been planning to start a war but they were planning to fight and win such a war with nuclear weapons if forced. This is something one realises when you stop listening to what they said and started looking at what they were doing instead.

*

By the early 1960s, the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union had grown so large and sophisticated that neither country could entirely destroy the other's retaliatory force by launching first, even with a surprise attack.

There are very few certainties in war ( people will die ; stuff will get destroyed, etc) but the USSR certainly planned to strike first if they realised that war was unavoidale and they prepared their forces accordingly.

The Army groups's last major briefing to McNamara in the Fall of 1966, included three major new findings based on this research and experience. First, contrary to the NIEs, the Soviets had a nuclear war fighting, damage limiting strategy; hence they would target their missiles to destroy as many of our missiles and bombers as possible on the ground in order to reduce the threat to their own air and missile defenses.(10)

Second, contrary to the NIEs, the intelligence evidence indicated that the Politburo had approved engineering development of MIRV systems emphasizing counterforce rather than population targeting. The MIRVed successor to the SS-9 (eventually designated "SS-18") would open the "window of vulnerability" of MM silos (at 300 psi) by 1975, so that few MM could be expected to survive a Soviet attack by 1980. By the same token, allocating most of their ICBMs to counterforce attacks would reduce the number of warheads targeted on U.S. urban areas, hence NIKE-X defenses (and fall out shelters) would reduce U.S. population fatalities to far less than McNamara's "assured destruction" minimum of some 50 million, even against an all out Soviet attack.

Third NIKE-X would be cost-effective against a 15 year projection of the Soviet threat that, in retrospect, closely approximated the strategic ballistic missile arsenal actually deployed through 1980. The advances in NIKE-X technologies, combined with realistic costing of FSU missile responses, had brought the cost-exchange ratios down to approximate parity, ranging from 4:1 in favor of the
offense to 4:1 in favor of the defense depending upon various initial assumption

www.fas.org...

Continued....

[edit on 28-5-2006 by StellarX]

*

Starting a nuclear war was therefore tantamount to committing suicide.
www.foreignaffairs.org...

If a war was unavoidable anyways it as not suicide to try get in the first blow hoping to do prevent as much as possible damage being done to yourself.

The Soviets have a first strike arsenal: at least 5000 warheads of sufficient yield and
accuracy to destroy any US military target.The US has 900 comparable warheads.
(Although the total number of US warheads is impressive, Jastrow pointed out that the
majority are carried by the "air-breathing" part of our strategic triad -- B-52s and
cruise missiles -- which would be unable to penetrate Soviet air defenses.)

www.oism.org...

Current Systems and Force Levels. The operational Soviet ICBM force is made up of 1,398 silo launchers. Some 818 of these launchers have been rebuilt since 1972. Nearly half of these silos are new versions of the original designs and have been reconstructed or modified in the past 5 years. All of these 818 silos have been hardened, better to withstand attack by currently operational US ICBMs, and house the world's most modern deployed ICBMs - the SS-17 Mod 3 (150 silos), the SS-18 Mod 4 (308) and the SS-19 Mod 3 (360). Deployment of these ICBMs began only 5 years ago. The SS-18 and SS-19 ICBMs are at least as accurate and possibly more accurate and carry more Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) than the MINUTEMAN III, the most modern operational US ICBM. The SS-18 Mod 4 carries 10 MIRVs, and the SS-19 Mod 3 carries six whereas the MINUTEMAN III carries only three. The SS-18 Mod 4 was specifically designed to attack and destroy ICBM silos and other hardened targets in the United States. Each of its 10 warheads has more than 20 times the destructive power of the nuclear devices developed during World War II. The force of SS-18 Mod 4s currently deployed has the capability to destroy more than 80 percent of the US ICBM silo launchers using two nuclear warheads against each US silo.

The US force structure dates from the 1960s.The TITAN ICBMs and the B-52D-model bombers are being retired in view of their age and declining military effectiveness. The B-52Dis scheduled for retirement this year and the TITANs by 1987. The aging B-52G/H bombers will not be capable of effectively penetrating the Soviet air defenses in the mid-1980s. The MINUTEMAN force is increasingly vulnerable to a Soviet ICBM attack.

www.fas.org...

Ironically, the Soviet force forecast that McNamara rejected in 1966 proved to be conservative, without the stimulation of U.S. national ABM. Flight testing of MIRVed Soviet ICBMs began in 1972- 73 followed by deployment in 1975-76. All three of these new ICBMS, not just the SS-18, were designed for damage limiting, counierforce strikes, and by 1980 constituted some 90 percent of the total Soviet ICBM arsenal. Too support its nuclear war fighting, damage limiting strategy the Politburo funded a larger and more formidable strategic nuclear arsenal than McNamara thought he would provoke by approving U.S. ABM defenses.

The counterforce arsenal that the Soviets actually deployed in 1975-80 was only 10-20 percent larger than my 1966 forecast. The "window of vulnerability" of U.S. land based strategic missiles opened on schedule, and became one of the major issues in U.S. strategic debates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Furthermore, the total ICBM/SLBM warhead arsenal the Soviets negotiated and deployed under SALT was not significantly different than the 1966 forecast against which even McNamara admitted NIKE-X would be cost- effective.

www.fas.org...

*

www.ucsusa.org...

I covered all claims in the cited part in my response to Westpoint ( just above) earlier so no reason to do that all again unless you state why you disagree with my responses&explanations.

www.globalsecurity.org...

I covered this exact quote in my response to Westpoint. Feel free to ask more specific questions but i exposed most of those claims as outright lies.

This shows that it would require at least two W78 warheads from a Minuteman III, detonated at 225 meters, to achieve a kill probability greater than 80 percent for each interceptor silo.

And the interceptor would still have to miss the missile heading for that Silo meaning 200 warheads going to waste beside any getting shot down. How many missiles do you fire at 100 interceptors if you want to destroy each Silo for certain? If such a strategy were truly in evidence then the Moscow ABM system would have payed for itself rather well. In fact look at what your quoted source page also mentions.

U.S. (and British) nuclear planners responded to the Soviet deployment of a limited missile defense system with enormous firepower. The large number of nuclear weapons that were assigned to overwhelm the Soviet ABM system and the substantial technical efforts the U.S. undertook to defeat it provide chilling examples of the attention missile defense systems attract from hostile nuclear planners. It is a history that fundamentally contradicts the portrayal of missile defenses as non-offensive, threatening no one. Ballistic missile defense systems threaten secured retaliation, and for smaller powers, deterrence itself. ( continues on next post)

Continued