Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Conventional warheads on ICBMs?
Message-ID: <1990Oct2.235223.23611@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 2 Oct 90 23:52:23 GMT
References: <1990Oct1.022048.3082@cbnews.att.com>
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: pjs@aristotle.JPL.NASA.gov (Peter Scott)
>... wondering whether ICBMs could be rearmed with conventional
>warheads and used against strategic targets in Iraq? ...
>... If we'd been attacked in Saudi Arabia in
>the early days after the invasion of Kuwait, could we have
>read off lat/long of targets from satellite recon and taken
>them out?

My technical objections to this, in my previous contribution on the subject,
occupied me to the point where I overlooked the more fundamental flaw that
I've orated about before:  this is *yet another* proposal to Win The War
With Strategic Bombing, an idea that didn't work in WWII and won't work
in the Persian Gulf.  Attacks on strategic targets in Iraq wouldn't even
slow down an attack on Saudi Arabia.  The supplies and equipment needed
for the attack would already be at the front.
-- 
Imagine life with OS/360 the standard  | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
operating system.  Now think about X.  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry