Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: ken%prism@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Reliability of Ballistic Missiles
Message-ID: <6799@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 23 May 89 04:32:05 GMT
References: <6747@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: ken%prism@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii)

In article <6747@cbnews.ATT.COM> jwm@stdc.jhuapl.edu (Jim Meritt) writes:
>
>Who cares enemy action?  Will the sucker work in the first place?
>And the soviet missles are donbe by the same crowd that can't keep cars
>going, right?
>
>BFHD.

Um, wrong...they're done by the same crowd that has a launch a month
or so and keeps men in orbit for a year.  Were I a betting man, I'd
take one of those low-tech, steel Soviet candles over one of our
super-sophistcated, titanium birds any day.  National pride and
wishful thinking aside, the Soviets build a better missle than we do.
They have many times the experience.

Now I have a question about accuracy.  In the 'real' world of nuclear
conflict, how useful is a nuclear weapon that has 50-yard accuracy
outside of a few, specific missions (taking out a silo or underground
bunker)?  I guess the deeper question is:  Given a confligration
where multi-megaton devices are being lobbed about, does precise
accuracy buy you anything?  After all, what good is a deep
communication bunker when all your means of production and a
substantial portion of your population is gone.  Put another way, does
buying a few expensive, accurate weapons beat more in-expensive, lesss
accurate weapons.

N.B.:  I AM NOT trying to start a 'why is nuclear war bad' discussion,
etc.  I am interested in what the tactical advantage of highly
accurate ballistic missles.

	...ken seefried iii
	   ken@gatech.edu
	   
	ken seefried iii	...!{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs, 
	ken@gatech.edu		masscomp, rlgvax, sb1, uf-cgrl, unmvax,
	                      ut-ngp, ut-sally}!gatech!ken