Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Cost Reduction and the Nuclear Deterence Message-ID: <13891@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 12 Feb 90 04:26:27 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Lines: 31 Approved: military@att.att.com From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >From: Randy Appleton >Well, anyhow, it would seem that to "destroy" the Soviet Union would take >about 600 EMT delivered on target (give or take some reasonable amount). >So why have such a large strategic force structure? 13,000 warheads at about >.4 EMT each is too many! The point of the large forces is being able to deliver those 600 EMT, or however many one thinks are required for one's vision of the worst-case war, after a devastating surprise attack has destroyed a large fraction of those forces on the ground. Force planning has to be done with an eye on the extreme worst case, not the best case or the average case. All that being said, I tend to agree that the US and USSR have more than they need. It could be worse. The original Minuteman deployment plans envisioned several thousand missiles, until MacNamara decided that one thousand was plenty and called a halt. (It's been said, with considerable justice, that a nation's military establishment tends to be haunted by its last big screwup. The US preoccupation with devastating surprise attacks is less surprising if one remembers that their last big screwup was Pearl Harbor. Similar lines of reasoning go a long way to explaining France's insistence on an independent nuclear deterrent [vs. the humiliating collapse in 1940], Britain's nuclear deterrent [vs. having to withdraw from Suez because the Soviets rattled their bombs and said "out!", with the US off in a snit and not willing to intervene], and the USSR's attack-oriented postwar military doctrine [vs. retreating to the gates of Moscow in 1941 and then fighting a long, devastating war mostly on Soviet soil].)