Academic article on the "window of vulnerability"- aka the perceived ICBM gap in the early 1980s.

 

Thoughts?

Many Many thoughts yes but I won't bore you with them all.

 

My take on the paper is that it seems well put together and the evidence backs up the statements made by the author. Unlike most nuclear weapons articles it didn't get sidetracked by the massive effects of even one well placed 100s of kT warhead.

 

There may well not have been a window of vulnerability but some of the reactions to the perceived window may have done their part in hastening the end of the Cold War. We all know nukes are expensive to create and maintain and a fictional vulnerability forced the West into upgrades and new weapons systems that kept the cycle moving in the USSR to continue developing more quantity, better accuracy, longer ranged, more costly systems to add to the existing (costly to maintain) mix. So the 'fictional' window in part led to very real expenditures that further pressed the USSR into the financial corner that helped bring it down.

 

 

Back to the idea of even a single warhead causing massive disruption is another opinion of mine that it doesn't matter if there was a vulnerability or not, even a few hits in the right spots (let alone the still expected hundreds of hits in populated areas) would certainly have taken the USA off the almanac of world affairs (think two ICBMs worth of warheads, a single warhead taking out 10% or more of the refining capacity of the US, a few more to bring the power grid to its knees, maybe knock out a couple of ports and you've more than crippled the US economy for decades. Could the same be done to the USSR, likely yes as it was already fairly close to the breaking point and upsetting the economy in any amount whatsoever (take out Moscow and all the central planning along with it and the USSR probably dissolves as a military and world power force). I've read fairly well justified books that explain how a single warhead in refinery country South USA could really do a number. I think any idea of a vulernability given the large number of warheads at each side's disposal, even after a sneak counter-force attack, in human and economic terms would be just plain nuts. There would still be enough force to ruin the other guy's infrastructure for decades. That doesn't mean the psychological and political idea of a vulnerability isn't important (cue Dr. Strangelove), far from it. Our favorite war room movie makes fun of the all too true and important application of so much irrational concern to the idea of 14,000 warheads being way too few if the other guy has 16,000.

The info about the relatively poor hardening of Soviet missile silos was interesting.

 

As for numbers of warheads and the nuclear precipice in general ...

 

"I don't give a hoot in Hell how you do it, you just get me to the Primary, ya hear!"

- Major T.J. "King" Kong