Gautam said: > 2. The reason for the size of the American arsenal was > to guard against a counterforce strike by the USSR
Sure. However, there are several factors at work here. Firstly, there's the number of Soviet targets that a US retaliation would have to be able to hit to destroy the Soviet Union. Secondly, there's the number of warheads that the US could deliver to the USSR following a Soviet attack. Thirdly, there's the delay between the initial strike and the retaliation. By keeping a reasonably large number of strategic bombers on fifteen minute alert (actually, SAC kept a number of B-52 bombers airborne and on attack trajectories for many years), having ICBMs prepared to launch on the detection of an attack, and dispersing warheads in SLBMs, the US could assuredly use a substantial portion of its nuclear force to retaliate while the Soviet missiles and bombers were still on their way or shortly thereafter. The SLBMs even provide a retaliatory capacity after a reasonable "cooling off" period, if that's desired. However, let's suppose that only 10% of American can be used for a retaliation. In that case, you need ten times as many warheads as you have Soviet targets to destroy. This number is itself far from clear, and was severely inflated by rivalry between the branches of the US military. (Personally, I think the possibility of losing, say, ten cities would sufficiently deter a totalitarian state and the prospect of losing even one would deter a democracy.) And far more than 10% of the American arsenal would reach its targets even in the worst cases. Even if you want to destroy a hundred Soviet cities you won't need more than a thousand strategic nuclear warheads. (I couldn't find the figures for target inflation in Rhodes' _Dark Sun_ or the discussion of inter-service rivalry. I did find some interesting figures though. In April 1950, the CIA had estimated that 200 nuclear (fission) bombs would be enough to destroy the US, so presumably the number to destroy the USSR would've been comparable. The US arsenal then was 298 bombs. In 1953, the JCAE had decided that 2010 bombs would wipe out the US. The US arsenal stood at 2422 bombs in 1955. By 1961, the US had 156 ICBMs, 144 Polaris SLBMs, 1300 strategic bombers and 18,638 nukes compared with the USSR's 44 ICBMs and 155 bombers. In 1962, the US arsenal had grown to 27,100 bombs.) According to Rhodes in _Dark Sun_, Miroslav Nincic examined the economics of the arms race in 1982 and found that levels of US and Soviet military spending were only weakly coupled: "The arms race is imbedded in circumstances proper to the domestic political and economic systems of the superpowers in addition to dynamics inherent in the interaction between the two nations... Strategic doctrines are designed, in large part, to justify weaponry that the arms race has imposed on both the United States and the Soviet Union." Rich VFP Scorpions In A Bottle _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
