On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 13:57:28 GMT, Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine said:
> OK. So one would have to be literate in a particular genre. The Army Air > Corp started targeting power generation and distribution in the metro NY > area in the late '30s, to see what a strategic bombing campaign against > national civilian infrastructure could accomplish. Results are mixed, from > the empirical experiences in the WW2 period, through GW1 and the Yugoslav > war, and the conclusion is ... it is wicked difficult, even with lots of > expensive planes and many, many fine bombs, The problem is that late 30's strategic bombing involved very dumb bombs, and you had to leave a LOT of craters to take out a power line. Current bombs are a lot smarter, but still suffer from the fact that unlike the average factory or troop bunker that's mostly solid, a power line is still mostly air. On the other hand, a few operatives with a backpack full of demolition gear could take out a few 765kv lines *quite* easily. Any military special-ops team that *couldn't* do this one and get away unseen without a scratch would be considered a total failure. And remember - the enemy we're presumably defending against has a much higher supply of operatives of whatever training level is needed than their supply of aircraft. I'll predict that if we *don't* have an attack on the power grid in the next 10 years, it's because the attackers have come up with something else they consider even more interesting as a target. A downed power line, even though it may have more economic impact, has less emotional impact.....
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