Quote:
Originally Posted by multiweb
I'd suspect that all US weapons delivery by now would be well above the atmosphere. From an efficiency stand point it makes sense to just drop some than flying them across continents and they have enough smart people who would have figured that out years ago.
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Hi Marc,
In order for the United States to have the flexibility to strike quickly,
not all nuclear weapons are delivered by ballistic missiles.
For example, the flight time for an ICBM from a base in North Dakota to,
say, Pyongyang. is approximately 30 minutes.
Consider a scenario where tensions have heightened on the Korean
peninsula to the point where it is believed that North Korea might
order a first strike against the US.
The United States might then likely deploy both submarines and B-52's
just outside of the North Korean defence system.
In such a hypothetical, then say the United States early warning system
satellites detected an ICBM launch from North Korea that was on a
trajectory toward the United States.
If it was known that the North Koreans had additional ICBM installations
that had not yet launched, the United States would deploy nuclear
cruise missiles from both the submarines and B-52's to take them out
as quickly as possible, the flight times of the cruise missiles being
considerably shorter than the 30 minute flight time of a retaliatory ICBM.
The B-52's use to be deployed with nuclear "gravity" bombs - meaning the
one's one drops from a bomb-bay.
In fact you will recollect from 1960 to 1968, the United States kept
wings of B-52's with thermonuclear gravity bombs on continual 24
hour airborne alert. At any one time either day or night, B-52's were
kept in the air by rotating aircraft and crews and by providing in-flight
refuelling so that they would be able to strike the Soviet Union at
short notice even if the United States ICBM installations were taken out
by a Soviet first-strike.
This was the premise of the movie "Dr. Strangelove."
However, it was clear even during Operation Rolling Thunder in the
Vietnam War where B-52's carpet bombed targets in Vietnam and Laos
that they were very vulnerable to air defence systems and several
were shot down by the North Vietnamese.
Today, with improvements in radar and missile systems, even stealth
bombers are more readily detected than they were during the Gulf War
and are vulnerable to being shot down.
Hence the US no longer equips the B-52's with thermonuclear gravity
bombs but instead they are equipped with long range cruise missiles,
including the option of nuclear tips.
The cruise missiles have terrain-following capability and are more
likely to reach their target than an aircraft at altitude.
As the document mentions, the US still has the ability to deploy nuclear
gravity bombs on F-15 fighters and plans to deploy them on the
new F-35.
Strategic planners always like to be able to provide options. However,
it is the multiplicity of these options and the concern that something
may one day go wrong in the command and control structure that
is still a very real concern today as it has been in the past.
Attached. Some snapshots I took some years ago of the wreckage
of a B-52 in a pond that was shot down with a SAM over Hanoi during
the 1972 Operation Linebacker "Christmas Bombing" campaign,
which was initiated by Nixon and Kissinger to try and get the
North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table in Paris.