Counterfactual part 4

 Counterfactual part 4: This is a continuation of the post of a while back. The questions were

1. What might have conventional combat in Europe at this time (1964-1975 basically Vietnam Era+Yom Kippur war) looked like?
2. If the war escalates to nuclear exchanges what are we looking at?

I think for the second question I'm going to assume an attack coming out of interactions resulting from the Yom Kippur war.  For the first part I'm leaning  strongly on this document Assessing the Conventional Forces Balance in Europe, 1945-1975 in particular Chapters 4 and 5.

Looking at conventional forces near the end of this period there were really two schools of thought. The Optimists including the then  Secretary of Defense (Schlesinger) and many of the analysts held that the qualitative advantages (better aviation hardware and doctrine, better anti tank defense, the preliminaries versions of "smart" weapons) combined with the natural advantages of defense would provide the NATO forces with a mild to moderate advantage which should let them stop an assault by the Warsaw pact. The Pessimists including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as many of the NATO military leaders felt that to steal a phrase "Quantity had a Quality all of its own". 4-5 US divisions had been diverted to Vietnam in the late 60's/ early 70's.  The Soviets had been increasing their numbers strongly, NATO's technological gap was slowly being eroded as things like the T-72 and newer aircraft came online. In addition the Warsaw Pact had superior material (armored troop carriers) and doctrine for combined arms operations. It should be noted that MUCH of the increase in the Soviet Army was actually deployed on the Sino-Soviet front as China was no longer a reliable ally. That said they did maintain the levels of the western forces, itself a feat. There was a clear advantage in numbers of divisions, however many of those (about a 1/3) were other Warsaw pact armies which might be needed to suppress/control their own populations. Also many of the Soviet and Warsaw Pact divisions would need additional manpower and materiel to be full strength and that mobilization would make obvious the intent giving NATO a fairly long lead time to prepare. 

I tend to favor the JCS (the pessimists). Much of  what the Optimists were depending upon was proving to be less effective than might be desired in Vietnam (although down the road that technological advantage grows). Also at this point the JCS brass are still Korean War and WWII veterans and are realists in their view of combat as well as command and control in that situation. Over the whole period the Soviet conventional strength grows so the later the war starts the worse for the NATO forces. A final issue is that throughout the period the Nuclear forces are moving closer to parity. This means the threat of nuclear response/retaliation to prevent an attack becomes far less viable than it had been in the '50s or early 60's. These factors  combined with moderate conventional superiority might also embolden the USSR. However even given the slight advantage it is not clear there is any advantage making a grab in the European front. The USSR is also tussling at the margins with their one time ally of China. Korea and Japan might be tempting, but both are hard nuts to crack. So we sit with the tit for tat border wars in Southeast Asia and Africa and sabre rattling in the Mideast. I think unless the Soviets could see a clear quick victory they knew this would quickly degrade into a war of attrition for which they had the materiel but without a clear need no real intent to carry through.

The nuclear front seems less clear. The most likely source of an exchange seems to be from the period of the Yom Kippur war in early October of 1973. With surprise and some new technical advances (TOW missiles, better quality SAM air defense) Egypt and Syria's attacks start making progress against the Israeli forces. About 3 days into the war Prime Minister Meir is thought to have put the (limited) Israeli nuclear forces on alert (see here ). US forces went to DEFCON 3 later in the month near the end of the conflict on October 25th. This was apparently due to some faulty technical data combined with a Soviet transport ship approaching Egypt. It was at the time thought to contain nuclear weapons although later information (perhaps from post the Soviet collapse?)  has revealed it did not. This jump to DEFCON 3 is thought to have been a signal to the Soviet government (see this article here note: this is paywalled you'll have to sign up for a free account that will let you have 100 reads a month) that their further intervention in the conflict interfering with ongoing peace talks was not to be tolerated. I think things are most likely to have gone bad near the start if instead of Israel getting control of the situation things had continued to degrade. If Israel felt it was going to be "pushed into the sea" they would use every tool at their command. Their leadership still had people who remembered and had been alive during the Holocaust and that would weigh heavily on their sense of duty.  They likely would have, like Samson, taken the temple down with them to save what they could of their people.With the nuclear genie loose in the middle east the Soviets might have felt a need to restrain the US/Nato forces from intervening against their allies and that could have escalated. 

Time wise this is after SALT I but that has little effect as it only locks forces numbers in place and includes the ABM treaty. Looking first at US forces (always easier) the 1973 DOD AR has a nice description of the forces at page 67 of that document

No major changes in deployed U.S. strategic retaliatory forces will be evident in FY 1973, although we are continuing to make qualitative improvements in our forces. At the end of that fiscal year, our strategic offensive force levels will continue to include 1,000 MINUTEMAN missiles, 54 TITAN missiles, 455 B-52 aircraft (26 squadrons), 72 FE-Ill aircraft (four squadrons), and 656 POLARIS and POSEIDON missiles carried in 41 nuclear submarines. In the strategic defensive forces, we will reduce to 585 manned interceptors and 755 surface-to-air missiles on site, together with associated warning and command and control systems.

I think the Minuteman missiles are primarily Minuteman II transitioning to Minuteman III. The Minuteman II had a single W56 warhead with ~1/2 MT yield and 1600m CEP. The Minuteman III had a 3 warhead MIRV bus with three W62 warheads with a yield of 170KT and a CEP of ~240M. What the split is is not obvious, The Minuteman III were being deployed starting in 1970 however there were Minuteman II missiles in operation until 1992. Assuming a 80/20 split on the II/III that yields 800 W56 warheads and 600 W62 warheads. The Minuteman II are most likely for countervalue strikes (cities, manufacturing and softer military sites). The Minuteman III have moved clearly into the realm of counterforce capability even with their smaller warhead their 480m CEP seems like enough to get likely kills on a silo. These are some of the most dependable missiles ever built, and the warheads are also well understood, and SAC is pretty near its peak so maybe 85-90% success rate.

The Titan missiles are Titan II missiles in hardened silos unlike the Titan I of the last post. They still carry the 9 MT W53 warheads. These are plain and simple countervalue weapons. I leave my 80% success rate from the last time.

Looking at the bomber forces there is a question of how many of those 455 B-52 were actually on nuclear alert. B-52D and G (in particular the G without ECM hardware) had been part of Rolling Thunder in 1972 estimates are as high as 80 were in use for that and ultimately over the Vietnam War ~30 were lost or destroyed. Assuming deployment in squadrons 30 squadrons of 12 yields 360 which seems possible. Looking at this List of B-52 units  I count over 40 squadrons active in 1973 (by looking at deactivation dates of bomber wings). 40 would be 480 B-52 so over the 455 the DOD AR has. Given that I'm just going take the 455 number as the best I can get. They can be equipped with SRAM missiles with 100 mile standoff range and 170 KT warheads. They can carry one of three different free fall weapons, the B-41 a either  25 MT dirty monster or a 10MT clean version, the B-53 the free fall version of the Titans W-53 with a 9 MT yield or the B61 with a settable yield up to 400Kt. The B-61 is small enough I'd think they could carry several, not sure about the others especially the B-41. Given the B-41 was designed for a high altitude drop I doubt it would have been loaded as low level attack had been the standard since the early '60s. It's hard to tell how effective the B-52 would have been. Certainly the Anti Air defenses of the Soviet Union were perhaps some of the best in the world. That said the Bombers aren't going to arrive until well after the missiles have come in and things like air defense and PVO bases would be high on their targeting list. Add to that the ability to suppress anything that even vaguely looks aggressive with 170 KT SRAM missiles and hordes of EW and maybe their odds of getting through are better than in the 1962 timeframe? To some degree the bombers are almost irrelevant, just piling on. But you can't hold the bombers for later they're exposed so they're use it or lose it to the Soviet missile strike. 

I suspect the FB-111 will just be used to prepare the way for the B-52s and to attack IRBM and SRBM sites in Europe. They're quick and agile but short ranged and potentially vulnerable  to AA as seen later when used in the conventional role vs Libya in the '80s.

This leaves us with the SSBN. There were 41 of them. The first 10 were Polaris only (Washington and Ethan Allen classes) and likely using Polaris A3 missiles at this point. The other 31 had larger tubes and could fit the Poseidon but the Poseidon had only been being fitted for a little over 2 years by October 1973 How many switched to Poseidon by that point isn't clear, but I suspect the changes were quick as by late 70's they're switching to Trident C4 missiles. I'm going to assume about 1/2 had made the transition so say 15. There are 16 missiles per sub so 416 Polaris A3 each with 3 MRV(not independently targetable) W-58 warheads  at 170 KT each for a total of 1248 warheads. And we have 240 Poseidon missiles with either 10 or 14 W-68 MIRV warheads. I'll assume the 10 configuration as it gives better range so 2400 40KT warheads. I'd say an 80% success rate seems feasible. The Polaris are probably for soft targets only, the Poseidons are more accurate but not quite as good as the Minuteman III and the smaller warhead means less ability to take out hardened targets. The SSBN force (known as 41 for Freedom) has one prime purpose, a retaliatory strike should a Soviet first strike debilitate the land forces.

At this point if your head is not spinning from the numbers here is a quick recap to make it worse. A land based launch of 1054 missiles with 1454 warheads. The SLBMs add another 656 sub launched missiles and 3648 warheads. That's a total of 5102 possible warheads. Splitting the difference on my success rates and averaging 85% that yields 4337 (rounded up) hits on Soviet (and potentially Warsaw pact) targets all of this arrives within a period of less than 1 Hour. Moscow does have the A35 Anti missile system permitted under the ABM treaty protecting it, but that is only 64 missiles. A barrage from a single Polaris A3 equipped sub could easily overwhelm this and not appreciably reduce the forces available for the rest of the USSR. The 455 strong bomber force is effectively irrelevant arriving 6-8 hours later (if at all) and simply making the radioactive debris bounce.

These numbers are so ludicrous, so insane as almost to make one laugh, except you realize that this probably effectively leaves no more than 10-15% of the Soviet population alive after prompt deaths and a month or two of other casualties. The USSR alleges to have had 280 million population plus in 1970. That seems somewhere between highly unlikely and out and out nonsense. US 1970 census showed 205 million and we had been breeding like rabbits through the 50's into the early 60's and didn't lose 1/3 to 1/2 our male breeding age population 30 years prior. I MIGHT buy 190 Million, World Bank qutes 132 Million. That said that strike would kill somewhere between 238 million (upper bound) and 118 Million (lower bound). that's an appalling figure in either case.

The US is NOT going to fare too much better. In the 1962 Missile Crisis scenario the Soviet's have few missiles and their SSBN are of VERY limited range. Their bombers are effectively suicide missions. All of this limits/blunts the results.  Much of that has changed in 11 years. The first  data I found is the Nuclear Weapons Databook from FAS. It has Table 2 on page 21 which is gross numbers of ICBM, SLBM and bombers for 1956 to 1996. Also interesting is the Intentions and capabilities Document of Estimates created by the CIA historians that contains a mass of declassified documents  from 1950 to 1983.  Two particular documents are of special interest the 1971 estimate NIE-11-8-69 (starting at page 253) which unfortunately seems incomplete (redaction?) and the NIE 11-8-70 (starting on page 263). The Databook has 1462 ICBM with 1557 warheads, 595 SLBM with 556 (sic?) warheads and 157 bombers with 568 weapons. Trying to figure out what the mix of these is is harder. 

The only bombers with range for the US are likely Bears.(TU-95), Badgers (TU-16) could reach Europe and Japan with a 1600 NM range (and refuel or one way mission) but not much else. Like the US bomber force they will arrive many hours after the initial attack. Note a time on target attack coordinated with the ICBM would likely NOT work as any surprise would be quickly lost as the DEW line and later OTH radars would see the bombers long before they would be in range of anything. Here I think the Bears arriving after the ballistic portion of the attack actually makes there likelihood to arrive on target far better than in the Cuban Missile Crisis scenario. Still their relevance is pretty limited, likely focusing on targets where the missiles missed their target or failed. This is again mostly a case in general of making the radioactive rubble bounce.

The ICBMs are FAR more numerous than the 30-40 in the 1962 scenario. There is also some MIRV/MRV going on as there are about 100 more warheads than missiles. The Nuclear Weapons Databook has some very good tables, in particular Table 4 on page 18 (I wish I'd found this earlier). In 1973 it lists the following ICBM's for the Soviets (Providing NATO nomenclature first details from wikipedia)

• 190 SS-7 (R-16) with either 3 or 6 MT warheads. only about 70 of these were in silos Their Hypergolic fuel took 1-3 hours to load and could only remain loaded for a few (2-3?) days before they would have to be defueled and sent for rework
• 19 SS-8 (R-9) These are IRBM with a maximum range of 6000KM with as ~2 MT warhead. These were in silos and have a 30 minute launch window. I think for attacks on the CONUS these can be ignored, they'll likely be used against European/British targets
•  238 SS-9 (R-36) In three variants most with 20MT warhead. These were in silos and use a bipropellant so probably similar to the SS-8/US Titan II in response time
• 905 SS-11 (UR-100) in 3 variants all with 1 MT warheads. Again a Bipropellant system housed in hardened silos 
• 60 SS-13 (RT-1) each with a 500KT warhead. These are the USSR's first solid propellent ICBM similar in concept to the US Minuteman
  

In total that is 1393 ICBM of which all but 120 are in silos. The numbers I get this way are in rough agreement with what I can glean from the period NIE. The total yield is MUCH higher than the similar US force likely because the CEP of these systems very poor (1 Mile/1300M is about the best reported) so with a larger warhead it is more likely to destroy its target

The SSB/SSBN fleet consists of 50 boats using four missile variants (per Table 6 in the Nuclear Weapons Databook)

• 21 SS-N-4 (R-13). These are VERY old missiles with short (~300NM ) range and the launchers have to surface to launch. I am going to ignore these, they'd be unlikely to succeed in a launch against CONUS and really can only hit coastal cities. These will likely be used against bases Like in the Philipines or the Indian ocean.
• 60 SS-N-5 (R-21). 800 KT warhead ~700 NM range. Still only coastal targets but at least they don't have to surface to launch
• 480 SS-N-6 (R-27) 1 MT warhead or 3 200KT MRV. Range is ~1200-1300 NM so similar to early US Polaris
• 34 SS-N-8 (R-29) Warhead unclear. Range ~4000 NM. It is NOT clear that these are actually operational at this time some sources claim 1974 for initial operational capability. I suspect given the massive overkill we can ignore them

So a total of 540 missiles in the roughly 1 MT range from the SSBN/SSB fleet. Total weapons 1833 (give or take the 120 not in silos) Call it 1700 with maybe 75% effective success so 1,275 total warheads almost all in the 1 Megaton+ range. I think that's 2-3 weapons for every population center over 50K  plus a couple for every airbase and sub base. In general I would expect this is a counter value strike, the CEP on these weapons is not good enough for weapons in silos, and the US SLBM fleet is large enough that even IF you take out the land based missiles the retaliatory strike ends the USSR. Similarly the 480 SS-N-6 mean that the US can not first strike without fairly heavy damage. This is truly the age of MAD. Likely full strikes will yield at least some environmental effects likely a "Nuclear Winter" as almost every city in the US, USSR, most of Europe and likely Japan will be burning. I don't think this is the end of humankind, but most of the Northern Hemisphere is reduced to pre 1800 technology, and the remaining countries will have neither the NATO nor Warsaw countries to trade with. I suspect few few bombs will hit Africa or India or other unaligned countries but their dependency on western food sources is going to make famine common especially if there is a Nuclear Winter effect.   Again like in the USSR the effect on the US is appalling with 10% survival feeling almost overly optimistic so something on the order of 190 million dead. I can't see either party being anything useful again for 50-100 years, it seems like it would take 2 generations to get back to  1800's technology and much would have to come from whatever survives of the unaligned nations.

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now

Counterfactual part 3 USSR/USA Conflict in the early 1960's

  So this is part 3 of the post of a while back. The questions were

1. What might have combat in Europe at this time (Bay of Pigs/ Berlin Crisis/Cuban Missile Crisis) looked like?
2. If the war escalates to nuclear exchanges what are we looking at?

The first is at some level both hard to handle and easy to handle. In the hard part I find little to nothing on US/NATO or Soviet/Warsaw Pact orders of battle in easily accessed (i.e. internet) form. As my access to scholarly libraries is very limited (read none) and my time to pour through such works even more limited I will have to make do with limited resources. The easy part is strategy from that period is clear. For mid 1950's the strategy was that NATO conventional forces as a trip wire to warn about the oncoming Soviet forces and delay them until strategic nuclear forces could be brought into play to affect the situation   . This document has a fair outline of the NATO strategies from 1949-1969. There was a shift under way to a more flexible response starting in about 1957 (see pg. 22-24 of that document) but it was  not complete as the Kennedy administration took over in January of 1961. Kennedy and his various advisors (Particularly Macnamara) were adamant about having other options both nuclear (but more limited than all out nuclear war) and using only conventional forces. These were only under development when the Berlin crisis unfolded and were still not complete as of the Cuban Missile Crisis. So effectively the US policy was still tripwire/massive retaliation throughout this period. For the Berlin Crisis the Soviets might have considered striking or more likely would have stumbled into a response by some misinterpretation of NATO operations. For Bay of Pigs if the US had started to defeat Cuba the Soviets might have used an attack out of East Germany as a counter. Honestly they seemed to understand the NATO position and given their very limited strategic forces at that point I think they would have written Castro off at that point. The Missile crisis really was more a naval operation due to the blockade. Given period weapons thing might have quickly moved from conventional to tactical nuclear weapons (Nuclear tipped torpedos against US battle groups, nuclear ASROC by US against Soviet subs). Given US policy at that time to treat any nuclear weapon used against US forces as an attack upon US soil this likely would have degraded quickly to a nuclear exchange.

The materials on the nuclear side of the question are more definitive for at least the US side. A precis describing the history of the SIOP-63 (Strategic Integrated Operating Plan 1963) is available. SIOP-63 was literally the outline for the US war plan and was what was in operation in September of 1962 at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis. Unfortunately the plan itself seems still classified some 60+ years later. SIOP-62 is allegedly declassified, but I'm not having luck finding it online. What I did find is this excellent Nuclear Order Of Battle (NOB)by Robert Norris. This is one of the best of this kind of things I've seen for any period. This also provides a nice overview of US strategic nuclear policy throughout the period. 

I'm going to use what the USSR could have done in a nuclear response to the Cuban missile crisis as the worst case. As the Berlin Crisis and the Bay of Pigs were earlier the Soviet assets would have been fewer and would have been minus the Cuban assets. First let's look at strategic assets that can reach the US.  The NOB document says 6-8 SS-4 missiles with ~1200 mile (statute I believe) range were available in Cuba each with a 1 Megaton  weapon. There are a further 36 SS-7 missiles available each with either a 3MT warhead (13000 NM range) or a 5-6MT warhead (11,000) range. Of the SS-7 only 10 are in hardened silos so they are heavily "use it or lose it" Readying time is ~1/2 hour for the siloed weapons 3+ hours for the exposed ones. The Cuban weapons were exposed it is not clear what their readiness state was. All of these are liquid fueled if you fuel them and don't use them before the time expires there is a several day recycle time. If its a preemptive US attack probably 10-12 get launched with maybe a 20-25% dud rate so 8-10 3MT+ explosions. Certainly NYC, Washington DC, LA and Chicago are targeted. Probably also Detroit, Pittsburgh, Vandenberg (one of our main missile sites). After that it starts to be a wild guess with anything strategic and military in nature being high on the list industrial stuff a very close second. If the Soviets shoot first its 42+ warheads again assuming a 20-25% failure rate that's ~32 large detonations. 

The bomber force is mostly TU-95 Bears and M-4 Bisons (the latter notoriously short ranged). There were also Il-28 Beagle medium range bombers in Cuba though whether or how many free fall atomic weapons existed on the island at that time is unclear at best. NORAD at that point was heavily equipped with various Century series interceptors armed with Falcon guided missiles as well as the notorious nuclear tipped Genie rocket. In addition there were many batteries of Nike Zeus surface to air missiles protecting large cities and some bases. The NOB author thinks the odds of any of these getting through is slim and I think he is if anything overestimating their odds. This is a suicide run with very little chance of any success at all.

Finally there were Soviet sub launched missile (cruise, and ballistic).  These have VERY short ranges (100-400 NM) and must surface to launch and launching takes time. There are about 95 total of these on various platforms. Call it 100, I think maybe 10% of the missiles get off. Using my usual 20-25% failure rate that's another 8 coastal strikes. 

I suspect the US gets hit and ~40 nuclear detonations is a very bad day. Deaths will be in the millions likely 10's of millions. In some areas transport will cease as well as major services. The Florida of Pat Frank's Alas Babylon is probably on the right order of magnitude for some regions especially coastal ones with large cities and critical strategic targets. At the low end the US walks away staggering, on the high end it is teetering on a razors edge of collapse. Where the damage is is dependent on what gets launched and what detonates, there will be some serious randomness to it and some targets (NYC, Washington DC) likely have multiple weapons targeted to deal with that even given the paucity of weapons. NATO countries particularly the UK and Turkey are hit hard due to their hosting IRBM and SLBM sub basing (UK) and the Soviets likely using their short and intermediate range hardware against those in a use it or lose it response.  Most NATO bases that host US nuclear weapons would be targeted these are all over Europe. I think the UK is in bad shape, Turkey it is hard to tell. Other European countries (e.g. Belgium, France, perhaps  West Germany (BDR) ) are likely to be targeted as well as US bases in Japan and probably the Philippines. The latter two being islands seem likely targets for the short ranged Soviet SLBM and cruise missiles. Although the JDF naval forces might just surprise the soviet subs.

The reverse is a very different matter. The US still holds a massive superiority in strategic weapons due to that being our primary response to anything larger than a pack of Pioneer Youth crossing into the BDR. Looking to the NOB referenced earlier we have this 229 ICBM (Atlas and Titan), 144 SLBM (Polaris), 105 MRBM (Primarily Thor) and 1300 Strategic Bombers (B52, B58, some B47 and likely even a few B50). Oh and the UK has some of their V bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons and they have made it clear they will be targeting cities not military targets, Now probably only half of the US bomber force was actually useful and who knows if there were enough free fall weapons to arm them all. I think my 80% rate is good guess for the ICBM. The warheads for the Polaris had an issue (although one had been full up tested in the Frigate Bird shot and that had yielded nominally though the Circular Error Probable (CEP) was huge) so maybe 30% full yield and another 10-20 percent low kiloton fizzles, rest out and out duds. Given the poor CEP (miles) on the Frigate Bird test we can ignore those fizzles at least as militarily insignificant. Finally the Bombers. Period surface to Air missiles as well as the PVO are an issue. But with several hundred attackers some are going to get through, The UK V bombers just add to the confusion, not sure how big that force was in 1962, probably 100 tops. So maybe 10% of each force drop their weapons that's 70 weapons give or take. So recapping using my failure estimates that's 183 strikes from ICBM, 43 full SLBM strikes, plus ~70 free fall weapon strikes. That's 296 strikes most in the Megaton+ range in the Soviet Union. 

The precis on the SIOP63 made it clear that one concern of the new plan was to minimize or avoid collateral damage to our allies and to limit damage to targets that were not of a military nature. As noted earlier I have NOT found the declassified SIOP63 so the strategic goals as seen by that period are not available to me. However, I can speculate. You don;t have to be an idiot to figure out that the unstoppable ICBM are likely to be used to attack other ICBM sites in the hope that those weapons are still being readied. It is not clear how effective that would have been. The US was at DEFCON 2, just a step away from a full shooting war. In addition the Commander in Chief for SAC had sent that notification (and his notice effectively a war warning) in the CLEAR (cf NOB) so the Soviets would know as a warning. I would expect the Soviets were at their highest alert. about 2/3 of their missiles were in hardened sites with 15-20 minute normal response times. The soft sites had a run up of ~3hrs, they could hold at that for some period (24-36 Hrs?) but once done would need some refit before being ready again. Not sure you catch many on the ground, but every one you catch is one city or base that makes it to tomorrow. It's a gamble I think the politicians and generals would be willing to make. Another thing the early strike weapons will be used for is to clear the way for the bombers. If that wave can reduce PVO and SAM sites the yield of the bomber wave can be improved to perhaps a 30% success rate. You now get 200+ delivered weapons from it instead of 70. Lastly command and communication will be targeted. In a world where 30-45 minutes is all you've got adding 10-15 minutes of confusion (especially in a system that is rigidly top down) may make a large difference. I believe Warsaw Pact nations would be hit with "tactical" weapons on medium bombers as well as fighters. Also short range SRBM like Corporal and Honest John are likely to be used to attack air bases, again to help the bomber wave.

My opinion is that the Soviet Union would cease to exist as a functional nation. Allegedly it has a population of 209 million people by their own 1959 census. That seems somewhere between unlikely and ludicrous as US Census of 1960 yields a US population of 179 million.  The Soviet Union took massive loss of the males of reproduction age population in WWII. Other numbers put the USSR at 120 Million which still seems high. Their densest populations are around cities as they were struggling to industrialize coming into WWII and then throughout the Cold War to compete with the US. Those dense populations are going to take a big hit as is the rail and road infrastructure needed to move things around. The initial strike probably kills 10-50 million. Afterward there will be famine in all but the most rural sections (and likely even there to some degree). If the land mass of the USSR has a population of 25 Million by the end of this I would be deeply surprised.

Generally I think the US fairs somewhat better than many thought it would at the time. That is NOT to say its in any way good. A large portion of Americas industrial might is gone, and it probably can no longer project power past its borders. It has lost 10-30% of its population. Europe is probably a wasteland with large losses due to starvation over time. The Soviet Union is a hellscape near its cities and rather unpleasant anywhere downwind of them or military installations. No one is coming to help, and some (Red China?) may be coming to pick the bones. I would not be writing to you as I was a 18 month old down wind of NYC and near the Groton Sub Base. In this case we really avoided a catastrophe by the skin of our teeth

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now

Counterfactual Part 2: USSR/USA war in Korean War Period (1950-1951)

 So this is part 2 of the post of a short while back. The questions were 

1. What might have combat in Europe at this time(Korean War) looked like?
2. If the war escalates to nuclear exchanges what are we looking at

Here we already have a fairly full on confrontation going on on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea (and Communist China) are at this point both direct clients of the USSR. That combat certainly gives an idea what fighting in Europe might look like as the North Korean weapons and doctrine are pure Soviet in nature. The NSC-68 report foresaw a rapid advance of the USSR across continental Europe. The information here US Army Between World War II and the Korean War suggests only 1 active division in Europe with a total of only 10 active divisions. There was also a general paucity of materiel of all sorts (weapons, ammunition, rations, uniforms etc) that would have greatly impeded any response, just as it did in Korea. NSC-68 suggests there were 26 Soviet divisions in Eastern Europe although the Rand Paper questions how many of those were other than paper divisions and also questions whether there would have been issues with at least low level rebellion. It looks to me like the USSR has the upper hand here but I suspect it is a far harder task than the NSC-68 report suggests.

Nuclear combat is a totally different issue. The USSR at this point literally can not strike the continental US other than at a few points and there only with suicide runs. The TU-4a (B-29 copies modified for nuclear delivery) are rare and of limited number and highly limited range. Europe and the UK they can reach although even mid 50's jets are a nightmare for B-29 class hardware as seen by the kind of havoc wreaked by Mig 15's against the B-29s in the Korean theater. The USSR may have up to 50 RDS-1 weapons (Their implosion based weapon similar to the production US MK-3 ) but having them and being able to use them are two different things. One might also see weapons used against US bases in Japan.

 The US isn't much better off. The weapon has improved with the MK4 which does not need as much hand assembly as the MK3 did, but still needs some work to be operational. I have a lovely document Ramey AFB conference April 1950 that has what appear to be a briefing on the war plans (declassified of course). Interesting things to note:

• SAC had 27 B-36 long range bombers at this point (see Chart after page 2). Nuclear capable B-50 (uprated B-29) and B-29 at this time of the latter only 50% are nuclear capable
  
• There was an exercise "Dualism" (page 3) war gamed out. There were 6 A Bomb assembly teams available to be moved, plan was 5 to European theater, 1 to Alaska. Chart between pages 3 and 4 has detailed movements of teams and aircraft groups. This was to occur 3 days after things are set in motion
• There were 123 targets selected. About half were well understood The other half would need reconnaissance before the strike. 
• First strikes were planned 6 days after the order was given, numbering about 26, this uses 10 of the B-36 and over 100 B-29/B-50 based out of the UK. This is not a time on target set of strikes, the attacks have a maximum of 4 hours between them. Also only 1 bomber in each strike carries a nuclear weapon. Other aircraft are for support (i.e. decoys).
  
• Further strikes would be delivered in another 3 days with all strikes completed by 30 days from initial orders.
• Nuclear bombing accuracy from high altitude accuracy was initially poor. In testing SAC's achieved Circular Error Probable was ~5000 feet. That's basically a circle a mile across. They fought the CEP down to ~1800 feet, but that's still a large area. It will kill soft targets, but protected targets may survive.
  
• There's a section on issues near the end of the briefing. At the time of the briefing there were a whole bunch of issues. Effectively only 3 airstrips in the UK had all the desired hardware and runways long enough. Fighter escort is a big issue. Also the bombers in question have lots of technical issues. It is NOT the SAC we thought of in the 60's and 70's
  

How many of these bombs would reach their target? Presuming the Soviet PVO is not a total catastrophe (not a given mind you) if the targets are at all defended things will get ugly quickly for the US bombers. This is also a MUCH longer nuclear combat than those of us raised in the missile age are used to thinking of. The bulk of the strikes take 6-9 days to happen and there is a lot of wind up. The whole thing might go on for 30 days.

Best guess 10-30 strikes finally occur in the USSR. The UK gets attacked hard to try to stop the additional attacks. Maybe 5-10 weapons are delivered in the UK aimed at the bases used. Other targets in Europe might be hit if US was basing out of there, or maybe just out of sheer nastiness. This doesn't feel like an end of the world scenario, but as the old saw goes one nuclear bomb will ruin your whole day. USSR is probably done with for a while, UK is hurting badly, Continental US is unaffected unless suicide attacks are made from Soviet Far east against NW US (Seattle) or nearby Canadian cities like Vancouver. These are 20-35 Kiloton weapons very similar to that used at Nagasaki or the Trinity test. If you're not within a few miles of the hypocenter of the blast you are relatively unaffected. How affected the USSR is depends on which targets get hit and how much their infrastructure is damaged

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now

 

Counterfactual/ Alt History: Could the U.S.S.R have successfully attacked the NATO/U.S.A. in the Cold War?

This post why does the dumpster always burn when I am away from keyboard on According to Hoyt contains a statement referencing this tweet: Was the USSR always a Potemkin state? . This lead me to wonder, how hollow was the U.S.S.R. and how unready/unprepared was NATO? What would that (thankfully avoided) situation look like? There are really two scenarios that I think of 

1. A ground assault on the European members of NATO (mostly Germany moving into the Low Countries)
2. A Nuclear exchange stemming out of some other ongoing issue (e.g. Cuban Missile Crisis) 

There is SOME information, but not a lot easily found. It also has the issue that it has the biases of the time, for example early analyses tend to treat the Soviet forces as overwhelming, something even analyses of the 1970s and 1980s readily admit the earlier failings. References I have found so far include

• NSC-68 [1] - Was a top Secret Report (now obviously declassified) briefing the president on the threat of the Soviet Union from 1950
  
• National Security Document 20/4 [2]- Report by the National Security Council on U.S. Objectives With Respect to the USSR To Counter Soviet Threats to U.S. Security
• Assessing the Conventional Balance in Europe 1945-1975  [3]- A paper from the Rand institute published in 1989 as the USSR was falling apart
• FAS nuclear-notebook [4] Various Nuclear armament issues information including acknowledged/suspected nuclear stockpiles of the nuclear powers by year
• Timeline of the collapse of the Soviet Union [5]- A rough timeline of the fall of the USSR
• HQ USAREUR site ( From Wayback) [6]- Lots of documents and info from USAREUR (US Army Europe) including period Top Secret references to the US army in Berlin (declassified)
  
• Military history of the Soviet Union [7]- High level history of Soviet army from revolution to the fall at McGill university, looks to be rehash of Wikipedia
• Chapter 5 of Why Nonnuclear States Confront Nuclear Opponents by Paul C. Avey [8]- VERY nice book/mongraph with details from the period in chapter 5. 
• Wikipedia - List of nuclear weapons of the United States [9]-  Nice list of various wikipedia articles on US Bombs and warheads with dates and numbers (if known)
• Berlin Airlift History [10] - History  of the Berlin Airlift from office of the US State Dept historian.
  

Of course none of these sources are perfect. FAS is notoriously alarmist in their stance and does use published sources which are almost all from various state sources and are potentially suspect. Rand is US funded, and of course the NSC of 1950 was itself part of the US executive. In addition the Soviet/Russian side of things is scarcer than hens teeth and what little I do find is far lest trustworthy than the Western stuff.

Looking at history as it spread out there seem to be a variety of obvious periods/flashpoints 

1. Berlin Crisis/blockade 1948
2. Korean war 1950-1953
3. Bay of Pigs  (1961)
   
4. Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
   
5. Vietnam War era  ~1964-1975
   
6. Yom Kippur War 1973
7. Afghanistan invasion 1979
8. Evolving Detente (1981-1989)
9. Fall of the USSR/ First Iraq War
10. Recent tensions 

I'm going to look at the first one here and then add more blogs over time, I suspect 2 will be another post, 3-5 will be another section 6  its own (or maybe roll in with the earlier stuff?), 7&8 another and 9&10 their own 

So looking at the Berlin Crisis (generally not going to quote sources for general info look at the list above) I think likely if the USSR wanted it could have taken Berlin. The question is what purpose would that serve? I suppose they could head further west into the BDR but that is fraught with all sorts of issues. For example they're at the end of a LONG supply line, even 2 1/2 years from the end of WWII I suspect their economy is still recovering and certain items they were getting Lend Lease they are no longer receiving. Also there is a suggestion in this source [3] that although they had an on paper advantage in divisions many of those were VERY understrength and ill supplied[3]. On top of that best estimates were their effectiveness was about 30-40% of equivalent US divisions. Also traditionally defense gives a 2-1 to 3-1 advantage. And their conquests in Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia might get restive. Last of all there is the nuclear elephant in the room. in 1948 Joe 1 is a year in the future the USSR has no nuclear weapons at all

That said everything everything is NOT rosy for the US/Nato. US Forces are VERY limited especially in Berlin. Also the US Armies  performance in the start of the Korean war hints that Soviet hardware ( T-34 etc) and tactics would provide problems for the US troops. 

The Nuclear front is also interesting. This source [8]  suggests there exist as many as 50 weapons in the US Nuclear arsenal. However these are All Mk3 [9] variants essentially a slightly modified version of the Fat Man weapon used at Nagasaki. These took a specialized 39  man team 2 days to assemble. They are also rather dangerous objects once assembled, with no safing and even without the threat of nuclear explosion they are several thousand pounds of delicate explosive. In addition the primary delivery system for these was still the modified B-29s of the 509th Composite Group (plane code name Silverplate). Their range is limited sources say ~2800 NM for standard B-29, and that seems reasonable for the Silverplate variants given Tinian to Hiroshima was ~2600nm round trip. The aircraft would have to be staged in Britain or Europe, The range is barely enough to get from Northern Great Britain to Moscow or Leningrad. 

The Soviet PVO (Air Self Defense forces) flew Yak-9 (high performance prop)  and Mig-9 (early jet) interceptors. Those might provide an issue particularly the Yak-9, like many early jets the Mig-9 is rather short ranged and limited in high altitude performance. In addition what kind of warning system the USSR had at that time is unclear. Later in the crisis the B-36 and the B-50 (uprated B-29) start to come online so the delivery at least will be easier range wise.  There is some suggestion in [8] that there was concern in the USSR over a possible nuclear response. Given the USSR was working on a MK-3 monkey copy (Joe-1) and B-29 copy (TU-4) and had the US/UK labs well penetrated I am a little surprised that held much fear for them given the limitations they likely understood. However, I suspect as was usual in the USSR the tight security on things such as Joe-1 (and their penetration of Los Alamos) would have meant this information would not have been widely known outside of the highest levels.

All in all I think what prevented this going hot was not necessarily the nuclear threat but the need for the USSR to recover from a long hard fought war and to consolidate its conquests in the area that would later become the Warsaw pact. I think the blockade is all they intended, using it as essentially a warning shot across the bow and perhaps to some degree a bluff. Combine this with how penetrated the U.S. and UK state departments were and it does give the USSR breathing time to get their nuclear assets online.

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now

 

After a 5+ year hiatus I'm back. What brought me back? This piece posted on Instapundit:U.S. makes unusual disclosure of ballistic missile submarine’s presence in Persian Gulf. lit off alarm bells for me.

Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf this is a solidly WTF maneuver. SSBN's have precisely two purposes 1) carry and deliver ballistic missiles, 2) Don't be found. Driving them around in the Persian Gulf would be like the guy in the Monty Python "How Not to Hide" skit that stands up when called. Telling people you're there just extends the idiocy.

The Persian gulf is shallow from what maps I can find 100 meter depths are rare. The Straits of Hormuz (entry to the gulf) is at most 50-75m deep even in the traffic lanes. An Ohio-Class Submarine draws 35ft of water on the surface. Including conning tower and masts I bet it takes at least 25m of water to cover it. South side of the strait is Oman's territorial waters with the shipping channels. Legalistically one is supposed to tell the owners of territorial waters before traversing it with a warship (In which class a boomer with 200+ warheads most certainly classifies). Oh and north side of the strait is Iran's (and way too shallow for a Trident anyhow)

The D5 Trident missiles the West Virginia carries have a (reported minimum) range of 7500mi/12000km range. Who is the target?
Iran? You can hit that from anywhere in the Indian Ocean no problem. Not like they can do bugger all against a ballistic shot and the extra 5-10 minutes of warning would only give them additional time to set the prayer rug down before they pray.
Russia? If you want a depressed trajectory shot at either Moscow or the missile fields you want to be up in the Arctic or maybe North Pacific. Shooting from the direction of the Arabian Sea I think will take you up across Turkey or that part of the world (sorry NOT good with visualizing great circle routes). Given in the bad old days we had Thor IRBMs and bombers stationed in Turkey its a good bet there are still Russian/ex Soviet DEW line equivalents watching that way just in case.
The Saudis?!? Is the current Administration that stupid and that desperate to get more oil? It's particularly stupid when all they really have to do is tell the Green arm of their party to pound sand for a bit. Oh sorry thats half their party and all those under 60...

Maybe an SSGN Ohio conversion might make sense to threaten Iran with its 150+ cruise missiles and the SEALs you can put on board. Of course again telling someone that you're going to use covert operatives does NOT inspire confidence in your military acumen. And of course if you're trying to get it into the Persian gulf we're back to sneaking a 170m (560') sub into the bathtub that is the Persian Gulf. I grew up in Connecticut and worked a summer at the Naval Underwater Systems Center in New London, CT. At least once we had a Trident at dock. Even the part that sticks out of the water when docked is probably 200' long. Part of the reason they stopped basing Boomers in Groton is Long Island Sound. Like the Persian Gulf it is shallow and has limited entrances/exits. Sending an Ohio class SSBN out from Groton was basically announcing to the USSR, "Hey, one of our SSBN's is going patrol come track us".

This tells me that the leadership (Commander in Chief, Secratary of Defense, JCS, CNO Strategic Command head etc) all have mush for brains. That is terrifying. People used to complain that Curtiss LeMay as the Head of SAC was a loose cannon and was going to get us all killed. I'll be honest get me Zombie Curtis LeMay and resurrect SAC. they'll make these prissy amateurs we have look about as pleasent as dog excrement on a sidewalk in a hot summer

Will I do this more? Maybe, though I thought that last time and got 5 posts. As I age I get more free time, of course I get more senile, but then again this is free (as in free beer), you get what you pay for :-) .

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for Now

Some Education thoughts...

Peter Grant has the following opinion on forgiving Student Loan debt: On the whole I agree with him. If you take on a debt it's your responsibility thats clear.  But he seems to be opposed to taking on debt at all. Frankly even  local universities are expensive. For example a small state college up the road Salem State University) (Nee Salem Normal/ Salem State College) is ~$10K in state $15K out of state . You can study subjects such as Nursing, Chemistry, Biology, Education and the usual liberal arts. If you want engineering you're looking at Umass Lowell  for $26K in state $30-42 K out of state (they seem to have have a deal with the other New England state universities) add 12K for room and board. Compare that to a private school WPI , $48K for Tuition and fees and 14K for room and board. Admittedly if you've got excellent grades (~2100+ SAT) and can keep them (Deans List) WPI will find you $12-16K in  grants/scholarships which puts them on a par with UMASS Lowell out of state.Even if UMass Lowell finds you $10K you're looking at $28K/year. Thats $27 an hour halftime (ignoring taxes, youd need more ). Full time its $13.50 an hour and any major worth having is not going to be compatible with full time work. Frankly I doubt an engineering degree is compatible with half time work unless you are truly exceptional.

So you're kind of stuck with borrowing some. My own opinion is that borrowing of any sort must be used carefully but it can be very useful for long term investments. You have to look at what your likely income is at the completion of the degree. I'd think a payment of no more than 10-15% of your salary ought to be survivable.  However the government pays no attention to this in making the loans. As example my elder daughter graduated with a double major in Math and Education and teaches at a public school for about $45K per year. She has not quite $30K in loans. On top of that she will get forgiveness of ~ 1/2 her loans if she teaches in this disadvantaged school for 5 years.  So if you don't do a <foo> studies major but something with employment potential a proportionate debt is probably fine if you're frugal. It is important that parents make this clear to children. Many will figure it out, but other 20 somethings don't have the best judgment.

In an unrelated issue Instapundit recently had this. What utter nonsense to let someone get a college degree without algebra. It's not that you'll necessarily use it, it's just that without it real science and statistics are incomprehensible. It's too hard? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?! Neither  of my parents had ever had algebra. My dad had a GED and my mom took only business math (although as a bookeeper she'd beat you cold in any arithmetic ). The High School I went to had it as a self paced course so I learned it on my own no sweat as a freshman. This is just low expectations out of stupid Liberal administrators

I think Robert Heinlein's character Lazarus Long had it right

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best they're a tolerable sub-human who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now

Dumber than a box of rocks, crazier than a bag of cats

First of all apologies to Cats and Rocks for the unfavorable comparison...

Recently I saw this post on  Ace of Spades about Reality Winner.  I've seen a bunch of questions on a variety of sites. First is how did a moonbat like that get a clearance? In my travels I read two good points:

1. She got the clearance due to language school (Pashtun, Farsi and one other) and  apparently had good skills in translation. Any thing useful she'd be looking at would have been Top Secret (TS) likely because of sources and methods .
2. Political views (conservative vs liberal) are generally NOT of interest in a clearance search unless you clearly have a  leaning for a particular target country (e.g you or your spouse were foreign nationals or you were a card carrying communist in the "good" old days)

And  a TS clearance is expensive. I've heard estimates of $10K to as much as $100K to do the investigation. So if she had a clearance and it had not expired (5 years for TS) she's a real temptation to any contractor, especially a small to medium one like Pluribus Inc .

However her behavior once employed by Pluribus seems odd to say the least. There are several things at play here

• In security there's a concept called adverse information. If you know something that argues against a fellow clearance holder you are supposed to report it. For example if you know that a fellow clearance holder is having an affair or is a heavy drinker or is  spending money they don't have or anything else that seems to argue against they're maintaining their clearance you should report it.  You have a positive duty to report it. To not report it is a potential security breach on your part. Ms. Winner's behavior in social networking seems to fall into that class and it seems likely that some of her (cleared) coworkers would have seen it.
•  The information was printed out from a top secret computer. These are maintained in an "Information System" usually in a closed area (sometimes SCIF, Secure Compartmented Information Facility) with limited access. These systems are CONSTANTLY monitored and everything is supposed to be logged with respect to printing and copying materials. Devices like USB ports and CD/DVD recorders are either removed, disabled or tightly monitored.
• In security there is the concept of need to know. There doesn't seem to be a reason why Ms. Winner would have need to know for the document she accessed. In the Information System information is supposed to be secured so that those without need to know can't access it and if they do it is logged. Those logs are supposed to be checked at least weekly in a Secret IS, I don't know the standard for a Top Secret IS but I'd expect it to be more stringent. Looking at things (let alone printing them) should have set alarm bells screaming.

DOD contractors of any sort are usually incredibly paranoid about this stuff. Their closed areas are inspected by the Defense Security Service (DSS) at least once yearly and that inspection is  dreaded. I heard tell of a case where an employee was told to take the 3-4 days of the inspection off as their behavior was so sloppy the DSS investigators would key on them.  Losing your certification to deal with classified information is a death stroke to a DOD contractor. So how the heck was Pluribus so darned sloppy? Were they NOT a DOD contractor but State or Homeland Security? Are their standards that different from DOD standard? And secondly has Pluribus gotten more than a slap on the wrist for such failure to identify the issue?

Some have speculated that the microdots printed by the color printer was how the document was identified. These we added back in the late 1990's when color printers got really good and the Department of the Treasury began to worry about wholesale counterfeiting. It may be this is how things were tracked back, but it makes me wonder what Pluribus' ISSO and ISSM were doing that this didn't show up in their oversight.

As for Ms. Winner she may have been a stellar translator but she's got NO common sense. She talked to people other than her attorney about this over the jail phone. Unless you're a raving idiot it should be known that those phones are recorded and are NOT protected  How do you end up so deluded, and how do you end up both bright enough to master three complex languages and yet still seem to be dumber than a box of rocks?

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now

Tyger Tyger Burning Bright

Ok  I was reading  on the Declination and ran into this post. In it there are two paragraphs about the death of Ebba Akerlund who was this girl

Who was killed in the terror attack on April 10th 2017 in Stockholm. Here are
those paragraphs

I wasn’t originally going to comment on the attack. After all, there are too many Islamic terror attacks these days for one blogger to ever hope to cover them all (and isn’t that a sad state of affairs?). But one thing compelled me to do so. 

You see, like the picture of the Syrian boy who drowned, there is a horrifying picture floating around the Internet right now of an 11 year old girl who was, quite literally torn to pieces by the terror attack. Pieces of her are scattered all over the road, a leg here, a leg there, guts strewn all over the road.

I missed that second paragraph the first time I read that, I went and read the Daily Mail article. It mentioned nothing of the horrific manner of her demise. However, even without that I could feel (as certain folks put it) the RCOB  (Red Curtain Of Blood) descending across my sight. I remember my daughters at that age and I have a niece that is that age. The thought of losing a child at that age to some worthless gutless creature who would so callously kill innocents was unthinkable. Then I came back and read the post in the Declination again and saw that second paragraph and lost it a bit.

As the Declination points out this is almost unknown in the US news stream. Ho Hum another person driving trucks into people for no discernible reason or  ideology (note: that was sarcasm for the sarcasm impaired).  Our news seems to avoid  "inflaming" our passions choosing NOT to cover various things. Ladies and Gentleman of the press I have news for you, This is why no one listens to you any more. When I was a kid the CBS news with Walter Cronkite (Uncle Walter) we believed these people. Even when they shaded the truth or out and out lied (c.f. Tet Offensive) we believed because there was no other source and we thought they were being fair. But now there are hundreds if not thousands of other sources, not just three TV networks and a handful of newspapers. And we can see they lie and see they selectively cover news choosing sides (invariably the SJW/Tranzi side).

The more pressing issue here is that I do not know if the Islamic peoples throughout the world really understand the danger they're in. Their apparent silence (or complicity through inaction) in these cases is building up an undercurrent in western society. As Tom Kratman opined in the afterword to A Desert Called Peace

If I could speak now to our enemies, I would say: Do you kill innocent civilians for shock value? So will we learn to do, in time. Do you torture and murder prisoners? So will we. Are you composed of religious fanatics? Well, since humanistic secularism seems ill-suited to deal with you, don't be surprised if we turn to our churches and temples to find the strength to defeat and destroy you. Do you randomly kill our loved ones to send us a message? Don't be surprised, then, when we begin to target your families, specifically, to send the message that our loved ones are not stationery. 

This seems lost on the current enemy but, then, he's insane. It's very sad. Yes, it's very sad for us, too.

Its like  a couple little boys with a stick poking a Siberian tiger in an old style cage with iron bars and a door. Except the door is not locked or latched. We know what will happen and it won't be the tiger's fault. He's just a dumb brute animal acting according to his instincts. And what happens to the crowd of children watching and cheering on the brave tiger teasing boys? We have a name for that, collateral damage.  It's just that instead of a half dozen mauled kids we're potentially talking several hundred million  people. Put down the stick, or at least walk away from the crowd.. I fear it is too much to hope that the crowd will take the stick away as they do not fear the apparently tame or cowed tiger. That tiger is not as toothless and indolent as you might think and its patience is running thin.  And as Col. Kratman said it is sad for us too. For the tiger has at least some semblance of a conscience unlike the boys.

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now

Two Things

Two things
First this piece is astonishing. (thanks to Instapundit www.instapundit.com)
In this I see:

Under Barack Obama, she was allowed to continue to view highly sensitive intel documents for years - well past her announced run for the presidency in April 2015, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Why? Toward what possible end?

In my return post I  talked briefly about my layoff from a Defense Department Contractor. Once notified I was followed from the moment of my notification to the moment I was walked to my vehicle by my supervisor. This was standard practice. Why? Because the moment  I was not working on that project  I no longer had need to know even though (conceptually) my clearance was active until I closed out my employment. Before leaving I signed a document that said (roughly from memory 6 years ago)

• I had kept NO materials that were classified
• All materials I had that were classified were returned to proper authorities
• I would NEVER disclose anything I had learned in my tenure with clearance

This was backed with US Code citations and the threat of prosecution for perjury.

From the moment  H.R. Clinton stopped being Secretary of State her need to know was gone and she should have had no access to anything classified at any level. Anything else is an insult to the rest of us that have had clearances and strived to follow the convoluted and stringent rules attached to possessing a clearance.  And she most certainly had no need for  "Highly Sensitive Intel Documents" which seems to imply Top Secret Compartmented or Top Secret Special Access Program materials to write a  personal hagiography. Apparently rules are for little people (and contractors) not for heads of executive departments or  Heirs Presumptive to the Presidency. President Trump may be a feckless boob but at least he's not a traitorous, incompetent, entitled feckless boob.

The second is this nonsense (Thanks again to www.instapundit.com) Letting engineers think about their  effect on society is a fine idea. Some schools, for example WPI ,have it built  in as part of the graduation requirements . But this is at Perdue is just idiocy

Breaking the Western hegemony. In order to decenter the male hegemony of the Western civilization, Riley discussed examples of thermodynamic inventions done by non-Western and non-male inventors. Also, some of the assignments required students to make interracial and intercultural connections in thermodynamics.

What the Sam Hill does this matter at all? Who cares who discovered thermodynamics? Its an absolute truth ( basic thermodynamics 1) You can't win, 2 You can't break even 3 ) You can't quit the game) and would be/is the same no matter the race, species or sexual identification of the discoverer(s). This "I can't relate to it because its not my ethnicity(etc)"  nonsense is something I'd expect of a 4 year old NOT an educated engineer. I want my engineers focused on making their results work and be safe. All else is irrelevant.  President Leshin should you ever let this infest my Alma Mater I hope you are ridden out of WPI on a rail.

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now

I'm Back ?

As Noted in my original post this was an unintentional blog and my feelings were a bit like those of Dread Pirate Roberts for Westley  in the Princess Bride "Good Job Westley. I may kill you in the morning, Good night". And Still Westley lives on.

I found I had 2 issues with blogging when I stopped in 2006

• The time to do a decent even vaguely researched post is HUGE, for example there's probably 10-15 hours gathering the data and writing up my last presented post ("Now what do they do with it?")
• It became very clear that my then employment and the topics I found of interest were a little too similar. This could present the issue of potential security violations which I took/take very seriously (unlike certain recent Presidential candidates for the democrats).
• Similarly my views on the operation of the company I then worked for would probably NOT be appreciated.

That problematic work relationship was ended in 2011 just before Thanksgiving with a layoff. They had been ongoing as with the likely second term of a defense opposed democrat there was very little new development, and what contracts there were we weren't winning. There had been  a constant drip drip drip of people just not being around. In a secure environment a layoff is very weird, it feels a bit like being made a "unperson".  When you are laid off you are told by HR and then in general you walk in to your desk clear it out with your supervisor watching. Then you are walked to Security to hand in your badge and any security related items. Then you are walked to your vehicle with your posessions. This is because at the point you are informed of your layoff your need to know is gone and although you still have a clearance you no longer need to know for the work you were doing just 15 minutes ago before you talked to HR.

So now its 6 years later. I did ~2 years of  contracting to a company now defunct and now work doing realtime work in JAVA for video delivery for a small contract house in Boston. With the passage of time I am in my later 50's. I am still married with two daughters and live with  two cats (beware potential cat blogging). The elder daughter is now a middle school teacher in north suburban  Boston having graduated 2 years ago. My younger daughter is a Junior in Mechanical Engineering at a local engineering school (no not that one 😀 ). We are down 1 cat, one leopard gecko and a all the fish, and the two remaining cats we have are elderly (14+). 

My blog will still be somewhat anonymous as who knows if any employer would appreciate my blogging. I will NOT blog on specific work subjects (or my current employer or their contracts), but still one can never be too careful.

I am a Evangelical Christian and currently a member of a Baptist (Converge) church. Its the same church, as before but the ABC went thoroughly around the bend and many new pastors deny (or talk mealy mouth) around the divinity of Christ and the salvific nature of his death on the cross. We left the ABC over this although they will state (like any good SJW) it was over ordaining homosexuals. As far as I can tell ordaining homosexuals is a mere peccadillo compared to ordaining those that deny Christ.

As noted I am of orthodox and Calvinistic tendencies in my beliefs. I am also an  egalitarian in that I believe that it is appropriate for women to teach and be pastors. I believe this to be a secondary issue (i.e. Christians can agree to disagree on it) but others do not.

I am of a Conservative/Libertarian (more precisely minarchist) bent in my politics. In general I'm of the view that the least government is the best. However I am pragmatic and do recognize that there are things the government does tolerably well (just not a lot of them). I grew up in a politically split household. My Dad was a strong Irish Kennedy Democrat, my Mom an old line New England Republican. This is NOT an Olympia Snow RINO but neither is it a Bill Buckley conservative. This species was a fiscally conservative/socially liberal (by the norms of the 70's) person. These Republicans were willing to help the poor/ down trodden but with the expectation that once helped if they could they would stand on their own and help others. These Republicans saw Roosevelt (FDR Not Teddy) as an abomination due to the massive increase of the commerce clause. The names my maternal grandfather used for FDR  would ionize the air about him for several feet. I favor government even less than either of my parents

I have a variety of hobbies. I love to observe the stars and have an  8" schmidt cassegrain that I  have sadly not used in 5 years living by eye and binocular  observations as setup for even a simple 8" scope is time I have not had. I enjoy  computer and video games and spend time playing them with my younger daughter when she's home. My karate participation is gone as as I aged and moved up in rank I had a tendency to injure  (and re-injure) myself constantly making me miss practices and fall behind in advancement.

As for Blogs I read regularly this has radically changed. Of course Mr. DenBeste
had stopped USS Clueless long ago and with his death even Chizumatic has gone silent.
 If you pin me down to my current five favorites they are:

•  Instapundit (https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/)
• Ace of Spades (http://ace.mu.nu/)
• According to Hoyt (https://accordingtohoyt.com/)
• Bayou Renaisance Man (http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/)
• Monster Hunter Nation (http://monsterhunternation.com/)\
• The Z Blog (http://thezman.com/wordpress/)

(Yeah that's 6. Hey I'm a software engineer and recovering C programmer ,
started counting at 0,  think of it as a fence post error...)

I read bunches of others, but these get daily perusal. Well, if you're still here and I haven't  bored you to death yet show up every once and a while. I can't promise I'll rise to the levels  of the  sainted Den Beste or even Sarah Hoyt but the length of the pieces may rival them. You know what they say "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance..."

I'm almost certainly not going to be blogging daily, if I manage bimonthly it'll be amazing ("Think he'll make it?", "It'll take a miracle...").


Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now...

Now what do they do with it?

OK so let's assume the Iranians have achieved a weapon like I mentioned in my earlier post. So now they want to deliver it to the Great Satan (that'd be us Americans for those of you not old enough to remember back to the Carter Administration). You can either use conventional methods, or non-conventional methods.

There are essentially two classic methods, aircraft in the form of long range bombers and missiles. Iran has no military aircraft of the right class unless the rumor of their purchase of Tu22-M Backfires is for real. Even that probably is pointless as it is ~ 10,000km (5495 NM) from Tehran to Washington DC which is half again the range of a one way mission in a Backfire. Then there's missiles. The Iranians have something on the lines of the Pakistani Shaheen 2 (itself derivative of North Korean Taepodong missile) called Shahab-5(b). Range on these (best case assuming 1000KG payload) is thought to be ~5500km. It can hit most of the EU from Tehran, in addition Jerusalem (and basically all of Israel) is easily in range. It is NOT clear to me if this is in service or predicted (and the FAS data is from 2002). There is also one on the drawing board (notional?) with 12000KM range and that puts the East Coast of the US in range.

Given these limitations conventional means to hit the U.S. are right out for the present (although Israel is well founded in their dislike for an Iranian Bomb). But even more important is that an ICBM or Aircraft is trackable to the attacker. Although you may think Allah is on your side, jumping the U.S. in a attributable fashion when you have say 1-5 weapons vs. the U.S. with 7000+ warheads (as of 1997, down to 5000 or so these days I believe) is folly. Those warheads represent over 2045 MT of deliverable destruction. That is a bit much even for folks with a death wish and a fairly far out eschatological world view to look at head on without having major qualms about whether those are 72 virgins (or figs) promised in the Quran are for real. Even they know the old saw that the Almighty favors the side with larger artillery and will think long and hard before lobbing something like that at U.S. soil in a fashion that leads directly back to them.

So that brings us to unconventional means. Here I've see three basic suggestions

1. Stuff it in a panel truck and get it into the US Via the borders.
2. Put it on a ship in a container and park it in a harbor (say Long Beach) and set it off
3. Put it on a large aircraft (cargo or alleged passenger) fly it over a US city and set it off

There is also a variant of 2 where you put that conventional missile on a ship and launch from said ship turning it into a really crude guided (well vaguely guided) missile cruiser.

The most obvious form of unconventional delivery method is the truck. Given the weight from my earlier post we're not talking anything bigger than an average UHAUL or Ryder Truck. This is nothing new, Terrorists have been doing this since Beirut. The big trick here is getting the bomb into a truck. Not the physical task, but getting the bomb or its unassembled parts into the US. It would probably be easier to bring it into Mexico or Canada, get the truck there and then deal with the issue of the border. There are places (especially on the US/Canada border in northern New England) where you wouldn't have to off road far (like across someones yard) or even at all to cross without being inspected. Doing it at a crossing is harder as there may (I hope) be monitoring for nuclear material. More critically if you're 2-4 guys with a rental truck and funny accents and maybe even looking a bit Middle Eastern you are going to get thoroughly eyeballed by the US customs agents. More concerning than the US would be Europe or Israel. There the truck can be loaded in Iran and go direct by road to its target. The Israelis would have the same issues our border guys would so that seems somewhat unlikely. Europe is another issue. A bunch of guys claiming to bring furniture to Paris or Munich for their uncle/cousin/brother are going to sound quite reasonable.

Your next choice is aircraft. Because we're assuming a large weapon and a 10000KM+ journey this probably has to be a devoted aircraft, perhaps one used for cargo. You could try to just ship it as cargo if its on the small side, but then you have the issue of timing the detonation in some fashion. Otherwise you end up blowing up Pease Trade Port or Newark Airport instead of New York or Washington. You then also have further run ins (a least I hope you do) with radiological monitoring. However, if you've got a plane and crew to waste (as well as a bomb technician or two) this shows some promise. The main issue is at present there are no direct flights from Iran to the US. However Iran has recently requested direct flights to the US (link). I think given the current state of the world allowing any Iranian flagged craft or Iranian originated craft into U.S. airspace is a probably a really bad idea.

Last of all there are ships. Cargo ships and containers seem a very easy way to get the weapon into a major port. Again there is the issue of detonating the weapon. I wonder if you couldn't put a couple folks in the container with sufficient food water etc. to get them to the US where then they act as a human fuze. The other option is the one I mentioned briefly the missile cruiser concept. Launch the missile from somewhere outside coastal waters of the US and now your under range IRBM's can reach much of the continental US. This does have some technical issues, in particular accuracy goes majorly south as the inertial navigation hardware probably presumes it is launched from a nice stable piece of ground. The pitching deck of a ship adds lots of uncertainty even in mild sea states. There is an old joke that close enough only counts in Horseshoes, Hand grenades and Nuclear weapons. However, you'd rather not shoot for New York N.Y. and get Bennington VT. or Buffalo or even Toronto (You wouldn't want those fierce Canadian retaliatory forces unleashed upon you).

One thought I've seen is to use the ship based weapon for an EMP shot (E.G at Barking Moonbat Early Warning Systems) This has some merit (for example the aiming problem is less severe). However it has some technical issues. The Skipper at BMEWS talks about a 50 Megaton explosion at 300 mi above the center of the US. However that's a ludicrous discussion for the Iranians (or the North Koreans). First of all a 50 Megaton weapon is not within Iran (Or North Korea's) capacity in even the near future. That's a weapon in the same class as the largest weapon ever the Tsar Bomb. They've got low kiloton range (10-20) WWII class weapons at best, and EMP depends directly on the gamma output of the weapon. A 20 KT weapon is going to be more than 3 orders of magnitude less powerful and induce 3 orders of magnitude less current than a 50 Megaton one. Add to that that although a missile may have a 5500 KM range it probably can't shoot 300 mi straight up . These missiles are like the early Redstones used for the suborbital Mercury shots. You're talking perhaps 60mi. of altitude at the top of the shot. So although I love BMEWS stuff this scenario of his is pure unadulterated hysteria for the present. One could use a weapon like I've describe to disable a region perhaps 300 mi. in radius. There's two reasons that it is unlikely to happen:

1. Taking out say the Northeast US via an EMP attack is a bit like an amateur sucker punching Mohammed Ali in his prime. Yeah, you may break his nose, but you are in for the beating of lifetime. This would be an attributable attack with weapons of mass destruction. U.S. Policy has always been that an attack on US soil with WMD will be retaliated to massively with WMD and the only WMD we have any more come in 300KT increments.
2. This doesn't fit their fantasy ideology . They want to kill someone, they want see that iconic mushroom cloud rise over the symbol of US power (NYC or Washington DC). Nothing short of blood sacrifice will bring back the twelfth Imam and start the rise to power of the world caliphate in their lunatic eschatology.

If we were facing a sane rational opponent (say the British or the Australians) one might expect a disabling EMP attack. Of course if it were the Brits or the Aussies the issue could probably be sorted out over a beer (or two, or six) and the only fights would break out over which brew to serve and what temperature to serve it at.

My own feeling is that terrorists are going to favor either the truck or shipping container options. A nation state is going to lean toward the commercial airliner or more likely the off shore kludged up guided missile container ship until they get the ICBM's in gear. Next time I'm going to think about how to defend against this kind of threat.

Tregonsee (L2) Signing out for now

What have the Iranians Got?

In a recent post Wretchard of the Belmont club talks about suitcase nukes and Iran. The good news is I think we can write suitcase nukes off the list of nightmare scenarios (see here for details why). So the question becomes what CAN the Iranians do. For examples we can look at others that have broken out of the treaties (or never were signatories) and see what they've got. The other place to look would be early US, UK and Soviet capabilities.

Our first candidate is the Pakistanis. We have two data points Chagai-1 at an estimated
9-12 KT yield and Chagai-2 at 4-6KT. Pakistani claims for these devices were in the 35KT
range (see here ). A.Q. Khan (The head of the Pakistani Nuclear program) claimed these were boosted weapons (Fission weapons with tritium injected to boost the yield). If they were they worked poorly as the originally quoted yields (from seismic data) are more in line with a much cruder U235 based gun bomb, and Chagai-2 hints at a less than successful test. The Pakistanis have set off no further tests so we're out of luck trying to estimate their current capabilities (the tests were in 1998).

The Indians are another example where some test data exists, as well as their statements
Their current repertoire is said to include:

* a pure fission plutonium bomb with a yield of 12 kt;
* a fusion boosted fission bomb with a yield of 15-20 kt, made with weapon-grade plutonium;
* a fusion boosted fission bomb design, made with reactor-grade plutonium;
* low yield pure fission plutonium bomb designs with yields from 0.1 kt to 1 kt;
* a thermonuclear bomb design with a yield of 200-300 kt.

This is a much more sophisticated set of options and looks more like a Late '50s to early '60s US or Soviet selection. The numbers are probably far reduced from the quantities the US and USSR had in that time period, but even if it's two orders of magnitude less we're talking tens to low hundreds of weapons.

Looking at the Soviet program its first weapon (Joe-1) was basically a clone of the US Fat Man weapon (the same as used at the Trinity test and in the attack on Nagasaki) and was tested in 1949. Their first boosted/fusion weapon shot was the Sakharov's "layer cake" design four years later in 1953. And their first true fusion weapon was tested in 1955.

If we look at the US program it starts with the MK 1 (Little Boy) and Mk 3 (Fat Man). Pretty much we used almost solely implosion based pure fission weapons until we get to fusion weapons testing in 1952 with deployment by 1954. Then we start creating boosted fission weapons. Our progression probably went that way because without a good understanding of fusion you can't model or predict the results of boosting. That is less of an issue today as much of that physics is well understood. However, the engineering details are probably tightly held secrets of the atomic powers so to do boosting well you're going to need some testing to get that critical data.

Given that the likely scenario is that Iran will go for a enriched uranium gun type weapon (say like the early US MK1 only less crude) as this is the easiest to make. It is also probably the plans they're most likely to have particularly given A.Q Khan's proclivities for selling the Pakistani atomic secrets. It will be a large weapon somewhere between the US MK 1 (8900 lbs) and some of our early IRBM warheads (The MK 7 at 1645-1700 lbs or the W-7 at 900-1100 pounds). Given the Pakistani weapon was intended as a warhead we're probably looking at the lighter end of that spectrum, the likely Pakistani delivery vehicle is the shaheen-1 (or shaheen-2) with quoted payloads of a metric ton (~2200 lbs for us geezers that still think in the English system). This is not a suitcase weapon but a panel truck or shipping container weapon. If they push hard they can have boosted or fusion weapons within 4-5 years. These don't necessarily get any smaller, they just are considerably more destructive. So next time I'll think aloud about the delivery methods for these nasty heavyweights.

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now...

Who Am I and why am I here?

Well my feelings about the concept of this blog are a bit like those Dread Pirate Roberts for Westley in The Princess Bride: "Good Job Westley. I may kill you in the morning, Good night" I started this blog somewhat unintentionally, I wanted to comment on a post at the Belmont club and serendipitiously chose the path to set up a Blogger account. The account is named after Tregonsee a Rigellian Lensman in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman for details on the series). Tregonsee was not my first choice by a long shot, but many of my other ideas were already taken. And truth be told a blocky somewhat emotionless incorruptible superanuated Boy Scout is rather closer to home than I might admit. In actuality I'm a software engineer in Greater Boston region. I am in my mid 40's. I am married with two daughters and live with three cats (beware potential cat blogging), a Leopard Gecko and assorted freshwater fish. My blog is somwhat anonymous as who knows if my current employer would appreciate my blogging. I will NOT blog on specific work subjects (or my current employer), but still one can never be too careful. I am a Christian and currently a member of a Baptist (ABC) church. I am of orthodox and calvinistic tendencies in my beliefs. I am also an egalitarian in that I believe that it is appropriate for women to teach and be pastors. This particular belief makes me neither fish nor fowl as I am not liberal enough to deny Jesus' divinity and atoning sacrifice, nor so conservative to ban women from teaching men like the Southern Baptist position. I am of a Conservative/Libertarian bent in my politics. In general I'm of the view that the least government is the best. However I am pragmatic and do recognize that there are things the government does well (just not a lot of them). I have a variety of hobbies. I love to observe the stars and have an 8" schmidt cassegrain that I hardly have enough time to use. I enjoy computer and video games and spend time playing them with my daughters on our Gamecube and (my) PS2. I particularly enjoy participating with my daughters in a Korean form of Karate called Soo Bahk Do. (http://www.soobahkdo.com/). As for Blogs the first I read regularly was slashdot (http://slashdot.org/ which many claim isn't a blog per se). One day it had a pointer to an article at USS Clueless a blog by Steven Den Beste. It was absolutely fascinating and had pointers to many other blogs. I enjoyed his take on things even though I think we'd disagree on many points. These days I read a variety of blogs, but not as many as I did at my peak. If you pin me down to my five favorites they are 1) USS Clueless, brilliant commentary (appears to have come back SOME after a long hiatus) 2) Inoperable Terran (lots of links to ongoing information) 3) AMCGLTD.com Another collection of unrelated but fascinating pointers and commentary 4) Little Green Footballs, almost everything the left would rather not hear 5)Anti Idiotarian Rottweiler, everything else the left would rather not hear I read bunches of others, but these (short the until recently inactive USS Clueless) get daily perusal. Well, if your still here and I haven't bored you to death yet Show up every once and a while. I can't promise I'll rise to the levels of Den Beste or Bill Whittle but the length of the pieces may rival them. You know what they say "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance..." I'm almost certainly not going to be blogging daily (how do people do that AND have a job?) but I'll try for a couple times a week. And even that may be tenuous (see how this post starts). Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now...