Counterfactual part 4: This is a continuation of the post of a while back. The questions were
- What might have conventional combat in Europe at this time (1964-1975 basically Vietnam Era+Yom Kippur war) looked like?
- 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
