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...