From: Gary Coffman <gary%ke4zv.uucp@mathcs.emory.edu>
Subject: Re: Is this true?
Organization: Destructive Testing Systems
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 17:44:12 GMT


From Gary Coffman <gary%ke4zv.uucp@mathcs.emory.edu>

In article <C15y9y.K7E@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> Ad absurdum per aspera <JTCHEW@lbl.gov> writes:
>
>>>  imagine the effects of say, a 5 megaton blast on a modern aircraft carrier group.
>> 5 meg bombs are awfully rare these days. 
>
>It's important to keep in mind, though, that these tests were
>weapons-effects 
>experiments, not tactical simulations.  If you wanted to nuke a task force
>or
>its BB equivalent in a real-death scenario, you'd lay the device as close
>to 
>the capital ship as possible.  To borrow a thought from somebody's .sig,
>it would be sufficient to get the power projector -- the ships that exist
>only
>to serve and defend the power projector are of some fiddling tactical 
>importance to whoever delivers the nuke, but are strategically
>insignificant.

Remember also that CV-3 was within 85 yards of ground zero. In a real
fleet deployment, the battle group spreads out over a hundred square
miles and may be moving at 30 knots. This makes the probability of
such a close in hit very remote in the case of an ICBM attack. You'd
need some kind of homing anti-ship weapon to lay the nuke close 
enough to the capital ship to destroy it. Something like a nuke
capable Harpoon. The fleet's air defenses are designed to counter
such missiles.

>Remember, also, that you can take a ship out of action without sinking
>her.  A carrier with the flight deck smashed up, or a BB with fire control
>blown or washed away, probably turrets smashed, etc., isn't going to
>do the enemy much good -- especially if ship and crew were badly 
>contaminated.  Decontaminated, repaired, and re-manned? Maybe.  
>Scuttled to get rid of the navigation hazard might be more like it.

Most US Navy capital ships have automatic wash down systems to deal
with surface contamination, and fallout filtration systems. While
the long term health risks to the crew might be high, the combat
effectiveness of the ship wouldn't be impaired by radiation from 
a nearby nuke. The key, of course, is *how* nearby. I recall that
our capital ships are supposed to be able to survive any SU nuke
that misses by 1/2 mile, maybe somewhat less.

>Of course, such fiddling issues apply only to nations that have a handful
>of nuclear weapons.  If you've got tens of thousands of the things, well,
>once you've gotten over the threshold of using them at all, you'd
>might as well plop a followup strike into the rescue/regrouping effort...
>or fire a dozen warheads in close succession and sink the lot.

Once you start thinking about lobbing thousands of nukes, you're going
to be facing a full exchange against the homelands of the two nations,
and the fate of a mere fleet is of little strategic consequence. That's
why boomers hide. They make the probability of a successful first strike
defanging your opponent very small.

>Ghastly stuff, that.

Indeed.

Gary
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