From: bprofane@netcom.com (Gert Niewahr)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Minuteman Launch Center Surviablity
Date: 17 Apr 92 01:02:17 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)


From bprofane@netcom.com (Gert Niewahr)

In article <1992Apr15.040641.7090@cbnews.cb.att.com> PAISLEY@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU writes:
>
>From <PAISLEY@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU>
>
>In article <1992Apr14.003117.22490@cbnews.cb.att.com>, pyrdek@edinboro.edu says:
>>
>>From pyrdek@edinboro.edu
>>
>>Does anyone have any information on the following:
>>
>>Survivability of Minuteman Launch Control Centers.
>>     In particular,
>I believe the basic consensus is that, in a full-scale nuclear exchange,
>these wouldn't stand a chance.  It is this realization that led to the
>development of "Launch on Warning" as a policy, because it was the only
>way they could be used.  Use 'em or lose 'em.

This policy arose as the Soviets built vast numbers of MIRV'd
ICBM's and was not based on the inherent accuracy of the Soviet
missiles but on the total number of warheads they could throw at
our land-based missiles.  I think it was the case that the US went
to the "Launch on Warning" after the Soviets deployed huge numbers
of warheads and *before* they improved the accuracy of their ICBM's
to Minuteman standards.  

I've long wondered whether this was an excessively paranoid policy,
since it was based on the idea that the Soviets could innundate
each silo with tens of warheads in the short time span of a first
strike.  I don't think it was ever claimed that the Soviets were
capable of multiple *simultaneous* strikes on targets as small as a
sile, which implies that warhead strikes would have have to be
spaced out like subways arriving.  What would have been the minimum
interval between strikes so that the accuracy of succeeding warheads
wouldn't have been affected by the blast effects of preceding
warheads on the the target silo, let along blast effects of
warheads targeting silos nearby.  When kill probability is measured
in the hundres of meters, it doesn't seem credible to expect that
the Soviets could have dumped hundreds of warheads into a small
area in the short span of a "first strike" (1-2 hours at most) and
achieved any kind of kill probability, even with massive
overtargeting.  The obvious rebuttal is that they were going to
kill something with all that megatonnage, but if it really takes a
direct hit to kill a silo then that's not as true as it might seem.
Chip twenty golf balls onto the green and your chances of getting
one in the cup on the fly is still pretty low and near misses don't
count.

>>What accuracy was assumed for U.S.S.R. missle attack on this type
>>of site?  And did it include penetrator (bunker buster) type
>>warhead design?
>I don't know about accuracy, but their accuracy, combined with nuclear
>yield is, shall we say, sufficient to trun any bunker into a smoldering
>crater, without even breaking a sweat.

I don't think this is right.  Up until the last round of Soviet
ICBM's, their missiles were not considered "first strike" weapons
of the same quality as our Minuteman force.  The kill probability
of a warhead strike on a silo is figured in the hundreds of meters
in all the figures I've seen.  You've really got to lay the sucker
right on the bullseye or else the silo survives with a high chance
of being able to launch.  As I understand it, you can only kill a
silo with the kernel of annihilation, so to speak, at the center of
a nuclear detonation; the silos can stand up (reasonably well) to
the overpressures, heat, and radiation outside of that radius.
This is not my field, but as I understand it the actual volume in
which a nuclear detonation will turn everything into plasma is
pretty small (hundreds of meters), and that this volume of total
destruction scales up rather poorly as you go from kiloton to
megaton warheads.

This is one of the reasons that we never installed megaton-class
warheads on the Minuteman: More smaller warheads gave a greater
kill probability.  I don't think the megaton warheads have been
targeted at hard targets since the 60's.  I think the Soviets went
back to kiloton warheads in the last generation of MIRV ICBM's,
once they had the accuracy to beat the kill probability of less
accurate megaton warheads.
Newsgroups: sci.military