page_title: Invasion of the United States
section_title: Cold War
hierarchical_section_title: Invasion of the United States / Cold War
caption_attribution_description: English: Nuclear map of the United States
context_page_description: The concept of an invasion of the United States relates to military theory and doctrine which address the feasibility and practicality of a foreign power attacking and successfully invading the United States of America. The United States has been physically invaded a few times, once during the War of 1812, once during the Mexican–American War, several times during the Border War, and once during World War II. During the Cold War, most of the U.S. military strategy was geared towards repelling an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union.
  The military history of the United States began with a foreign power on U.S. soil: the British Army during the American Revolutionary War. Following American independence, the next occurrence of an attack on American soil was during the War of 1812, also with Britain, and also the first and only time since the end of the Revolutionary War in which a foreign power occupied the American capital.
  On April 25, 1846, Mexican forces invaded Brownsville, Texas and attacked U.S. troops patrolling the Rio Grande river in an incident known as the Thornton Affair, sparking the Mexican–American War.
context_section_description: During the Cold War, the primary threat of an attack on the United States was viewed to be from the Soviet Union. In such an attack, nuclear warfare was projected to almost certainly happen, mainly in the form of intercontinental ballistic missile attacks as well as Soviet Navy launches of SLBMs at U.S. coastal cities.
  The first Cold War strategy against a Soviet attack on the United States was developed in 1948, made into an even firmer policy after the Soviet development of the nuclear weapon in 1949.  By 1950, the United States had developed a defense plan to repel a Soviet nuclear bomber force through the use of interceptors and anti-aircraft missiles, while at the same time launching its own bomber fleet into Soviet airspace from bases in Alaska and Europe. By the end of the 1950s, both Soviet and U.S. strategy included nuclear submarines and long range nuclear missiles, both of which could strike in as little as ten to thirty minutes while bomber forces took as long as four to six hours to reach their targets. The concept thus developed of the nuclear triad where all three weapons platforms (land based, submarine, and bomber) would be coordinated in unison for a devastating first strike, followed by a counterstrike, accompanied by "mopping up" missions of nuclear bombers.
  Operation Washtub (United States) was a top secret joint operation between the United States Air Force and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Primarily lead by J Edgar Hoover then his protege Joseph F Carroll, the Operation was carried out during the Cold War with the primary goal of leaving Stay Behind Agents in the then Territory of Alaska for covert intelligence gathering, and a secondary goal of maintaining a evasion and escape facilities for captures friendly American Forces. 
  On June 22, 1955, during the Cold War, a US Navy P2V Neptune with a crew of 11 was attacked by two Soviet Air Forces fighter aircraft along the International Date Line in international waters over the Bering Straits, between Siberia's Kamchatka Peninsula and Alaska. The P2V crashed on the island's northwest cape, near the village of Gambell. Villagers rescued the crew, 3 of whom were wounded by Soviet fire and 4 of whom were injured in the crash. 
  American nuclear warfare planning was nearly put to the test during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The subsequent blockade of Cuba also added a fourth element into American nuclear strategy, this being surface ships and the possibility of low yield nuclear attacks against deployed fleets. Indeed, the United States had already tested the feasibility of nuclear attacks on ships under Operation Crossroads. Reportedly, during the Cuban missile crisis, one Soviet submarine nearly launched a nuclear torpedo at an American warship, yet the three officers required to initiate the launch (the Captain, Executive Officer Vasily Arkhipov, and the Political Officer) could not agree to do so.
  By the 1970s, the concept of mutually assured destruction led to an American nuclear strategy which would remain relatively consistent until the end of the Cold War.
caption: FEMA-estimated primary targets for Soviet nuclear attacks during the height of the Cold War.
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