About when did a US/CCCP war become suicidal?

Chad Irby wrote:

:In article ,
: Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
: I always considered that they'd paste such things with persistent
: chemicals, instead. Kill all the depots that way. While we sometimes
: claim that we would go nuclear in the face of a chemical attack, would
: we really have done it?
:
: I'm unconvinced we would have done so against the Soviet Union.
:
:If the USSR was into the realm of dropping planeloads of chemicals on
:depots and such, it's hard to imagine that the war wouldn't have crossed
:into the "screw 'em, what have we got ready to launch?" phase.
:
:They built tactical nukes for a *reason*, you know.

Yes, they did, and the Soviets had their share of them. Would we have
fired the first one in response to a chemical attack in the face of
"if you shoot a nuke, we'll empty our magazines back at you after YOUR
first use"?

I still don't think so, unless there wasn't another choice.

--
"Rule Number One for Slayers - Don't die."
-- Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"Kevin Brooks" wrote:

(large suspension bridges are a real bear to try and
destroy with conventional demo)

Seems to me that a largish FLSC (Flexible Linear Shaped Charge) would
do to sever one or both of the main suspension lines.

Not really. Take a gander at the size of the suspension cables for a large
bridge--they can be up to around three or more feet in diameter (the Golden
Gate is a bit over 36 inches). Take a gander at what kind of shaped charge
liner it would take to penetrate what is essentially 18 inches of steel, and
how much explosive is required to back it. Then imagine how massive that
puppy would have to be to get around that three foot cable. When we were
taught bridge demo, the large suspension bridge was not even really
addressed (I can recall an instructor flippantly remarking that it would
probably be best to just park a couple of fuel trucks under the cable at its
lowest point and light them off and hope that the thermal loading degraded
the strength enough to drop it). Given *lot's* of prep time you could make
it work, but you'd probably have to resort to precutting the cable part way
with a torch. I can recall an old Alistair MacLean novel where the bad guys
were going to drop the Golden Gate with "beehive" charges--but imagine the
efffect if you did wrap a ring of maybe the standard 40 pound chaped charges
around one of those cables. You'd end up with a few small diameter holes
penetrating most if not all of the way to the center, but you'd only be
taking out maybe 15 percent of the cross sectional area, which is unlikely
to do anything other than weaken the structure.

Brooks

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

In article ,
"Kevin Brooks" wrote:

When we were taught bridge demo, the large suspension bridge was not
even really addressed (I can recall an instructor flippantly
remarking that it would probably be best to just park a couple of
fuel trucks under the cable at its lowest point and light them off
and hope that the thermal loading degraded the strength enough to
drop it).

One of those "how to knock down buildings" shows on Discovery showed a
medium-sized suspension bridge somewhere getting knocked down, and they
didn't screw with the main cables for the primary cuts. They just
knocked down the vertical suspending cables with a *lot* of much smaller
charges, taking out the deck. I suppose they went back later and cut
the big cables, but if you don't have something to drive on, it's not
that useful, especially in the short term.

Now, if you had some good prep time, a half-ton chunk of thermite
wrapped around the cable could be interesting...

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

"Chad Irby" wrote
"Kevin Brooks" wrote:

When we were taught bridge demo, the large suspension bridge was not
even really addressed (I can recall an instructor flippantly
remarking that it would probably be best to just park a couple of
fuel trucks under the cable at its lowest point and light them off
and hope that the thermal loading degraded the strength enough to
drop it).

One of those "how to knock down buildings" shows on Discovery showed a
medium-sized suspension bridge somewhere getting knocked down, and they
didn't screw with the main cables for the primary cuts. They just
knocked down the vertical suspending cables with a *lot* of much smaller
charges, taking out the deck. I suppose they went back later and cut
the big cables, but if you don't have something to drive on, it's not
that useful, especially in the short term.

Now, if you had some good prep time, a half-ton chunk of thermite
wrapped around the cable could be interesting...

I would think the anchors at the ends of the suspension cables would be a
fruitful place to start but somehow I don't think the Golden Gate's anchors
have prebuilt demo chambers.

"Chad Irby" wrote
Fred J. McCall wrote:

I always considered that they'd paste such things with persistent
chemicals, instead. Kill all the depots that way. While we sometimes
claim that we would go nuclear in the face of a chemical attack, would
we really have done it?

I'm unconvinced we would have done so against the Soviet Union.

If the USSR was into the realm of dropping planeloads of chemicals on
depots and such, it's hard to imagine that the war wouldn't have crossed
into the "screw 'em, what have we got ready to launch?" phase.

They built tactical nukes for a *reason*, you know.

A not very well thought out reason. Unless you are willing to detail nuclear
targeting to an SF sergeant or a FAC, aside from some rear-area logistics
and transportation targets, the intended target set was either too fleeting
or too close to FLOT. The weapon release/target authorization cycle was just
too long. Then there was the memorable phrase that "West German villages
averaged 3KT apart".

What made the Red Tide recede were things like Pave Mover, the associated
strike weapons systems and US training and doctrine that resulted in US arms
able to move_lots_faster than the Sovs' system of command and control. That
last is interesting because during the sixties and seventies, much of the
literature credited the Soviet system of battle drills as delivering a very
flexible and fast responding tactical instrument to Soviet commanders. Then
it came to light that most of those "battle drills" were practiced by crowds
of Soviet soldiers running up and down hillsides chanting "tank, tank,
tank..." (OK, I made that last part up but the running part was true).

I have a book called "Measuring Military Power" (Joshua Epstein) from that
era that tried to calculate war-fighting ability, taking into account the
short lifetimes of Soviet-era equipment. What Epstein missed was that if the
aircraft and tank engines had 500 hour lives then not much training got
done, just Gun Decked. False reporting gave the Soviets (and western intel
shops) wildly optimistic views of Soviet readiness states that started to
evaporate in Afghanistan.

In article , "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:

"Owe Jessen" wrote in message
...
Am Fri, 27 Feb 2004 03:15:43 GMT, schrieb Fred J. McCall
:

Owe Jessen wrote:

:Could you give in some applications for the SADM? ISTR from childhood
80s) that there were plans to destroy a lot of bridges and so on
:with
:atomic bombs. Why was it thought necessary to use those instead of
:conventional explosives? Aside from the fact that using nuclear
:weopons just for the fun in a friendly country might not be overly
opular there.

Because wiring a modern bridge with sufficient explosives to bring it
down is not a quick job. Failure to manage this cost the Germans
dearly in WWII.

Either we wire them up and leave them that way in peacetime (not real
safe) or you take them down fast with nukes in wartime.

I guess the folks living next to the bridges were thrilled. Or was the
plan to use it only, if nuclear weapons were allready being used?

Bridges were not a very common target for SADM.

I have to admit I was using "bridge" as shorthand for "transportation
bottleneck," as it hadn't been used precisely in every case. Yes, I
agree that the most probable defensive use of ADMs would be road cuts,
where you aren't just destroying structural integrity of a bridge, but
needing to cause the collapse of hundreds to thousands of tons of rock.

They still might have made sense for a "friendly" bridge that had not
been prechambered, or for special operations against bridges in the
enemy rear.

No code for the PAL, and the weapon would
crunch
itself so that it would not be usable.

IIRC, the ADMs had fairly simple PALs -- essentially combination locks
that could not reasonably be bypassed in the field. These were
significantly different from the later, limited retry, multiple code
option PALs, which would also destroy key components of the devices.

"Paul F Austin" wrote in message
. ..

"Chad Irby" wrote
"Kevin Brooks" wrote:

When we were taught bridge demo, the large suspension bridge was not
even really addressed (I can recall an instructor flippantly
remarking that it would probably be best to just park a couple of
fuel trucks under the cable at its lowest point and light them off
and hope that the thermal loading degraded the strength enough to
drop it).

One of those "how to knock down buildings" shows on Discovery showed a
medium-sized suspension bridge somewhere getting knocked down, and they
didn't screw with the main cables for the primary cuts. They just
knocked down the vertical suspending cables with a *lot* of much smaller
charges, taking out the deck. I suppose they went back later and cut
the big cables, but if you don't have something to drive on, it's not
that useful, especially in the short term.

Now, if you had some good prep time, a half-ton chunk of thermite
wrapped around the cable could be interesting...

I would think the anchors at the ends of the suspension cables would be a
fruitful place to start but somehow I don't think the Golden Gate's
anchors
have prebuilt demo chambers.

You'd probably need some pretty massive prechambers. The weight for each
anchor on the Golden Gate is a whopping 60 thousand tons. Which would be
equivalent to a solid cube with sides a bit over 30 yards long. Buried.
Merely busting up that reinforced concrete behemoth does not guarantee
success, either, as long as the bulk of the mass remains in place and the
reinforcing steel continues to distribute the load throughout the bulk.

Brooks

Brooks

"Howard Berkowitz" wrote in message
...
In article , "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:

"Owe Jessen" wrote in message
...
Am Fri, 27 Feb 2004 03:15:43 GMT, schrieb Fred J. McCall
:

Owe Jessen wrote:

:Could you give in some applications for the SADM? ISTR from
childhood
80s) that there were plans to destroy a lot of bridges and so on
:with
:atomic bombs. Why was it thought necessary to use those instead of
:conventional explosives? Aside from the fact that using nuclear
:weopons just for the fun in a friendly country might not be overly
opular there.

Because wiring a modern bridge with sufficient explosives to bring it
down is not a quick job. Failure to manage this cost the Germans
dearly in WWII.

Either we wire them up and leave them that way in peacetime (not real
safe) or you take them down fast with nukes in wartime.

I guess the folks living next to the bridges were thrilled. Or was the
plan to use it only, if nuclear weapons were allready being used?

Bridges were not a very common target for SADM.

I have to admit I was using "bridge" as shorthand for "transportation
bottleneck," as it hadn't been used precisely in every case. Yes, I
agree that the most probable defensive use of ADMs would be road cuts,
where you aren't just destroying structural integrity of a bridge, but
needing to cause the collapse of hundreds to thousands of tons of rock.

They still might have made sense for a "friendly" bridge that had not
been prechambered, or for special operations against bridges in the
enemy rear.

No code for the PAL, and the weapon would
crunch
itself so that it would not be usable.

IIRC, the ADMs had fairly simple PALs -- essentially combination locks
that could not reasonably be bypassed in the field. These were
significantly different from the later, limited retry, multiple code
option PALs, which would also destroy key components of the devices.

It has been quite a few years since I sat through the very basic lectures we
received on the SADM (being in the very last EOBC class to go through that
phase), but IIRC the PAL was set up such that failure to input the proper
code would result in the device inerting itself. Or at least that was what
we were told as we viewed the training device from our stadium seating
arrangement. It was not that big a deal for us--our job was to be able to
run the calcualtions for emplacement requirements (i.e., determine the depth
of placment required to acheive the required effect)--the ADM guys, who had
to attend a special ADM course (which was three to five weeks long, IIRC),
would have been the guys doing the arming. We were supposed to be able to
help arm it and if necessary provide the demolition guard (minus the
requirement for actually firing the device).

Brooks

In article , "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:

"Paul F Austin" wrote in message
. ..

"Chad Irby" wrote
"Kevin Brooks" wrote:

When we were taught bridge demo, the large suspension bridge was
not
even really addressed (I can recall an instructor flippantly
remarking that it would probably be best to just park a couple of
fuel trucks under the cable at its lowest point and light them off
and hope that the thermal loading degraded the strength enough to
drop it).

One of those "how to knock down buildings" shows on Discovery showed
a
medium-sized suspension bridge somewhere getting knocked down, and
they
didn't screw with the main cables for the primary cuts. They just
knocked down the vertical suspending cables with a *lot* of much
smaller
charges, taking out the deck. I suppose they went back later and cut
the big cables, but if you don't have something to drive on, it's not
that useful, especially in the short term.

Now, if you had some good prep time, a half-ton chunk of thermite
wrapped around the cable could be interesting...

I would think the anchors at the ends of the suspension cables would be
a
fruitful place to start but somehow I don't think the Golden Gate's
anchors
have prebuilt demo chambers.

You'd probably need some pretty massive prechambers. The weight for each
anchor on the Golden Gate is a whopping 60 thousand tons. Which would be
equivalent to a solid cube with sides a bit over 30 yards long. Buried.
Merely busting up that reinforced concrete behemoth does not guarantee
success, either, as long as the bulk of the mass remains in place and the
reinforcing steel continues to distribute the load throughout the bulk.

Hmmmm...it's California, after all. I wonder if a sufficient number of
troops indulging in California's most valuable agricultural crop could
get into a mindspace to levitate it?

In article , "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:


It has been quite a few years since I sat through the very basic lectures
we
received on the SADM (being in the very last EOBC class to go through
that
phase), but IIRC the PAL was set up such that failure to input the proper
code would result in the device inerting itself.

From my recollection of open sources, the inerting was of the arming
mechanism, not the actual nuclear components. In other words, to use it,
you'd have to build and reinstall at least an entirely new arming and
firing system, but the physics package was intact.

In contrast, some later PALs were supposed to damage the nuclear
components to a point that they would only be useful as (possibly
contaminated) raw materials. One example cited was that a
neutron-absorbing safety wire or rod, normally retracted from the inside
of the hollow pit during the firing process, could be broken off inside
the pit if the PAL decided there was an unauthorized firing attempt.