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To: 43north; east1234; fso301
I was in Minuteman missiles in the late 1970's. At that time the Soviet Union had so many warheads they were targeting Individuals with weapons. The targeting info was updated in their computers to follow these "high value" individuals around. Imagine that for a moment. They had so many warheads they were targeting individuals.

Research the term "nuclear winter" on the net. If you have access, take a course on Nuclear Tactics at the Air War College.

20 posted on 05/06/2010 12:33:06 PM PDT by Ben Mugged (Unions are the storm troopers of socialism.)
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To: Ben Mugged; All
I was in Minuteman missiles in the late 1970's. At that time the Soviet Union had so many warheads they were targeting Individuals with weapons.

Fine but if launch orders went out from either side, how many missles would work as designed versus malfunctioning? Not very many. That's why so many are needed. More systems are needed than targets in order to compensate for system unreliability.

More air dropped nuclear bombs were needed than targets existed because of expected losses due to enemy air defenses. More subs were needed than targets because some subs might be destroyed by enemy action and some subs could be expected to be lost due to missles malfunctioning in the tube resulting in loss of sub (similar to the Kursk)

Using NASA as a metric, the space agency probably does no better than 50/50 at getting a satellite launch off on time. Unlike a minuteman sitting in a remote silo years on end, NASA missiles are of fresh manufacture and are attended to by swarms of engineers and technicians. All this for no better than a coins toss chance of launching on time.

23 posted on 05/06/2010 2:36:21 PM PDT by fso301
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