bearsandsyrup wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
bearsandsyrup wrote:
Virtually undetected? What are you talking about? Pine Tree line, Mid-Canada Line, DEW Line, North Warning System, any of those ring bells? How about Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, Joint Surveillance System, Aegis, MIDAS, or Defense Support Program (DSP satellite system)? We have had beautifully intricate early warning systems since the beginning of the Cold War and very detailed anti-ICBM defense systems since the USSR swapped over from using bombers to using ICBMs as their primary attack method in the event of a nuclear war. At no point could the USSR have "wipe[d] out nearly every major city in the US at any point virtually undetected". That's ridiculous.
They would they were nuking us.
Thats correct. Stealth was never the issue.
We would know we were dead meat. But we would still be dead meat.
The only defence was retaliation. There were no anti-missle systems ever perfected. Even if there had been any defense would have been overwhelmed and both superpowers wouldve been incinerated many times over.
I don't understand your first sentence.
Stealth is an issue if you want to gain the advantage and give your opponent less time to detect your attack.
Depends on too many factors to list and discuss. MAD was very real, but that's also why we developed numerous systems to do our best to safeguard ourselves against it.
That's incorrect. Retaliation was NOT the only defense-- again, there were numerous defense systems in place. Perfected is such a pedantic term-- technically no technology has ever been "perfected". Our missile defense systems were, however, very well-developed. As I said above, I'm not saying that we wouldn't have gotten hit-- if they had correctly launched enough missiles and if they were functioning, then we could have gotten very badly damaged and lost a lot of people. But again, we DID have detection and anti-ICBM programs in place, so to say that the only defense we bothered with was pointing a gun back at them is incorrect.
I thought I deleted the post.
Started to edit, then just lost interest and surfed away from the thread.
Didnt know my post was still there.
The first sentence was recast as "Yes, the moment they fired their missles we would know it.
There would be no stealth in a nuclear attack by either side.
They never figured out how to hit a bullet with a bullet during the era when they were trying to 'perfect' (ie make it work at all) anti-missle missles. Then later they talked about anti-missle lasers or particle beams. But they never had the money to even try to build them. Even if we had had somekind of defense against ICBM's those defenses would quickly be overwhelmed and both superpowers wouldve been toast. What prevented a nuclear exchange was not either side's feeble to nonexiste ICBM defense. What stopped it was both side certainty the other would retaliate with ICBMs- mutual assured destructon. Anti-missle defense was never a strategic consideration. The only real consideration ever was MAD.
And even if you had a 99 percent effective antimissle defense- and only one bomb got through- that one bomb wouldve killed atleast a thousand times as many civilians as died on 9-11.
Last edited by naturalplastic on 20 Jan 2014, 1:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
19 Jan 2014, 8:50 pm
