Nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union

regurgitating terminology I doubt you fully understand.

a film was made recently about this courageous man:

Thanks for the link, I haven't seen that movie. I'll check it out!

Any good?

it is on my to see list

Oh cool, I might go and rent it now then, I'll tell you how it is

Have you seen The Gatekeepers? It's a documentary film where all six living former heads of the Israeli Shin Bet go on camera to talk about their career in intelligence, to talk about the occupation of the territories, of intelligence operations they were involved in.

Not only is it extremely well-made, it is actually quite moving; probably the most profound documentary I've seen

no. i recently watched a really good movie about a Mossad operation. "The Debt" stars Helen Mirren.

Presumably that's what's occurring when someone says "low trajectory SLBM", not realising the term is "depressed trajectory"?

Definitely check out the Gatekeepers then, it is amazing. Not just good, but exceptional. Seen the Honourable Woman? That's quite good.

Thanks for the heads up re The Debt.

[video="youtube;HdMjr8cuEy8"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdMjr8cuEy8[/video]

I used to have the misfortune of dealing with a USMC sniper who reminds me of you.

He'd constantly go on about how a sniper rifle was an indirect weapon due to the trajectory of its bullet at range.

We all thought he was a boring w*****r.

Munich is a great film about the hunt for the terrorists who attacked the Olympic Games in 1972.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/munich/

Ah yes, I've seen Munich, great movie. Out of interest, have you seen the original 1979 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy?

Bloody awesome, seeing the Le Carre world of espionage; middle-aged civil servants having drinks at the bar of the Travellers, searching out a Soviet mole of the sort who went to Oxford and wears a pinstripe suit, backbiting in the Foreign Office and amibtions for knighthoods and peerages, rather than car chases and gun fights.

I don't know, maybe it's just me Did you see the recent BBC spy thriller The Game?

[video="youtube;vLdp4kiuT-U"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLdp4kiuT-U[/video]

i agree that Alec Guinness was far better suited to playing George Smiley. A brilliant series. The book is even better.

this film is worth watching:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087629/

Most definitely, I absolutely loved the books, loved the series. And it's interesting that the series follow the books so closely, they didn't rewrite dialogue, they essentially lifted it straight out of the book. It's a testament to just how strong the source material is.

I didn't particularly like the recent Tinker, Tailor movie, it was too short to be able to tell the short.

A friend of mine is a member of the Travellers Club and when he took me there for dinner I thought it was the most awesome thing in the world



You're kidding!! I had no idea The Little Drummer Girl had been made into a movie. I absolutely loved the book, I actually read it when I was on holiday in Greece so that felt suitably appropriate Thank you sooooo much for that link, I'm off now to go watch it

It's true that Soviet doctrine planned for conventional forces fighting in a nuclear battlefield environment, but it's also true that we know the Soviets were never planning a first strike and that they were terrified the Americans were.

I would have thought Minot was probably inappropriate for a depressed trajectory strike given its elevation and its distance from the coast.e

This was really far from my main interests, but in the past two or three months I've become really engrossed in military theory, particularly about nuclear weapons. I'm beginning to find it really fascinating. Since you seem quote knowledgeable, I'm wondering if you have any recommended (non-fiction) reading?

In other words, I might express this in such a way: deterrence was designed to prevent force escalation. Any violation of this trend or rule would have led to a responsive escalation. Given the size of the nuclear arsenals at the time of your video's production, this escalation could have gone on, effectively, ad infinitum.

I've not come across the terms depressed trajectory or CEP before. What I want to ask is if all SLBMs were launched using a depressed trajectory and if this significantly influence flight times and also if a depressed trajectory has any noteworthy effect on accuracy (which I assume to be roughly equatable with CEP)?

The absolute bible, in my opinion, for reading up on nuclear strategy through the Cold War, and how it evolved in light of different weapons systems and eras is a book called The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy by Lawrence Freedman.

Are you familiar with the distinction between counterforce and countervalue? (apologies if the question is patronising, I don't know how much you know about the subject). The distinction was increasingly important as the Cold War progressed, as nuclear weapons become more accurate, and as it becomes plausible for one side to target the other side's strategic weapons systems and command/control systems rather than their cities (that is known as counterforce).

Two other very important concepts are overpressure in psi (pounds per square inch) and the inverse square rule. A nuclear detonation will cause a blast effect; overpressure. The strength of the overpressure will reduce according to the inverse square rule (take a look at the nuclear weapons effects calculator below)

In essence, due to the inverse square law, you are far better investing in accuracy than bomb yield to get a better outcome in terms of target destruction... To bust a silo, you need a weapon much more like the US MX missile, which carried ten warheads of 500 kilotons each and a CEP of about 40 meters. You need to get pretty close to a silo to bust it.

So, depressed trajectory... basically, ICBMs and SLBMs follow a ballistic trajectory where they arc very high, in a suborbital trajectory, detach the warhead bus which then ejects warheads at the right moment so that it will fall on the target you want it to fall on. The problem with a big, arcing trajectory high above the surface of the earth is that it makes it easy to detect with radar, and it has a longer flight-time. The flight-time of an SLBM from the mid Atlantic to a continental US target would be about 10-15 minutes.

But if you fire it on a depressed trajectory (think of it like you are firing a rifle, rather than an artillery shell; instead of arcing high into the atmosphere and falling back, you are firing it at a much lower angle). This means you have a much shorter flight time, closer to 5 minutes. The adversary has far less warning. That would be very useful for a decapitation strike against Washington DC... The problem with this is that ballistic missiles are not designed for this manoeuvre; a missile which otherwise has a range of 4,000-5,000 miles might have it reduced to 1,000 miles or even less on a depressed trajectory, simply because it is encountering far more aerodynamic resistance as against the thrust the rocket can produce.

Sorry, I know that is a massive rambling post, but I thought I'd outline some of the basics. It's one of the most interesting areas of study, nuclear strategy and arms control. To really get a handle on it, the first thing I'd encourage you to do is get a handle on the technology; most of the strategy flows from the technical characteristics of the weapons. Check out the Minuteman, the MX, Polaris/Poseidon/Trident, the SS-18, the SS-20 and BGM-109.

I think I am. Crudely, countervalue targets are military targets and counterforce targets are civilian targets; or countervalue targets are those that pose a military threat and counterforce targets are those that don't. In some things I've read, I've felt there's been the implication that countervalue has strategic weight as opposed to counterforce which has tactical weight, although I'm not sure what you think about this.

Sometimes I feel the distinction could be obscured. Instances like garrisoning, conscription, or, as you point out, of ABM launchers around major cities would blur the distinction.

I read in the aforementioned book that higher overpressure can be created by detonating atomic weapons closer to the ground (a ground burst). If I understand the inverse square rule, this is a way of exemplifying it?

That's really interesting. Was there an inequality in the resilience of silos between the two superpowers?

This is the paper that I read recently. It goes through the different phases of missile launch. If you can get access to both Vol. 114 no. 2 and no. 3, I think you'd find pursuing them really interesting.

So, to answer my question, all missiles were fired using a suborbital rather than a depressed trajectory? Or was the option to fire with a depressed trajectory available at control centres? Do you know what accounts for the lower flight time of SLBMs - is it simply that submarines are closer to the United States?

Any book recommendations on this point? At this point, I haven't looked into military technology at all.

X

This is the paper that I read recently.
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Any book recommendations on this point? At this point, I haven't looked into military technology at all.