New fighter jet to bolster Russian air force, and India

[Razgovory]

You don't understand deterrence, my friend.

Nor do you, my friend.

In what manner?  Fixed ICBMs are more vulnerable to a first strike than airborne or seaborne (or land mobile) launch platforms, reducing their deterrent value.

The hell they are.  ICBMs are in harden bunkers.  They are thought to be hard to kill.  Besides, by the time an enemy nuke hits one of them the ICBM will be long gone.

[CountDeMoney]

I don't want to hear any of you fucks trumpeting "second strike" capabilities, since none of you gave two shits about Jimmy Carter or Gary Hart when they were the biggest supporters of it.

My mom was a delegate for Hart back '84.

Did she fuck him? Be honest.

[Neil]

But like I said, SSBNs also had those advantages, with greater survivability.

Not at all.  An SSBN can sink.  A silo can also sink, but it's pretty unlikely.

[Ideologue]

You don't understand deterrence, my friend.

Nor do you, my friend.

In what manner?  Fixed ICBMs are more vulnerable to a first strike than airborne or seaborne (or land mobile) launch platforms, reducing their deterrent value.

The hell they are.  ICBMs are in harden bunkers.  They are thought to be hard to kill.  Besides, by the time an enemy nuke hits one of them the ICBM will be long gone.

1)ICBM bunkers are difficult to destroy or render inoperable, not impossible.  They were less difficult to destroy earlier in the Cold War, but at the same time ICBMs were also less accurate.  In any event, a sufficient combination of numbers, power, and accuracy can defeat ICBM site hardening.  Especially earlier modes of hardening.
2)They would not necessarily be gone, especially earlier in the Cold War.  Iirc, Atlases (and R-7s) could not be kept fueled and ready for launch.
3)The "partially successful first strike" is a valid concept.  I'm hardly claiming every ICBM would be destroyed in a first strike, but enough may have been destroyed or rendered inoperable to render a second strike less severe.  In this case, bombers and later SSBNs have a very important role to play in deterring a first strike.

[Razgovory]

I don't want to hear any of you fucks trumpeting "second strike" capabilities, since none of you gave two shits about Jimmy Carter or Gary Hart when they were the biggest supporters of it.

My mom was a delegate for Hart back '84.

Did she fuck him? Be honest.

Don't know.  Probably not.  She had to drag me along everywhere, and I was probably as much of a turn off at 3 as I am at 30.

[Razgovory]

1)ICBM bunkers are difficult to destroy or render inoperable, not impossible.  They were less difficult to destroy earlier in the Cold War, but at the same time ICBMs were also less accurate.  In any event, a sufficient combination of numbers, power, and accuracy can defeat ICBM site hardening.  Especially earlier modes of hardening.
2)They would not necessarily be gone, especially earlier in the Cold War.  Iirc, Atlases (and R-7s) could not be kept fueled and ready for launch.
3)The "partially successful first strike" is a valid concept.  I'm hardly claiming every ICBM would be destroyed in a first strike, but enough may have been destroyed or rendered inoperable to render a second strike less severe.  In this case, bombers and later SSBNs have a very important role to play in deterring a first strike.

I thought that by the Vietnam war they had shifted to solid rockets.  Anyway, I'm not sure how well the B-52s would have done by that late a date.  The Soviets had built a lot of defenses, and probably knew (or at least make a good guess) the routes the planes would take.  The KGB was very keen to find things like that out.  They invested a lot of money in interceptors and SAMs

[Ideologue]

Well, the Vietnam thing is a whole separate issue (i.e., non-nuclear missions for which ICBMs and SLBMs are unsuited in a great many ways).  I was speaking on the narrow grounds of ICBM hardening and early warning nets making bombers completely obsolete.  Instead, I think significant SLBM deployment vastly reduced the bomber's importance to the triad, and indeed reduced the importance of a "triad" entirely.  And that came a little later, but prior to Vietnam (although developments and improvements of course continued throughout the Cold War)

This doesn't entirely conform with my service prejudices, but oh well.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Oops

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/08/21/Advanced-Russian-fighter-aborts-takeoff/UPI-80631313936868/

I guess it could still function a little against ground targets . . .

Between their fighter that can't take off and our new fighter that can't communicate with anything (and our other fighter that will bankrupt us before seeing service), the next air war will certainly be interesting.

[grumbler]

In what manner?  Fixed ICBMs are more vulnerable to a first strike than airborne or seaborne (or land mobile) launch platforms, reducing their deterrent value.

Fixed ICBMs, in the era you note (pre-MIRV and pre-accurate-SLBMs) were not overly vulnerable to first strikes because it cost more than a missile's worth of warheads to knock out a missile.

Plus, the very use of the term "terror-bombing" by you says that you don't understand deterrence.  Deterrence exists in the mind of the person you wish to deter.  It is that person's fear that, should he or she take an action, they will lose something more valuable to them than the value he/she gets from taking the action.

The contribution of the manned bomber to deterrence was always slim; there was little the manned bomber could do that couldn't be done better by the ICBM or SLBM.  Manned bombers were retained as a hedge against technological uncertainty; given the stakes, even systems as inefficient as manned bombers could be justified.  The bombers never played a key role in strategic planning once the Polaris A3 was deployed in numbers, though.

[grumbler]

3)The "partially successful first strike" is a valid concept.  I'm hardly claiming every ICBM would be destroyed in a first strike, but enough may have been destroyed or rendered inoperable to render a second strike less severe.  In this case, bombers and later SSBNs have a very important role to play in deterring a first strike.

The "partially successful first strike" is not a valid concept.  Even ten thermonuclear warheads hitting the ten most valuable targets in a country would be devastating to that country and cause it to drop dramatically in relative power.  And ten warheads could come from just a single surviving missile (though such targeting wouldn't occur IRL).

A successful first strike could only come with the elimination of all the command nodes that had the capacity/authority to order a retaliatory launch, before they could do so.  Ironically, the US adoption of PAL on its SSBNs robbed them of their ability to make such a first strike completely impossible.

[grumbler]

Well, the Vietnam thing is a whole separate issue (i.e., non-nuclear missions for which ICBMs and SLBMs are unsuited in a great many ways).  I was speaking on the narrow grounds of ICBM hardening and early warning nets making bombers completely obsolete.  Instead, I think significant SLBM deployment vastly reduced the bomber's importance to the triad, and indeed reduced the importance of a "triad" entirely.  And that came a little later, but prior to Vietnam (although developments and improvements of course continued throughout the Cold War)

This doesn't entirely conform with my service prejudices, but oh well.

Okay, so you do seem to understand something about deterrence.  I withdraw my claim.

[Neil]

Ironically, the US adoption of PAL on its SSBNs robbed them of their ability to make such a first strike completely impossible.

Don't worry.  The RN has your back.

[Ideologue]

Well, the Vietnam thing is a whole separate issue (i.e., non-nuclear missions for which ICBMs and SLBMs are unsuited in a great many ways).  I was speaking on the narrow grounds of ICBM hardening and early warning nets making bombers completely obsolete.  Instead, I think significant SLBM deployment vastly reduced the bomber's importance to the triad, and indeed reduced the importance of a "triad" entirely.  And that came a little later, but prior to Vietnam (although developments and improvements of course continued throughout the Cold War)

This doesn't entirely conform with my service prejudices, but oh well.

Okay, so you do seem to understand something about deterrence.  I withdraw my claim.

Yeah, I don't know why you guys were conflating those two issues, but I guess I could've been clearer.

The "partially successful first strike" is not a valid concept.  Even ten thermonuclear warheads hitting the ten most valuable targets in a country would be devastating to that country and cause it to drop dramatically in relative power.  And ten warheads could come from just a single surviving missile (though such targeting wouldn't occur IRL).

Alright, a "partially successful first strike" is a valid concept for defensive planning purposes, given rationality (and the accuracy of information on which the enemy may be basing a decision to launch) cannot be assumed.

[grumbler]

Alright, a "partially successful first strike" is a valid concept for defensive planning purposes, given rationality (and the accuracy of information on which the enemy may be basing a decision to launch) cannot be assumed.

The concept of a suppressive strike makes some sense in a counter-force environment, but that's merely a theoretical concept because you have no idea what targeting strategy your opponent is pursuing, and a suppressive strike might even induce your opponent to switch to counter-value targeting, which is the opposite outcome to what you would desire.  Pretty much every scenario that doesn't assume perfect communications and perfect rationality devolves into massive counter-value strikes and the end of complex life on earth.

[Ideologue]

"End of complex life on Earth" is overselling it.  Unless you mean it will be more difficult to go to poetry slams in the post-war environment.