Articles: "Nuclear Warfare 101".

[Uraniun235]

There's a bunch of highly specialized jobs which few people can do, and worse yet some of them are industry trade secrets so we may not even know how important those people are until they're dead and we're trying & failing to train their replacements.

On the plus side, it's been demonstrated that you can get away with murder under the pretense of "national security", so forcibly demanding these secrets for storage in a "doomsday bunker" should be doable. But that of course assumes a government focused on preparing for the aftermath of a nuclear war and willing to irritate business owners to do so... very unlikely for the past or next thirty years.

To use an example, my parents have a family friend in Europe who eventually became upper management in an aerospace contractor. One of the things they do is make precision ball bearings for airplanes and for certain types of those bearings there were only 2 people in the entire company with the skills to make them. Those 2 people had to make a whole bunch of extra bearings before they could go on summer vacation each year or else a large part of the European airline industry would grind to a halt.

Wow, that's pretty wild. I had no idea it was that specialized. I imagine there must be some pretty huge key-man insurance policies on those two!

If they're the only two people with those skills, who trained them? Or perhaps rather, how did they acquire those skills? Were they the same guys that developed those bearings?

[Big Orange]

OK Stuart, I come from Bristol, England, and I wouldn't count on myself living through WWIII considering that there's Filton with its aircraft production facilities only a few miles Northwest and then there are also the military facilities on Salisbury Plain not so far away , with the former location most likely a priority target and easier to knock out with a couple of ground burst devices to properly destroy the runways and surrounding facilities (in that case major civilian airports are going to get it, since they're going to support military aircraft in wartime, so bang goes Bristol International as well ).

And a lot of people don't take into account how delicate modern agriculture is, not only are there the enviromental problems of a Nuclear Autumn, but the support behind a modern farm is going to be cut off and decimated, with the pesticides, seeds, livestock, people, and machinery needed getting in shorter supply and not to be adaquetely replaced anytime soon (with vital fresh water and electricity inevitably lacking). I'm not sure about law and order not breaking down, considering how badly some bits of New Oreleans got after a hurricane, although that could've been blown out of proportion by the media hype. But even if civilian militia, "tame" criminal gangs, law enforcement officers, and surviving military units could pull together and form a relatively stable society, that society is going to be pretty local and they're perhaps going to be rivals of another similar group on the far side of what's left of California.

And here's some interesting forum entries relevant to this topic on the PRC's military defence capabilities which seem detailed for an armchair general type:

Bluffer's Guide - Fortress China

Bluffer's Guide: Chinese Naval Power

This guy has also done similar stuff on Cuba, Iran, and Russia.

[Pelranius]

Bluffer's Guides are pretty solid work, though I take issue with his "HQ-9 range is 90km" estimate (I imagine it would at least be 150km).

He also has a lot of stuff on North Korea.

[Big Orange]

I also like his stuff on aircraft carriers:

Harrier (type) Carrier Essay

Large Carrier Essay

And oh shit, Bristol is also not far away from a Magnox nuclear reactor facility in Oldbury on the Eastern bank of the Severn; it's old and supposedly in the middle of being decomissioned this year, but afterwards I assume it'll be a dormant military/industrial asset of some importance and probably get hit as well (the enemy not taking any chances).

[Zixinus]

Well, that's what you'd have to look into. "How much of these people's knowledge can we write down, at least to the level where some poor fool assigned the task of duplicating what a prewar Expert Ball Bearing Maker does will be able to do it given the same tools after several years of trial and error?" You can't make such high order technical specialists expendable, but it isn't in anyone's interests* for them to be irreplaceable.

What should also be considered that the skills most likely needed will be ones that may seem trivial or even forgotten.

I mean, does anyone here know how to make a rope? Cordage even? Carpentry? How to make a basket from raw resource to end product? Making material for clothes from falling/combed fur? Make cheese? Cure meat? Or even how to light a fire without matches or lighters?

What would be terrible is that a large deal of people with high qualifications would suddenly find themselves useless in such a world. Expert Airplane Ball Bearing Maker would suddenly find that he or she is just a landless, unskilled peasant (unless that degree gives you enough knowledge and skill for other stuff, like metalworking or assembling mechanics). 500 IT specialist of various kinds that once drove the town's small economy now are just peasants at the lack of electricity and internet (or anything useful for computers to do). And in some heavily urbanised populations, you have the problem that several skills that would be essential are forgotten and the avalaible skillset being one-sided. You might find a lot of people that can use tools to create houses and whatnot, but few if any, that can make the tools in the first place.

Then there is stuff like heat-treating. Heat-treating is almost a separate category of metalsmitting and it really doesn't matter how you do it, for what time and to what temperature. Odds are, that there are very few heat-treating experts in the entire county you live in, unless there is a metal-working factory there (which may be a target).

So you will not only be throw back several centuries, but most people will not have any idea how to live like that and will not have the skills necessary to live.

EDIT: What I just thought, is that various indian/first nation/etc preserves may find themselves at an advantage if they preserved the knowledge of their anchestors. Short-term, they know how to utilise everything in their environment to live.

[MKSheppard]

With MIRVs, the footprint is larger but how much larger is something that is kept very quiet.

MY FUHRER! I CAN SHROOM! (again)

So I found buried in the USAF ICBM Histories this tidbit:

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This compromise cleared the way for development of the Mk-12 MIRV.   According to this concept, Minuteman II would propel, on a ballistic track, a "bus" equipped with its own guidance and control and housing three Mk-12 warheads.   Once the bus had separated from the third stage, a so-called post boost control system would position the Mk-12 carrier so that it could eject in succession, the three warheads. In this fashion, one Minuteman could engage three separate targets within an eliptical area 50 miles across and extending 200 miles down range.12

By the way; the Official USAF ICBM Histories are a sad story -- the missiles were utterly unreliable for most of the 1960s; with a long list of explosions, failures, silo modifications needed; flooding silos; silos hardened to 1,000 PSI turning out to be really only 200~ PSI or so, etc...all requiring gargantugan amounts of money to fix -- and unlike bombers, ICBMs are not an ideal postnuclear strike system:

The 1962-64 history has this:

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As the Minuteman II was thus taking shape, the Air Force began having second thoughts about the system's ability to survive attack. A study prepared in late 1963 warned that the wing support bases were the most vulnerable element of the Minuteman system. Usually located at airfields that themselves were attractive targets, these bases were soft and therefore unlikely to survive a nuclear strike. Should the supporting facilities be destroyed, missile maintenance would be limited to that which could be performed within the squadron at the silos; and this, the study disclosed, would be inadequate to sustain a lengthy alert. If 135 Wing II missiles were maintained under these circumstances, the study predicted that after 15 days only 77 would be ready for immediate launch, and after 30 days the number would drop to 23. As of June 1964, the consequences of this study could not be predicted.37

[MKSheppard]

My favorite; from "USAF BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAMS 1965"

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A design review panel, which was organized in 1963, over a period of time identified some 40 "suspect areas" in Wings I through V, and further analysis disclosed that 27 items did not meet design specifications. Silo construction seemed basically sound, however; the fault lay in blast valves, pipes, and similar items that could not survive the ground shock produced by nuclear detonations. Instead of being able to survive overpressures up to 1,000 pounds per square inch, launch control facilities could withstand no more than about 125; launcher hardness, designed for 300 pounds per square inch, was rated at approximately 70.

[Simon_Jester]

What should also be considered that the skills most likely needed will be ones that may seem trivial or even forgotten.

I mean, does anyone here know how to make a rope? Cordage even? Carpentry? How to make a basket from raw resource to end product? Making material for clothes from falling/combed fur? Make cheese? Cure meat? Or even how to light a fire without matches or lighters?

Yes, yes, this is all true.

The point of this hypothetical "what do we do when we wake up the day after Armageddon and 70% of the population is still alive?" study would be to try and minimize the scope of this problem- preserve what can be preserved in terms of an industrial base, so that the country still has a future in some recognizable form after the bombs fall.

That takes two forms: trying to prepare for a disaster that devastates the infrastructure and patch together something, and trying to maintain a small core of at least crude industrial production capacity so that you don't wind up collapsing straight back to the Iron Age.

[MKSheppard]

More fun regarding high altitude airbursts and pen aids found:

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For a time the Air Force had pursued development of a high altitude fuze for the Mk-11A reentry system as a means of blacking out defensive radar by nuclear detonations outside the atmosphere. The Air Force and OSD believed that if it could be made available by December 1967, it would extend the useful life of the Mk-11A and thus provide insurance against delays in reentry development efforts. Unfortunately, work on the high altitude fuze (HAF) proceeded so slowly that OSD during the fall of 1965 became convinced that ground testing of a prototype would still be under way long after the 1967 deadline had passed. DDR&E therefore canceled the undertaking, noting that "future needs for a HAF capability will, of necessity, depend on the Mk-17 R/V program.

So you basically need a high altitude (as in 528,000 ft capable) fuzing system to make "radar blackout" or the mythical EMP work over a wide area -- rather than being a localized effect. This fuze of course, would be totally different than the fuzing system already installed/required in a nuclear RV which only needs to operate at altitudes from ground level to about 80,000+ feet.

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By mid-1965 elements of the operational force were being equipped with rudimentary penetration aids.   Titan II had mid-course and terminal decoys that simulated the radar image of its Mk-6 reentry vehicle.   Some Minuteman I missiles in Wings II through IV were fitted  with retro and tumble rockets to insure separation of the final stage from the Mk-11 reentry vehicle and prevent the former from being used by enemy radar as an offset aiming point.

The retro-tumbling rockets are interesting; and something that I hadn't thought of before this. But their effect would be very limited, due to the iron laws of ISP and delta vee; you would be able to increase distance and angles only by enough to give enemy search radars a couple seconds of delay; which isn't worth the weight or complexity of retro-tumble rockets.

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The two [PenAid] systems placed under development for Minuteman were Mk-1 and Mk-12.   

Mk-1, which met the requirements of both the Mk-11A and Mk-17 reentry vehicles, would emit nine large clouds of light chaff at intervals of 50 nautical miles during descent prior to reentry.  The clouds would be dense enough to conceal both the vehicle and its booster from defensive radar. The initial operational capability for Mk-1 was scheduled for January 1968. 

The penetration aid planned for the Mk-12 reentry vehicle would deploy heavy  chaff at intervals of 15 nautical miles down to 200,000 feet. Decoys also were being developed to confuse terminal defenses. Initial operational capability for Mk-12 was July 1969.25

Hmm. If they emit nine clouds at intervals of 50 nautical miles during the descent phase prior to re-entry, then that means the chaff corridor is 450 nautical miles long.

A image detailing LGM-30B Wing II's trajectory is available HERE, showing that re-entry occurs about 116~ nautical miles from ground zero. So you need to hit the target at about 566 nautical miles out to eliminate chaff as a threat.

Luckily for us...Jane's lists the GBI as having a maximum range of 2,700 nautical miles; which not only lets it cover the whole CONUS; but also hit warhead busses before they can deploy their decoy/chaff/etc spam.

[cosmicalstorm]

These posts are very interesting, thanks Sheppard!

I've always wondered what the worst case "bolts from the blue" scenario that the US planners dreamed up looked like, does anyone know anything about that stuff?

[Stuart]

Mk-1, which met the requirements of both the Mk-11A and Mk-17 reentry vehicles, would emit nine large clouds of light chaff at intervals of 50 nautical miles during descent prior to reentry. The clouds would be dense enough to conceal both the vehicle and its booster from defensive radar. The initial operational capability for Mk-1 was scheduled for January 1968. The penetration aid planned for the Mk-12 reentry vehicle would deploy heavy chaff at intervals of 15 nautical miles down to 200,000 feet. Decoys also were being developed to confuse terminal defenses. Initial operational capability for Mk-12 was July 1969.25

I remember looking at this back in the early 1980s. The problem was (and is) that chaff doesn't work in space. Perhaps I should rephrase that to avoid misunderstanding. Chaff works in the sense that it will still reflect radar. What doesn't work is the deployment of chaff. Chaff clouds rely on aerodynamic forces to cause the individual chaff strips to seperate and form the chaff cloud. Dropped from an aircraft, the chaff bundle is dispersed by airflow. Only, in space there is no airflow. So, the chaff bundle stays as a solid discrete lump and will not disperse. That's a problem that has never really been overcome. In theory one could do it by (say) putting a dispersal charge into the bundle but there are a number of problems with that. One is that to work, the bundle has to be a specific distance away from the RV and by the time it has got there and the dispersal charge has fired, the speeds involved are such that the chaff cloud is too far behind teh RV to be useful. Another is that chaff itself is fragile and has to be cut to specific lengths - the dispersal charge shreds it. Also, an adequately powerful dispersal charge going off too close to the RV will damage and/or deflect it. There are other problems as well. Also, there are a lot of technologies other than radar used for target discrimination and countering one doesn't help very much.

The problems with chaff decoys were so obvious and so well known that there was a lot of speculation as to why they had been considered at all. One hypothesis was that each side put them on in the hope that the other would assume that they had solved the problems involved and waste valuable research money funding chaff decoy technology (oddly, the reverse happened in the mid-1980s when everybody was trying to find places to throw black funding away. We had to get rid of the cash somehow and chaff dispersal in space was a suitably expensive and innocuous place to do it. Even then, it was a bad job but at least it generated receipts.)

Luckily for us...Jane's lists the GBI as having a maximum range of 2,700 nautical miles; which not only lets it cover the whole CONUS; but also hit warhead busses before they can deploy their decoy/chaff/etc spam.

The latter's the critical one. We can shoot down the warhead busses before they start to release their warheads (or alternatively force them to fire so far out, they'll be hard put to hit North America let alone any specific point therein). As I've said before, ABM in the 1970s wasn't the reason why MIRVs were created. MIRVs were created because it was the cheap way to run a deterrent and MIRV was only functional in the absence of ABM. So it was in the interests of the bean-counters on both sides to get rid of ABM.

[Jeremy]

Could the chaff be packed into a container filled with air? Why use explosives?
Inflate a balloon, douse it with water, then pop it in front of a large mirror.

[Stuart]

Could the chaff be packed into a container filled with air? Why use explosives?

Because one needs to have a blast wave that will disperse the chaff over a wide area. In an aircraft (or when firing chaff rockets from ships) airflow does that. The chaff is tossed into the airflow and then distributed by it. But there is no airflow in space.

Inflate a balloon, douse it with water, then pop it in front of a large mirror.

Huh? As a word of caution, a lot of very bright people on both sides spent a couple of decades studying this problem and gave it up as a bad job. There isn't an easy solution - or a difficult one come to that.

[Jeremy]

I am asking questions, not second guessing. I already know I'm dim.

Would releasing a volume of pressurized gas in space be able to spread material, and possibly less violently than a "blast wave"? When I pop a wet balloon it throws off the water droplets, I thought the concepts were similar.

[MKSheppard]

The problem was (and is) that chaff doesn't work in space. Perhaps I should rephrase that to avoid misunderstanding. Chaff works in the sense that it will still reflect radar. What doesn't work is the deployment of chaff. Chaff clouds rely on aerodynamic forces to cause the individual chaff strips to seperate and form the chaff cloud. Dropped from an aircraft, the chaff bundle is dispersed by airflow. Only, in space there is no airflow. So, the chaff bundle stays as a solid discrete lump and will not disperse. That's a problem that has never really been overcome.

In one of the later Histories, they have this line:

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The Mk-1 program made little headway at first. Early designs required extensive change, and the first tests of the completed system revealed that the clouds of chaff released from the dispenser did not fully screen the reentry body and the third stage from defensive radar. Despite improvements in the quality of the chaff, the density of the clouds, and the timing of their release, Mk-1 remained somewhat erratic in its ability to conceal the Minuteman third stage.

That right there, is British-grade Understatement (TM).

This led in turn to the improved Mk-1A Chaff Dispensing System; which used pre-stressed titanium foil, as opposed to the bagged chaff used in the Mk-1.

[Stuart]

I am asking questions, not second guessing. I already know I'm dim.

It's not a question of dimness; it's a matter of knowing about the right things. My point was that a number of design teams who were literally rocket scientists spent years on this problem and gave it up as a bad job. Now, we might not know why a specific idea failed or was impractical, only that they never found one that succeeded or was practical. The trouble is that if one knew enough about the more abstruse ideas to know why they didn't work, one certainly wouldn't be allowed to post the information here. So, its a bit pointless to suggest it could be done a specific way since it was probably tried and found wanting but we don't know why. The chances of hitting an idea that hasn't been thought of, tested and discarded is lower than minimal.

Would releasing a volume of pressurized gas in space be able to spread material, and possibly less violently than a "blast wave"? When I pop a wet balloon it throws off the water droplets, I thought the concepts were similar.

Ah, I see what you mean now. The problem is to get a smooth and complete chaff pattern in a medium that doesn't help. I'd think that a gas blast would simply divide the big chaff pack into a few smaller ones. There's also weight, volume considerations and so on.

[Stuart]

The Mk-1 program made little headway at first. Early designs required extensive change, and the first tests of the completed system revealed that the clouds of chaff released from the dispenser did not fully screen the reentry body and the third stage from defensive radar. Despite improvements in the quality of the chaff, the density of the clouds, and the timing of their release, Mk-1 remained somewhat erratic in its ability to conceal the Minuteman third stage. This led in turn to the improved Mk-1A Chaff Dispensing System; which used pre-stressed titanium foil, as opposed to the bagged chaff used in the Mk-1.

The real problem was that by the time the chaff was simply launchable, discrimination technology was running ahead of it. Chaff drifts, it doesn't have the velocity profile of the missiles and it can be very easily distinguised (that's why chaff is obsolete on aircraft as well). So, even if the chaff could be dispersed properly, it still wouldn't behave properly. However, the launch problem was never overcome and the chaff still clumps together. IIRC the Minutemen missiles don't carry either chaff or decoys now. Weight's too precious.

[Zixinus]

I have a question for Stuart.
I once read a book about nuclear charges a long while ago, from the library.

There was a small section about neutron bombs. Now, I know that neutron bombs use transuranic elements to create a lighter charge and such (which probably helps with mass-sensitive rockets), I would like to ask:

a, why use cobalt to artificially create long-lasting radioactive fallout? Especially considering that from what I understood, the point of nuclear war is to decimate the enemy's ability to wage war by destroying their military, industry, etc. What is the point of making certain areas useless to humans, if the war would last only a few weeks at worst? Does it have something to do with hopes to disperse this so it would give fallout to a greater area?

b, I also recall that one such warhead was made small enough to be fire from artillery? What is the use of that? I know that it would give some leeway, but I imagine that only a small number of such warheads would exist and would be far more complicated and slow to carry around any company. So, why were they built?

[MKSheppard]

Neutron bombs were developed to make it easier to destroy enemy tank columns on the battlefield. Soviet tanks had quite efficient anti-radiation liners that managed to reduce radiation exposure to the crew to a level that was acceptable for the expected lifetime of the tank (a couple days at best).

The reason neutrons were selected as the kill mechanism is that Neutrons are very hard to shield against; compared to the other types of radiation -- and so they would pass through the anti-rad linings on the T-55/T-62/T-64/T-72/T-80 and retain sufficientl lethality to kill the crew either instantly or in a few hours.

This also meant that you could use much smaller devices optimized for neutron output; and thus not have to blow away half of Germany to stop the Soviet Armored Fist.

EDIT: This smaller device yield led to the common myth of "kill people, but leave the buildings intact" associated with the Neutron Bomb.

[SilverHawk]

Neutron bombs were developed to make it easier to destroy enemy tank columns on the battlefield. Soviet tanks had quite efficient anti-radiation liners that managed to reduce radiation exposure to the crew to a level that was acceptable for the expected lifetime of the tank (a couple days at best).

The reason neutrons were selected as the kill mechanism is that Neutrons are very hard to shield against; compared to the other types of radiation -- and so they would pass through the anti-rad linings on the T-55/T-62/T-64/T-72/T-80 and retain sufficientl lethality to kill the crew either instantly or in a few hours.

This also meant that you could use much smaller devices optimized for neutron output; and thus not have to blow away half of Germany to stop the Soviet Armored Fist.

They were certainly worthless in preserving enemy infrastructure that you wanted to use. Even with the most efficent neutron bombs the only thing that changed was now YOU had to pull down all the unusable buildings instead of the bomb doing it for you.

[Stuart]

a, why use cobalt to artificially create long-lasting radioactive fallout? Especially considering that from what I understood, the point of nuclear war is to decimate the enemy's ability to wage war by destroying their military, industry, etc. What is the point of making certain areas useless to humans, if the war would last only a few weeks at worst? Does it have something to do with hopes to disperse this so it would give fallout to a greater area?

The idea of doping nuclear warheads withcobalt (or other materials that give really nasty fallout) was one of teh CND horror stories that they loved to put out. There was a grain of truth in it in that the USSR was short of warheads so some of their ICBMs were loaded with radioactive waste (later they carried bio heads instead). But, by and large, nobody used doped warheads. The "neutron bomb" actually called an enhanced radiation device was rather different. Essentially this was a nuclear device that had the blast and thermal emissions reduced to a minimum (thus limiting property damage) while its radiation output was increased to a maximum (thus killing as many people as possible within its radius of effect). Oddly, a dugout witha foot or so of mud on top would actually give quite good protection from an ERD but steel wouldn't unless it was backed up by a boron-doped liner.

I also recall that one such warhead was made small enough to be fire from artillery? What is the use of that? I know that it would give some leeway, but I imagine that only a small number of such warheads would exist and would be far more complicated and slow to carry around any company. So, why were they built?

Basically to take out enemy units wholesale. Also, more importantly, as a tripwire. The line went. "See that unit yonder? It has nuclear weapons. If you attack it, it will use them. One flies, they all fly. So if you attack it and it lets fly, soon your homeland will be a blasted radioactive wilderness. Now we don't want that to happen do we? So let's all be nice and peaceful." It worked.

Actually, there were quite a lot of tactical warheads for bombs, missile warheads, artillery shells, navy depth charges etc. Also nuclear sea mines and torpedoes. The first Soviet strategic nuclear weapons were nuclear-tipped torpedoes.

[Consumerist]

Does the "one flies they all fly" rule count for nuclear navy equipment considering the lower impact those weapons have? If you use one on a carrier or submarine I could see that initiating an exchange based on the fact you are directly attacking the opposing nations strategic arsenal but would a destroyer being sunk by a nuclear torpedo cause an immediate strategic retaliation?

[Zixinus]

The idea of doping nuclear warheads withcobalt (or other materials that give really nasty fallout) was one of teh CND horror stories that they loved to put out. There was a grain of truth in it in that the USSR was short of warheads so some of their ICBMs were loaded with radioactive waste (later they carried bio heads instead). But, by and large, nobody used doped warheads.

Ah, that makes sense. I recall several allusions to NATO in that book and it is possible that the book was written in Soviet times.

Essentially this was a nuclear device that had the blast and thermal emissions reduced to a minimum (thus limiting property damage) while its radiation output was increased to a maximum (thus killing as many people as possible within its radius of effect).

That makes plenty of sense. I presume that such bombs would create little fallout?

Basically to take out enemy units wholesale. Also, more importantly, as a tripwire. The line went. "See that unit yonder? It has nuclear weapons. If you attack it, it will use them. One flies, they all fly. So if you attack it and it lets fly, soon your homeland will be a blasted radioactive wilderness. Now we don't want that to happen do we? So let's all be nice and peaceful." It worked.

Actually, there were quite a lot of tactical warheads for bombs, missile warheads, artillery shells, navy depth charges etc. Also nuclear sea mines and torpedoes. The first Soviet strategic nuclear weapons were nuclear-tipped torpedoes.

No, I mean, what is the point of artillery in particular? I may be out-of-date regarding modern artillery, but doesn't artillery have shorter range and using nuclear artillery shells implies that there is no air superiority (that is, bombers can't do the job instead) and would need artillery.

However, artillery is limited to the ground, I imagine that the nuclear warhead has to be stored separately and much more carefully than regular warheads (due to the fact that nukes are sensitive devices). However, if there is no air superiority and there is reliance on nukes to be thrown by limited-range artillery... you avalaible targets will be small, no? The only thing I can imagine that would be useful is destroying a field of tanks, but if nukes get involved, then those tanks would be fighting for a country that's in ashes, no?

It can also make things uncomfortable if there is artillery lined up and the enemy does not know to expect nukes or not.

Or am I missing something? Especially artillery range?

[Big Orange]

I guess artillery shells tipped with tactical nuclear devices would've been useful for taking out an Soviet Army/National People's Army division or five if they advanced into West Germany suddenly over the Iron Curtain.

[SilverHawk]

Atomic Annie was made to turn the Fulda Gap into a wasteland if needed. (Along with Davy Crocketts) Artillery can respond faster to the opening moves of an enemy force then a bomber can and they did their job perfectly. (Even if the soviets almost always knew where the Atomic Annies were at all times.)

What's even better is the Iowa Class BBs Mk-23s, each had a 15-20 Kt payload (Similar to Annie) and could be delievered in mind blistering salvos of 135-180 Kts, wiping out any target not at least 20 miles from the coast line off the face of the earth.