F-16 intercepts ballistic missile in test..

[Phantasee]

Where the hell did you find an instructional comic about the B-70, Shep?

[Sea Skimmer]

Where the hell did you find an instructional comic about the B-70, Shep?

Valkyrie: North American's Mach 3 Superbomber by Dennis R. Jenkins and Tony R. Landis

[Medic]

You seriously don't think a Stealth Bomber could penetrate current US airspace without being detected? Despite the fact that the US doesn't HAVE an IADS of any real kind at all? Seriously?

No comment.

While I have no idea what Stuart knows / can't disclose / is alluding to, I can at least speculate: hundreds of North American (Canadian and American) airport and military airbase radars can't all be useless, can they? North American airspace is very busy and all airliners or aircraft with any business at all in the air must have some sort of transponder that obviously signals "I have business being here."

Any hint of an aircraft following some non-standard flight path or coming from the North out of the blue raises a red-flag and yes, this is a theoretical stealth aircraft but by the time it's over the midwest there's already radar's surrounding it on all sides -- it's stealth, not invisible.

[Sea Skimmer]

While I have no idea what Stuart knows / can't disclose / is alluding to, I can at least speculate: hundreds of North American (Canadian and American) airport and military airbase radars can't all be useless, can they?

They are all 100% useless for detecting a Russian bomber launching cruise missiles from 500 miles off the coast. The USAF built four big backscatter radars that would have detected that kind of threa in the 1980s, but just was work was finished the Cold War ended and they got put into mothballs, the order was given just recently to rip them down for good. The only thing that could provide real early warning of a Russian bomber attack would be E-3 Sentrys, and the US doesn’t have enough of those to fly standing patrols on both coasts all time.

Ironically we do have two older backscatter radars aimed south… but only to look out for drug planes. Some drug planes still slip through too; not good sign from a cruise missile defense standpoint.

Russia is BTW developing several new air launched cruise missiles with very long range. They are only for conventional attacks (at least that’s what we’ve been told) but adapting the designs to use nuclear warheads would be easy if Russia desired to do this, the reverse of how Tomahawk and ALCM spawned non nuclear variants.

[Chris OFarrell]

Please, if Mexicans can jump across the border and the US government can't do jack shit to stop them, how in the hell is the US going to stop a network of professional special forces cells being quietly established in the US months before any strike is planned, with smuggled in or covertly dropped things like smuggling in or having dropped in stuff like a W72 launcher to blast the runways at airbases into junk and trap the bombers on the ground? Hell, I don't even know if most major US airbases actually had *hardened* shelters for the bomber wings, did they?

You would have to be utterly insane to try such a thing. The potential points of failure for such an operation are numerous, and any failure would be completely disastrous.

Complex? Yes. Impossible to pull off? Hardly. The fucking 9-11 hijackers, some of whom were on a terrorist WATCH LIST got into the US through the front door and stayed there for years, TRAINED using US companies and executed an astonishingly more complex, coordinated attack. If you are honestly telling me that well trained intelligence professionals with the resources of a major power behind them couldn't be inserted into the US along with -probably disassembled and smuggled components- over the short term for a first strike opperation, then frankly I think your far more confident in US border security then I am. Tell me, how many illegal and undocumented people were estimated to have made their way over the border in 2007?

You'd be extremely lucky if the US did not immediately retaliate with full force.

Hello? The whole POINT of this operation is as part of a First STrike scenario, if you had read the point I was trying to make. This isn't some one off terrorist strike here...

Even if it did succeed, the US still has nuclear-armed naval assets. Any preemptive strike would be undoubtedly painful.

Yessss but, as in my post, the US has scrapped its SSBN force in favor of these bombers, a naval response is going to be severely degraded, especialy if the opponent uses the destruction or heavy degradation of the bomber force. Tactical fighters off carriers can't hold anything like as many strategic targets at risk as effectively as heavy long range bombers can and will have to fight against a much more intact defensive system of the enemy.

Firstly if a spy happens to hear of the operation, you're fucked. Even the best operational security has a risk of leakage, you better be dammed sure that the rewards are worth that risk.

OppSec issues are going to be valid for ANY plan to launch a first strike against an enemy, if at ANY level the enemy hears of it, they'll probably strike first, so its hardly an argument thats limited only to ONE part of the plan.

Secondly you are assuming that all the teams will get through with their weapons and gear unnoticed. This is a huge gamble, even if the chances favour a successful insertion, you only need a single team to have a run of bad luck.

All operations have elements of risk in them, especially at this level of the Strategic game, a First Strike scenario when you get down to it is ALWAYS a question of 'but what if the enemy does X Y or Z instead of A B or C? What if E F or G happens?' When you're playing for these stakes, you have to take some risks, especially if you look at the strike teams as something to enhance the operation rather then the operation in of itself. If both sides have something of a strategic parity, then even if the operations fail, the best outcome is probably going to be M.A.D. If however you pull these kinds of operations off, you might come out well ahead.

Thirdly, let us assume they do manage to get in. Your commandos not have an extensive support network that has insinuated itself into the very fabric of American society, as do illegal immigrants. Thus they are at a considerably greater risk of discovery.

They don't have to bloody LIVE there for a decade. This it talking about the short term, not the long. I'm not talking about countless nuclear armed sleeper cells just waiting for the wakeup call, living in the US for decades here...

Fourthly, they will also have to assault bases that are mostly located in the middle of nowhere and heavily guarded.

Which is true, but with the range of these weapons you don't have to get THAT close, its not like you have to pull up to the gate. And most of hte bases are not THAT isolated anymore, not even the Strategic bases, most have had significant sized towns grow up around them which don't have any kind of access control. Go and LOOK at some of them on Google Earth and how, understandably, towns have grown steadily around them...

We're not talking an AFB in the middle of the desert with minefields and guard towers all the way around them...

If anything, anything at all, goes wrong, the USA has ironclad casus belli and will most likely proceed to nuke your country into oblivion. Only a madman would authorize such a risky operation.

Uh yeah, if you had noticed my entire post was operating under the assumption that the BAD GUYS were trying to pull off part of a First Strike here...

[Chris OFarrell]

How so, at least any more then any other shoreside C4I technology? From what I recall, most communications with submarines is done via Satellites, with only the ELF quing system shore side, though I think I recall hearing that there are command and control aircraft that can take over that function.

Because the bombers are gone, on their way. The submarines are still waiting for their missile launch orders. Again, one can recall bombers, one cannot recall missiles.

The bombers are still holding at the failsafe launch point aren't they until THEY get the go order as well? And that GO order being 'yes this is a no shit Nuclear strike order' which would not be issued unless there really WAS no doubt? I can see dispersing the bombers to failsafe points or alternate airfields as a precaution, fair enough. But the order that sends them from there to their targets...why would anyone give THAT order unless they were utterly sure?

Especially as with the increasing range and speed of the munitions the bombers will pack (as well as their own speed) they could be firing off the first long range missiles very shortly after the order is given, to start blasting their way through the enemy defensive structure?

The same is true of a depressed trajectoy SLBM launch

No such thing.

Really? I stand corrected then. But I was under the impression that there HAD been testing and research done on the concept, thats SLBM missiles could be fired in a relativly flat arc at very high speed, sacrificing the range of a ballistic arc to punch through the lower atmosphere at very high speed with little warning.

off the US coast at major US airbases is it not? And before you can say that the bombers given increasing alert and tension would have been dispersed, the same holds true of the missile subs, does it not?

No, it does not. The B-70s could have bene off the runways in five minutes; at best it would take hours to get an alongside submarine off, if it was in maintenance it could take days or weeks.

I was talking about if the tension was increasing over several days or weeks, not minutes.

The entire logic of my post was that in a sudden 'no warning' first strike scenario, the ports could be held at risk by things like nuclear torpedoes or cruise missiles, but the same held true for airbases by the aforementioned SLBM launches, Stealth Bobmers or special forces operations in a first strike, but where as the Subs will still retain at least a third of their firepower already 'dispersed', the aircraft could be caught on the ground, unless you were running standing patrols with a third of the bombers as well.

My entire damn post was basically ASKING what the cost differences would be to run a bomber based deterrent with this level of survavibility INCLUDING things like Air Defenses capable of stopping Stealth aircraft, increased Security perimiters to stop any kind of special forces attacks, logistical costs like running the fleet at this state of 5 minute readiness's including their tanker support, running standing airborne alerts...
All as compared to the Subs plus their support costs.

At least I was looking for an honest simple answer to this, but got a load of screaming. *shrug*

Those in port would be sortied as the tension started to increase as a matter of course unless I'm mistaken, hence the whole reason for having two complete crews for them.

You are mistaken. The point of having two crews is to have one crew training/on leave etc while the other takes the boat out., It has nothing to do with rapid sortie

I know thats the primary purpose of it, I didn't make myself clear. What I was MEANING was that as each boat has two complete crews, it makes it easier in an emergency to gather up enough people to run the things and scramble them in an emergency.

Yeah for a missile attack from say Russia against the US, not including a point strike through a bomber for a launch 5 miles off the US coast from that same sub that just blew up the boomer port.

Once again, we get the bombers off wheneverw e feel like it. We can always call them back. We still get plenty of warning of an attack even if its launched froma relatively short distance off our coast. And the boats that launch those attacks have a VERY short life expectancy.

Okay then. Assuming someone parks a number of SSBN's off the coast and launches against the airbases, command and control centers and so on.

1. How long will it take for the warheads to impact.
2. How long will it take for NORAD to see the inbounds, correctly ID them, tag them, sound the alert.
3. How long will it take in this decision cycle for SAC to be told 'Get them off!' and THEN press the button, which starts the 5 minute countdown.

And is that 5 minutes for an aircraft to have its crew arrive from their shack, jump in, start up, taxi and be ready to take off? Or are you actually claiming 5 minutes for the entire wing to be up in the air after the trumpet sounds? If its the later, has it even been shown? As in an out of the blue scramble drill that had all the aircraft 5 off the ground 5 minutes after the order is given?

The US has great C4I technology, but the decision-response cycle to detect the launch, validate it and issue scramble orders then get the bombers off before the missiles start blasting into your air bases, command and control facilities, long range radars and rest is going to be a little tight isn't it?

No. Once aggain, you don't understand the essential difference between a missile launch and a bomber launch. For a bom,ber launch we don;t have to validate or do anything else. We can launch on suspicion and turn teh bombers around and bring them home if it turns out to be a mistake. A missile cannot be turned around, redirected or aborted so we have to go through all the steps you suggest.

What does this mean for the cost of the system? You must get a lot of false positives, leading to a lot of scramble orders, only to have the bombers turn back 5 minutes later? What does that do in terms of keeping the system up and running?

Yes and the same is true to a large extent of the subs isn't it?

No it is not. An SLBM cannot be aborted, redirected, turned around or destructed. Once its gone, its gone, it can't eb recalled.

But in the event of a 'warning order', Bombers will be told to get up and Subs will be told to prepare to shoot, won't they? In that case, the Sub is hovering ready to launch in place and the bombers are holding station at their final waypoints before being committed into the attack and at THAT point, the time between taking off the leash and firing the first nuke off is only going to be measured in a matter of minutes, isn't it? Especially with someone as fast as and with the loadout of standoff weapons a B-70? So at that point, making the idea of 'recall' extremely unlikely? Because if you give the go order THEN, you would only have a tiny window to recall the bombers?

See from where I'm standing, I see scrambling the bombers off to their failsafe points be no more different then alerting the subs, putting them to a high DEFCON status, if not giving them launch release authority. The 'launch' order then being no different then telling the bombers to go ahead and start shooting off their weapons, the 'stand down' order no different then telling the bombers to RTB.

From what I recall, most US subs come back to port for a period of generally minor stand down while the crews and switched over and routine crap is done, but they ARE maintained ready to surge out within a matter of hours, if the tension is suddenly starting to rise.

You recall mostly wrong. A few boats can be surged out in a matter of hours (as compared to the five minutes for a B-70) but the majority are in deep maintenance and are out for days, weeks or months.

I see.

You also need what, 3-4 complete maintenance and 'crew' crews for each aircraft in order to maintain a viable 24/7 alert don't you?

No, that's not the way it works. hasn't been since the middle of WW2 Saint Curtis saw to that. Operational readiness rate for a SAC group was set at 80 percent - ie that percentage of aircraft had to be ready to go within the stipulated time period - five minutes for a B-70. Operational readiness rate for ballistic missiles is classified but is popularly reported to be around 60 percent.

Okay...well I appreciate you telling me thats NOT how its done, so how IS it done? How expensive IS it to keep the wings at 80% operational readiness for a 5 minute launch? What are the costs behind the sceens? You posted originally this nice post about how if you buy X Valks instead of Y Ohios with Z warheads you could do more with less, but if you are GOING to deploy these bombers at these levels, what ELSE do you have to spend then?

See the question I've been trying to ask all along is if you want to replace the SSBN fleet with the Bombers so you can have the entire warhead count, apparently, able to get safely away in five minutes, rather then having perhaps a third of it 'away' in the case of subs, is it going to cost more, or less to DO this?

Plus if you are going to disperse deploy the aircraft to alternate airfields in the event of an attack, you need to have all the equipment and personnel already forward deployed at those locations to support the aircraft.

Nope. Still wrong. Turck convoys set up and ready to move.

[/quote]

Costing HOW much? Ready to go all the times? How many people? How many trucks? Will you be duplicating equipment then at the airbase and for these convoys to use as well?

A lot of equipment can be pre-positioned though. However, the dispersal airfields are such that they have a lot of the stuff for their routine operations only

Again, see above.

What I'm trying to get at here is the TOTAL costs from a systems approach to support this kind of B-70 -or any bomber fleet really to repalce the boomers-

You're failing rather badly. Also, there are a lot of costs in submarine operation we haven't included. For example, escorting the boats as they leave port and re-enter, mine clearance for same, all the way to disposing of the submarines at the end of their life (VERY expensive).

I'm failing badly? I haven't got a fucking number from you yet or any substantive answer to my questions about the differences between the two approaches, Bomber vs SSBN and the costs of supporting these systems. I can appreciate that there are very clear rules about what you can and you can't say, and that you take your security very seriously, but a little more in the way of facts would HELP...

You seriously don't think a Stealth Bomber could penetrate current US airspace without being detected? Despite the fact that the US doesn't HAVE an IADS of any real kind at all? Seriously?

No comment.

See, this is what I mean. I understand you can and can't say some things but seriously....

So whatever, I'll just concede everything as clearly I'm not in your league.

[MKSheppard]

3. How long will it take in this decision cycle for SAC to be told 'Get them off!' and THEN press the button, which starts the 5 minute countdown.

Not that long. As far as the crews know, it's just another alert, or is just one of SAC's ORIs where they test everything.

And is that 5 minutes for an aircraft to have its crew arrive from their shack, jump in, start up, taxi and be ready to take off? Or are you actually claiming 5 minutes for the entire wing to be up in the air after the trumpet sounds? If its the later, has it even been shown? As in an out of the blue scramble drill that had all the aircraft 5 off the ground 5 minutes after the order is given?

The B-1B has a "nuke war button" on it's landing gear. If you push that button, bam, by the time you're in the cockpit, the plane's coming to life.

Not to mention that the crews spend their alert time in a well equipped windowless building with TVs and such, and have jeeps at their disposal...

As for scrambling everything within a few minutes...

[MKSheppard]

I'm failing badly? I haven't got a fucking number from you yet or any substantive answer to my questions about the differences between the two approaches, Bomber vs SSBN and the costs of supporting these systems. I can appreciate that there are very clear rules about what you can and you can't say, and that you take your security very seriously, but a little more in the way of facts would HELP...

Stuart's not here to hold your hand. In case you lacked any reading comprehension; look at what he said earlier. He did some numbers that are right out there for you to read.

[MKSheppard]

But since I'm such a nice person:

How expensive IS it to keep the wings at 80% operational readiness for a 5 minute launch?

SAC Costs:

Budget and Financial Status (FY 85 as of 30 September 1985)

Operations and Maintenance
$955,825,677, includes supplies, communications, civilian pay, minor equipment purchased

Assets
$25,283,589,329, includes real property, inventories, equipment, and weapon systems

Operating Expenses
$3,715,956,369, includes O&M listed above, military pay, troop subsistence, and aviation petroleum, oil, and lubricants (POL)

Military Family Housing
$99,191,292, includes O&M expenses (Military Family Housing Defense Appropriation) in support of housing units

---------------

Budget and Financial Status (FY 62, as of 30 June 1962)

Operations and Maintenance
$750,958,000, includes supplies, communications, civilian pay, minor equipment purchased, and aviation petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL)

Assets
$17,934,650,000, includes real property, inventories, equipment, and weapon systems

Operating Expenses
$1,949,864,000, includes O&M listed above, military pay, military family housing, troop subsistence, and procurement of equipment

-----------------------------

Costing HOW much? Ready to go all the times? How many people? How many trucks? Will you be duplicating equipment then at the airbase and for these convoys to use as well?

Considering that you can get everything you need to maintain a heavy bomber except for a few specialized equipment with no civilian equivalents, like LOX generators, and external power units for military electrical systems at a major airport.... I mean you have fuel trucks, you have tugs, you have washing equipment, cherry pickers, etc.

[Vympel]

Russia is BTW developing several new air launched cruise missiles with very long range. They are only for conventional attacks (at least that’s what we’ve been told)

The most prominent are Kh-101/102. Kh-101 is a CALCM, the Kh-102 is the nuclear variant thereof. That was always the plan - I don't know of other new long-range air launched cruise missiles, myself.

(Kh-555 or whatever it's name actually is isn't strictly new, it's just a rebuild of a Kh-55SM with Kh-101 components for conventional strikes, it's been in service for a few years now)

[Adrian Laguna]

Complex? Yes. Impossible to pull off? Hardly.

I didn't say it was impossible, I said it was risky enough that only a complete and total loon would try it. In fact, you would need a government composed entirely of crazies. All you need is one sane man with a spine to call the US Government and tell them all about it in order to avoid nuclear war and save the lives of millions.

The fucking 9-11 hijackers...

Were crazy. All nuclear powers to date are cold, rational, and very cautions when it comes to dealing with other nuclear powers. Look at the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis. All of them were into vigorous sabre rattling, even against nuclear powers. The moment they tested their first nuclear weapon, every single one suddenly got a bad case of the prudence.

If you are honestly telling me that well trained intelligence professionals with the resources of a major power behind them couldn't be inserted into the US along with -probably disassembled and smuggled components- over the short term for a first strike opperation, then frankly I think your far more confident in US border security then I am. Tell me, how many illegal and undocumented people were estimated to have made their way over the border in 2007?

I'm telling you that well trained intelligence professionals attacking military targets and smuggling considerable weaponry into the US have far more hurdles to jump over than a well trained terrorist cell using only materials procured legally in the US and bypassing completely laughable airport security to hijack some aircraft. The issue is not so much one of impossibility as one of the risks not being worth it.

The whole POINT of this operation is as part of a First STrike scenario, if you had read the point I was trying to make.

Yes, and if one thing goes wrong your first strike scenario is out the window and the aggressor's homeland will find those bombers paying them a visit. First strike scenarios only make sense when one has strategic superiority and wishes to prevent the enemy from attaining it in the future. In that case sneaky commandos raids are pointless.

Yessss but, as in my post, the US has scrapped its SSBN force in favor of these bombers, a naval response is going to be severely degraded, especialy if the opponent uses the destruction or heavy degradation of the bomber force.

The fact remains that the USN will proceed to use all the nuclear weapons it has. You will see waves of nuclear-armed fighter/bombers launching from carriers and nuclear cruise missiles launching from smaller vessels. Sure your first strike has preserved more of the homeland, but it will still get hit, and many millions will still die. What kind of moron thinks that's an acceptable price?

OppSec issues are going to be valid for ANY plan to launch a first strike against an enemy, if at ANY level the enemy hears of it, they'll probably strike first, so its hardly an argument thats limited only to ONE part of the plan.

That is one of the reasons why first strikes are stupid unless you have strategic superiority. In other words, a first strike makes sense when you are the only power capable of making one.

All operations have elements of risk in them, especially at this level of the Strategic game, a First Strike scenario when you get down to it is ALWAYS a question of 'but what if the enemy does X Y or Z instead of A B or C? What if E F or G happens?' When you're playing for these stakes, you have to take some risks, especially if you look at the strike teams as something to enhance the operation rather then the operation in of itself. If both sides have something of a strategic parity, then even if the operations fail, the best outcome is probably going to be M.A.D. If however you pull these kinds of operations off, you might come out well ahead.

Again, first strikes are the realm of crazy people where strategic parity exists. They only work when you already have the upper hand, and they are done to prevent parity from being achieved. You strike first if you want to avoid the MAD scenario, if the possibility of MAD exists, then the first strike is off the table.

Uh yeah, if you had noticed my entire post was operating under the assumption that the BAD GUYS were trying to pull off part of a First Strike here...

It is also operating under the assumption the "bad guys" are either clinical cases or brain dead.



Listen, you do have a point about a bomber force being inherently more vulnerable to first strikes than an SSBN force. However the vulnerability of the force is not the sole deciding issue here, there are numerous factors to consider. Not only that, but strategic planners will realize this and take measures to counter-act. Such as tighter security around air-bases and the adoption of a "launch on hint of trouble" policy. Even a first-strike with iron-clad OpSec will have visible movement, and if the US sees any such movement it's not too much trouble to put a few wings in the air, just in case.

[Stuart]

The bombers are still holding at the failsafe launch point aren't they until THEY get the go order as well? And that GO order being 'yes this is a no shit Nuclear strike order' which would not be issued unless there really WAS no doubt? I can see dispersing the bombers to failsafe points or alternate airfields as a precaution, fair enough. But the order that sends them from there to their targets...why would anyone give THAT order unless they were utterly sure?

Because it gets them off the most vulnerable part of their existance, standing at an airbase. Just like the most vulnerable part of an ICBM's existance is sitting in its silo and that of an SLBM is sitting in port. Now, the key factor that bears here is time. We have up to 40 minutes warning of ICBMs inbound from some potential launch targets plus up to 25 minutes of SLBMs. There is a big problem, by the way, with SLBMs that has never been fully addressed. They don't fire all their missiles at once, they have to fire them one at a time (as far as I know, the rate in question is still classified). Therefore, once an SSBN starts firing, its position is known and countermeasures can be taken. This isn't too significant with regard to SSBNs firing at very long range because the range acts as a pad but if the boat is in close there are quite a few nasty things we can do about it. The Soviets actually kept land-based missile batteries on alert for counter-battery fire in the case of missile launches.

The time element is critical because it compresses everything we do. With missiles we have to get an absolute confirmation that the attack is genuine; if we do not have that confirmation the missiles must sit in their tubes. The only real confirmation that will do the job is a nuclear warhead initiating on/over US territory. That means the comms system, etc must be able to function under the conditions that prevail during.after a nuclear strike. With manned bombers its different, they've already gone, they're safe and on their way. If it does turn out the attack is genuine, they're still on their way. If it turns out to be a false alarm, then the system that calls them back is functioning under a peacetime set of conditions. That's a big difference.

Especially as with the increasing range and speed of the munitions the bombers will pack (as well as their own speed) they could be firing off the first long range missiles very shortly after the order is given, to start blasting their way through the enemy defensive structure?

Not so. The timing doesn't work out that way.

Really? I stand corrected then. But I was under the impression that there HAD been testing and research done on the concept, thats SLBM missiles could be fired in a relativly flat arc at very high speed, sacrificing the range of a ballistic arc to punch through the lower atmosphere at very high speed with little warning.

Really. You're confusing a lot of different things here. The Russians have an anti-submarine weapon called the SSN-16 in our coding system. This is a rocket that delivers a nuclear depth charge. We had a smilar thing called SUBROC. Now, with both SSN-16 and SUBROC, the nuclear depth charge can be fused for a surface (or air) burst, turning the anti-submarine missile into a short-range nuclear-tipped ballistic missile. These do have a fairly low flight path but their range is severely restricted (less than 100 miles). In the Soviet case, their targets were coastal ports and installations (including Washington DC).

SLBMs are like mortars, to shorten the range, the elevation at firing has to be increased - so firing at short range means a very high, hairpin trajectory. The longer the range, the lower the possible trajectory. However, depressed trajectories are very, very fuel expensive. By and large, they are not practical. Just because you've read that some research has been done on a specific area does not mean that research has ended in a practical weapons system. To take an absurd extension of that argument, some research and testing has been done on using paranormal mental powers to detect missile launches and blow missiles up in flight.

I was talking about if the tension was increasing over several days or weeks, not minutes.

The entire logic of my post was that in a sudden 'no warning' first strike scenario, the ports could be held at risk by things like nuclear torpedoes or cruise missiles, but the same held true for airbases by the aforementioned SLBM launches.

This is mutually contradictory. On the one had you're talking about a slowly-building period of tension that allows the SSBNs to get out of port, then talking about a "bolt from the blue" strike that hits without any sort of warning. They're very different cases and can't be compared. Which one do you want to go with.

In "bolt from the blue", nothing is going to get out of port (remember what I told you about the SSN-16, the missiles will not get out of their silos on land (the Soviets would have air-burst missiles over the silos to get the ones that had just launched and pin down the remainder until ground bursts can take out the silos. The bombers with their instant reaction probably can get a reasonable percentage of their aircraft off (how many is a crapshoot). In a bolt from the blue, SSBNs will be lost by pre-emptive attacks (torpedoed without warning) and they will be sunk by missile counter-battery fire once they start to launch. Bolt from the blue is the most dangerous and disadvantageous form of attack to receive.

However, a bolt from the blue is very unlikely. It is much more likely that any nuclear exchange would be preceded by a steady increase in tensions. That would mean we could sortie some additional SSBNs but, on the other hand, it means we could do all sorts of other things as well. Like dispersing bombers to emergency fields, bringing all the aircraft to maximum readiness etc etc.

Stealth Bombers

Stealth bombers are not invisible; they have reduced radar cross sections, not non-existant ones. They can be seen on radar, its just the range at which they can be seen is a lot less than for normal aircraft. Also, they can be seen and heard. The US has more radars and other search systems pointing skywards than any other nation. Something to think on; we spotted the 9/11 hijacked aircraft early on and were reacting to them. Its just we couldn't react fast enough. FYI we had the duty F-15s up from Dover and on their way down when the WTC aircraft hit; they'd flown down on full afterburner; both planes were desperately short of fuel and made emergency landings (safely) - one ran out of fuel on the runway, the other made it to a dispersal point before it ran dry. Nevertheless, the air defense system (there is one and discussion of that point stops right there) was aware of what was happening.

Stealth is not some magic wand that allows an aircraft to suddenly materialize over its target. A stealth bomber would have to fly a long, long way through the most intensely-observed airspace in the world. The moment its spotted, it'll be tracked and shot down if it crosses into our airspace. Stealth aircraft are slow, by definition, every increase in speed means a decrease in its radar-dodging capability. We're not talking about a Valkyrie here that smashes straight through an enemy defense at high mach numbers. We're talking at an aircraft that is making its run at speeds not so very much greater than a WW2 bomber. It takes hours to get anywhere.

or special forces operations in a first strike

Fictional concept. Any discussion of using special forces to bring a nuclear device on to a SAC base is something out of the pages of a James Bond novel. For reasons that have been adequately explained here, its just not plausible. Even if it was, all defense systems would be equally vulnerable. Nuclear devices could be smuggled into naval bases, limpet mines attached to the hulls of submarines while they were leaving port and detonated remotely etc etc etc. Fortunately, all of those can be dismissed as well (which really is very fortunate - if a nuclear submarine vanishes at sea, it could be months - if ever - before we found the hull and determined what sank her. Even then, its far from a done deal - there are still conspiracy theories over what sank Scorpion). So its a problem we don't have to worry about

My entire damn post was basically ASKING what the cost differences would be to run a bomber based deterrent with this level of survavibility INCLUDING things like Air Defenses capable of stopping Stealth aircraft, increased Security perimiters to stop any kind of special forces attacks, logistical costs like running the fleet at this state of 5 minute readiness's including their tanker support, running standing airborne alerts. All as compared to the Subs plus their support costs.

There are several factors there. One is that a lot of the requirements are dual-purpose; for example the tanker fleet has to exist anyway because its needed to support other operations (tanking fighter aircraft for example). SACs tankers spent most of their life supporting F-4s and F-105s (later F-15s and F-16s). Base security is needed anyway, an air defense system is needed anyway. One of the beauties of relying on a bomber fleet is that it uses so much 'stuff' that we have to have anyway just for our defense system to function. In contrast, an SSBN (or ICBM) fleet requires special functions and equipment that do not exist

At least I was looking for an honest simple answer to this, but got a load of screaming.

Actually, the only person screaming here is you. I'm trying to answer questions as accurately and informatively as possible. Unfortunately, we're in an area where - as far as I know and I have to err on the side of caution - a lot of relevent data is still classified. Shep is very, very good at finding out stuff that I thought was still classified and I'll defer to him if he can find it.

I know thats the primary purpose of it, I didn't make myself clear. What I was MEANING was that as each boat has two complete crews, it makes it easier in an emergency to gather up enough people to run the things and scramble them in an emergency.

Not really, the two crews are distinct entities. If the boat is in between patrols, one crew will be with her, the other will be dispersed all over the States. If she's in for a major refit/overhall, she'll be sitting in drydock so it doesn't matter or will be so short of crew that getting her out is impossible. She doesn't have two complete crews sitting pierside. Obviously the longer the warm-up time, the more boats we can get out, perhaps using scratch crews made up from boats that don't stand a chance of getting out. In a bolt from the blue, there is zero time to react; the interval from detection time to impact for an SSN-16 is 90 seconds. Then the whole port has just gone bye-bye.

Okay then. Assuming someone parks a number of SSBN's off the coast and launches against the airbases, command and control centers and so on.

1. How long will it take for the warheads to impact.
2. How long will it take for NORAD to see the inbounds, correctly ID them, tag them, sound the alert.
3. How long will it take in this decision cycle for SAC to be told 'Get them off!' and THEN press the button, which starts the 5 minute countdown.

Number 1 is 15 - 20 minutes. The rest is classified. However, once again, we don't need verification for bombers. "There's sea launched things coming in - get them off. Its a drill, a couple of minutes at most. If the SSBNs are in really close, it would atke even less than that. So the bombers go. A few minutes later, its "Ah, Canada Geese. Bring'em back." With missiles the verification procedures are much, much harder because we must be sure of what is happening before we start shooting.

And is that 5 minutes for an aircraft to have its crew arrive from their shack, jump in, start up, taxi and be ready to take off? Or are you actually claiming 5 minutes for the entire wing to be up in the air after the trumpet sounds? If its the later, has it even been shown? As in an out of the blue scramble drill that had all the aircraft 5 off the ground 5 minutes after the order is given?

The five minutes target time for the B-70 was based on from the warning siren going off to the first bomber leaving the runway. Othera ircraft would follow at 15 second intervals. We could clear the base that way in probably less than six minutes. For Loring it would be three minutes. So five minutes to start, six minutes to clear the base, we have four minutes in hand. By that time the tail-end charlie would be 80 miles from the base in any specified direction,

What does this mean for the cost of the system? You must get a lot of false positives, leading to a lot of scramble orders, only to have the bombers turn back 5 minutes later? What does that do in terms of keeping the system up and running?

Based on historical evidence, false positives are few and far between. I acn think of perhaps a dozen over the last thirty years. They would be simply an operating cost - after all, such launches would be essentially an exercise which the bomb wings do anyway. "Damn, a false alarm. Ah well, we might as well strike one planned exercise from the roster, we just had an unplanned one. Look at a film called "The Gathering of The Eagles", it shows just what a SAC exercise was like

But in the event of a 'warning order', Bombers will be told to get up and Subs will be told to prepare to shoot, won't they? In that case, the Sub is hovering ready to launch in place and the bombers are holding station at their final waypoints before being committed into the attack and at THAT point, the time between taking off the leash and firing the first nuke off is only going to be measured in a matter of minutes, isn't it?

Its not the same at all. The bomber can be recalled at any time right up to the split second before it does its laydown. No decision is irrevocable until the device actually leaves the bomb bay. A missile launchg is irrevocable from the moment the missile is fired.

See from where I'm standing, I see scrambling the bombers off to their failsafe points be no more different then alerting the subs, putting them to a high DEFCON status, if not giving them launch release authority. The 'launch' order then being no different then telling the bombers to go ahead and start shooting off their weapons, the 'stand down' order no different then telling the bombers to RTB.[.quote]

Then you're standing in the wrong place.

Okay...well I appreciate you telling me thats NOT how its done, so how IS it done? How expensive IS it to keep the wings at 80% operational readiness for a 5 minute launch? What are the costs behind the sceens? You posted originally this nice post about how if you buy X Valks instead of Y Ohios with Z warheads you could do more with less, but if you are GOING to deploy these bombers at these levels, what ELSE do you have to spend then?

As near as I can figure it, for an equivalent operational force. The raw operating cost of an SSBN is US$150 million per year (assuming 1/3 of the fleet is at sea and usable. For a Valkyrie group, assuming standard SAC maintenance schedules are met, the operating costs are US$97 million. The SSBN can (assuming 60 percent of its missiles are fireable a figure that I can neither confirm nor deny and an average of eight warheads per missile) can deliver 115 warheads to targets. The bomber group (assuming SAC standards are met) will get 80 percent of its bombers off can deliver 153 warheads to targets. Therefore the cost per warhead delivered is US$1.30 million per warhead for the SSBN and US$634,000 per warhead for the B-70. Note those are support and operational costs - not capital equipment costs which, as we have seen, strongly favor the B-70.

Costing HOW much? Ready to go all the times? How many people? How many trucks? Will you be duplicating equipment then at the airbase and for these convoys to use as well?

The truck convoys are included in the capital cost of the B-70. Part of the acquisition package.

Again, see above.

No comment.

See, this is what I mean. I understand you can and can't say some things but seriously....

But seriously the information is highly classified. I can go no further than this. The US has an air defense system that is well-developed. It has more sensors than one can shake a stick at. How its done is classified as are its capabilities. Here endeth the disclosures.

Just think on this. Do you seriously think we would disclose a technology like the B-2 or F-117 (or F-22 come to that) if we didn't already know how to counter it?

So whatever, I'll just concede everything as clearly I'm not in your league.

Thank'ee. However, my point in talking about this isn't to get people to concede points or to win debates, its to try and give people who are interested in a subject some extra insight (from a rather unusual perspective) into what is going on and what some of the less obvious criteria in the decisions that get taken are. Some factors which kept getting brought up in discussions of this sort (like smuggling nuclear weapons onto bases) aren't a serious consideration; others that are very important (like the C4ISR problems) get overlooked.

[MKSheppard]

But seriously the information is highly classified. I can go no further than this. The US has an air defense system that is well-developed. It has more sensors than one can shake a stick at. How its done is classified as are its capabilities. Here endeth the disclosures.

Just think on this. Do you seriously think we would disclose a technology like the B-2 or F-117 (or F-22 come to that) if we didn't already know how to counter it?

Okay, you've really now piqued my curiosity.

Obviously, the days of peppering the country with radar sites is over, look at our much publicized decommissioning and tear down of all the SAM battalions in the late 60s early 70s.

While we no doubt have upgraded much of our existing radars in still existing military installations like Air Force Bases, et al; a lot of these installations closed as a result of the "peace dividend" in the early 90s.

So thinking about it there are probably four keys to what Stuart is alluding to:

1.) Mobile high powered radar systems like the TPS-117; which move around semi randomly on US Military installations -- they could spend six months at Aberdeen Proving Ground, and then for the next six months, get moved down to Norfolk; to keep enemies guessing where we are putting them. Not to mention PATRIOT batteries; they can be moved around as well. There's also the US Navy to consider; what's to say that the 2,000 or so steaming hours that a Arleigh Burke spends each year is cruising off the coast of the United States, radiating away with her SPY-1?

2.) Frequency Agile radars for Key 1. IIRC, the keys behind the F-117 and B-2's success was that they were optimized for specific radar frequencies -- the F-117 was optimized against fire control radars, since it was intended as a strike aircraft penetrating very heavily defended airspace; while the B-2 was optimized against air search radars; since it's intended mission was to penetrate the Soviet Union's thinly covered siberian frontier, and then cruise around the heartland of Russia, nuking away. Obviously, this was possible in the bad old days of huge fixed frequency mechanical scanning radars; but with the capabilities of modern phased array systems (AESA); optimizing for one specific band no longer will work.

3.) "Scatter Radars" -- Perhaps we have built "scatter" systems and have tied them together; so that we can put together a rough map of US Airspace -- Such a system would have two advantages:

A: It doesn't show up on enemy ECM since it doesn't radiate at all.
B: No damn EPA forms that you must write out to get permission to build radars; the enemy can search those EPA statements and deduce how powerful and what band the radar is in...

Certainly, it's doable from the huge amount of EM bandwidth tossed around every day in the US; from cell phone towers, WiFi, civilian air traffic radars (I'm sure they've been updated since 9/11 to at least give us minimal skin paints; to avoid the trick of disappearing via turning off your radio transponder). The problem is networking and computing power....

4.) Radar reflectors scattered everywhere on power lines to make enemy terrain following systems not work by screwing with them. Ever wonder what those orange balls on high tension power lines are? Hmmmm. Lets go get one and cut it open!

[TimothyC]

4.) Radar reflectors scattered everywhere on power lines to make enemy terrain following systems not work by screwing with them. Ever wonder what those orange balls on high tension power lines are? Hmmmm. Lets go get one and cut it open!

You don't even need to do that. I drive by Wright-Patt on my way to church, and I see them out in the open!

[Starglider]

However, the cost of converting TODAY from missiles to Mach 3 high-altitude bombers would be hideously prohibitive, it would bankrupt the country. The technology is long gone, we just don't have the facilities to build them (all the jigging and tooling needed to build the SR-71 and B-70 was destroyed specifically so that the aircraft could not be returned to production).

One of the many reasons I am looking forward to large scale nanofabrication technology (not the same thing as general assemblers, easier to make but just as transformative for high cost items) is that it will utterly revolutionise the aviation industry. Not only can entire airframes of any shape be created from feedstock chemicals in a few days, those airframes can be made of incredibly exotic materials with performance well beyond anything currently available for no extra cost. Even complex mechanical systems can be built quite easily with early versions of the tech, by making the temporary supports out of disolvable materials, and low-performance solid state electronics can be integrated right into the structure at no additional cost. Nearly all the expense becomes design and prototypes become very cheap. Hopefully there will be a major leap forward in aviation comparable to the 40s/50s/60s period when this tech finally becomes available - though we'll also need an energy breakthrough along the lines of widespread fusion power to create the abundence of cheap fuel required for civil hypersonics.

I do not work in this area myself (and I have enough trouble keeping up with AI literature never mind an entire other field), but I do know a few people who are on the nanomaterials & nanorobotics research coalface, and they all say 'the so-called commercial 'nanotech' you've seen so far is pathetic compared to the stuff we've got in the pipeline'.

[Darth Wong]

I do not work in this area myself (and I have enough trouble keeping up with AI literature never mind an entire other field), but I do know a few people who are on the nanomaterials & nanorobotics research coalface, and they all say 'the so-called commercial 'nanotech' you've seen so far is pathetic compared to the stuff we've got in the pipeline'.

Umm, that's what everyone in every research field says.

[Starglider]

Umm, that's what everyone in every research field says.

Untrue. Current aerospace research is pretty much 'yeah, we have a bunch of cool concepts we will never ever get the massive funding to build' and 'oh yes, with another decade of research we can get fuel consumption down by another 10%!'. Hardly inspiring stuff. Meanwhile in my field of AI, there have been researchers confidently claiming that general AI is ten years (or less!) away for the last 50 years, without ever explaining exactly how they are going to do it or proving that it will work. Of course, these proclemations always turn out to be wild optimism pulled out of the researcher's feel-good asses. The vast majority of fields of science and engineering are in a fairly incremental mode right now. Computer hardware design and biotech are two stand out areas where there exist both a lot of known potential, a track record and a detailed roadmap for future advances that allows us to confidently predict that rapid progress will continue - though the later case is seriously hindered by having to thread through a vast legal minefield. Alternative energy storage technologies (advanced batteries and fuel cells) are nearly as dubious as AI; lots of claims, few detailed designs, uninspiring track record.

Nanofabrication is exceptional in that very detailed designs for nearly all the technological components either exist and have been verified to work in detailed computer simulations. The bottleneck is building them - but unlike say interplanetary nuclear starships (which we also have detailed designs for) this bottleneck is surmountable with relatively modest amounts of research spend, and steady progress is being made on building more and more advanced microscale and nanoscale mechanisms (of course the massive effective subsidy from chip fabrication tech research is a big help). Thus we can predict quite confidently that general nanoassembly is possible and barring disaster will be developed in reasonable timescales; though of course you can't confidently predict those timescales with anything better than order of magnitude (e.g. 'between 20 and 200 years, barring major disruption') accuracy. This can be said of very few technologies, and even fewer of those have the same potential impact on industry, society and other areas of technological progress.

Yes, the hype from the uninformed is annoying and has lead to something of a backlash from people with a high but unfocused allergy to bullshit. This has no relation to the actual reality.