I've heard quite a load about this Doomsday thing, about how the US was planning to send fleets of bombers, armed with nuclear weapons, to bomb the USSR in the Cold War. If that really happened, it really would be Doomsday for Russia. Fortunately it didn't, but anyone have some specific details about it?
It would be Doomsday for the rest of the world too.For sure Russia would bomb USA too with nukes.But even without Russia to fight back the world would be doomed after such enviromental destuction. And,surely, that would also be the end of Cold War
The USSR invested extremely heavily in missile defence systems, which is why their cold-war missiles were slightly more effective... Russia claims to have enough Anti-missile missiles to save 'at least' all nuclear military sites and 1/3 of their population in the event of complete nuclear war... don't know much about US "star-wars" claims... ever head the expression "The bomber always gets through" ?
both usa and ussr have so many missiles to destroy each others several hundred times, so not matter how good was you anti missiles systems it was limited
I think at one point the US missiles were longer range and the USSR wasnt able to reach America without the aid of bombers... Even when the USSR developed capable ICBM's the USA always had the edge in Nuclear weapons
Soviet ICBMs always had the range to reach USA, this is what was actually so frightening about Sputnik, it meant the Soviets were able to reach anywhere in the world. Soviet boosters were much more brute force, range was as good as US and payload usually larger (much larger). US had an advantage in accuracy of weapons, especially submarine launched weapons, Soviets in size of bang and numbers. Soviet bomber force was number two to ICBM force, and US was much better equipped to handle bombers. US bomber, attack missile, and cruise missile technology was amost always in advance of Soviet defences. Soviet anti-missile defence systems were of neglible value and would not likely have protected one-third of their missile forces, much less civilian population. However the Soviets did expend enormous resources on these sites and made the maximum of the propoganda value.
The first Soviet missile capable of reaching the USA was the SS-9 "Scarp" (1969) though I migth be wrong... Not sure about America's first ICBM but i'm sure it was considerably earlier I thought that USSR air defense missiles of the cold war were generally superior to Western ones? The SA-5 Gammon and the SA-4 Ganef were the best missiles of the period, and the USSR had no trouble shooting down American U2 border flights in the 50's, or poor Anderson in Cuba 1962... i'd hardly call that capability 'of negligable value'... This superiority applied strictly to groud to air missiles only... I've even heard rumors that Soviet Air-to-Air missiles were programmed around the code of video games like 'Pong' - Anyone knwo if this is true?
The "negligable value" I was referring to was the anti-missile missile defenses, not the anti-aircraft missle defenses. The Soviets did have great difficulty in taking down (very slow) U-2s initially, Powers and Anderson not withstanding. The extreme altitude makde them difficult to reach. I believe Powers U-2 was the first shot down and that wasn't until 1960, not the 1950s. Soviet surface to air missiles were generally good, but probably outmatched in a full fledged war. The Soviet R-7/SS-6 ICBM was operational early in 1959, basically the same missile that lofted Sputnik I in October 1957 and was capable of reaching the US. Not a very good design, I don't think it lasted long. The US Atlas was also being deployed in 1959, but started later in the year. The Atlas was a better missile (longer range, larger payload, more accurate) and a version with Russian engines is still in use.
anti icbm missles are a joke...the nikes and such. even the famous patriot missle of desert storm did not kill even one scud that i know of. a cold war icbm exchange would have been very bad all arround i think....i wonder ...are the soviet icbms still a threat ,ive heard the maintenence of soviet icbms has been kind of spoty of late?
SCUD's only have a range of 270km, still they were a feared in Desert Storm because the US had only low capability to shoot them down; still the Patriot managed to get %40 of all SCUD's launched which was more than enough. This was largely due to the fact that the Patriot was designed as an anti-aircraft system and not an anti-missile one
Problem is that those SCUDs never were realy destroyed and the results were that altough they were hit big parts of it did considerable damage on the ground (sometimes considerable more dammage then when not hit by a patriot).
The Russians focussed mainly on thier bomber fleet and bombs while the Americans focussed on missile technology. Pre-Sputnik most American missiles were superiour to Soviet (Hence the development of interceptors like the Arrow...which was replaced by the inferior BOMARCs). The Russian warheads may have had a bigger punch (they built the bomb responsible for the biggest explosion in history....shockwave was still detectable on it's third trip around the world), but it couldn't get as far.
I always thought that we were intended to believe that... Russian Bomber fleet wasn't as big as we thought (US alone had more) and their missile threat was just as much of a threat as our own missiles (the stalemate of cold war...or was it stable maid?)
The Russians built the largest operational bomber to date-the Tu-160 Blackjack, though. It's even a bit longer and taller than the B52! That's a bit weird, since it looks like the B1. Max. speed: Mach 1.9, which is faster than the F18. The only things bigger are probably the B36 and An225.
14 aircraft are now in service with Russia....according to: http://russianforces.org/aviation/ and http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/tu160/ 38 airframes built....according to: http://www.flankerman.fsnet.co.uk/tu-160.html
15 according to this site: ( plus another one near completion) http://www.flankerman.fsnet.co.uk/tu-160.html
