
A brief history of the nuclear triad - danso
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/07/15/brief-history-nuclear-triad/
======
danso
Interesting tidbit: Vannevar Bush, he of the frequently posted "As We May
Think" essay [0], is quoted as being highly skeptical of ICBMs:

> _There has been a great deal said about a 3,000 mile high-angle rocket. In
> my opinion such a thing is impossible and will be impossible for many years.
> The people who have been writing these things that annoy me have been
> talking about a 3,000 mile high-angle rocket shot from one continent to
> another carrying an atomic bomb, and so directed as to be a precise weapon
> which would land on a certain target such as this city. I say technically I
> don’t think anybody in the world knows how to do such a thing, and I feel
> confident it will not be done for a very long time to come._

The debate over ICBMs vs pilots reminds me a lot of the current tech/AI vs.
human debates today:

> _But it wasn’t just that the USAF was pro-bomber. They were distinctly anti-
> missile for a long time. Why? The late Thomas Hughes, in his history of
> Project Atlas, attributes a distinct “conservative momentum, or inertia” to
> the USAF’s approach to missiles. Long-range missiles would be disruptive to
> the hierarchy: engineers and scientists would be on top, with no role for
> pilots in sight. Officers would, in a sense, become de-skilled. And perhaps
> there was just something not very sporting about lobbing nukes at another
> country from the other side of the Earth._

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4577865](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4577865)

~~~
mikeash
I'd really like to know just what kind of timeframe he was thinking of when he
said "many years" and "a very long time" there. Because that was 1945, and the
first ICBM didn't become operational until 1959. With a 14-year interval, I'd
be comfortable in saying he was right. Especially since those early ICBMs were
so inaccurate that they would have been completely pointless if armed with
1945-era bombs. It took the development of multi-megaton thermonuclear weapons
for those early ICBMs to be useful weapons.

Those early ICBMs were also delicate and required a lot of preparation to
launch, making them highly vulnerable to attack, and of course they would be
prime targets in a war. Bombers could be kept ready to take off in just a few
minutes from receiving an alarm, and some could be kept on airborne alert at
all times, making part of the force effectively invulnerable to attack. The
modern idea of an ICBM, able to launch on warning from hardened silos capable
of withstanding a close hit from an enemy weapon, took many more years to come
about.

~~~
vonmoltke
> Especially since those early ICBMs were so inaccurate that they would have
> been completely pointless if armed with 1945-era bombs. It took the
> development of multi-megaton thermonuclear weapons for those early ICBMs to
> be useful weapons.

The Atlas had a CEP of 1.4km, which was good enough for a kiloton-class
warhead. Plus, its original warhead was only 1.44Mt. It was mostly lack of
priority that delayed the first operational squadron to 1959.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
20kt at 1400 meters won't yield 6 psi overpressure. And "only 1.4 megatons"???
That's two orders of magnitude larger than Hiroshima. It took many tests and
advancements to go from a fission release to a fission-fusion weapon.

~~~
vonmoltke
Little Boy, with an effective yield of ~15kt, had a 5psi radius of 3500m.

The "only" in my comment was a response to the assertion that it required
"multi-megaton" warheads to make ICBMs practical.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
We never had many megaton weapons. Two megaton was about the limit, and most
weapons were under 500 kilotons. Accuracy is better. Huge bombs was a dick-
waving contest, and after Tsar Bomba, we gave up that game and went for
sophistication.

~~~
mikeash
The W38 used on Atlas and Titan 1 was 3.75 megatons. If we consider bomber
weapons, the B41 was a 25 megaton weapon with about 500 built. The B53/W53 was
a 9 megaton bomb for both bombers and missiles, with around 100 built. There
are more beyond 2 megatons; these are examples, not a comprehensive list.

Huge bombs weren't a dick-waving contest, they were partly to maximize the
value of an ICBM carrying one warhead, and partly to mitigate inaccuracy. As
MIRV became practical and accuracy increased, yields decreased on both sides
of the Cold War, because smaller bombs are just plain more efficient if you
can put them where they need to go.

------
Kadin
Herb York's memoir/autobiography "Race to Oblivion: A Participant's View of
the Arms Race", which is noted as a source and linked from the article, is
fascinating primary-source reading.

[http://www.learnworld.com/ZNW/LWText.York.RaceToOblivion.htm...](http://www.learnworld.com/ZNW/LWText.York.RaceToOblivion.html)

(I don't know if that's a bootleg or an authorized electronic version of the
text; hopefully it's the latter since it's unavailable in electronic form via
usual channels. I don't feel too bad posting it since it's also the top hit on
Google for the title, even above Amazon.)

