Cold War Myth
The general secretaries were replaced by presidents, but no one was in a hurry to part with this part of the Soviet legacy. The stamps of Soviet agitprop became an axiom, having a very distant relation to reality, and new tales were added to Soviet folklore.
One of the most widespread propaganda myths was the cliché about the "redundancy" of nuclear arsenals. Soviet agitprop was very successful in arguing about the "senselessness" of building up nuclear arsenals capable of "repeatedly destroying all life on Earth." Post-Soviet agitprop continued the work of the Soviet, adding a lot of its own. According to the latest theories, the buildup of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was caused only by "blunt" rivalry with the United States. This means that it can be painlessly reduced.
In the opinion of the layman, the meaning of the existence of "thousandth" arsenals is really not obvious. According to the estimates of the Americans themselves, 400-500 megaton-class warheads are enough to deprive the United States of a third of the population and two-thirds of its industry. If you believe the officialdom, the strategic nuclear forces will "work" in a retaliatory-counter strike (OVU) mode. In other words, after receiving a signal of a nuclear attack, the missiles of the attacked side must take off even before the attacking intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) reach their targets.
Don't you notice anything strange? While some characters are broadcasting about a retaliatory strike, others just as persistently argue that "one nuclear explosion is already unacceptable damage, and ten is the end of the world." Meanwhile, the spectacle of one or two missiles launching in a "retaliatory oncoming" strike — despite the fact that the number of ICBMs even in the worst-case scenario of the development of strategic nuclear forces (SNF) will be measured in hundreds — looks absolutely ridiculous. In other words, if a counter-strike is inevitable, then where did the ten lone warheads come from?
Let's digress from rhetoric and get down to facts. What is the real reason for the nuclear race in the 1950s and 1980s? In short, the Americans, planning a nuclear strike against the Union, were not at all going to die next. They had to destroy the Soviet missiles before they could launch. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, only a nuclear warhead mounted on another ICBM could get an ICBM in a mine. At the same time, due to the low accuracy of ICBMs, several warheads were required to destroy one mine. On the contrary, the USSR, which had an advantage in conventional forces, viewed its strategic nuclear forces only as a means of retaliation and an "argument" in order to deter the United States from using nuclear weapons.
The retaliatory strike involved the preservation of a large number of warheads after a US strike, which could destroy the vast majority of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. According to Soviet estimates, reliable containment required 100-150 warheads. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the American disarming strike grew along with the characteristics of the carriers. And the USSR had to build up its own arsenal. As a result, in order to ensure the launch of hundreds of warheads in a retaliatory strike, thousands of warheads had to be kept on duty.
Why, then, in the USSR, were they laid for a retaliatory strike, if the rate was placed on the OVU? In reality, the scenario of a retaliatory strike was realistic for a short time and in rather specific conditions. And even then, they did not even try to rely completely on OVU.
In the mid-1970s, only another rocket of the same type could “reach” a rocket in the mine. Meanwhile, ICBMs fly to the target for 30-35 minutes. Moreover, their positional areas are known, and the launches are relatively easily detected by satellites of the missile attack warning system (EWS). On the trajectory, they are just as effectively - and from afar (now - up to 6000 km) - are detected by early warning radars. As a result, the victim of the attack has a lot of time to react: a surprise strike is impossible.
Submarine ballistic missiles (SLBMs) do not have this drawback. They can launch near the enemy's coast and are capable of hitting targets even in the depths of the continent in 8-10 minutes. An SLBM attack leaves very little time for the enemy to respond. In the 1970s, however, the accuracy of boat missiles also remained very low. They were practically incapable of hitting highly protected point targets, such as silo launchers (silos) of ICBMs and nuclear command posts.
Until the 1980s, missiles capable of hitting enemy nuclear targets had a long flight time, and missiles with a short flight time were ineffective against them. At the same time, by the end of the 1960s, both the USSR and the United States acquired early warning systems - first, ground-based radars, and by the end of the 1970s, space groups of the corresponding purpose appeared. In the early 1970s, the leadership of the USSR could receive a warning about a missile attack 15 minutes before the strike, and by the end of the decade - 25-30 minutes, that is, almost immediately after the launch of enemy missiles.
And then the concept of a retaliatory strike became a reality. In the American interpretation, a pre-emptive strike scenario looks something like this. In the first 5 minutes, the satellite constellation detects the launch of enemy missiles. The next 7 minutes are a series of military meetings about the reality of the attack; notification of the president. By the 15th minute - the President's meeting with the Chiefs of Staff Committee. 25 minutes after launch: If the attack is interpreted as real during the meeting, the President will authorize a counter strike. Further, the order with the start codes goes down the chain of executors and the start procedures are performed. According to the former commander-in-chief of the Strategic Missile Forces Solovtsov, in our case it takes 3 minutes. Americans call 4 minutes. 30-35 minutes after the launch, the warheads of enemy missiles explode, destroying the empty silos. And after another 30 minutes, the enemy's large cities evaporate.
The relatively lengthy procedure for establishing the “realism” of an attack signal is a dire necessity. In the 1980s, primary false alarms were reported on average 6 times a day in warning systems. In the 1970s, "clarifying" procedures were not yet a problem - there was enough time for them.
The peculiarity of the situation at that time was a long "threatened period": the Americans could not deliver a disarming strike without preparation and a clearly visible exit from the peacetime readiness state. Moreover, the missile launch itself would not have come as a surprise. Therefore, in the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, a retaliatory strike looked like a completely realistic scenario.
The USSR should have reduced its strategic nuclear stockpiles to those very 150 "heads" and enjoyed peace and safety. However, from 1970 to 1980, the number of warheads quadrupled. The fact is that even then there were dozens of possible reasons why an OVU could not have taken place - from an accident or sabotage at an early warning system (accidents did occur) to an elementary mess in the Kremlin, during which control over the nuclear button could be lost. That is precisely why the Kremlin considered it necessary to have nuclear forces capable of delivering 100-150 warheads to the United States at least in a retaliatory strike. Meanwhile, the accuracy of American missiles grew, and strategic nuclear forces developed taking into account not only current, but also potential threats.
Potential threats quickly became real, making the counter-strike not too realistic along the way. By the mid-1980s, the United States was able to get out of the stalemate due to the rate of short flight times, high accuracy and low visibility. The efforts of the Americans were directed in several directions. The United States developed a new generation of SLBMs: by 1990, a very accurate Trident-II missile was created, capable of reliably hitting highly protected targets. In addition, the United States managed to improve the accuracy of ICBMs: the circular probable deviation (CEP) of MX missiles (in service since 1986) was brought to 100 m.
By the mid-1980s, the Pentagon revived the strategic cruise missiles Tomahawk and AGM-86 at a new technical level. Low flight altitude (from 60 m - "above the tops of trees") and small size made them extremely difficult to detect by air defense, and very decent accuracy at that time (CEP 60 m) gave 150-kiloton warheads the ability to reliably hit the most "intricate" targets. Cruise missiles could penetrate the enemy's airspace unnoticed and at "X hour" strike an effective strike at nuclear facilities and command posts of the USSR.
In addition to developing ICBMs and cruise missiles, the United States has begun deploying new intermediate-range missiles (IRMs) in Europe. The idea of a "decapitating" RSD strike came from the Americans back in the mid-1970s, and by 1982 the Pentagon's efforts were crowned with the "Pershing-2". The new RSD had a short flight time (8 minutes) and high accuracy (KVO 50 m). Finally, the production of unobtrusive strike aircraft - the famous "stealth", began.
By the beginning of perestroika in the USSR, the Americans were able to dramatically increase the potential for a "disarming", "blinding" and "decapitating" strike. As a result, when the negotiations on the reduction of nuclear weapons (START-1) began at the close of the Soviet era, many experts doubted that even a level of 10 strategic warheads would guarantee full-scale retaliation after a "disarming" US strike. The Soviet establishment did not rely too much on the OVU.
Since the Cold War, both American IRBMs and ground-based tomahawks have disappeared from Europe, and the American nuclear arsenal has been cut by about half. At the same time, however, the number of targets was reduced, and the formal reduction of the American nuclear fist was compensated for by its qualitative improvement.
The scenario of a nuclear attack in modern conditions is as follows. The strike is delivered without obvious, eye-catching preparations: American military doctrine calls for a sudden and preemptive use of force. In the first echelon, the attack is carried out with a "trident" - the Trident-2 SLBM, cruise missiles with nuclear warheads and stealth aircraft.
Trident is the main acquisition of US nuclear forces since the late 1980s. High accuracy (KVO 120 m) makes it the only SLBM capable of reliably hitting highly protected targets. So, hypothetically starting from the water area of the Barents Sea, "tridents" fly along flat trajectories (altitude up to 200 km) - this reduces the flight time and sharply reduces the detection range of the early warning missile radars (up to 1600 km). After some time - 6-8 minutes for central Russia - the warheads reach their targets, destroying missile silos, command posts and communication centers, hitting submarines at berths, mobile missile systems in light shelters, strategic airfields aviation... Several high-altitude nuclear explosions block radio communications.
The second "character" of the hypothetical attack is sea- and air-based cruise missiles, both nuclear and conventional. At the same time, although the deployment of nuclear missile systems on ships is prohibited by the START Treaty, this limitation is ephemeral - conventional warheads of "tomahawks" are replaced by nuclear ones almost instantly. Given the state of our air defense, their effective detection is practically impossible. Stealthy aircraft will also play a role.
Finally, a finishing blow from the Minuteman-3 ICBMs, on which part of the warheads from the MX has migrated, falls on the disorganized and out of control grouping of the Strategic Missile Forces.
With this development of events, there is no chance of organizing a counter-strike against the adversary in our harsh reality: ICBMs are now only "closing" in the series of means of a disarming and decapitating strike. So the hypothetical strike of our strategic nuclear forces will not be a counter-counter strike, but a counter strike. It is not hard to guess that this implies a sharp reduction in the number of launching ICBMs.
However, there are still mobile platforms - submarines and mobile ground missile systems (PGRK). They can really create problems for the attackers, but not as big as people think. The elusiveness and invulnerability of 120-ton vehicles, even on the patrol route, is greatly exaggerated. Submarines have another weak point - communication. Submerged boats are only capable of receiving transmissions in the very low and extremely low frequency bands. Transmitters operating in these bands are monstrous designs that exist in single copies, very vulnerable. Reception is also associated with problems: towed antennas for such communication have a length of 300-900 m, and their immersion depth is limited to 30 m. Such a "tail" limits the boat's speed to three knots and the ability to maneuver. As a result, the boats communicate with the command posts with significant interruptions, so that the attacking side does not have to sink them in the first minutes after a nuclear strike.
So it turns out that in reality "one and a half thousand warheads taking off in a counter strike" exist only in fiction from domestic propaganda. In the course of this conflict, 85-90% of our nuclear weapons will be destroyed before they can start. And the remaining 10% (and this is far from hundreds of carriers) will have to deal with missile defense, the prospects of which are by no means as dark and sad as propaganda is trying to convince us, while for some reason nervously reacting to the anti-missile threat. In general, the answer to the question of why thousands of warheads are needed is actually quite simple: to deliver to their destination ... a couple of dozen.
Information