Of course, but the point was the goal of that targetting. The US public by and large believed, and seems to still believe (i.e., the TV show Jericho) that the goal of a USSR attack was purely vindictive, complete annhilation. Apparently Civil Defense leaned more towards invasion as a goal. No doubt as weapons systems evolve how you achieve one goal or the other evolves. Either goal leads to different targeting strategies, as possible. If your goal is invasion then value preservation is important (factories, bridges, civilian infrastructure, etc.) If anniliation is the goal than it's of no importance, just bomb the densest population centers. On February 12, 2007 at 16:17 smb@cs.columbia.edu (Steven M. Bellovin) wrote:
On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:05:45 -0500 Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com> wrote:
In the late 60s I remember having an interesting conversation with someone who did this kind of strategizing for the Dept of Civil Defense.
His scenarios were markedly diferent from the "urban folklore" you'd hear from people about what the Russkies were likely to nuke, other than everyone agreed they'd try to get the silos and a few other key military assets to try to prevent retaliation.
Targeting strategy changed over time, because of changes in technology, quantity of bombs available, accuracy, perceived threats, and internal politics. For a good history of US nuclear targeting strategy, see "The Wizards of Armageddon", Fred Kaplan, 1983. The short answer, though, is that it changed markedly over time. To give just one example, at one time the US targeted cities, with very big bombs, because the missiles of the day couldn't reliably hit anything smaller. Since that's what was possible, a strategic rationale evolved to make that seem sensible.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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