On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 13:57:28 GMT, Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine said:
OK. So one would have to be literate in a particular genre. The Army Air Corp started targeting power generation and distribution in the metro NY area in the late '30s, to see what a strategic bombing campaign against national civilian infrastructure could accomplish. Results are mixed, from the empirical experiences in the WW2 period, through GW1 and the Yugoslav war, and the conclusion is ... it is wicked difficult, even with lots of expensive planes and many, many fine bombs,
The problem is that late 30's strategic bombing involved very dumb bombs, and you had to leave a LOT of craters to take out a power line. Current bombs are a lot smarter, but still suffer from the fact that unlike the average factory or troop bunker that's mostly solid, a power line is still mostly air. On the other hand, a few operatives with a backpack full of demolition gear could take out a few 765kv lines *quite* easily. Any military special-ops team that *couldn't* do this one and get away unseen without a scratch would be considered a total failure. And remember - the enemy we're presumably defending against has a much higher supply of operatives of whatever training level is needed than their supply of aircraft. I'll predict that if we *don't* have an attack on the power grid in the next 10 years, it's because the attackers have come up with something else they consider even more interesting as a target. A downed power line, even though it may have more economic impact, has less emotional impact.....