AIM-152 AAAM Phoenix replacement projects

Talking about Phoenix replacements after the AIM-54 were retired where were they stored and have they been dismantled and recycled yet? Come to think of it where are all of the various air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles that have been retired are stored?
 
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Talking about Phoenix replacements after the AIM-54 were retired where were they stored and have they been dismantled and recycled yet? Come to think of it where are all of the various air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles that have been retired are stored?

I'd bet money the surviving Phoenix have been scrapped. If not when the F-14s were retired, then certainly as part of the same push that saw the surviving F-14s cut up to keep the from being parted out to Iran. No point in keeping them since nothing but AWG-9/APG-71 could control them.
 
I should point out that the infrared aspect was in part a response to late-Cold War Soviet bombers and
ASCMs equipped with terrain-bounce jammers where the jammer would repeat and
bounce the illuminator or other seeker signal off the ocean surface into the missile's radome at an angle.

The missile then goes into Home-on-jam mode and plummets into the ocean.
That's why, in part, you started to see things like SM-2 Block IIIB.
I find your lack of faith…disquieting. I think the GD missile had too many moving parts. I like the Hughes ramjet missile myself.


Pg. 11-23
I‘m supposed to buy the Soviets successfully pulled this off?
 
Would it have been possible for the Navy to have combined the two proposals? Say, take the propulsion system and generally smaller body of the GD/W design and combine it with the guidance system and seeker head of the H/R design? Kind of a, "best of both worlds" approach?
Yes in theory no in reality since you need to wrangle the three different companies into agreeing for that.

And you literally need a act of Congress to do that without some hefty benefits.

GD and Westinghouse and Hughes would all be out of the missile business in a few years.

Given the forced pairings that have occurred due to industrial base considerations, "the best of both worlds"
approach is not too far fetched.

The Big Lessons Learned from this project:

a. Don't lie to the SECDEF about the progress of your contemporary acquisition programs
- esp: don't permit the SECDEF to repeat your lies to Congress under oath such that the SECDEF has to retract his testimony
b. Don't massively underperform as a service in Gulf War I
c. Don't be a scandal ridden service
d. Don't make the primary carrier of your wunderwaffe be an aircraft the SECDEF (correctly) views as a Grumman jobs program.
Cheney's view was anything but accurate. The F-14A/B was not the airplane the Navy needed, but he ignored the proposals from Grumman to improve the plane. Had the F-14D Quickstrike/ST21/AST21 been built, the Navy would have had the plane that it needed for fleet defense and strike/FAC-A, literally a carrier-based F-15E. The AIM-152 program, had it not been cancelled, would probably have been the way forward in the long-range missile capability that the F-14 was known for. Even if you discount the Tomcat as a launch platform though, other aircraft could use the 152, the Hornet/Super Hornet for example. It doesn't have (and probably never will have) the a radar capable of taking full advantage of a missile like that, but the missile itself could be added without any issue, and was a lot lighter than the old AIM-54.
 
I find your lack of faith…disquieting. I think the GD missile had too many moving parts. I like the Hughes ramjet missile myself.


Pg. 11-23
I‘m supposed to buy the Soviets successfully pulled this off?
The GD missile has a better form factor. You could fit more into an internal bay (no wings and fins to mess with), and with a booster they could be used by ground and naval forces as well.

Hindsight 2020 etc. the AIM-95 Agile and GD AIM-152 would have been perfect for internal carriage since both had minimal control surfaces, which means more could have been carried in the same space since you wouldn't have to worry about fitting fins as well as fuselages in limited bay spaces.
 
I find your lack of faith…disquieting. I think the GD missile had too many moving parts. I like the Hughes ramjet missile myself.


Pg. 11-23
I‘m supposed to buy the Soviets successfully pulled this off?
The GD missile has a better form factor. You could fit more into an internal bay (no wings and fins to mess with), and with a booster they could be used by ground and naval forces as well.

Hindsight 2020 etc. the AIM-95 Agile and GD AIM-152 would have been perfect for internal carriage since both had minimal control surfaces, which means more could have been carried in the same space since you wouldn't have to worry about fitting fins as well as fuselages in limited bay spaces.
I'd be a bit bit concerned that it doesn't have enough of a warhead to guarantee the destruction of a Backfire or other bomber which is the main purpose of such a long range missile. With the Hughes missile you know there is a room for something large enough where the target won't limp back to base.
 
I find your lack of faith…disquieting. I think the GD missile had too many moving parts. I like the Hughes ramjet missile myself.


Pg. 11-23
I‘m supposed to buy the Soviets successfully pulled this off?
The GD missile has a better form factor. You could fit more into an internal bay (no wings and fins to mess with), and with a booster they could be used by ground and naval forces as well.

Hindsight 2020 etc. the AIM-95 Agile and GD AIM-152 would have been perfect for internal carriage since both had minimal control surfaces, which means more could have been carried in the same space since you wouldn't have to worry about fitting fins as well as fuselages in limited bay spaces.
I'd be a bit bit concerned that it doesn't have enough of a warhead to guarantee the destruction of a Backfire or other bomber which is the main purpose of such a long range missile. With the Hughes missile you know there is a room for something large enough where the target won't limp back to base.
If you have the ability to select your aimpoint (some do) you just hit the cockpit.
 
I find your lack of faith…disquieting. I think the GD missile had too many moving parts. I like the Hughes ramjet missile myself.


Pg. 11-23
I‘m supposed to buy the Soviets successfully pulled this off?
The GD missile has a better form factor. You could fit more into an internal bay (no wings and fins to mess with), and with a booster they could be used by ground and naval forces as well.

Hindsight 2020 etc. the AIM-95 Agile and GD AIM-152 would have been perfect for internal carriage since both had minimal control surfaces, which means more could have been carried in the same space since you wouldn't have to worry about fitting fins as well as fuselages in limited bay spaces.
I'd be a bit bit concerned that it doesn't have enough of a warhead to guarantee the destruction of a Backfire or other bomber which is the main purpose of such a long range missile. With the Hughes missile you know there is a room for something large enough where the target won't limp back to base.

You don't need a large warhead.

With modern infrared or radar seekers, you don't need a warhead period. It would probably be more lethal against large aircraft if it were hit to kill rather than a warhead, or some sort of SAPHE warhead that detonates inside the aircraft structure, but no warhead is probably preferable to a tiny one in practice. The GD AAAM is big enough to be a rather muscular metal rod that punches a fat hole in an airframe.

Planes generally dislike having big holes in them, you can probably carry as many or more of these little missiles as AIM-120, and there are only a few dozen functional Backfires left in the world.
 
Also given the AIM-152's role in the event of WWIII destruction of the Soviet bomber wasn't necessary if it results in a mission-kill.

This is also true. It's rather unlikely the Backfires would have a base to return to, after all.

I'm not convinced. One thing we're learning from the war in Ukraine is that the threshold for use of tactical nuclear weapons is rather high, even when only one side is willing or able to use them. It might have been possible to fight a conventional WW3 after all.
 
Also given the AIM-152's role in the event of WWIII destruction of the Soviet bomber wasn't necessary if it results in a mission-kill.

This is also true. It's rather unlikely the Backfires would have a base to return to, after all.

I'm not convinced. One thing we're learning from the war in Ukraine is that the threshold for use of tactical nuclear weapons is rather high, even when only one side is willing or able to use them. It might have been possible to fight a conventional WW3 after all.

Well, Ukraine isn't 1980's Germany. It's two decayed post-Soviet armies fighting over Khrushchev's legacy in a medium intensity conflict.

Besides that, it may yet still be escalating to nuclear combat anyway, just doing so in slow motion. That was one of the fears of the Red Army in the 1980's: a limited proxy war between the superpowers escalating out of control because one side or the other refused to accept anything less than total victory.

Anyway, a "conventional WW3" might be how NATO would have wanted it, but the Red Army would escalate to immediate nuclear use, at least in the latter half of the Cold War. The entire attack plan for the GSFG on land demanded immediate nuclear use against the enemy to attain the initiative and sustain the offensive to the Rhine at least, if not the Channel, and the only way to achieve that rapidity of attack was by nuclear weapons to disrupt establishment of defensive lines and movement of enemy troop formations.

It would have been restrained to tactical and operational weapons, though. I think hitting Murmansk's Backfire bases qualifies as an operational use of nuclear weapons, not a strategic one, even if it's in the Soviet metropole. Moscow and London would be safe, but Murmansk, Reykjavik, and Ramstein might not be.

Any "WW3" in the Cold War would have immediately and instantly nuclear either way, at least tactically speaking. Had NATO attacked, the Soviets would have gone nuclear. Had the Soviets attacked, then NATO would have been nuked, and likely responded similarly. The Red Army's plan hinged on the deterrent effects of the SSBN bastions, SS-20s, and deep reserve missile silos of SS-18s, to keep NATO/America from responding with strategic bombardment, and thus limiting themselves to tactical and operational use of weapons.

The supercarriers directly threatened the bastions, one of the three main legs of the Soviet missile forces, by providing air cover to intruding US and British nuclear submarines. The proper response would be nuclear armed Backfires to disrupt the battlegroup air defenses and hit the HVU/carrier.

Mission killing the Backfire would be sort of important, but the Backfire would be carrying nuclear weapons anyway primarily to be detonated, AIUI, some distance away from the battlegroup's inner defense zone and create an artificial radar horizon. The ionization clouds of nuclear explosions would create a "wall" of radar blackout and reduce the available time the escorting cruisers had to fire on incoming anti-ship missiles, which would allow more to penetrate through the missile screen and hit the carrier. The anti-ship missiles would be conventional because the atomic warheads for the Kh-22s were expensive or something.

I'm not sure the US Navy would let nuclear missile attacks on its battlegroups go without a equal riposte, which would probably be some "proportionate" thing, like using nuclear Tomahawks on the Backfires' launching base or something.

While it's possible a conventional WW3 would occur, at least initially, the Soviets never planned for it. Even contemporary Western literature discusses these main assumptions, either in Brassey's Amphibious Operations or Modern Sea Power, I forget which, but nearly all Soviet "major" operational exercises assumed nuclear weapon use.

Conventional weapons were viewed as being retained primarily for small, limited, periphery wars like Afghanistan or Vietnam, where capturing territory and populations requires more surgical means, because the stakes were not high enough to justify nuclear use, or because the forces in place were not sufficiently concentrated or powerful or mobile enough to do so.

The Central Front of NATO certainly qualified as a nuclear combat zone in that vein, as did Transcaucasia and the Norwegian Sea, although I'm not sure either side would be wanting to attack anything more than the frontlines with nuclear weapons. Few people would cry about an armored company or a destroyer getting nuked compared to, say, Rostov or Detroit, so there's relatively little risk of strategic escalation unless America or Europe decided they wanted to go all in over West Germany. Then again people have done dumber stuff before so who knows.

All I know is that the Soviets more or less planned to start throwing nukes from the start to disrupt/suppress frontline defenses and allow their operational maneuver groups to penetrate the frontlines. Nuclear weapons would also be used for flanks protection/obstacle creation and destruction of major enemy concentrations. Since the Soviets didn't have an assault breaker and were also supposed to attack, because Barbarossa can never be allowed to happen again, it was really the only practical move.

Perhaps if the USSR had continued existing to the present day, I think a conventional arms/PGM-based force would be viable for tactical-operational combat, at least in industrial production terms. Imagine a Soviet Union with about 1,000 Ka-52s, instead of Russia with about 100 or so, but that was still far in the future in the 1980's. The USSR could very well have also decided PGMs weren't worth it, and continued with tactical nukes as well, since they are still more effective per unit of time, thus giving Soviet formations higher tempo on the ground.

So while a "conventional WW3" would be plausible from NATO's perspective, barely, in the 1990's I suppose, I think the Soviets were still a decade or two behind this and would require deliberate investment going down this route regardless, while nukes are just kinda...there. Besides that, it isn't clear if PGMs can offer up the necessary operational tempo of destruction of ground forces and suppression of the enemy needed that nuclear weapons offer, even today. Going from the IGB to the Rhine river is something like 40-50 kilometers per day, which is pretty gosh darn quick for a strategic offensive operation, being about three to four times faster than Bagration, one of the fastest offensives ever. Tactical nuclear weapons can plausibly offer that if their use can be sustained and defensive positions accurately hit though, because they only require a few shells being fired per tube per mission to achieve massive destruction. Something like a 100:1 ratio for conventional rounds:nuclear and 10:1 for PGM:nuclear so that's a lot of minutes spent.

tl;dr My impression is that any WW3 would have been over in a few days or weeks with a negotiated settlement between the superpowers and the battered and bruised Central European plain being rebuilt in most likelihood. Trading an atomized armored division or a couple brigades for a Backfire base to prove "I can hit you any time I want" against a bastion seems to be the sort of strongarmed negotiating tactics that the superpowers would use. Maybe the carrier would be shotgunned by an SS-18 or something, but I suppose that assumes both superpowers are willing to throw their allies/proxies under the bus to save themselves, which seems out of character for America as it's not particularly pragmatic at times.

America may have been psychologically inclined, as it is now, to seek a solution comparable to WW2 or the US Civil War, rather than status quo ante al a WW1, or accepting a minor defeat to stave off total destruction, al a the Franco-Prussian War. The end result of that sort of thinking would be a general nuclear war I guess. H/e that wouldn't be the Soviet "plan" so to speak, which would be to keep NATO away from it and maybe gain the other half of Germany, it would just be a potential outcome.
 
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Also given the AIM-152's role in the event of WWIII destruction of the Soviet bomber wasn't necessary if it results in a mission-kill.

This is also true. It's rather unlikely the Backfires would have a base to return to, after all.

I'm not convinced. One thing we're learning from the war in Ukraine is that the threshold for use of tactical nuclear weapons is rather high, even when only one side is willing or able to use them. It might have been possible to fight a conventional WW3 after all.

Well, Ukraine isn't 1980's Germany. It's two decayed post-Soviet armies fighting over Khrushchev's legacy in a medium intensity conflict.

Besides that, it may yet still be escalating to nuclear combat anyway, just doing so in slow motion. That was one of the fears of the Red Army in the 1980's: a limited proxy war between the superpowers escalating out of control because one side or the other refused to accept anything less than total victory.

Anyway, a "conventional WW3" might be how NATO would have wanted it, but the Red Army would escalate to immediate nuclear use, at least in the latter half of the Cold War. The entire attack plan for the GSFG on land demanded immediate nuclear use against the enemy to attain the initiative and sustain the offensive to the Rhine at least, if not the Channel, and the only way to achieve that rapidity of attack was by nuclear weapons to disrupt establishment of defensive lines and movement of enemy troop formations.

It would have been restrained to tactical and operational weapons, though. I think hitting Murmansk's Backfire bases qualifies as an operational use of nuclear weapons, not a strategic one, even if it's in the Soviet metropole. Moscow and London would be safe, but Murmansk, Reykjavik, and Ramstein might not be.

Any "WW3" in the Cold War would have immediately and instantly nuclear either way, at least tactically speaking. Had NATO attacked, the Soviets would have gone nuclear. Had the Soviets attacked, then NATO would have been nuked, and likely responded similarly. The Red Army's plan hinged on the deterrent effects of the SSBN bastions, SS-20s, and deep reserve missile silos of SS-18s, to keep NATO/America from responding with strategic bombardment, and thus limiting themselves to tactical and operational use of weapons.

The supercarriers directly threatened the bastions, one of the three main legs of the Soviet missile forces, by providing air cover to intruding US and British nuclear submarines. The proper response would be nuclear armed Backfires to disrupt the battlegroup air defenses and hit the HVU/carrier.

Mission killing the Backfire would be sort of important, but the Backfire would be carrying nuclear weapons anyway primarily to be detonated, AIUI, some distance away from the battlegroup's inner defense zone and create an artificial radar horizon. The ionization clouds of nuclear explosions would create a "wall" of radar blackout and reduce the available time the escorting cruisers had to fire on incoming anti-ship missiles, which would allow more to penetrate through the missile screen and hit the carrier. The anti-ship missiles would be conventional because the atomic warheads for the Kh-22s were expensive or something.

I'm not sure the US Navy would let nuclear missile attacks on its battlegroups go without a equal riposte, which would probably be some "proportionate" thing, like using nuclear Tomahawks on the Backfires' launching base or something.

While it's possible a conventional WW3 would occur, at least initially, the Soviets never planned for it. Even contemporary Western literature discusses these main assumptions, either in Brassey's Amphibious Operations or Modern Sea Power, I forget which, but nearly all Soviet "major" operational exercises assumed nuclear weapon use.

Conventional weapons were viewed as being retained primarily for small, limited, periphery wars like Afghanistan or Vietnam, where capturing territory and populations requires more surgical means, because the stakes were not high enough to justify nuclear use, or because the forces in place were not sufficiently concentrated or powerful or mobile enough to do so.

The Central Front of NATO certainly qualified as a nuclear combat zone in that vein, as did Transcaucasia and the Norwegian Sea, although I'm not sure either side would be wanting to attack anything more than the frontlines with nuclear weapons. Few people would cry about an armored company or a destroyer getting nuked compared to, say, Rostov or Detroit, so there's relatively little risk of strategic escalation unless America or Europe decided they wanted to go all in over West Germany. Then again people have done dumber stuff before so who knows.

All I know is that the Soviets more or less planned to start throwing nukes from the start to disrupt/suppress frontline defenses and allow their operational maneuver groups to penetrate the frontlines. Nuclear weapons would also be used for flanks protection/obstacle creation and destruction of major enemy concentrations. Since the Soviets didn't have an assault breaker and were also supposed to attack, because Barbarossa can never be allowed to happen again, it was really the only practical move.

Perhaps if the USSR had continued existing to the present day, I think a conventional arms/PGM-based force would be viable for tactical-operational combat, at least in industrial production terms. Imagine a Soviet Union with about 1,000 Ka-52s, instead of Russia with about 100 or so, but that was still far in the future in the 1980's. The USSR could very well have also decided PGMs weren't worth it, and continued with tactical nukes as well, since they are still more effective per unit of time, thus giving Soviet formations higher tempo on the ground.

tl;dr Nukes let ground troops drive fast over radioactive ashes of their enemies. Tit for tat means both sides would be trading nukes against military targets, trying to gain an advantage in a rapidly changing (a few hours or days) environment, and holding each other's cities hostage, probably until Germany cried uncle and just surrendered. I guess a fat escalation could work, but that wasn't something America practiced at the time AFAIK, that was more the Soviet wheelhouse. Something like a surprise NATO attack would be met by a fat escalation of nuking London or New York or something equally big and scary.

OTOH trading a atomized tank brigade or division, an almost certainty in Soviet war plans in the 1980's, for a Backfire base or something seems a reasonable and not particularly dramatic response, at least provided the SSBNs aren't actively hunted or something. That's to be expected, although that carrier battlegroup might get shotgunned by an SS-18 or something, which was wargamed at least twice by US planners. If you started hitting the strategic deterrent of SSBNs, SS-20s, or Dombarovsky's missile fields, though, is when the Soviets would launch everything.

Nuclear wars aren't necessarily total anymore than conventional wars are, based on a sample size of one, but there's no particular reason to believe that nuclear combat would require a total/general nuclear war out of hand. It's entirely possible for a WW3 to be fought as a regional nuclear war concentrated in Northern-Central Europe between the proxy states/vassals of the superpowers.

My impression is that any WW3 would have been over in a few days or weeks with a negotiated settlement between the superpowers and the battered and bruised Central European plain being rebuilt in most likelihood. Neither the USA nor USSR would necessarily be willing to die over Germany and the USSR didn't plan to go strategic from the outset, as it would be wanting to capture Germany and push America and NATO out, not demolish it outright. I also don't think NATO had any significant offensive plans against the USSR after the 1950's, as America never particularly had much of a backbone for "Pearl Harbor"-type surprise attacks, but those would probably still be classified if they'd existed. Maybe the UK or Germany did who knows.
I've read quite the opposite actually, instead claiming the Soviets would only resort to nuclear weapons should NATO use them first, or there is some sort of major offensive into Red territory. This is sourced from a book called Red Banner: The Soviet Military System in Peace and War, written by Chris Donnelly, who apparently served as an advisor to NATO's Secretary General (Source: https://www.cidob.org/en/events/geo...eace_the_face_of_conflict_in_the_21st_century). I have attached the relevant excerpt below.

I think the notion of liberal use (note I said liberal use, not all use), was fairly outdated by the 80s, and that's why both sides signed the INF Treaty. I don't think this was the case in say, the 50s or 60s however.
 
Mass nuclear use by the Red Army had its heydey in the early- to mid-1970's, yes.

It didn't completely disappear until the USSR did (as a threat to NATO or vice versa) though. The SS-20's were withdrawn from service less than two years before the end of the Cold War, after all, and less than five before the USSR dissolved, and well after the second detente under Gorbachev dramatically reduced the possibility of NATO attacking the USSR in 1985. In 1980 or 1982, they would still be the mainline method by which the USSR would deter NATO attacks outside of tactical nuclear weapons on field forces, which the Soviets possessed an advantage in both numbers of and in absorbable casualties.

This is beyond the scope of the thread though. The point is that if a Backfire regiment is attacking a carrier battlegroup, long range missiles mission killing them means they're as good as dead, because I don't think the US Navy would just let them go back to base all willy nilly after hitting a CVBG with a gaggle of tactical nukes. They would nuke the airbase they came from, obviously, in a tit for tat response.

Either at sea or on land, the Red Army would only plan on fighting with nukes to make the war as short, sharp, and decisive as possible. One protracted war nearly broke the Union in 1941, a second would have exterminated it*, because GOSPLAN bureaucrats were absolutely convinced they wouldn't be able to win a war of industrial attrition against the West.

*It's not actually true, but that's what the economic planners believed was true, so it was acted on.
 
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Mass nuclear use by the Red Army had its heydey in the early- to mid-1970's, yes.

It didn't completely disappear until the USSR did though. The SS-20's were withdrawn from service less than two years before the end of the Cold War, after all, and less than five before the USSR dissolved, and well after the second detente under Gorbachev dramatically reduced the possibility of NATO attacking the USSR. In 1980 or 1982 they would still be the mainline method by which the USSR would deter NATO attacks outside of tactical nuclear weapons on field forces, which the Soviets possessed an advantage in both numbers of and in absorbable casualties.

This is beyond the scope of the thread though. The point is that if a Backfire regiment is attacking a carrier battlegroup, long range missiles mission killing them means they're as good as dead, because I don't think the US Navy would just let them go back to base all willy nilly after hitting a CVBG with a gaggle of tactical nukes. They would nuke the airbase they came from, obviously, in a tit for tat response.

Either at sea or on land, the Red Army would only plan on fighting with nukes to make the war as short, sharp, and decisive as possible. One protracted war nearly broke the Union in 1941, a second would have exterminated it*, because GOSPLAN bureaucrats were absolutely convinced they wouldn't be able to win a war of industrial attrition against the West.

*It's not actually true, but that's what the economic planners believed was true, so it was acted on.
And I just told you why neither the Backfire attack, nor that on the Kola would be nuclear, nor would the land war be nuclear (at least initially), and cited what I think is a very credible source to back it up. You’re not justifying your positions here.

Edit: please, by all means, do dispute it, but one thing I’ve learned is *always* have a source
 
This is getting off topic so this will be my last post on the subject. Anyway, you posted a quote from a guy who, at best, is mirror imaging NATO thought onto the Soviets? That's not evidence.


Even contemporary sources, imperfect as they are, recognize that the Soviets were never actually dissuaded from mass use of nuclear weapons in the opening offensive stages. There's no evidence to suggest that, prior to the end of the Cold War, and certainly not during Reagan's first term, the Soviets would have opened an offensive in Europe with anything less than several hundred nuclear artillery shells and rockets to disrupt initial defensive positions of US, German, and British corps. A similar response could be expected from US corps, which each possessed between 100-200 nuclear weapons for mass use to decisively end a battle. The Red Army simply needed to use nuclear weapons to attain its required operational tempo and NATO needed to use nuclear weapons to hold its positions.

This was simply something that would come with the territory.

Page 52-53 is rather noteworthy for pointing out that contemporary Soviet military scientific articles were still planning for mass nuclear use even into Gorbachev's time. The CPSU, of course, had never been a fan of nuclear weapon use because it was afraid it would have died. The Red Army, however, felt it was so decentralized and big that even a strategic nuclear exchange may not have destroyed it.

The mentioning of the conventional theater combat is, notably, a single phase of indeterminate length. It could be days, weeks, months, or hours. One which eventually transitions to regional nuclear warfare as one side's COFM shifts to requiring nuclear weapon use to maintain its integrity agaisnt the other. It's either Brassey's Modern Sea Power or Amphibious Operations that elaborates on the four phases of Soviet thought regarding possible war scenarios, with all of them leading at least to regional nuclear war, and ideally stopping there with the U.S./NATO accepting a fait accompli or risk escalation to strategic exchange.

The largest risk of escalation to strategic exchange would be either the US planners hitting Leningrad or Vladivostok to attain some measure of operational security for their naval forces, or the Soviets hitting Pearl Harbor or Yokohama for similar reasons, and this being misinterpreted by either side as a prelude to a general exchange.

However, the conventional war potential of WW3 during Soviet times is mostly the CPSU crossing its fingers, and the Red Army ignoring their pleas by planning to fight and win a nuclear war, because the Soviets nor Americans simply did not have the weapons nor the capabilities to inflict damage with precision guided weapons sufficient to replicate nuclear weapons at the time. These were still a decade, or more, in the future. This would not be attained until the mid-1990's by America (at least) with the full deployment of the Joint STARS and the Soviets never attained it, obviously. Joint STARS' performance in Serbia and Bosnia left much to be desired even then, and it came down to Croatia pulling off an attack by a quarter of a million men in a mass offensive to attain final victory.

It would have been possible had the USSR continued existing for another 20-30 years, and Russian theorists discussed the PGM aspects of conventional combats replicating nuclear weapon use on the tactical level in the mid-1990's (and have been writing incessantly about the subject ever since), but that is something only America and its allies possess at the moment.
 
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IMG_20220824_113916718.jpg
Here's a good example of what might have been possible with the Hughes missile had it been made with clipped fins like the AIM-120C/D. I'm a terrible modeler BTW, but I decided to go for the Hughes missile here because I wasn't sure the GD missile would 3D print at 1:48 scale (even in the tube). It might, come to think of it, but I do like the Hughes missile better except that the GD missile can be carried in much larger numbers.
 
Also given the AIM-152's role in the event of WWIII destruction of the Soviet bomber wasn't necessary if it results in a mission-kill.

This is also true. It's rather unlikely the Backfires would have a base to return to, after all.

I'm not convinced. One thing we're learning from the war in Ukraine is that the threshold for use of tactical nuclear weapons is rather high, even when only one side is willing or able to use them. It might have been possible to fight a conventional WW3 after all.
I think it depends on what kind of targets are being hit. If we didn't target Russia's nuclear systems. civilians, or things like powerplants, perhaps. As long as they didn't believe the existence of the Motherland was at risk they may not have "gone nuclear".
 
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I always liked the idea of a booster on the back of an AMRAAM, only I imagined it would be considerably wider and relatively shorter than the rest of the AMRAAM. And the booster should be discarded after burnout, like a multistage rocket. You could achieve a fantastic fineness ratio.
 
Wow. Seems like somebody at the highest ranks of USN, was thoroughly traumatized by Tom Clancy all time masterpiece - Red Storm rising, Dance of vampires. o_O o_O o_O
As noted, Clancy just wrote out what the Pentagon was already freaking out about.

And thank you for reminding me to go find a new copy of RSR, my old paperback is in pretty rough condition.
 
As noted, Clancy just wrote out what the Pentagon was already freaking out about.

And thank you for reminding me to go find a new copy of RSR, my old paperback is in pretty rough condition.

Apparently the Pentagon freaked out so much about RSR's technical accuracy they sent around a couple of officers to interview Clancy to see whether or not he'd used classified material when writing it. He didn't but he had to go out of his way to prove that he'd only used unclassified publicly available material.
 
Apparently the Pentagon freaked out so much about RSR's technical accuracy they sent around a couple of officers to interview Clancy to see whether or not he'd used classified material when writing it. He didn't but he had to go out of his way to prove that he'd only used unclassified publicly available material.
Yes, Clancy was used as an example of how a spy could listen to conversations in bars and extrapolate from what we didn't say in our counter-intelligence briefs.
 
Yes, Clancy was used as an example of how a spy could listen to conversations in bars and extrapolate from what we didn't say in our counter-intelligence briefs.

Do please elaborate as it sounds like you've got some interesting tales to tell.
 
Do please elaborate as it sounds like you've got some interesting tales to tell.
Let's see here... Had one officer come in, sounded like he was Puerto Rican or from the Bahamas, got talking along about what we were learning in Sub School, and then suddenly shifted to "News Broadcaster" accent saying "gotcha". Apparently the islander accent leads people to trust the speaker, see how many of the fortune tellers use it.

The other one was when I arrived at Bangor, Washington. Less than a decade after the book Blind Man's Bluff came out. Everything in there was what Sontag had picked up as she talked (and or slept) with guys from the Parche.
 
Starbucks?! No, no, no, no. That will never do. Dunkin or freshly ground and brewed coffee from a French Press.
A bigger no-no: French Press coffee. It has the highest concentration of cafestol and kahweol, lipids that markedly increase serum cholesterol. Paper filters are a must to enjoy coffee without increasing your risk of cardiovascular disease. I've personally done this test... blood panels taken 3 months apart showed about a 10% reduction in LDL when I used paper filters in my brewing machine -- no other diet or exercise changes during the testing period.

 
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The details on the GD design seem clearer, missile itself was 5.5" and the jettisonable rocket booster 8". The fins on the missile portion folded so it remained within an 8" diameter so the missile could be carried and launched from a pod.
There seems to be less information available on the Hughes design so it's difficult to tell which concepts and images represent earlier versions and which ones were the final version.
The site Designation-Systems.net suggests a 9" diameter for the main body of the Hughes missile but the ramjet of course increases that.
The big question I have about the A-6F or A-12 carrying the AIM-152 is when would either aircraft be in a position to contribute to defense of the carrier battle group from an attack by Backfires? Their radars were sophisticated but were also built primarily for ground attack missions so would they even have the range to take advantage of a truly long range AAM?
 
The details on the GD design seem clearer, missile itself was 5.5" and the jettisonable rocket booster 8". The fins on the missile portion folded so it remained within an 8" diameter so the missile could be carried and launched from a pod.
There seems to be less information available on the Hughes design so it's difficult to tell which concepts and images represent earlier versions and which ones were the final version.
The site Designation-Systems.net suggests a 9" diameter for the main body of the Hughes missile but the ramjet of course increases that.
The big question I have about the A-6F or A-12 carrying the AIM-152 is when would either aircraft be in a position to contribute to defense of the carrier battle group from an attack by Backfires? Their radars were sophisticated but were also built primarily for ground attack missions so would they even have the range to take advantage of a truly long range AAM?

I'm fairly certain that the idea was that the attack aircraft would provide extra missiles that would be guided by the F-14s (or possibly the E-2s).
 
Yes my post got moved here from the thread on the ATA/A-12 since it dealt more with the AIM-152 but I had forgotten about that possibility of data-linked engagements.

It does provide an interesting secondary use for such attack aircraft to put them on patrol if the CVBG was in a situation where there was nothing within striking distance.
 

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