I had to watch the movie Threads for my nuclear studies class. The war started over the Soviets pulling an Afhanistan in a Iran. Anyway, the Americans deployed airborne troops and readied for war. We accussed the Soviets of having nukes stored at an airfield in Northern Iran and sent a bunch of B-52's to bomb the base, and they were shot down by a nuclear tipped SAM. How realistic a response would that be? Surely the number of B-52's would tell the Soviet commander that it was a conventional strike. Was it really worth it to be the first to respond to a conventional threat with a nuclear weapon? The Americans later tactically nuked the airfield, and to make a long story short, there was a full nuclear exchange. I'm just wondering, did both sides in this hypothetical make the right decisions? |