So did Ike. He created an investigatory body called the Sprague Commission. [Sprague of Sprague Electric, a major industrial firm]. Sprague interviewed LeMay in person at SAC HQ (Omaha). LeMay said if he had photorecon indicating assembly of Soviet bombers, he would order a strike, without informing the President or JCS! Sprage duely reported back, and Ike sent a warning to the incoming Defense Secretary (MacNamara) of the need to get some control over SAC. This led to the Two Man Rule, to the Joint Targeting Committee, to the SIOP, and other things. But LeMay probably WAS mad enough to do it!

The question was asked: If the US or USSR thought that they could win why didn't they do it? At the beginning of the Kennedy administration, USJCS under a Gen Tower proposed exactly that. They had enough because there was not yet a Soviet capacity to retaliate. They wanted to insure deterrence did not become mutual. Kennedy was horrified. Leaving the session, he said to RFK "And we call ourselves civilized." So there is more to the subject than sheer capacity. The USA could have attacked the Russians in 1946 (at least if it had actually built any bombs - which it didn't - but that is another subject - theoretically it could have done and no one else knew how]. It was not an option politically. USA does not seek world domination, and its people do not believe in unprovoked attacks on other countries.

The question was asked: If the US or USSR thought that they could win why didn't they do it? At the beginning of the Kennedy administration, USJCS under a Gen Tower proposed exactly that. They had enough because there was not yet a Soviet capacity to retaliate. They wanted to insure deterrence did not become mutual. Kennedy was horrified. Leaving the session, he said to RFK "And we call ourselves civilized." So there is more to the subject than sheer capacity. The USA could have attacked the Russians in 1946 (at least if it had actually built any bombs - which it didn't - but that is another subject - theoretically it could have done and no one else knew how]. It was not an option politically. USA does not seek world domination, and its people do not believe in unprovoked attacks on other countries.

Defined provoked elcid

Gix, Define victory... If in the aftermath the US find themselves without LA, NY and another large city, would you consider it a victory? How?

Victory...US ability to continue on as a society and eventually recover from the destruction.

If it takes 600+ missiles to reliably take out the Chinese arsenal and seeing as how Russia has many many more nukes than China how do you propose that the US actually destroys the Russian response capability?

“Victory...US ability to continue on as a society and eventually recover from the destruction.” Your “victory” leaves a lot of room for loses. If the US loses a few important cities, which are the targets of the Russian mobile missiles, I don’t see how they could recover on a medium period of time. Or by recovery, you mean a 100 years later?

Russia has many underground complexes which require more direct hit to be destroyed. Thus Russia is capable of wistanding nuke warfare while the West has no real civil defense agenda of this sort. US weapons are more accurate, but now ruskies coming with Polar Orbit ABM evading TOPOLS can get the better of a protection for Cheyenne mountain type complex. (Moscow as already a fully operational ABM system with nuke tipped ABM missles that are effective in their shot gun blast approach, not to mention EMP abilities to fry nuke trigger mechanism). Ruskies also have the biggest arsenal of about 20,000 strategic nukes and gazillion tactical nukes, most of which out west we have gotten rid of. In fact I believe the US does not have neutron devices like France used to have. I believe only Israel has neutron devices. Cohen helped design both French and Israeli neutron tact devices that USA PC puritans shied away from. Maybe a return to nuke bunker busters is going to happen, who knows. I dunno, if they have baseball sized red mercury devices delivering Hiroshima+ type explosions, we are in big trouble in nuke war against Russia. Unless USA would not give up fighting after several strikes (because ruskies do not just need a blitz war, but a long term engineered winnable nuke war supported by the world over coerced), the Ruskies would win hands down, at the very least at the 1st second and third strike capability game. They do have the plans.

The US could recover from Russian strikes. It took I believe something of a huge arsenal to attempt destroying tiny Germany from the air, and it did not work, had to go ground. Imagine trying to destroy USA, even with no nuke response from rusky strike, it would be difficult to break the country. I believe it takes about 50 1Mt devices to destroy LA completely. The only threat to nuke warfare is demoralization and giving up. Even the war hardened Samurai like Japanese only took two and gave up real quick. Russians I believe tested US resilience on US POWs and apparently were impressed by some of them.