Where can I find a map of Cold War era missile silos?

I’m a bit of a Cold War history buff and have been attempting to find a map of the US with missile silo sites on them but so far I’ve had little luck.

Also I would like to see a map of a planned Soviet attack against the US.

I know this is pretty grim stuff but I just find it fascinating.

Any help would be appreciated.

I’m sure that’s classified.

http://www.siloworld.com/COORDINATES/LOCAL.htm

First link off of a Google search.

I didn’t dig deep, but there’s a LOT there, you might find something useful. Probably more for historical sites than current locations, for obvious reasons.

As for your second question, here’s an interesting link. Not a U.S. attack, but still fascinating/horrifying.

To speculate, the Soviet strategy was probably similar to the U.S. strategy in the sense that it likely evolved with technology, i.e. Soviet bombers and the early, inaccurate generations of ICBMs were targeted at things they couldn’t miss hitting-- cities, ports, large factories, etc. As Soviet weapons increased in accuracy (and numbers), counterforce strategies could be considered-- hitting silos, Launch Control Centers, etc.

One factor to consider in Cold War targeting was the lack of available information regarding valuable targets. Sure, everyone knows Moscow will be hit, but what in Moscow do you hit? It’s a big city, and if you’re trying to take out bunkers, you want to get as close as possible to your target. Worse, that’s a city everyone knows about-- what about military bases? Which ones are important, which ones aren’t? What about industrial sites? Rumor has it that the late Cold War U.S. plans were targeting Soviet cement factories by the time all was said and done. Eventually, you have more weapons than you do targets.

Alas, that’s the inexorable logic of deterrence-- enough is never enough, as the most important thing is to have a deterrent robust enough (read: large, dispersed and protected) to survive your enemy’s first strike and retaliate with unacceptable force. In a conventional war scenario the historical rule of thumb is that the attacker needs to outnumber the defender, often by a high ratio, i.e. 3 to 1. In a total nuclear war scenario, that wisdom is reversed-- the defender needs to have more weapons than an attacker in order to survive the attack.

Back in grad school (mid-1990s) I had a class on military force planning. Half of it was focused on the nuclear question, with plenty of simple math-based exercises to determine what a “survivable” deterrent looked like. No matter how many times you ran the math, it always led you to a larger arsenal, simply because a surprise first strike by either side could neutralize (destroy) a significant portion of your nuclear arsenal. When you consider it, this is fairly intuitive-- most missile submarines are in port, and bombers are on only a handful of bases. A few dozen weapons at most are needed to immediately eliminate the majority of the weapons provided by two legs of the nuclear Triad.

Digging out silos is a harder proposition-- multiple weapons per target (2-3) are needed to ensure confidence that you’ve destroyed the target. Again, the more silos you have, the more targets you present, and thus you need more weapons of your own to counter this, etc. etc.

Of course, after that first strike, what does the retaliatory strike look like? After an all-out Soviet assault, you need to know how many weapons you lost, how many survive, and then apportion those according to the appropriate strategy. Do you bother hitting anything BUT cities at that point-- you have to figure the Soviet silos are empty, but they could be reloaded; the Soviet sub and bomber bases are probably worth hitting, but their subs and bombers may have already deployed.

Anyway, nuclear logic is simultaneously logical and illogical, as you may have noticed :-).

Darn, I hate it when someone has the perfect answer to an OP. :slight_smile:

Silo World? Hah!

If you are interested in such things, I assume you are aware of the silo and command center near the Badlands that is now open to the public as a national historic site?

My wife and I found it way cool, tho I think our kids somewhat less so. Delivery worldwide in 30 minutes or less, or your next one is free! Heh-heh! :stuck_out_tongue:

How could you secure the location of missile silos? Not only are they generally visible from public roads (often placed adjacent to privately-owned farmland) but they are frequently serviced by specialized missile handling equipment from a central depot or booster processing facility traveling on public roads. The known location of fixed silos and the increasing precision of Soviet delivery vehicles was the impetus for the stillborn Peacekeeper Rail Garrison and Midgetman Small ICBM Hard Mobile Launcher development programs.

The United States maintained Single Integrated Operation Plans (SIOP) as a unified plan for a nuclear response to a threat. This was actually a set of plans and contingencies covering all possible scenarios that strategic planners could conceive, and were modified and updated on an annual basis. These are classified information, though certain aspects of them are apparent through treaty agreements and other public documents. The Soviet Union doubtless had a similar arrangement, though some previously unknown attack plans and capabilities have been released after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Stranger

Why do you want to know…comrade?

They were and are very public. It’s part of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). If they aren’t convinced you have the capability, they might shoot first, so let’s show them what we’ve got. There are no more active Minuteman 2 sites in South Dakota, but you can not only visit the launch facility (as noted above), but one of the actual silos where a disarmed missile sits looking very menacing.

http://ed-thelen.org/loc.html

NIKE missile / rocket sites. There’s a bunch throughout Los Angeles.

Where can you find map of Trans-continental-nuclear-missile silos?

Put your finger on ANY location on the USSR map… There you go, you found one they forgot they had :smiley: .

The fact that we have ICBMs and their general capabilities are public. SIOPs (or CONPLANS as they’re now called) are classified documents and are highly controlled. The strategy of Assured Destruction is about producing the perception that one side cannot make a disarming first attack (counterforce strike) or reasonably hope to survive the reciprocal attack (countervalue). To that end, the ability to detect and discriminate and incoming strike, or to deploy assets in a way that they cannot be countered (submarine launched ballistic missiles, air and ground launched TERCOM cruise missiles, intermediate range ballistic missiles, low observable strategic bombers, et cetera) is more valuable than a blatant show of force, although glory trip ICBM test flights and RV tests certainly demonstrate the precision of delivery systems. Assured Destruction itself is at best a marginally stable strategy, and while it received general acceptance among US strategic planners it was not without its detractors among the strategic nuclear community (Herman Kahn being the most notable) and was not a general assumption for Soviet planners.

The LGM-30F Minuteman II has been deactivated in all wings for over a decade (since 1995, if memory serves). The LGM-30G Minuteman III is the only active ICBM currently in the USAF arsenal, and its force has been reduced to about half of the original complement of launchers.

Stranger

I believe this is a large part of the reason why Russia is so strongly opposing the US ABM plans. With the dwindling amount of delivery platforms, both by ICBMs not being replaced as fast as old ones are taken out of service, and by treaty limitations, together with an increasing number of BM interceptors, a US first strike begins to look increasingly survivable.

People often say that they have thousands of nukes, which dozens of interceptors would never dream to cover. However, a US first strike would significantly reduce the number of their remaining delivery platforms, which then would present a much more easily overcome challenge. For example, their road mobile ICBM launchers are treaty bound to stay within certain areas, the nuclear bombers only have a couple bases that they operate from, a few attack subs can take care of their boomers, bombers who actually got off the ground can be intercepted before launching their cruise missiles, and the number of remaining ICBMs will not overwhelm the ABM system.

Good stuff. It was interesting to hear them speak about solid fueled- vs liquid fueled missile engines. It changed the whole game. The tour of the launch facility was very interesting, particularly the capsule where the Misslemen sat.