A significant amount of information has since been published about Soviet thinking about nuclear weapons.
It's two decades since the Cold War ended. The other thing that surprised me is the authors lack of curiosity. Given the current state of the Soviet Navy one can speculate they may once again be our must invulnerable leg of the triad. His comments about the invulnerability of our Tridents on Ohio-class boats in the late 70's until the fall of the Soviet Union also seem to a few decades out of date - probably true when he was around for the Lafayette-class Poseidon - it may not have been accurate post the Walker spy ring.
#STOCKPILE REVIEWS VERIFICATION#
SAC's radar order of battle, ICBM penaid strategy and national means of technical verification weren't discovered by the good fairy, nor were they discovered by the ELINT flights on the periphery of the Soviet bloc. Not to belittle Air Force Intelligence, (it produced a great product) but it had many sources. Given his time at SAC I was also surprised about his high praise of Air Force Intelligence at the expense of trashing the NRO along with the CIA and NSA's contributions. (Some was worse than we thought, some better and some we're still shaking our head over.) One of the overall problems with chapters 1-3 is that author simply blurs his "I was at SAC headquarters for awhile" with "here's what was going on for the last 50 years." (The vice admiral went on to have a distinguished career as commander of the Atlantic and Mediterranean fleets, but it would have been helpful to have a short bio to understand when and how long he was at the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff at Strategic Air Command Headquarters.) The problem is that a great deal of what we believed in the 1950's through 1990's motivated the Soviets was simply wrong. All of us who lived through the Cold War had our opinions shaped by our culture of the time. One of the downsides is that unless they've had a second career as an academic or researcher, you get a lot of opinion, hearsay and misinformation and a very narrow point of view. One of the great things about books written by people "who were there" is that you get their unvarnished opinion and an eyewitness perspective. 130 - The Creation of SIOP-62 -'More Evidence on the Origins of Overkill.
#STOCKPILE REVIEWS ARCHIVE#
Stockpile is worth reading if you skip the first three chapters and read it in conjunction with the George Washington University National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. One of the downsides is that unless they've had a second career Read it for the "I was there" part. A final chapter reviews threat scenarios and suggests actions to bring the nuclear force into line.more
He addresses the role of the military in establishing requirements and the role of the scientists in meeting those requirements and identifies the weapons' strengths and weaknesses and their significance for the future. Jerry Miller highlights the strategies, targeting and attack plans, and arms control measures associated with the bomb. nuclear weapons force, gives an account of that buildup and the efforts taken to keep the stockpile under control. This book, written by a member of the U.S. Jerry Miller highlights the strategies, targeting and attack plans, and arms control measu In 1960 there were some 3,500 strategic nuclear weapons in the United States and by the mid-1970s there were more than 10,000. In 1960 there were some 3,500 strategic nuclear weapons in the United States and by the mid-1970s there were more than 10,000.
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