Soviet-American ICBMs

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I have a report to do and right now I need to gather sources. It's on the Cold War and I'm looking for some sort of website that tracks the amount of Soviet to American nuclear weapons, technology, etc. over the years of the Cold War to compare how each power was doing at different times. The rules specifically say I can't cite forums, so can you give me some websites?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Also, if anyone cares, can someone validate the graph found here, or give me some way to get it without wikipedia? I can't use wikipedia as a source.

[patrick1]

These might help
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Almanac/Stockpiles.shtml
http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/coldwar/index.shtml
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/
http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/database/usnukes.html
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/index.html


US obviously got off to a head start, but Soviets caught up quick due in large part to successful espionage programs.  They also had first ICBM's with the R7 @1958.  I'm pretty sure the US consistently held the edge in SLBM's and Soviets were always worried about this.

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/dafig6.asp
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datainx.asp

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Thanks. I have the twelve required sources, but as I write along I'll most likely need more and I can look back on these.

[patrick1]

No problem, this site is also useful- even if there web design/navigation is terrible. 

 http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/index.html

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Bumping because another step towards the creation of the paper is being undertaken.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Bumping again.

As a side note, http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datainx.asp, which Patrick1 recommended and I actually found while searching on my own, is a very interesting website in tersm of looking at numbers of US, USSR, and global nuclear stockpiles and can make some very interesting arguments for and against the missile gap.

[patrick1]

This was an interesting time and with the benefit of hindsight a lot of pressing issues of the day (missile gap)  seem ridiculous.  This civil defense video is great http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvChsvdPGjA
 
If you need multimedia I think this nuclear testing video is great
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U8CZAKSsNA

[Silent Hunter]

I wrote a TV Tropes article on the ICBMs of both countries, so I know a bit of these.

It's worth pointing out that a major reason for the deployment of the R-12/SS-4 MRBMs and R-14/SS-5 IRBMs to Cuba in 1962 was the problems the Soviets were having in fielding large numbers of ICBMs.

Mentioning the Tu-22M "Backfire" and R-36M/SS-18's importance to the nuclear arms race (particularly in terms of SALT II).

A bit of advice: there are four different designation systems for Soviet ICBMs. Pick one and use it consistently.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

A bit of advice: there are four different designation systems for Soviet ICBMs. Pick one and use it consistently.

Can you explain please?

[Silent Hunter]

A bit of advice: there are four different designation systems for Soviet ICBMs. Pick one and use it consistently.

Can you explain please?

Actually make that five - at least five.

The USSR did not, as a general rule, publicly disclose the designations of its missile systems/aircraft/ship classes etc.

In order to keep track of the different types, the DoD created a system of codes for missiles. Each new type would be allocated a two letter code of the sort of missile and a number based on the order it had appeared. For example, SS-18 referred to the 18th type of surface-to-surface missile identified - in this case a Soviet ICBM type with ten MIRVs.

At the same time, the Air Standardization Coordinating Committee, a five-nation group, allocates names to Soviet/Russian/Chinese aircraft/ships/missiles etc. based on another system. This is where the names Scud and Flanker come from: designations for the R-17/SS-1 missile and Su-27 fighter respectively. The SS-18 was allocated the name Satan. The names are often capitalised or italicised in articles.

These are actually two separate designation systems, but are commonly used together as in SS-18 Satan.

The Soviet Main Agency of Missiles and Artillery of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (GRAU in Russian) allocated indices to munitions and equipment, I guess partially for inventory purposes. The SS-18 in the GRAU index was the 15A18.

At the same time, there were service designations for the missiles - R-36M in this case. This is the designation the missiles are usually given these days. The M ending signifies it is a development of the R-36/SS-9.

[This is more important than it might sound. To get the "Backfire" medium-range bomber through procurement, Tupolev called the Tu-22M, implying it was a development of the rather lacklustre Tu-22, instead of a completely new bomber)

Both of these Soviet designations were kept secret. For the purposes of the arms control treaties, the R-36M was called the RS-20 by the Soviets.

If you look up "NATO reporting names", you'll find a lot more on this stuff.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Weird. Thanks.

[Silent Hunter]

Weird. Thanks.

No problem. It's something I have to keep track of in my discussions - many Western wargamers still use NATO-speak to describe the systems.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Bumping as I turned in my paper's rough draft today and I'm thinking of posting it.

[dead0man]

do it!

[bullmoose88]

A PBS documentary that was an ad (sort of) for the now discontinued Peacekeeper.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlPEBROvR9w

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

A warning for when I post it, it's nor going to have everything that I would like to explain. I typed it up in 1 day, so as the day ended, I started caring less. Therefore, when I finally got past the seventies, I pretty much skipped to the conclusion. Also, I forgot to touch on missile amounts outside of warheads: I didn't get to things such as subs, & others that I don't rember right now. Also, it's basically five pages as it had to be 8 or more when double spaced. However, I intend for it to expand.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Okay, here goes:

Christopher Clark
English 10
May 15, 2011

American Foreign Policy and its Consequences during the Cold War

   Military build-ups and an aggressive foreign policy were more useful to American than détente and arms reduction treaties during the Cold War. The first step towards an argument in favor of this thesis is establishing, first and foremost, what the Cold War was, and the context of it. The term “Cold War” can be mainly used to describe the relationship, talks, and political, propaganda, and proxy-wars that took place between the United States of America and the United Soviet Socialist Republics. (Trueman) The Cold War, after over forty-five years of threats, tensions, treaties, and wars between client states, ended in 1991. (Gaynor) It is also said by man historians, that the first signal of the end of the Cold War came in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was the barrier that divided up Germany, separating the Western half which was on the side of NATO and was capitalist, from the Eastern half which was part of the Soviets’ Warsaw Pact and was communist. This fall symbolized the crumbling of the Soviet Union and the re-uniting of a country. (Moore, 579-580)
   The Cold War, as opposed to a “Hot War” which would involve two countries meeting head on in battle , would instead utilize threats of atomic and later nuclear weapons. America had started the road to building atomic weapons with the atomic bomb which was dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, thus ending World War II and beginning the Cold War. (Trueman) The first real act of the Cold War would be in 1948, after the Allies had decided to divide up Europe following World War II. The Soviets, angered by the amount of Allied presence in Germany, decided to assert their power and block all access to Berlin on June 22, 1948, hoping that West Germany would soon join East Germany in the Warsaw Pact, having no other choice. The following use of airplanes to deliver necessities to those in Berlin would be called the Berlin Air Lift. (Moore, 408) This would set off the string of small conflicts to take place between American and Russian client states across the world for decades to come, including Vietnam and Afghanistan. (Trueman)
   One of the main arguments against an aggressive American foreign policy during the Cold War included saying that the Soviets didn’t have the technology, weaponry, and resources to rival the United States. However, even before the United States had entered World War II, the Soviets themselves were working on the construction of atomic weaponry. In 1939, the Soviet Union was already recruiting scientists to research the properties of Uranium-238 and Uranium-235. Papers on the subjects of Uranium-238 chain-reactions, and the conclusion that a slow-neutron chain-reaction in Uranium-235 were published. By July 12, 1940, the possibilities of the use of nuclear fission were discovered, and on July 16, more research was ordered. On July 30, 1940, the Special Committee on the Uranium Problem was created by the Academy of Sciences. Despite Soviet research being halted by the German advance on Russia during World War II, research was soon continued, spurred on by rumors of atomic activities by Soviet allies. “Comrades-a single demand of you. Get us atomic weaponry in the shortest possible time.” was Stalin’s response to the dual bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Before 1946, Soviet spies were inside Los Alamos and several other Allied atomic research facilities in America, Canada, and Britain. (Richelson, 62-64) By 1946, despite set-backs and invasions, it is not as if the Soviets were completely helpless, nor was it as if they were unprepared for the following decades.
   In 1962, while discussing the military budget for fiscal year 1964, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, anticipating criticism of the level of military spending, remarked that it would rise from those believing in the myth of the missile gap. Humorously, President John F Kennedy remarked that he had been one to put that myth around. During his days in the Senate, and right through his 1960 Presidential campaign, Kennedy had campaign on the idea of the Soviets having caught up to, and in fact surpassing, the United States in missile production and possession. (ecnext) The argument was that Eisenhower had sacrificed national security for the sake of a balanced budget and Kennedy pounded Nixon on it. Nixon privately agreed with Kennedy on the issue, but publicly was forced to take Eisenhower’s stance. In the debates, Kennedy attempted and succeeded at being seen as the more hawkish of the two despite the opposite. (Ambrose, 549-551, 577-578) The missile gap, as it was known, Kennedy admitted was in fact a fallacy. (ecnext) However, was it as false as Kennedy himself joked it to be? In 1960, the idea was completely untrue. The United Soviet Socialist Republics had less than 1,000 nuclear warheads while the United States had surpassed 20,000 nuclear warheads and would surpass 30,000 warheads before the middle of the decade. Over the next decade, Soviet stockpiles would surge as their armory was continually added to, eventually surpassing that of the United States. (NRDC: nuclear weapons index, a, b)
   The idea of a ‘missile gap’ had first come into being in 1957, (ecnext) the year after President Eisenhower’s landslide re-election to the Presidency over two-time opponent Adlai Stevenson. (Moore, 430-431) In August of 1957, the world’s first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the SS-6, would be launched by the Soviets (NRDC: Soviet Weapons). Following that, on October 4, 1957 the Soviet satellite Sputnik would be launched, becoming the first man-made satellite to orbit the earth. Reports, claiming that the United States was falling behind in the Cold War and was losing ground, were ignored by President Eisenhower in his quest for a balanced budget. However, those same reports became public knowledge, turning the people against their popular President. Then-Senator John F Kennedy used the idea of a missile gap to make himself known in the Senate and to help in his re-election bid. His assumption was, of course, that figures circulating in the public domain were accurate. The reason for numbers being inaccurate was that military brass tended to go with worst-case scenarios as their guide in order to make sure everything was accounted for. Those figures upon which Kennedy relied, however, were inaccurate as analysts were inclined to believe that the Soviet Union was engaged in building warheads to overwhelm the United States. (ecnext) In fact, throughout the 1950’s, the United States had an incredible advantage over the USSR in terms of nuclear firepower. (NRDC: nuclear weapons index, a, b)
   Sputnik’s launch in 1957 is what kicked off the “Space Race”, and was in fact part of Kennedy’s missile gap, claiming “the nation was losing the satellite-missile race with the Soviet Union because of ... complacent miscalculations, penny-pinching, budget cutbacks, incredibly confused mismanagement, and wasteful rivalries and jealousies”. Thus, not only did missiles and bombs become part of the discussion as to United States superiority or inferiority, but the issue of satellites, rockets, and space exploration came into the debate. (ecnext) Kennedy’s conviction to close the missile gap, something that lasted until after he was sworn into office (ecnext), carried over into the realm of space-flight. Donald Rumsfeld, who in 1963 was a one-term Congressman from Illinois, was one of the people to note that as he was assigned to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, known as the Space Committee. While he had been originally assigned there so as to be put out of the way by House Republican leadership, that committee under the Kennedy Administration began becoming more important than in the previous administration. (Rumsfeld 74-76) However, the question as to who would make it to the moon faster would not become the dominant foreign policy issue of the sixties, nor would it have a decisive fate in American outlook and perception in the decade to follow.
   In his auto-biography, Donald Rumsfeld, who served as Secretary of Defense for the Gerald Ford and George W Bush Administrations, describes a 1966 briefing to members of Congress by then-President Lyndon B Johnson. He describes the President in a state of desperation, attempting to control the briefing which was meant to be given by then-Vice-President Hubert H Humphrey, shouting down questions and being in a state of rage. Attempting to communicate something to the effect of “I’m doing the best I possibly can!” President Johnson was attempting to use the Golf of Tonkin Resolution—a resolution by Congress that gave the President the go ahead in 1964 in Vietnam—to do whatever he wished in terms of trying to “win” the war in Vietnam. Meanwhile, other problems were coming up. American casualties were piling up. Bombing runs seemed to have no effect on The Whitehouse’s policy was unclear. There was no true definition of what “victory” meant. (Rumsfeld, 69-73) The two tiny nations of North Vietnam and South Vietnam, located in South-Eastern Asia, caused so much strife, chaos, and worry in the United States, and caused the deaths of 50,000 American troops. This “police action” was only to end around a decade after public opinion of it had grown sour, in 1975. (Rumsfeld, 208-212)

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

     This narrative of the 1960’s, divergences into the space race and into Vietnam, are not without purpose. America’s failure in Vietnam, the public turning against the war, the chaos on the American home-front caused by peace protests, was to set the stage for 1968 and the election of Richard Nixon to the Presidency. Under Nixon, negotiations became the main point of American foreign policy ad Nixon opened talks with the Soviet Union and became the first American President to visit Communist China. (Moore, 492-497) This foreign policy style came packaged with a classy French title: détente, meaning relaxation, thaw, relaxing of tensions. This foreign policy was practiced not only by the man mainly identified with it, Richard Nixon, but also by Presidents Johnson, Ford, and Carter. (Rumsfeld, 215) However, as nice as an era of missile reduction treaties and “thawing” of relations might have been, the Soviet Union’s arsenal of nuclear warheads continually grew. America’s nuclear arsenal, from 1969 to the end of the Cold War, peaked in 1973 at 28,335. From there, America’s nuclear arsenal trended continually downward. If one were to look at the Soviets’ nuclear stockpiles, however, one would see that by 1978, the Soviets had surpassed America in terms of amounts of nuclear warheads. They had in their possession 25,393 nuclear warheads while the United States, which had lead the field by crushing margins two decades before, had 24,243. From there, the margin would widen as by 1980, the Soviet Union possessed 30,062 warheads and the United States had 23,764 nuclear warheads. (NRDC, b) The era of détente, a thawing of tensions was a failure. At least for the American side. For the Soviets, it was an incredible success. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, a humiliating diplomatic defeat, the USSR had experienced its own steady rise. Along with its increasing missile production, there were other triumphs. Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party and thus the leader of the Soviet Union, was able to add, under his watch, French Indochina, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Portuguese Africa, Grenada, , and Nicaragua, to the Soviet Union. (Buchanan, 360) During the seventies, an era of Soviet expansion despite détente, nations began to wonder if American protection and military personnel and hardware, were worth anything anymore. Brezhnev himself declared in 1976 “The general crisis of capitalism is continuing to deepen”. (Rumsfeld, 215) Brezhnev would also write “Détente, in no way replaces, nor can it replace, the laws of class struggle… Détente, in fact, creates favorable conditions for struggle between the two systems and for altering the correlation of forces in favor of socialism.” (Buchanan, 361)  Even Secretary of State and former National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger who had been a pioneer of détente during the Nixon and Ford years, admitted in 1976 that the United States was slipping in power and influence. (Rumsfeld, 228) Brezhnev had no reservation in breaking every treaty signed with the Western Word: the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), SALT II, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), the Code of Détente, or the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights. Lenin himself wrote “Telling the truth is a bourgeois prejudice; deception on the other hand is often justified by the goal.” Brezhnev would just be carrying out the beliefs of the Communist Party, lying for what he viewed as the greater good, the spread of Communism and the defeat of the West. (Buchanan, 361-362)
   The era of détente would not end with Nixon’s resignation in 1974. His Vice-President, Gerald Ford, a moderate, would, at least to some extent, continue Nixon’s policies by keeping Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State, among other things. Neither did his defeat to former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter in 1976 end détente. (Moore, 516-520, 532-533) Among all accusations fired against his four years in the Whitehouse, the one that can be most stuck to him, is naiveté. His signing of SALT II, something Carter viewed as incredibly important, was seen by some, namely former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, as another cession to the Soviet Union. In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he declared “Fishing privileges for the Soviet Union in United States waters will be severely curtailed.” Rumsfeld, in his autobiography, wrote following that quote “Winston Churchill he was not”.(Rumsfeld, 238-240, 258-260)
All in all, what did the era of détente do for America? The so-called relaxing of tensions, the “thaw” did nothing for America but to weaken its standing in the world. While America was tied up in Vietnam, the Soviet Union advanced its cause across several continents.  Patrick J Buchanan, a Conservative writer who was an adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and served as Whitehouse Communications Director from 1985 to 1987, put the situation in 1988 remarkably well:
“The reason the permanent conflict between East and West, the Cold War, can not be negotiated out of existence by any American President is because the origin of the conflict lies in the character and nature of the Soviet regime itself. Lenin’s party, which rules the Soviet Union, is a war party; the very reason for its existence is to wage war against the West.”
In Conclusion, détente failed to protect both national and international interests and succeeded only in furthering the agenda of the Soviet Union. What would work and what did work was an aggressive foreign policy based on national and international interests that finally worked to defeat the Soviet Union.
 
Appendix: Reference Graph


From:
“Figure of US and USSR/Russian Nuclear Stockpile, 1945-2002” March 29, 2011 <http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/dafig11.asp>

Works Cited
1.   Trueman, Chris. “What Was the Cold War.” <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/what%20was%20the%20cold%20war.htm>
2.   Ellis, Elisabeth Gaynor and Anthony Esler. “Prentice Hall World History, Connections to Today.” The Changing Political Climate. Prentice Hall Inc., 2001, 806-811.
3.   Moore, Kathryn. The American Presidency, A Complete History. United States of America: Barnes & Noble Inc., 2007.
4.   “Soviet Nuclear Weapons.” October 7, 1996. 29, March 2011 <http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/Sovwarhead.thml>
5.   Richelson, Jefferey T. Spying on the Bomb. United States: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006
6.   “Who ever believed in the ‘missile gap’: John F Kennedy and the politics of national security.” 1, Sept. 2003. 23 March 2009 <http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-1230060/Who-ever-believed-in-the.html>
7.   Ambrose, Stephen E. Nixon, the education of a politician 1913-1962 New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987
8.   “Index of Nuclear Data” March 29, 20ll. <http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datainx.asp>
a.   “Figure of US and USSR/Russian Nuclear Stockpile, 1945-2002” March 29, 2011 <http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/dafig11.asp>
b.   “Table of Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945-2002” March 29, 2011 <http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab19.asp>
9.   “Soviet Nuclear Weapons” October 7, 1996. 29 March 2011 <http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab19.asp>
10.   Rumsfeld, Donald. Known and Unknown. New York: Penguin Group, 2011.
11.   Buchanan, Patrick J. Right from the Beginning. United States: Little, Brown, & Company, 1988.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Critiques, comments, questions, criticisms, compliments, etc. are welcome as this is the rough draft.

For the record, the paper I'm doing is for an English class and the point isn't the topic but how it's done. I myself chose the topic.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Anybody want to read and comment?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I know that no-one is reading, but, should someone in the far distant future look up what's on the atlas server, ftr I got 200/200 on the final draft of the paper.

[patrick1]

I know that no-one is reading, but, should someone in the far distant future look up what's on the atlas server, ftr I got 200/200 on the final draft of the paper.

Congrats, Chris.

I haven't been able to read your whole paper. However, on a cursory glance, I would say you should sprinkle in some more simple sentences.  Your paper will flow better without commas and clauses strewn about.  It can also add some thrust to your statements.

[Jerseyrules]

Sorry to bump this, but I find it interesting that during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Mr. "Let's f---kin nuke 'em all!" himself, American ICBM's stagnated, even decreased in number!