Хау мач из инаф?
Exactly these questions of "how much is enough" were raised fifty years ago in secret debate within the U.S. government, when Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke argued that a small force of mainly nuclear missile-launching Polaris submarines was enough for deterrence. Burke and Navy leaders developed a concept of "finite" or "minimum" deterrence--highly relevant to today's debate--that they believed would make the United States safer because it would dissuade nuclear attacks while removing pressures for a dangerous "hair-trigger" posture.
In early 1960, when Eisenhower's budget director Maurice Stans was told that the U.S. Navy's Polaris missile-launching submarines could "destroy 232 targets, which was sufficient to destroy all of Russia," he asked defense officials, "If POLARIS could do this job, why did we need other … ICBMs, SAC aircraft, and overseas bases?" According to Stans, the answer "he had received ... [was] that was someone else's problem." An electronic briefing book of declassified documents obtained through archival research and published for the first time by the National Security Archive shows how the U.S. Navy, tried to take responsibility for this "problem" by supporting a minimum deterrent force that would threaten a "finite" list of major urban-industrial and command centers in the heart of the Soviet Union.
Адмирал взял под свой контроль сборку систем наведения подрядчиками
With their capability to destroy key Soviet targets, Burke believed, the virtually undetectable and invulnerable Polaris submarines could "inflict terrible punishment" and deter Moscow from launching a surprise attack on the United States or its allies. By contrast, Burke saw land-based missile and bombers as vulnerable to attack, which made the U.S.-Soviet nuclear relationship dangerously unstable. While he did not propose eliminating all strategic bombers and ICBMs, he believed that a force of about 40 Polaris submarines (16 missiles each) was a reasonable answer to the question "how much is enough?" Although the Kennedy administration rejected Burke's concept, years later former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara revived it by arguing that 400 nuclear weapons were "enough" to deter a Soviet attack
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb275/index.htm
400 блоков, это две Акулы 941 пр. А парад оказался пиаром.
if we like, to gain national objectives more advantageous than simple revenge
Войну нельзя доверять ни генералам, ни умным адмиралам.
Air Force leaders were "smart and ruthless ... it's the same way as the Communists; it's exactly the same techniques.
В ВВС тоже умные, не сапоги, но тем не менее
China and France, for example, focused more on straightforward deterrence and built relatively small nuclear forces.
Китайский путь с французским акцентом
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