EXERCISE SAGEBRUSH: What The Air Force Learned When It Nuked Louisiana
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- Опубликовано: 5 июл 2024
- In the fall of 1955 the US Army ran a massive exercise called SAGEBRUSH, involving up to 140,000 troops and hundreds of aircraft.
Sagebrush is best known for the extensive employment of simulated nuclear artillery shells fired by big 8 inch artillery pieces. While that’s definitely both cool and profoundly terrifying, SAGEBRUSH was also fundamental in shaping how the Air Force thought about establishing air superiority in the event of a war with the Soviet Union.
Many of the missteps in training, tactics and procurement the Air Force made in the 1950s and '60's stem from the conclusions they reached when they brought nuclear armageddon to Louisiana. This video examines the exercise and how its conclusions were interpreted. I had some 'a ha' moments when researching this one. I hope it does that same for you.
Quick errata - my lack of knowledge of early bombers comes through. It should be ‘B-26 Invaders’ not ‘Marauders’ throughout.
Notes and sources:
- Austin State University piece on the atomic weapons: www.sfasu.edu/heritagecenter/...
- Archival material used in the video: historyhub.history.gov/milita...
Hey all, just want to flag that there is a small, but important error in the part that describes the composition of the two forces. I have referred to the B-26 Marauder, when actually the aircraft was the later, but similarly designated B-26 Invader. I don't believe this has any bearing on the analysis in the piece, but wanted to recognise and highlight the mistake.
I don't know if you take requests, but I would love a video on the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo. I feel as if she's the forgotten sister of the Century series and deserves her own time in the sun.
Those two aircraft have been misidentified forever and will ever forever be misidentified. When my brother was army in Germany mid 70s, he was there to maintain nuclear artillery pieces ,..shells. So yes, a massive nuclear strike was envisioned
Its a common enough mistake- in last months “History Today” magazine, an article on the bay of pigs invasion makes the exact same mistake, mistaking the Martin B26 for the Douglas B 26. But this minor error does not detract at all from this excellent video on an operation i had not heard of before.
Neat fact- the Invader was also designated the B-26, but due to it being confused with the B-26 Marauder consistently, the designation was changed to A-26.
Honestly when he said the bomber, my mind was already thinking A-26 for some reason.
Those Canberra cartrige starters! Never gets old, seeing that.
I think that you have confused the B-26 Marauder with the B-26 Invader. The Marauder had left service by 1947/48. The Invader was originally the A-26 but was renamed B-26 after the Marauder was retired.
The emphasis on nuclear warfare left America underprepared when conventional warfare occurred...
The late General Robin Olds referred to the USAF leadership at the time as "pro nuclear nutcases"...
Thank you for covering a long forgotten exercise.
Yep - a definite mistake - always one!
Imagine what the Air Force would've looked like with General Daniel James as the Chief of Staff and Robin Olds commanding TAC.
@@notapoundcan you do a video on the N.A.T.O. exercise "able Archer" from 1983 in which we almost came to armegedon....there is even a pop song about it...."99 red balloons go by"
Reconstitution of destroyed or degraded forces in order to keep an exercise going is standard in furtherance of the goal of learning as much as possible from the limited units and time available in most exercise scenarios.
Is there anyone else besides me that would love a video on the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo? I feel as if she's the forgotten sister of the Century series and deserves her own time in the sun.
If there is any channel that could do a great video on the Voodoo, it is this channel!
Grew up near Ellington AFB in SE Texas. Use to see their Air Guard F-101Bs all the time.
The thing I really like about this channel is it is highlighting a really unrecognizable chapter of development for air forces between WW2/Korea and Vietnam. The phase that determined the doctrine we had to later step away from. So much is known by military aviation enthusiasts about the energy maneuverability developments that created the famous 4th generation aircraft we all came to love but this channel explains why we had thuds and phantoms before based on the exercises, technology limitations, and leadership assessments. Such a gem!
I think we only stepped away from it because ballistic missiles became a bigger threat than bombers. Vietnam wasn't considered a "real" war, since neither superpower's existence was threatened it could be treated as a sideshow (at first, anyway). But right up until 1991 the potential battle in Europe was considered the real deal. The F-117 and B-2 were not built to drop bombs on desert-dwelling guys with sandals and Kalashnikovs; those aircraft were designed to penetrate defenses of places such as East Germany and the USSR.
A very Dr. Strangelovian wargame which is rather insane and leaves radioactive death everywhere. But, 15 years later, the UK would create the Harrier which wouldn't need established large airfields to counter Soviet armies. The B-57 results were interesting. Thanks for the nice vid!
Ironically, it was the B-57 which, of all the Hot War' capable aircraft in the USAF's inventory, proved the most useful in SE Asia. They took a heavy toll of NV supply convoys in the interdictor mission, which they proved superbly suited to.
That was true for a limited set of scenario's. The logistics of operating FOL's (Forward Operating Locations) from memory, were rather constrained by not just weapons and fuel - reltively easy to carry but by liquid oxygen availability for the pilot. In the late 70's one of the things I was involved with was the "molecular sieve" which was an attempt to provide 96%+ pure oxygen without the logistics. These days they are called OBOGS. Trouble was that they were about an 80cm cube and required more space than was available in the Harrier. Nowadays I have no clue...
"And why not, it's lovely." As a native of the area, bless your heart.
I recoiled when he called louisianas weather lovely
Ft. Polk the Paris of Louisiana
SAGEBRUSH was also a simulation of logistics cutoff. The Gulf of Mexico is, believe it or not, a major shipping center for the southern US, Mexico, Central and South America. We're talking TRILLIONS in logistics being moved every day through the canal, to/from the countries considered as Third World...
Yeah, if the ports of Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Texas City, and Galveston were captured, blocked, or crippled, over 35% of the domestic cargo exports of natural and refined petroleum supplies, LNG, and agricultural products lost and the revenue in limbo.
If the Port of New Orleans is captured, that's over half of the US grain blockaded. And the Mississippi River, easily transited by Threat sappers and combat engineers with a couple hundred pounds of explosives, could easily put the hurt on US agricultural stockpiles and bridges.
Ouch.
Love this commentary! As a child of the cold war, and very much a Reagan acolyte in the 80s, it wasn't until the mid-80s that real sobriety over nuclear weapons was a main stream conversation in the news.
Good Presentation. This was during the Pentatomic organizational mess the army was fooling with.
As a NCO in the US Army reserve I was for a period the unit Chemical, Biological and Radiological NCO. I had the set of exercise planning books covering every possible pattern of use for from company to national level exercises. Much of the work was keeping track of Masks, Filters decon kits, Radiation survey gear and helping the Training officer in setting up classes as needed. Protective gear advanced over the years for chemical exposure but large-scale use against US Forces would have been a serious problem after 24 hours. I did live training with sarin code named agent GB and everyone in the class showed exposure after a 4-hour live agent exercise with gear better than most units ever had access to. Radiation survey equipment started reading at 1 RAD / hour. We trained to find the 1 rad / hour line and then work sideways to map the area effected. Bio was if in doubt segregate find out what was eaten and water sources used so we could mark areas as off limits. Then it was up to the medics and docs to find out what was loose.
I was about 10 years old in 1957 (plus or minus a year or two; it was a long time ago!), and we were living at Ladd AFB in Fairbanks, Alaska, when I got to witness one of those simulated atomic bombs. Ladd was a joint Air Force and Army base (the Air Force pulled out several years later, and it then became Fort Wainwright), and the two services joined to put on the most wonderful Armed Forces Day show imaginable. It started off with the nuclear explosion, complete with mushroom cloud--it must have been one of the same devices used in your video, and it continued with the Army assaulting an enemy emplacement with the Air Force flying support sorties right over the spectators. As a little kid, you can imagine the impression it made on me!
I have discovered your channel a month ago, through a link I received from a friend. Never left since! Love your dropping of casual humor in between the sometimes Strangelovian content!
This is fascinating and bizarre, though it fit the logic of the day. REM’s song “The End Of The World As We Know It” kept running through my head as I watched your excellent video.
This is such great content. I have been fascinated with 20th century military aircraft my entire life, and I’m learning new concepts. Love your channel!
Your videos continue to get better with each presentation.
Great video! I hope that you will eventually cover other lessons from either conflicts such as vietnam or more exercises that would influence or change Air force doctrine and aircraft design.
Wow! So well written. Great script. Thanks.
(3:55) A fighter that has greater sustained turn capability than a predecessor with greater instantaneous turn capability is usually considered more maneuverable, not less.
Enjoyable as ever. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for the kind comment!
Never heard of this before. Love this Chanel ❤❤❤
Thanks for the kind comment. I came across the exercise when researching the Sabre Hog and was surprised that I hadn't come across it before. I may be over-stating things, but I feel that Sagebrush caused the Air Force to double down on their doctrine, which in turn led to the air superiority equipment and training issues encountered in Rolling Thunder. Definitely more research to be done on air superiority in the nuclear air force next year...
@@notapound Its very interesting stuff. It really points to the logical thinking that lumbered them with sub optimal planes. Only really getting addressed with the stable of f14 f15 f16. Looking forward to all your work in the new year :) I appreciate it :)
At the risk of sounding generic, fabulous content - nuanced, detailed, entertaining. Looking forward to forthcoming vids! I predict your subscriber number will grow quickly 😎
Thank you! Appreciate the comment. This one is definitely one for the purists, but I thought it interesting in the overall history of USAF air superiority doctrine.
The conclusions of the exercise were valid and useful in shaping future doctrine. That fact that they are uncomfortable is lamentable but is not a reason to discount them.
BTW, it a nuclear rather than conventional war exercise for a reason. There was no need to conduct a conventional war exercise. There had been recent conventional wars, and in the case of a another conventional war in Europe the West would not prevail without a massive buildup of conventional forces that would have been far more expensive then the nuclear one.
When passing judgement on the thinking of the time another thing to keep in mind is that fallout is not necessarily as bad as depicted in the movies, depending on the targets. Airbursts are more effective again non-hardened targets, and above a certain height they don't create as much lasting fallout as ground bursts. To borrow from Bucky, "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks", is less than the last conventional world war.
It was a difficult time.
Excellent and to the point!!!
hilarious 40$ nuclear explosion simulation! Thanks you made my day!
I love your videos 😊
The Canberra is one heck of a sexy plane; or at least as far as a bomber goes.
Hunh. I grew up about 35 minutes south of England AFB and had visited there several times and I'd never heard of Sagebrush. I mean it was a good 10 years before I was born, so that might be it. I do recall going to their open houses and getting buzzed by A-10s many times as they'd fly over the fields nearby. And when I was younger you could hear the sonic booms from the high flyers. Best was you could park at the end of the main runways outside the base and watch the jets. Nothing like an old F-105 Thud lumbering to get airborne 50 feet over your head. Good times.
It's interesting hearing some of General Robin Olds talks when he describes the doctrine of such as LeMay. It doesn't sound like he was impressed at all. God Bless General Robin Olds!
Would be really interesting to see / read the outcome of Sov equivalent war games.
Seems like this fostered or helped reinforce the concept of mutually assured destruction keeping the brush-fires conventional in nature.
Excellent content! This war game was designed to reinforce the current doctrine used in that period. It was not designed to learn anything new. It looks like in the post world 2 period the US Air Force was controlled predominantly by the “bomber mafia”. Another video would be interesting in detailing why, when & how the “Fighter mafia” were left out of the loop. When you see how engrained a particular modus operandi becomes, without constantly investigating alternatives in war fighting. This fixed mindset then dictates all future procurement & training. All this lead to a complete disaster a decade later. One wonders what is being missed today?
Scarily, a lot.
Best part of my weekend
Thank you :)
*_"By the end of the exercise, Louisiana would have been glowing in the dark."_*
That statement is both disturbing and funny.
It is entertaining but not necessarily reality. When passing judgement on the thinking of the time another thing to keep in mind is that fallout is not necessarily as bad as depicted in the movies, depending on the targets. Airbursts are more effective again non-hardened targets, and above a certain height they don't create as much lasting fallout as ground bursts. To borrow from Bucky, "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks", is less than the last conventional world war.
It was a difficult time.
Radioactive mutant alligators anybody? 🤪 😱
Got any more of these cool story/analysis?
Everyone's favorite new Friday Tradition!
Enjoyed this , from back when we had drills at school to get under our desks in the event of an atomic attack. Don't see that doing any good either.
Scary.
To those who say that USAF and the US military in general got it wrong in this period by producing a force optimised to fight in Europe rather than Vietnam, I say this:
1. It was never necessary to hold Vietnam.
2. It is far from evident that even a totally conventional - oriented air force would have won the Vietnam war.
3. Even if different USAF procurement choices could have won the Vietnam war, that victory would have been completely irrelevant if the Soviets had taken Western Europe using their overwhelming superiority in conventional forces.
I do not know what you mean by saying that combat air patrol would disrupt enemy bomber attacks. As far as I'm aware, short ranged interceptors were not kept on airborne alert - they barely had enough fuel to reach the bombers from ground alert. And even if there was such an airborne alert, it would constitute a small fraction of the interceptor force and have extremely little effect on the incoming bombers.
I love your videos but please please please add some sort of intro/outro. Just 3 seconds of silence if nothing else, when most of your videos start, for me, I miss the first word or two spoken. Especially if I am watching on my TV RUclips app. And at the end... well it just ends, abruptly. Otherwise you have some of the best aviation content on this platform.
This is v interesting to me - my dad did nuclear artillery, both Lance and 8"
Interesting.
Not Marauders. Invaders, which were redesignated as B-26 from A-26. The Marauder disappeared from service very rapidly after WW II.
I remember the sky ovrr San Francisco was full of fighters, bombers, transports. It was great fun for a 9 year old me and my friends.😂. I dont know if it was part of that exercise or not.
I would like to tell three additional anecdotes in support of the author's conclusion. I was a US army officer from 1965 to 1973. Twice I and the guys around me were convinced that fighting nuclear war was simply impossible. In between tours in Vietnam, we went to various schools. The first one emphasized ground combat in the nuclear environment. We were given a brief taste of living in CBR-proof suits, eating and drinking through our gas masks, in foxholes, with hospitals and rear areas in CBR-proof huts with air locks. The most common question was "How do you take a shit in this thing?" Everybody knew it would be impossible, but nobody could think of what might happen instead.
The second was in an advanced college when my generation had reached the rank of captain. In the classrooms we fought two paper wars, "a Russian invasion of West Germany" over a period of a week: one conventional. one nuclear. I was in the conventional one. That went as expected. The the guys from the nuclear one told us that in their war both sides had been wiped out in one week and the battle wasn't won or lost , it just evaporated.
Here's my third comment: Putin is right now showing us the future of war. It will be entirely conventional, because all sides will have nukes, and nobody will dare to actually conquer the other side, because nukes. How insane is that? I think we could actually have a global WWIII with no nukes, millions of casualties, and nothing decided! I'm glad I'm an old man.
SAGEBRUSH was a classic example of confirmation bias.
A crazy thing to do..
So this is we ended uo with MAD, as shown in the early 1960s movies Failsafe and Dr Strangelove.
6:36 "Batter up!" in USA means "Next up to bat!" in a game of Baseball.
I thought it something Marlon Brando said in Paris; “butter up”
This exercise honestly put American tactical air combat back to pre WW2 tactics. Forward to every single conflict the USA has fought in since WW2 close support and tactical interdiction is just far superior for waging war
who’s big pickle inspired the design for the F-100?
Chilling. The world was tottering on the edge of total annihilation.
We always prepare for a different war...
I didn't know "aerial refueling" meant refueling the air. Huh.
interesting
scary
I know this question is not related to aviation, but. How do you simulate an nuclear artillery shell?
You tell the referee that you're firing one, they consult the rules to see who lives and who dies, and then they let those forces know that they're casualties. It's not as automatic or responsive as Fort Irwin's laser tag system, but it more-or-less gets the job done.
@@boobah5643 hmm got it, kinda interesting that they went to the trouble to set explosions to when an airfield is bombed lol, i suppose it's purely for fun or would that be an attempt to create an nuclear-like cloud for the simulation? Also purely for anesthetics i suppose?
I had never heard of this. I knew there was a prevalence in the Air Force at the time to focus on high-speed/high-altitude fighter interception and nuclear bomber strikes in deference to CAS, but I hadn't known they had staged their own version of the "Louisiana Maneuvers" to back it up with empirical data. (or as close to empirical as you can get with a wargame)
I wonder if anybody in the Pentagon asked plaintively in the 1960's and 70's: "Can't we just NUKE Hanoi??! You know, like we PLANNED for???"
They never planned to nuke Hanoi, because they didn't even get to nuke North Korea. This video assumes the U.S. left itself completely unprepared for limited conventional war like Korea or Vietnam, but that was not the case. Curtiss Lemay was asked about that and said something to the effect of that if your forces are capable of fighting a major war they are also capable of fighting limited one. He said it more colorfully but he was not wrong. The airplanes used in Vietnam did not fail, the strategy used failed.
@@gort8203 I didn't mean they did plan to nuke anything (not beyond having some staff study in a drawer kind of thing) but I did mean that there must have been Air Force and Army officers that participated in this exercise, who were fighting in Vietnam years later (or for that matter in Korea) who wondered on a personal basis when they were going to get to use the nukes they had been trained to use previously.
As an example, think of the thousands of sorties and shot down aircraft expended trying to drop the Than Hoa Bridge. I am sure at some point some Thud or BUFF driver said "Why don't we just nuke the damn thing and go home?".
B-26 refers to the A-26 Invader aka B-26 Invader, look up if RB-26 was used during the exercise, as there was no B-26 Marauder variant named as such. You fell for a USAF ruse lol. Check your source dates.
Yep - that is a mistake on my part. Shows how little I know about bombers!
@@notapound ; Especially ironic since the A-26 is the least bomber of all bombers. Like the A-26 training video said, this ship flies like a fighter.
The usaf reorganization did away with Attack even though Interdiction was the B-57s bread and butter the Invaders would be perfect for CoIn during Vietnam so antique or obsolete is in the eyes of the beholder in Thailand they didnt think bombers were appropriate so Attack was reinstituted
Re Louisiana DMZ, of course LA was a stand in for two other divided countries in the world (soon to be joined by a third).
Fascinating !!!! I Say, Spare New Orleans!
On a More Serious Note, No One On Any Side Could Be Troubled With The Morality Of Their Actions!!!!
Your incorrect use of capitalization is the most troubling thing here.
Sometimes being reminded of our past stupidity helps me feel better about today's.
But any base would be defenseless against Naruto runners.
From the words of tthe great foghorn leghorn "There's something a little YEASH about a boy tha ain't never played baseball"
I have to wonder how much impact this had on think tanks like Brookings & Rand, or on the policy paper by people like Kissinger. Friends who were stationed in Germany told me pretty much that if Russia were to start a conventional war we didn't have the the wherewithal to defend against it. The deal was to get the family in the car if you were in Europe on their way to Switzerland and give some appearance of defense knowing it would go nuclear fairly quickly apparently because it had to. Although, having examined Russian and E. German conventional forces gear, it wasn't that great. In fact, it was pretty bad. I get why Russia wasn't and isn't all that thrilled with short-range nuclear weapons being pointed at them in Turkey before the Cuban Missile Crisis and current new deployments along Russia's borders.
B-26..A-20S?
And the JCS said to the US government ‘See? We TOLD YOU we need more money!’
Interesting analysis. Given post-Vietnam hindsight it's tough to put yourself in the heads of decision makers in the 50s. The idea that a fight would break out and either side would decide not to immediately go full nuclear and eliminate the enemy's nuclear forces just didn't seem to make sense. In a way, it almost still doesn't. I remember the 80s when it was still assumed that any conflict between NATO and Warsaw Pact wouldn't stay conventional for very long, if at all. If one side feels its survival as a nation state was in jeopardy, it was assumed they'd open all the stops and use all the big bombs in desperation. Even today, people are wargaming a Pacific war between China and US allies, and it's important to realize that both sides have considerable nuclear capability, which presumably discourages either side from attacking the other's mainland. That seems like a dangerous assumption, but the alternative is to go back to a hard Cold War mentality like we saw in the early 80s where everyone lived in constant dread.
I wonder how much Sagebrush affected other aspects of the US government's diplomatic and military postures, or rather how it reflected them. Not an American, but I wasn't aware that the US considered invasion via the middle of the Gulf of Mexico as a likely scenario, by 1955 the Cuban Revolution had already started and I'm sure the closeness of Florida had to be in somebody's mind (maybe not the, infallible, Generals though). Knowing somebody higher up feared invasion of Louisiana plus then having a very vocally militant "red" country at their footsteps must have been one of the factors that helped the US justify it's continuously meddling with Central American countries sovereignty. And just like in this exercise, the real world nuances and implications of the actions where not considered, to the general detriment of humanity, unfortunately the cost of these is in real blood, not just in some ink blots in some top secret dossier. And some Americans wonder why there's so many people fleeing violent unstable countries that can't seem to get their act together.
Nobody ever considered a Gulf Coast invasion to be a threat. It was an exercise deigned to test theories and Louisiana just happened to be the area of the US chosen to play the fictional battleground. Nobody in Washington was ever worried about Cuban troops invading. Rather, they were worried about the spread of toxic far-left ideology in the Western Hemisphere, which represented a long-term threat to Western Civilization in general and to the US in particular. The US has always had a vested interest in suppressing malign influences in its hemisphere, a policy going back to the Monroe Administration (look up the Monroe Doctrine). China's current policy towards Central and South America show the foolishness of relaxing the Monroe Doctrine. All of your nonsense about how the US should sit idly by while neighboring nations become hotbeds of socialist dictatorships hostile to Western society can be safely ignored by thinking individuals.
Hello
That it was a good idea?
2:34 Wrong B-26 pictured. The Martin B-26 Marauders were retired immediately after WWII. The more advanced Douglas A-26 Invaders replaced them and served into the Korean and Vietnam wars. In 1948 the USAF stopped using the A for attack designators, and the Douglas A-26 was redesignated as the B-26. The Douglas B-26 was what was used in the 1955 exercises. If that's not confusing enough, the USAF brought back the A for attack designators in the 1960s and the Douglas B-26 became the A-26 once again.
Did you bother to read the pinned coment or were you so excited that you had found an error in somone elses work that you couldnt wait to show how smart you are?
Nope, I didn't. This channel is so good that I go straight to the videos.@@robd8577
Fighting wars the psychopath way.
If that's what you get from this video it didn't do a very good job of educating you about the realities of war in general or that era in particular.
@@gort8203 Oh, i'm very well read about both wars in history and i'm quite decently knowledgeable about REALITY during that era.
Just because the US military is convinced of something stupid, doesn't mean it's true.
@@DIREWOLFx75 I beg to differ with your 'well read' opinion that this was "psychopathy". From the comfort of your keyboard it is easy to slander people who were defending the West under difficult circumstances. It seems you would have them surrender because they were unwilling to fight a war that might be thrust upon them. We're lucky we had smarter men than you in charge of defending us then.
@@gort8203 "defending the West"
DEFENDING?
By turning it into a wasteland and the civillians into dust?
There's a damn good reason why Germany refused to let USA put tactical nukes in the country once they figured out what the US planning was for any war.
"It seems you would have them surrender because they were unwilling to fight a war that might be thrust upon them."
Where did you get such delusions from?
Are you stupid?
"We're lucky we had smarter and more mentally balanced men than you in charge of defending us then."
Because people wanting to massmurder civillians with WMDs are so mentally balanced and smarter... Riiight.
And BTW, no, i rate an IQ of 173 according to Mensa, so no, vast majority of people are not smarter than me.
Nuked Louisiana? Explains a lot
Vietnam and the Six Day War proved the air force had the tactics for the wrong war.
Haha, yes in North America, Batter Up refers to the game of baseball and announcing to the players that a batter is ready to play and take a swing at the pitched ball. Aren't idiosyncrasies fun?
Aha - thanks.
What a massive and costly exercise in masturbation. Except for the Canberra, they used almost exclusively obsolete or very soon to be obsolete aircraft. Sure the Sabres were still in service, frontline aircraft but their replacements were already flying and intended to enter service in months. How could you expect any valid conclusions without the use of B-52s, B-47s or even still in service B-50s. Korea demonstrated that there was still a need for conventional bombing. The service ceiling (B-52) and range of all three would complicate any defender's strategy by forcing a 360° awareness. Clearly the goal was to justify the obsession with nuclear fighter bombers.
Sure they always sounded good on paper. The Soviets couldn't hope to stamp out any nuclear response and had to fear a nuclear attack from anywhere. But this is predicated on the false idea that there could be a "limited" nuclear exchange. In the fifties any such use would result in a visit by Bear bombers anywhere they could reach. The Soviets didn't really have a "tactical" nuke inventory yet. Their TU-16 and IL-28, although technically medium bombers, due to range, were meant to deliver full house nuclear bombs. Perhaps the Canberras were intended as stand-ins for those Beagles and Badgers. To me that should have demonstrated the need for better all weather day/night fighters instead of the very high altitude long range stand-off interceptors they continued to plan for waves of Bear bombers over the pole.
This is what the so-called "cold war" was all about, i.e. keeping wartime advanced technology progressing at a wartime pace. The Soviet Union was America's very bestest wartime buddy until ten minutes after WWII ended. Suddenly Americans discovered they had given all that wartime largess to their worstest enemy. But why?
Simple answer; when the wartime powers that brought forth WWII accessed the cornucopia of German advanced weapons technology, they realized how quickly the war had advanced such technologies. Think about it, fabric biplanes to all metal jet fighters in under a decade. What was needed was another war to keep the technology advancing at the same pace. However, a hot war could not be sold so soon after the end of a war that had recently decimated the world. So the "cold war" was invented.
Soviet leadership had long been of the Biden variety and anything not deemed war worthy was quickly shelved so proletariat workers could produce more weapons technology that would in turn keep America producing more advanced weapons technology as well. GUM store empty shelves and other domestic shortages were legendary under Soviet leadership. A standing Russian joke at the time was, "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us".
However, it was American grain shipments to the USSR in the early 1960s that really baked the cold war's cake. American grain had been supplied to the USSR free of charge in the effort to keep them alive after another disastrously insane, Soviet five year plan collapsed to the point of starvation. So the question among the lower officer ranks in the Air Force missile program was, if the Soviets are such a terrible threat to democracy, then why are we keeping them alive with free grain shipments?
Just prior to that event, Americans had begun questioning why they were digging bomb shelters in their backyards and crouching under their desks. So to address those troublesome questions, the "cold war" suddenly went soft, turning into a "space race" that recast America's implacable, communist enemy as a more or less friendly competitor in a race to the moon. All the while, advanced weapons technology was quietly rocketing upward in the form of booster "rockets", satellites and other advanced electronic technologies.
To bolster the illusion of those good things that come from war, these developments were shown by propagandists as wonderful commercial products American's received as bleed off from advanced weapons programs; you know, like those heat shield tiles you use every day. Of course the beleaguered citizens of the Soviet “workers paradise” received no such comfort from their propagandists. All they required was the threat of a concentration camp to keep them motivated.
Since the technology did not exist to go to the moon, I mean really, 72Kb of computer memory to support the computing of spacecraft trajectories and a suddenly forgotten Van Allen radiation belt? The government simply faked the moon program to hide the true intent of the space program. Suddenly Air Force stars and bars disappeared from the sides of the "booster rockets."
When the "nuclear" Navy's SLBM program was finally perfected, (more German technology) the space program was shut down, as there was no longer any need for massive ICBM missiles. At last, the Soviet Union was no longer needed as a straw enemy and it too was purposely shut down, leaving America as the sole superpower delivering advanced weapons technology to Israel. Sounds like a plan? It was. Americans were the gullible suckers that swallowed it whole, and look where the word is today.
Centralized government is the bane of mankind and will result in the end of the world - as we know it.
Don't know what happened to the rest of this rather lengthy comment.
The snarky disrespect of the general in charge of the exercise is unbecoming of a channel which I view in the hopes of seeing objective and balanced material.
Confirmation bias at its finest
...Silly unrealistic, Impractical exercise.
It wasn't an impractical exercise, it generated valuable information. Truth is not always pleasant.
As even the video admits even fallout consequents were IGNORED!!!@@gort8203