• Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I read a very illuminating article on the purpose of Star Wars. It was never intended to shoot down all the missiles.

    The math was that a US first strike using intermediate range ballistic missiles in Europe could kill enough of the USSR's ICBMs to greatly reduce the USSR's retaliatory launch. Star Wars was supposed to thin out the surviving missiles. Not to stop all of them, but to make the retaliatory strike survivable within certain parameters.

    The whole point of Star Wars and contemporary nuclear missiles was to allow the US to launch a first-strike to slaughter the entire Soviet population and survive the retaliation with only 100 or 150 million causalities. You know, more than enough to get the economy back up and running.