Soviet Nuclear Arsenal in 1962

[Guardsman Bass]

What was the state of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in 1962, when the Cuban missile crisis occurred? I was under the impression that their ICBMs were in the low single digit numbers, supplemented by several dozen ballistic missiles that were dubious in terms of their ability to hit targets in the US (but not Europe), plus submarine missiles. But I've received pushback on that, with a claim that the Soviets had 42 ICBMs in 1962.

Does anyone have information on that? I've googled for this, and come up with a range of figures: the Soviets had 36 ICBMs, 25 ICBMs in 1961, and so forth, in addition to IRBMs and MRBMs that could hit the US from the Soviet Union.

[Adam Reynolds]

Shep has a post from a few years ago in which he went into this: https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic ... an+Missile

Balance of Power; 1962

United States

Strategic Air Command
639 x B-52 with 1,278 gravity bombs, 547 Hound Dog SSMs, and 436 Quail Decoys
880 x B-47 with 880 gravity bombs
76 x B-58 with 76 bomb pods
30 x Atlas D in 5 PSI soft launchers (See Note I)
32 x Atlas E in 25 PSI coffin launchers
80 x Atlas F in 100 PSI silos
62 x Titan I
20 x Minuteman I (See Note II)

Totals: 1,595 bombers with 2,234 gravity bombs/pods, and 224 ICBMs.

NOTE: Atlas D was updated with command guidance, meaning an Atlas D squadron could launch only one missile every five minutes.

NOTE II: With the establishment of DEFCON 2 on 24 October, by 25 October; SAC had 1,436 bombers, 145 ICBMs, and 916 tankers on alert. The first Minuteman went on Alert duty on 27 October, and three days later nine were on alert.

CONAD
1,044 aircraft in air defense duties.

On 26 October they broke down as:
598 on 5-15 minute alert
446 on 1-3 hour alert

Florda CONAD force was 154 aircraft on:
26 on 5 minute alert
35 on 15 minute alert
55 on 1-3 hour alert
4 to 11 aircraft were airborne continuously around the Florida Penisula.

US Submarine Fleet
5 x George Washington SSBNs with 80 Polaris A-1 with 600 kt warhead and 1,200 nm range.
1 x Ethan Allen SSBN with 16 Polaris A-1 with 600 kt warhead and 1,200 nm range.

Total: 96 SLBMs on 6 boats (all nuclear powered)

NOTE: Polaris A-2 with a 1,500 nm range became operational on 26 June 1962; but I have no information on how many boats had A-2 during the Cuban Crisis.

Additionally, the Polaris A1 had a reliability rate of around 50% or less; and the early W47 Y1 warhead on the Polaris A1 and A2, due to a faulty mechanical safing device design was estimated to have about a 50/50 chance of initating or not. When it was tested in a series of shots in 1966; the W47 Y2 had a dud rate of 3 out of four shots. It wasn't until the W47 Y3 mod was introduced in 1967 that the W47 became reliable.

So basically, out of the 96 SLBMs the US had deployed; only about 48 will successfully fire; and of that 48; only 24 will actually initate over Soviet Targets.

Soviet Union

Long Range Aviation
58 x 3M BISON-Bs with 116 gravity bombs
45 Tu-95 BEAR-As with 90 gravity bombs
57 Tu-95K BEAR-Bs with 57 Kh-20 SSMs with range of 205 to 325 nm.

Totals: 160 bombers with 206 gravity bombs and 57 KH-20s

NOTE: Arming Tu-95K with Kh-20 requires between 4 and 22 hours.

Soviet Submarine Fleet
6 x Pr V-611 ZULU IV/V SSB with 12 R-11FM (2 each boat), 10 kt or 500 kt warhead; 80 nm range.
3 x Pr 629 GOLF SSB with 9 R-11FM (3 each boat), 10 kt or 500 kt warhead; 80 nm range.
19 x Pr 629 GOLF SSB with 57 R-13 (3 each boat), 1 MT warhead; 325 nm range
1 x Pr 629B GOLF SSB with 2 R-21 (2 each boat) 1 MT or 800 kt warhead; 755 nm range
8 x Pr 658 HOTEL SSB with 24 R-11M (3 each boat), 10 kt or 500 kt warhead; 80 nm range.

Totals: 104 SLBMs on 37 boats

Ballistic Missiles
6 x R-7/R-7A with 5 or 3 MT warhead, 4,320 nm (R-7) or 6,480 nm (R-7A) range
32 x R-16 with 5, 3 or 6 MT warhead; 5,940 to 7,020 nm range

Totals: 38 ICBMs.

The US Plan to Hit Cuba

Basically, OPLAN 316 was set to go off on October 29th, if nobody negotated an end to the crisis.

The plan was to launch three massive airstrikes a day until Cuban air capacity was obliterated. The first strike was to involve 576 sorties. The second and third strikes for the first day brought the total sorties up to 1,190.

By 26 October, CINCAFLANT had 579 aircraft in his attack force.

The first air strikes would hit the five missile launch sites, and 24 SA-2 sites by F-100s and F-105s; with F-104s flying MiG CAP.

USN and USMC aircraft would begin bombing the landing beaches and nearby objectives in western Cuba, near Tarana.

While this was all going on, the 82nd and 101st Airborne would parachute in onto the following targets, with each target being hit by at least a regiment:

Jos Marti airfield (near Havana)
Los Banos airfield
Mariel naval air station
Baracoa Airfield

As a final bonus, the Marine garrison at Gitmo would have assaulted out of it's perimeter, after being reinforced via MATS with 3,500 extra Marines.

The Really, Really, Really FINAL US Plan to Hit Cuba

The USS Enterprise and Independence both had about 40~ nuclear devices in their magazines; but the cores for them were carried on cruisers accompanying the carriers; the plan was to transfer them to the CVs via helicopter; and in tests, the first bombs could be ready in 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, SAC had plans to destroy the SS-4 and SS-5 missile sites in case conventional bombardment didn't destroy them. In keeping with Curtis LeMay and Tommy Powers' ideas, the amount of force planned was truly massive; six B-47s each carrying two 10 to 20 megaton gravity bombs, were programmed to strike the missile sites, and not coincidentally, blow most of Cuba off the map, literally.

Local Forces near Cuba

US Forces
180 Ships
1,000 Land Based Aircraft
40,000 Marines
14,500 US Army Paratroops (82nd and 101st)
100,000 US Army Troops

Among which:

CTG 136.2
USS Essex (CVS-9)
---22 x S2F (2 squadrons of it)
---14 x HSS-2s
---1 x WF-2
Blandy (DD 943)
Keppler (DD 765)
Sperry (DD 697)
Barry (DD 933)

Cuban Forces
270,000 Cuban Army Troops
160~ T-34/T-54 tanks
60 x MiG-17s and -19s
700+ AA Guns

Group of Soviet Forces in Cuba:

74th Independent Motorized Rifle Regiment (OMSP) - San Cristobal and Guanajay area
----3 x Motorized Rifle Battalions
----1 x Tank Battalion (31 x T-55s or T-34-85s)
----6 x 122mm Howitzers, 10 x 100mm SP Guns, 9 x 120mm Mortars
----1 x Battalion of Lunas (2 x Launchers, 8 to 12 missiles with "special" warheads, and 102 men)

43rd Independent Motorized Rifle Regiment (OMSP) - vicinity of Santiago de las Vegas
----3 x Motorized Rifle Battalions
----1 x Tank Battalion (31 x T-55s or T-34-85s)
----6 x 122mm Howitzers, 10 x 100mm SP Guns, 9 x 120mm Mortars
----1 x Battalion of Lunas (2 x Launchers, 8 to 12 missiles each with "special" warheads, and 102 men)

146th Independent Motorized Rifle Regiment (OMSP) - Camajuani, Placetas, Sulu
----3 x Motorized Rifle Battalions
----1 x Tank Battalion (31 x T-55s or T-34-85s)
----6 x 122mm Howitzers, 10 x 100mm SP Guns, 9 x 120mm Mortars
----1 x Battalion of Lunas (2 x Launchers, 8 to 12 missiles each with "special" warheads, and 102 men)

106th Independent Motorized Rifle Regiment (OMSP) - vicinity of Holguin
----3 x Rifle Battalions
----1 x Tank Battalion (31 x T-55s or T-34-85s)

12th PVO Division (72 SA-2 Launchers plus 288 missiles) - Western Cuba
27th PVO Division (72 SA-2 Launchers plus 288 missiles) - Eastern Cuba

32nd Fighter Aviation Regiment (42 x MiG 21F-13 FISHBED Cs)

36 x Il-28 Beagles (Conventionally armed)

6 x Il-28 Beagles (Nuclear Armed; provided with six 407N devices - 12 kt)

Missile Division
----539th Missile Regiment (8 x SS-4) - West Cuba
----546th Missile Regiment (8 x SS-4) - West Cuba
----564th Missile Regiment (8 x SS-5) - West Cuba
----514th Missile Regiment (8 x SS-4) - Central Cuba
----657th Missile Regiment (8 x SS-5) - Central Cuba

231st Independent Aviation Engineering Regiment (OAIP) - Western Cuba
(8 Launchers and 40 x 4K87 Sopka (SSC-2a) Tactical Cruise Missiles - 90 mile range, 12 kt warhead)

222nd Independent Aviation Engineering Regiment (OAIP) - Eastern Cuba
(8 Launchers and 40 x 4K87 Sopka (SSC-2a) Tactical Cruise Missiles - 90 mile range, 12 kt warhead)

12 x Komar Missile Boats

Sources
DEFCON 2 by Norman Polmar
Strategic Air Command: People, Aircraft, and Missiles (2nd Edition) by Norman Polmar and Timothy M. Laur, 1990
Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces by Oleg Bukharin, Pavel Podvig, Frank Von Hippel, Timur Kadyshev, Eugene Miasnikov, Igor Sutyagin, Maxim Tarasenko, Boris Zhelezov
The Air Force Response to the Cuban Crisis USAF Historical Division, Declassified.
The Big Book of Warfare by Ryan Crierie

[Guardsman Bass]

Thanks for finding that. I should have searched first.

I was in the wrong. The Soviet arsenal was considerably smaller than the US one, but they still could have done considerable damage to the US in the advent of a nuclear exchange from the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[Simon_Jester]

As I recall, the Soviets are at something of a disadvantage in midair refueling, which is a major problem when it comes to Soviet bombers trying to hit the US the way the American SAC bombers would hit the Soviet Union.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Tu-95 could bomb most of the US without in flight refueling if it staged from forward bases. The 3M Bison needed buddy air refueling, so no more then half the available force could make an attack on CONUS. The USSR did not produce a dedicated tanker until the Il-78 of the 1980s, though by the later 1960s the entire Bison force was being employed full time as buddy tankers. So were many Tu-16s.

Both Soviet bomber types were vulnerable to fighter interception and missiles unless they flew below 1000ft which is unlikely but possible, the Kh-22 missile was vulnerable to interception by Nike Hercules missiles but would have been a tough target for USAF interceptors. Since this was the short lived perid in which both the DEW line and the Mid Canada line were operational, large areas of the US were well shielded against a Soviet bomber attack (as in we have up to six hours of warning!). The main vulnerability would have been attacks on the north east and north west coasts where the Tu-95 could approach from over the ocean and fire Kh-20 from well outside of land based radar coverage. On the other hand an array of radar pickets were being employed precisely to warn against this threat. This was near the peak of US air defense.

Worth noting that Hercules also had some ABM capability against the Soviet MRBMs in Cuba particularly when employing a nuclear warhead, though around IIRC 60% of sites still had the inferior Ajax missile.

[Thanas]

There still was no defence against the subs or ICBMs though, right?

[Sea Skimmer]

Actually many the submarines are only armed with variants of the SCUD series, R-11, a very short ranged missile and very open to Nike and even HAWK interception, and hell, if you had a good enough AA gun too. Far more so then the MRBMs in Cuba. The R-13 was better, but still a realistic target. Only the one boat with R-21 is a really challenging problem. Keep in mind an R-11 missile, which is very close to a warmed over V-2, is slower then some manned aircraft.

Also importantly, all but the single sub with R-21 had to fire while surfaced, a process which takes 10-15 minutes, and only in calm weather, and lack good navigation equipment made them highly inaccurate to say the least. Since so many boats had to be very close to the US coastline, and more then a few were already being trailed by the USN, they might be sunk before they could fire.

Nothing could stop the ICBMs once fired, but launching them is an open ended question, While the exact number of operational R-16s is in despite, what is known is that few or none was in a silo at the time. They were stored in soft hangers and required several hours to erect and fuel. Most of the open launch sites were clustered at just a few sites. All R-7 launchers were at Plesetsk or Baikonur and consisted of massive launch gantries. These two sites also hosted a number of the R-16s. R-7 preparation time was 20 hours.

While most US ICBMs also needed to fuel, all could do so in under an hour, and Minuteman and Polaris could fire in minutes. End result is it was plausible US could have destroyed many if not most of the Soviet soft launch sites with its own missiles before they could fire, and the R-7 sites were a realistic target for a manned bomber attack. The Soviet ICBM force would thus be vastly less of a threat unless the Soviets initiated a pre planned nuclear attack. Many are just going to be blown up on the ground even by inaccurate early US missiles.

This is all a major reason why the USSR sought to deploy MRBMs and IRBM in Cuba in the first place.

[Thanas]

Wouldn't the soviets already have kept them armed and fueled? Or was that too dangerous?

My apologies if these are stupid questions, I don't know much about how ICBMs worked back then.

[Mr Bean]

Wouldn't the soviets already have kept them armed and fueled? Or was that too dangerous?

My apologies if these are stupid questions, I don't know much about how ICBMs worked back then.

It's not a dumb question, ICBM fuel standards are not the thing I expect primary education in Germany to mention, or anywhere else for that matter. But the long and short answer is that good liquid fuel rocket fuels tend to be....

1. Very easy to ignite
2. Very energy dense (Burns hot, burns long)
3. Horribly lethal to humans
Most 1950s-1970s rocket fuel can be described as an ecological disaster waiting to happen and a lethality danger that can be described as "like breathing ammonia but 10x worse"

Of course most rocket fuels are not one chemical but two mixed together. One typically instantly lethal and very easy to ignite while the other chemical makes the first one easier to ignite and only mostly lethal.

[Thanas]

Yeah, that I know, I am just wondering why, with war so imminent, the rockets were not ready to fire at moment's notice. Were they that unstable?

[Sea Skimmer]

Later liquid fuel missiles such as R-36 could be fired just as quickly as solid fueled ones. But that took considerable development and better launchers. This was accomplished in the mid and late 1960s and the earlier missiles were rapidly phased out.

R-7 cannot be stored fueled, once loaded it must be fired within hours, its LOX oxidizer was cryogenic and begin boiling off as soon as it was loaded. If you don't fire you have to unload it and send it back to the factory for a rebuild of key parts.

The R-16 had short term storable fuel, Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitric acid, but this ruined the missile after several days. It was immensely dangerous to maintain such a thing fueled on open pads. An R-16 blew up on the pad in 1960, the Nedelin disaster of which film exists, killing the designer and about 100 other people. So odds of keeping them ready to fire are slim, unless a decision was taken to actually attack. A silo made the situation much more reasonable as at least you don't have to erect the missile before the fueling cycle commences.

US liquid fuel missiles had to be fueled before firing too, but the launchers, even those that involved erection (but the missile was already on the erector) were much better, also absurdly expensive, and allowed this to be done much more rapidly on demand.

The shorter ranged missiles in Cuba had limited ability to remain fueled, and at least some where fueled during the crisis but they were much smaller and easier to deal with in general. On the other hand they still couldn't fire at the drop of a hat, even without considering the communication time lag to get permission to fire, and if the US struck first it was possible and likely that many would be destroyed on the ground by conventional bombing. Some of sites could have been hit with a very high degree of surprise by Nike-Herk batteries at Key West firing missiles as SSMs.

The Soviets didn't just back down because nuclear war was really bad in general, they did so because it wasn't out of the question that the US would come out only heavily damaged, while it was not in doubt that the USSR would be wiped off the map.

[Thanas]

Thanks for the answers. Really informative.

[PeZook]

The R-16 had short term storable fuel, Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitric acid, but this ruined the missile after several days. It was immensely dangerous to maintain such a thing fueled on open pads.

Also, don't forget that dimethylhydrazine is horrifically toxic. It's not quite a nerve gas, but it can be absorbed through the skin (!!!), is corrosive and a cancirogen. On the HAZMAT diamond, it's classified as lvl 4 for health, the same as VX.

The corrosiveness is especially problematic, I think, because it would yield itself really well to creating leaks in the missile. It's one of the reasons why NASA had to rip up the shuttles they were giving to museums, the OMS system was thoroughly contaminated by the fuel and would have created a health hazard.

[K. A. Pital]

For port denial the USSR could also utilize nuclear torpedoes. Some boats were armed with them, IIRC.

[Simon_Jester]

Worth noting that Hercules also had some ABM capability against the Soviet MRBMs in Cuba particularly when employing a nuclear warhead, though around IIRC 60% of sites still had the inferior Ajax missile.

On the other hand, heavy SAM/ABM sites don't redeploy quickly; the assets to defend against the missiles in Cuba may not have been in place at the time of the crisis. Though I'm sure they'd be frantically redeploying them.

[Sea Skimmer]

Also, don't forget that dimethylhydrazine is horrifically toxic. It's not quite a nerve gas, but it can be absorbed through the skin (!!!), is corrosive and a cancirogen. On the HAZMAT diamond, it's classified as lvl 4 for health, the same as VX.

If it leaks enough to kill you, odds are the missile is going to blowup anyway and kill you. Running is advised. All fueling operations were, and are conducted in protective gear which will save you from fumes, generally. The Russians still use missiles powered by that stuff, coatings to protect against corrosion and higher purity chemicals eventually made it storable. It was also used on the US battlefield mobile Lance tactical missile, deployed as late as 1992 in Europe. Lance was an amusing rare case in which a liquid fueled missile actually replaced the solid fuel Honest John and Sergeant in the quest for more range and amphibious mobility.

The corrosiveness is especially problematic, I think, because it would yield itself really well to creating leaks in the missile. It's one of the reasons why NASA had to rip up the shuttles they were giving to museums, the OMS system was thoroughly contaminated by the fuel and would have created a health hazard.

The space shuttle thrusters used Monomethylhydrazine and Dinitrogen tetroxide. Both rather toxic, but used by many spacecraft.

For port denial the USSR could also utilize nuclear torpedoes. Some boats were armed with them, IIRC.

Some were, but they were under orders to only use them on western naval vessels. The short range, straight running guidance and low yields made attacking most ports problematic. The US also had non trivial harbor defenses in this era and lots of nuclear depth bombs.

On the other hand, heavy SAM/ABM sites don't redeploy quickly; the assets to defend against the missiles in Cuba may not have been in place at the time of the crisis. Though I'm sure they'd be frantically redeploying them.

They don’t need to redeploy. Nike radar systems provided continuous all around defense against high altitude, while the missiles launched vertically. They were for all practical measures, fixed sites. On paper the systems could be moved in about 24 hours, plus another 24 hours to setup again, but most sites were never issued the required mobility equipment. In fact many sites, particularly for the nuclear armed Nike Hercules had large concrete bunkers for storing the missiles, to guard against accidental explosions, and the acquisition radars were often mounted on large towers from which they could only be removed via crane.


See this for example
http://ed-thelen.org/RockvilleNikeIFC-SiteW-92C-.jpg

HIPAR and LOPAR acquisition radars as well as the smaller sphere like target and missile tracking radars all on towers. Other sites were on mountain tops when possible.

HAWK had real mobility, but only a few sites in Florida had HAWK deployed full time, and these were also on towers. They lasted until the end of the cold war too. Some field army HAWK batteries were scattered around the US during the crisis guarding airfields and bases, but they’d make little practical difference.

[Simon_Jester]

Er, the question is- are the defense missiles physically located in a place where they could intercept MRBMs coming from Cuba? Did cities in the American South have such protection? Places like Washington did, I presume.

[Sea Skimmer]

A number of major southern cities had them, yes. Texas was rather heavily defended for example, so was Miami and areas of Louisiana and Georgia. Defenses were assigned fairly strictly on the basis of strategic value. The Washington Baltimore area shared a common Nike oval defense area with eighteen sites. Southern cities were generally small and unimportant at the time so, yeah, they turn into that heavily damaged area. Saving the arsenal of atomic democracy of freedom is what counts.

Moving firing batteries to other cities would make no real sense, Soviet bombers remain the main threat they defend against and ever ever so slight chance existed to engage IRBMs. The US fully expected the Soviets would just send shorter range planes on one way suicide missions increasing the possible bomber threat. Modern indications are those Soviet planes would have hit Europe and its rather large and pressing collection of targets. That table above far understates the true NATO nuclear threat to Europe, because large numbers of European and Japan based tactical fighters would have flown deep missions, some one way, to nuke targets within the USSR such as airfields and even cities ahead of SAC bomber attacks. That's when bomber self retargeting was handy, and why many NATO fighters in this era had high yield W-28 gravity bombs.

[Beowulf]

The R-16 had short term storable fuel, Unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitric acid, but this ruined the missile after several days. It was immensely dangerous to maintain such a thing fueled on open pads.

Also, don't forget that dimethylhydrazine is horrifically toxic. It's not quite a nerve gas, but it can be absorbed through the skin (!!!), is corrosive and a carcinogen. On the HAZMAT diamond, it's classified as lvl 4 for health, the same as VX.

UDMH isn't especially corrosive. Toxic, yes. If you smell ammonia around, you run. Nitric acid, on the other hand, is extremely corrosive. This both tended to create leaks in missiles that were fueled for long, but also ruined engine parts after a while. Incidentally, the reason why the R-16 used these fuels is to avoid ignition problems: the combination is hypergolic, and will reliably ignite without delay. MMH and N2O4 are similar, which is why the space shuttle used them for thrusters.

[PeZook]

The space shuttle thrusters used Monomethylhydrazine and Dinitrogen tetroxide. Both rather toxic, but used by many spacecraft.

Yeah, because it's hypergolic. Aerozine-50 was used by Apollo CSM and LM engines because it required no ignition mechanism, which means saved mass and also reliability.

But IIRC Korolev was strongly opposed to Chelomei's designs and he cited the toxicity (and volatility) of the fuel as one reason.

UDMH isn't especially corrosive. Toxic, yes. If you smell ammonia around, you run. Nitric acid, on the other hand, is extremely corrosive. This both tended to create leaks in missiles that were fueled for long, but also ruined engine parts after a while. Incidentally, the reason why the R-16 used these fuels is to avoid ignition problems: the combination is hypergolic, and will reliably ignite without delay. MMH and N2O4 are similar, which is why the space shuttle used them for thrusters.

My mistake ; I confused UDMH with just hydrazine for reactivity and didn't bother to double check. Still, the combination of UDMH and nitric acid does have all that in spades

[Sea Skimmer]

But IIRC Korolev was strongly opposed to Chelomei's designs and he cited the toxicity (and volatility) of the fuel as one reason.

He did, but then his own R-7 design was effectively unworkable as a weapon so, its kind of a trade off on that. Chelomei did ditch the nitric acid for dinitrogen tetroxide in later designs, but dinitrogen tetroxide had its own stability problems. Not so much corrosion wise, but undergoing chemical breakdown that made it unusable and self heating as I recall.

[FedRebel]

Thanks for finding that. I should have searched first.

I was in the wrong. The Soviet arsenal was considerably smaller than the US one, but they still could have done considerable damage to the US in the advent of a nuclear exchange from the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It gets worse, SAC had back doors into Soviet Air Defense. While Soviet bombers would be going into a fog of war (and no doubt SAC would be feeding Soviet telemetry to NORAD), SAC knew all the weak points in the PVO and what exactly they can expect in terms of resistance, where and when.

[Sea Skimmer]

Soviet bombers are not really going into a fog of war. The location of every single NIKE site and USAF interceptor base was effectively public information. It was extra public in the case of NIKE deployments in the north east, because the US military had a very hard time buying the required land for them due to suburban sprawl and had to jump through all kinds of hoops. The problem was so bad much effort went into downscaling the land requirements for Nike Herculses over Ajax because of this, particularly adapting underground magazines for Nike-Herk so less of a buffer zone was needed owing to explosive hazard (you just accept the risk when the missiles are in ready to fire position). This also helped make the systems even more effectively immobile in tactical terms.

Corona and the first ferret satellites certainly gave the US a very good look at PVO deployments, but said deployments were considerably more flexible in the first place. All Soviet air defense equipment could move, rapidly. Aside from some very specialist continuous wave and bistatic radar fence equipment on towers (not the S-300 CW radar, an earlier one) that's true of everything they ever deployed to this day. About all Soviet air base equipment was also mobile, even the freaking control towers normally were. As such, with the Soviets have a strategic warning of the war SAC had to assume they'd be shuffling stuff around, and Corona isn't exactly a quick reaction system to keep up with that. Just how much the Soviets were shuffling, I dunno, but they certainly love that kind of operation.

Of course overall the shear disparity in numbers and the sprawling distances between key Soviet cities provided an inherent advantage to SAC. That N squared rule at work. Bigger attack is just going to take proportionally less losses. Particularly when earlier waves and nuking the defenses.