orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) (04/23/85)
Once again Milo regales us with more rumors and fantasies: > > > Part of the bomber fleet is in fact kept on airborne alert. An > > additional part of the fleet is kept on strip alert, which means they > > are supposed to be able to get in the air within 5 minutes of being > > ordered to do so. > > > > I'd really like to know your sources for this, I've talked to > many SAC people, and they never thought we had an airborne alert force > these days. At any given time, only 1/3 of the bomber force is even > armed (training missions are flown unarmed), and then the pilots are > not in the planes. A strip alert is a condition of increased > readiness, not the normal state of things. As I said, I think > I'm right on this. Anyways, there was an article several months ago > (in SA I believe) detailing the timetable for a response to an attack, > showing that it'd be too late for the bombers given a sneak > SLBM attack, remember it takes a bomber quite a while to get out > of the range of the blast, taking off isn't good enough. > Milo A quotation from "Arsenal of Democracy" by Tom Gervasi: Let us assume that Soviet SLBM's, the missiles that could arrive most quickly, would be launched simultaneously at our long-range bombers, the targets that would take the most time to become airborne in order to avoid destruction. If the first bomber at each airfield took five minutes to become airborne and another was airborne every 30 seconds thereafter, we would have a minimum of 200 of our bombers in the air before even the first Soviet SLBM struck. In fact, SAC readiness air alert exercises have placed bombers in the air rather more quickly than this. The Global Shield exercises held in February of 1981 removed 400 aircraft from 70 bases in less than 10 minutes. (page 25) This is the result of a real SAC exercise not your friends conjectures. tim sevener whuxl!orb