Talk:Single Integrated Operational Plan

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UK participation - I'm all for mentioning us humble Brits but when we've only got around 67 trident D5 missiles and only 400 (or is it 200 hundred, numbers available on FAS< CDI, global security, etc) warheads how on earth can we hit 500+ targets (we could have in the past when we had more warheads and the We-177 was dropped from tornadoes but that ended with the strategic defence review of 1998 160.5.247.213 03:38, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 The President's Authority 2 SIOP-62 3 OPLAN-8044 4 No-first-use policy 5 Sources? Availability?

[edit] The President's Authority

My understanding is that the President, alone, cannot authorize _any_ nuclear attack, be it tactical or strategic. This goes beyond the statement in the article that reads "the President by himself cannot order a strategic nuclear strike on any country."

[edit] SIOP-62

A lot has been published about the inflexibility of the early SIOP, and the shift in 1963 was ordered as a result of McNamara finding the plan both inflexible and barbaric. It paid no attention to the Sino-Soviet split and called for the obliteration of China, Eastern Europe and Albania as a result of Soviet actions. Pentagon generals referred to it as "wargasm" and I believe it was LeMay who said it would leave the Soviet Union a "smoking radiating ruin" in 2 hours. Should this information be included in the history section?--csloat 23:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

The "wargasm" quote was from Herman Kahn, and LeMay was exaggerating in many respects. In 1962, there were relatively few ICBMs, and bombers certainly were more than 2 hours from most of their targets. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 21:50, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] OPLAN-8044

Revision 05 went into effect on October 1 2004, and has been unofficially quoted in some defence and military circles as having a particular emphasis on "deterrence through pre-emption" but also "deterrence through massive disproportionate response" - to be exact, it supposedly foresees an actual “response ratio” to a Chinese nuclear strike - literally a 10:1 ratio for strikes; China hits Okinawa and the US hits ten Chinese bases in retaliation. Now given that the point of deterrence is that the other side knows about it, has there been any reference to this in the none-English press that anyone can find? It does not seem to publicly confirmable—Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.101.4.34 (talk • contribs)

That almost sounds like classified information....Titanmiller 18:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No-first-use policy

The existing article refers to a US policy of no first use in two places:

' in SIOP-63... the 'no first use' policy became implicit.'

'Under Reagan, through NSDD-13, ... first-strike was still explicitly removed'

My own understanding is that the United States has always explicitly refused to pledge no first use of nuclear weapons. Indeed, the original doctrine of 'massive retaliation' was envisioned as being invoked in case the Soviets were to launch a conventional attack on Western Europe. Robert McNamara gave a speech in 1962 pledging no first attacks against cities (i.e. US nuclear strikes would be counterforce as long as the opponent did not attack US cities?), and after leaving office McNamara became an advocate of no-first-use. However I am unable to locate any indications of an operational policy that the US would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.

Therefore, I propose editing the article to remove or clarify any references to a US no-first-use policy.

Gaffer Gamgee 18:54, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources? Availability?

Has any SIOP ever been released? If so, why does the article lack direct citations? If they're not, why would these documents continue to be classified after almost 50 years, without even a heavily redacted version available? -Rolypolyman (talk) 20:51, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

No SIOP has ever been released. Some of the planning documents that went into the SIOP objectives are available, in redacted form, at the George Washington University National Security Archive. These documents dealt with general targeting objectives, such as taking out nuclear forces with various levels of restriction of collateral damage. Some pre-SIOP nuclear targeting plans, such as DROPSHOT, have been released.

Part of the confusion here involves the "P" in SIOP. When the actual SIOP documents are created, certain sections contain assignments, authentication mechanisms, and other things that have to do with the actual order generation process. The exact format of Emergency Action Messages, for example, is unlikely to be released when any part of the old system is still in use -- and there's no real reason to believe that aspects of EAMs needed change. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 21:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)