Israel announces new land grab

How far is Alaska from the USSR?

Sarah Palin can see it from her house.

Which is why I said "virtually no".

Which of course Sarah Palin never said.

I'm sure I read a magazine where she said exactly that. It's out in the chicken coop, I'll try to find it later.

Sarah Palin is batshit insane, but she never said that.

No you didn't. That was Tina Fey.

If you don't think we had nuclear weapons in Alaska, you're dreaming. And the US had Jupiter 8 nuclear missiles in Turkey, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The "shit fit" only happened because Kennedy saw it as a way to bolster his image in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster. Kennedy very carefully structured the blockade of Cuba to make sure the Soviets knew he wasn't going to launch first.

And, it worked. Kennedy got what he wanted (Soviet missiles off Cuban soil, the Jupiter 8 missiles removed from Turkey, and a better public image). Nobody went to war with one another, and there was very little shooting. Compare that with what's going on in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank right now.

[Lt. Saavik] Humor. It is a difficult concept. [/Lt. Saavik]

Interesting sidebar to that:

Alaskans Were Trained as Secret Agents Against Soviets
Fisherman, trappers called on in Operation Washtub

Even before oil was discovered in Alaska, it was considered a vital part of American military strategery. The ALCAN Highway is 1K+ miles long, and the US built in some 9 months 1942, because they were worried about the Japanese occupying Alaska. (Something to remember when its announced by your local government that it'll take 10 years to build 10 miles of road. )

I might be willing to concede that during the 1960s perhaps that the U.S. had some Genie AAMs mounted on interceptors in Alaska. And perhaps some bomber carried nuclear weapons now and then.

But if you're claiming the U.S. actually had some medium or long range nuclear missiles ever deployed in Alaska, I would need to see some proof.

They had 24 drop bombs in Alaska in the 90s.

NIKE HERCULES.

And it wouldn't be "now and then" that a nuke equipped bomber would be in Alaska. It would be all the time, because of how close Alaska is to the USSR.

Nike Hercules were nuclear capable SAMs.

Are they even capable of hitting surface targets deliberately? And if deployed in Alaska, could they reach any actual target in the Soviet Union?

By your information at the site, the Nike Hercules had ranges of 88 miles.

Which given their deployment at Anchorage and Fairbanks would make them completely INCAPABLE of reaching Soviet territory, territorial waters or air space.

Really? Which nuclear bombers were deployed in Alaska "all the time"?

B-47s? B-52s? B-58s? B-36s?

There's this thing called "Wikipedia," you should check it out some time.

(bolding mine) The missile had an official range of 90 miles for intercept, it no doubt was longer than that, and longer still if being used as a surface to surface missile. The USSR and Alaska are considerably less than 90 miles apart, so it could certainly hit targets in the USSR, and the psychological impact of having a nuke hit even a remote yak herding village in some godforsaken armpit of the Soviet Union would be pretty powerful. I'm sure if the Soviets had nuked Davenport, Iowa, we'd still retaliate, even though there ain't dick there.

All of them. If you do actual research on the subject, you'll find that all of those aircraft, operated by a number of different air wings have been operated out of Alaska since 1948. Here's wiki's entry on B-52 units., if you scroll down, you'll see several different units were deployed to Alaska over the years. I'm not going to waste my time looking for the others. No, it doesn't specifically say that they had nukes, but only a fool would believe that they didn't have them there. The US Navy certainly carries nukes, and they travel all over the world. Both Soviet and American subs came within a few miles of their opponents countries, and neither of us launched. The Soviets (and hell, the Russians today) did numerous bomber flights into US airspace (and the US sent spy planes over the USSR), but neither of us went to war with one another.

Fine Tuckerfan, believe what you want.

If you want to believe that a missile with a 90 mile range can fly several hundred miles then more power to you.

No amount of wishful thinking on your part will move Fairbanks and/or Anchorage closer to Soviet territory.

You do know that the exact locations of the missile batteries is classified, don't you? And that any statements by the US government as to where they're located must be taken with a grain of salt? We're talking about a government which refuses to declassify battle plans from WWII, and denies that Area-51 exists, even though everybody on the goddamned planet has probably heard of it at this point. To think that Fairbanks and Anchorage are the only places in Alaska where the US might have nuclear missiles is to be woefully naive of how your own fucking government operates.

Do you even know that your own state has had nuclear missiles in it? We've stationed nuclear missiles in much of Europe, and every time a US Navy fleet docks at a foreign port, there's a high probability of nuclear weapons being onboard some of the ships.

Us putting nukes in Alaska is no different than us putting nukes in Europe or having a ballistic missile sub in Japan (where they do occasionally make a port of call).

Of course, I remember when one of the Titans blew up in its silo in 1980 IIRC. Killed two people.

I'm just going by the information you helpfully provided in your link. If you did not believe it accurate you should've said so.

And regarding nuclear missles, ICBMs for most of the Cold War were the most important nuclear missiles known to man.

Yet in the U.S. their precise locations down to the centimeter were (and are) a very well known public fact.

Yes, the US government is going to announce the exact locations of its ICBM facilities, because there's absolutely no way on Earth that the Soviets would ever use this information to target US facilities.

If you need to be told that US figures relating to anything dealing with its military capabilities should be considered suspect, then you're more inept than I thought humanly possible.

Tuckerfan, you got me wondering just how close I might have been living to some of the Nike sites. Turns out one of the bases for the New York Defense Area was Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island. From 1971-79 I lived in the first house outside the gate -!

There were also fake houses on the East Coast (West Coast as well, I'm sure), which were missile batteries. They were said to be scattered all over the country and supposedly one in the 50s/60s in Michigan launched by mistake.

I served with a senior NCO who started out as a Nike crewman in the late 60s/early 70s. IIRC, he was stationed in New York at one point.

Their bitching would be more than justified. And this is grounds for war.

Since when as the West Bank been considered a country?

Prove it.

In case you didn't know it, the U.S. isn't Russia or China.

Not that it has a bearing on Israels right to steal land, but Palestine is recognised as a state by most of the world.

You're an absolute moron, and your "knowledge" of anything military is a complete joke.

I'm basing my response on Tuckerfan's own linked information.