Talk:Operation Dropshot

Military history: North America / United States

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Leaving aside

Leaving aside the rather dubious claim attributed to the UK Parliament, which have no bearing on the subject of the Dropshot war plan and whose inclusion smacks of POV, I think the best examination of the Dropshot war plan can be found here:

http://www.johnreilly.info/ww3.htm

I am linking to it, but of course the work belongs to its author.

If his analysis is correct, incidentally, Dropshot was a general global war plan, not necessarily nuclear. When it was created, the nuclear arsenals on each side were a miniscule fraction of the sizes they reached in the 1970s. Significantly, one of Dropshot's fundamental assumptions is that nuclear weapons cannot be decisive in and of themselves. Given the assumptions at the time it was written, during the Korean War or thereabouts, this seems reasonable. Dropshot was written with the assumption that the only way to get a nuclear weapon, probably yielding 50 kilotons or less, to its target, was to put one or two of them on a propeller-driven B29 or B36 bomber and hope it reached its target without getting shot down.

possible defensive

It is defensive or offensive plan?--Jaro.p 16:34, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That seems unclear. No First Use was not official until Kennedy. Maury (talk) 16:52, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Base on the plan, it seems to be defensive.

BASIC ASSUMPTION
On or about 1 January 1957, war against the USSR has been forced upon the United States 
by an act of aggression of the USSR and/or her satellites.

Jskn65 (talk) 00:40, 22 October 2009 (UTC) Jskn65 (talk)[reply]