Economic Targeting in Modern Warfare,

Abstract

Nuclear weapons and strategies for their use play a variety of roles in the defense and foreign policies of the United States and Soviet Union. Accordingly, both nations buy forces and prepare war plans for many purposes. Although it is perhaps the least likely contingency for which either country prepares, the scenario in which both sides launch more or less all-out attacks against their opponent's economic or urban-industrial target system often dominates public consideration of strategic policy issues. These kinds of strikes, generically termed countervalue attacks, are usually assumed to throw many thousands of nuclear weapons against cities and isolated facilities in order to destroy the adversary nation as an organized, functioning, and economically viable entity.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 01, 1982
Accession Number
ADA122857

Entities

People

  • Benjamin S. Lambeth
  • Kevin N. Lewis

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Counter WMD
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aerial Warfare
  • Air Force
  • Air Power
  • Bombing
  • Combat Areas
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Fusion Weapons
  • Military Organizations
  • Military Science
  • National Security
  • Nuclear Bombs
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Second World War
  • United States
  • Urban Areas
  • Warfare
  • Weapons Effects

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Economics
  • Game Theory.