So, about three miles from the childhood domain resides a Nike air defense missile base.
A place I often meander with the Shiba Inu.
I always had the general gist of what the place entailed but today I strolled across a vet who was actually stationed there. And he mentioned how it was public knowledge it went from 20 Ajax conventional explosive air defense missiles to 12 Hercules nuclear warhead missiles.
The Hercules carried 3 different warheads of 3, 20, and 30 kilotons.
So, I'm thinking, ok, 240 kilotons just a few miles away and a 100 foot ridge in between.
Worst case, enemy ICBM successfully air bursts and well I'm bacon.
Best case, accidental unfortunate accident and I've got a few minutes.
See here's the thing that buggers me, I always thought of the "missile thingy" being out in Montana and Wyoming and the sparse spaces.
NEVER crossed my mind anything between 36 and 360 kilotons was right under my ass....
I just want to acknowledge your sentiments here. The "Like" button seemed inappropriate.
Scott,
A hundred 120 miles east of you, I don't know how many kiloton tons were under my ass. To start they built a BOMAC missile base here. By the time the base was operational the missiles were obsolete. The Feds sold the base to the County. What the county did with the base is a whole other thread.
A mile east of the BOMAC base is now Gabreski Airport (turned over to the County), formerly known as Suffolk County Air Force Base. The Base was a fighter interceptor base during the Cold War. The Base was built in 1943 as a pilot training base. As the Cold War started the runways were extended to 10,000 ft plus. As a kid I saw B-52's taking off from the Base. Air shows not that long ago I saw C5a' s landing there. That being said the County cannot rent several of the bunkers on the Base because they are "HOT". The County does rent some bunkers that are at acceptable level of "HOT".
Floyd
If you're really into creepy cold war stuff, check out Operation Plumb Bob to read up on all the nuclear bs that went on out west back then...
One of our camps we surveyed is a Nike radar installation which was part of the air defense ring around Travis AFB.
How many trillions of dollars did they waste on the Nike mssile installations only to abandon them within a few years?
Wasted billions??? Really. The Nike was cutting edge for its time. It was for YOUR defense.
Perhaps you do not understand how fluid the situation was back then. How fast technology was running during those years. Look at the time span between Kitty Hawk and a man on the moon.
What is the "appropriate " cost for the defense of our nation and its people? Nothing?
More was put into YOUR defense than money. Many of us gave a large portion of our life to that effort. Christmas in holes in the ground. Not seeing family for LONG period of time.. The things an all volunteer force sacrificed for YOU. Was that a waste too??
These unthoughtout comments make me want to puke.
I suppose what all the soldiers should do is resign and open up prayer rug stores and leave you to all your own defense, seeing as how YOU couls do SO MUCH of a better job at it.
The essence of being a citizen of a free country, and a taxpayer is the right and duty to question things the government does.
Every question is not a personal attack on you.
When a very expensive program produces something with a short life span, it raises the possibility that it was wasteful. The part of your reply
cptdent, post: 348856, member: 527 wrote: How fast technology was running during those years.
could be an answer to that, if developed further.
I saw no attack on the service personnel or the overall defense mission in his post.
Dave Karoly, post: 348867, member: 94 wrote: The essence of being a citizen of a free country, and a taxpayer is the right and duty to question things the government does.
Every question is not a personal attack on you.
I did not taker it as a personal attack, but rather, an uninformed opinion, or at least one not well thought out. What was the purpose of the Nike ? What was the purpose of the base they surrounded? Didn't those tools succeede in doing what was required. They sure did.
Yeah, the Air Force has spent some dumb money on toilets, etc., but overall, the fact that this conversation is being conducted in English rather than Russian is a direct result of some of that "wasteful spending".
It's just that I am so tired of PC buzzwords and slogans with out verification.
Oh, too, the entire Nike program did not cost "trillions of dollars".
Many say the A-10 is outdated and needs to be replaced by other aircraft. I'll tell you this fact; when your mission involves being surrounded by rubber bladders containing 5,000,000 gallons of various fuel products, there is nothing more beautiful than an orbiting Wart Hog. An f-16 or F-18 cannot perform that mission. They don't do "low and slow" very well at all.
Bottom line, think long and hard before complaining about "waste" in areas that you know nothing about. There are just too many other targets. Consider the fact that the reason those weapons went away was because we had developed newer thing and no longer needed the old technology. The abandoned ICBM silos, Guess what. The wall came down. We won. For a little while at least.
