[BC] Usefulness of EAS

[Rob Landry]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2012, Alan Peterson wrote:

> I wasn't in radio when CONELRAD was a valid and active process, but it 
> always seemed to me that, even in the days of small thermonuke weapons, 
> an incoming missile could just latch on to *one* of the 640s or 1240s 
> before the frequency rotated locations, say to itself "close enough!", 
> and still manage to toast everything in a five-mile radius. Even a 
> confused missile will faw down and go boom.

I suspect the creators of Conelrad had manned bombers in mind (and 
particularly the British experience in 1940-41), not missiles.

ICBM's came along only in 1957, and they weren't an effective threat for 
some years later, as the first generation, such as the R-7 and Atlas, used 
cryogenic liquid propellants and therefore needed a day or more to prepare 
for launch, during which they were easy air-raid targets.

I read that one of the reasons Sputnik was such a great propaganda coup 
was that it convinced the Americans that the Soviets had an operational 
ICBM even though they hadn't yet figured out how to keep their warheads 
from burning up on re-entry.

Rob