Note that military installations (launch control rooms and bunkers for leadership) goes 800 meters below Kremlin, and in case of war they could be reached only by many megaton class explosions. Moscow has around 20 million people now.
Other large Russian cities may also have military targets inside city walls—exactly because there is hope that cities will be not attacked.
I do find the destruction of capital cities from “decapitation strikes” especially worrying, for three reasons.
1) they disrupt NC3 systems
II) they remove the highest levels of leadership and thus make command hierarchies less clear to both sides
III) as you note, they involve the destruction of cities. I would be very surprised if a US—Russia nuclear war broke out without Washington DC and Moscow being hit with multiple nuclear weapons.
The question becomes—can the destruction of most cities be avoided even with a few being destroyed? It seems unclear. Airports are another very problematic target, as they’re always located near cities and provide backup runaways to military aircraft. Huge fallout problem for cities.
Note that military installations (launch control rooms and bunkers for leadership) goes 800 meters below Kremlin, and in case of war they could be reached only by many megaton class explosions. Moscow has around 20 million people now.
Other large Russian cities may also have military targets inside city walls—exactly because there is hope that cities will be not attacked.
I do find the destruction of capital cities from “decapitation strikes” especially worrying, for three reasons.
1) they disrupt NC3 systems
II) they remove the highest levels of leadership and thus make command hierarchies less clear to both sides
III) as you note, they involve the destruction of cities. I would be very surprised if a US—Russia nuclear war broke out without Washington DC and Moscow being hit with multiple nuclear weapons.
The question becomes—can the destruction of most cities be avoided even with a few being destroyed? It seems unclear. Airports are another very problematic target, as they’re always located near cities and provide backup runaways to military aircraft. Huge fallout problem for cities.
Agree. Also some cities have military ports, like San Diego.