Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
...the fact that they are are targeting areas not normally targeted (I have real doubts any Australian facility was ever targeted for real during the Cold War with the exception of one or two major cities)
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Why would they not be targeted during the cold war? It's not like they had a shortage of warheads. My guess is the US probably targeted us as well, just for the practise and just in case a decade down the track we switched sides for some reason - not like the US were short of missiles either, and targeting doesn't automatically mean launching.
Even a near miss though would inflict terrifying casualties on the population. Australian cities aren't as condensed as those elsewhere in the world. You can drive along a highway for an hour in some cases and still be in the same city. Given the range the Soviets would have to deal with, it's likely they'd have used ICBMs too with their correspondingly larger potential payload and therefore theoretically larger blast radius.
Outside of Europe and North America, Australia is one of the most developed countries on the planet (technologically and economically). It simply makes no sense for the Soviets
not to attack.
As for recon of the damage, isn't that what satellites are for? No need to fly a plane all this way just to take a few photos.