Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
So an attack on the storage sites - which of course the KGB knew exactly where they were - could have taken out the nukes allocated to the Turks before they ever had a chance to get them out of the bunkers. Especially if they had compromised US or NATO communications and got a heads up for the release request and hit them before the President could respond.
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In the case of the gravity bombs, taking out the storage site might not do the job. Toward the end of the Cold War, NATO was starting to move away from keeping the gravity bombs in central storage areas and toward storage in vaults built into the floors of individual HAS. The idea was to shorten the reaction/load time by eliminating the weapons convoys from the WSA to the individual HAS/QRA pad.
Which isn't to say that you can't take out each individual HAS, but they are often more numerous and more spread out than storage igloos. And I believe it would require simultaneously hitting at least five Turkish air bases.
All the above assumes a conventional attack. If we're talking nukes, well that's different.