Anyone have a copy? Looking for the NY, CT, VT, PA, NH aimpoints. Have the other pages and have converted it all to Excel/csv (and shapefiles). Recreated those states using the FEMA maps, but NY and PA are particularly messy around NYC & Philly.
It is extremely difficult to predict what an enemy might target. Ten different experts will each have a completely different list of what each of them thinks is a high-value target, and there is no guarantee that any of those 'experts' will have the same priorities as the committee who actually set the targets. Some will want to predict that all military bases get targeted. Some will predict that all political administrative centers will be targeted. Hydroelectric dams? Railway yards. River crossings. My career included daily loading target packages into MRVs. Many of those targets made no sense to the crewmen that I served with. If you surveyed 100 'experts' you would get 100 different lists, with very few repeats among those lists. Everyone wants to think that his backyard chicken coop [or state capital, or harbor, or lumberyard] holds some special strategic value. If all the maps on this subject were all compared there would not be a single acre of land anywhere in the USA left untargeted. Americans think differently than how Russians think, and Chinese think completely different too. There is no way to accurately guess these targets. Lets say that you come up with your private list of 1,000 targets. But the opponent is only able to launch 100 nukes. Which of your supposed 1,000 targets will get a nuke? I have seen this argued many times, including back when I was servicing Polaris, Poseidon, and Trident missiles. Crews that I served with would often spend weeks in debates. It was pointless.
you mean the old Nuclear Attack Planning Base thing from the 1990s? last i saw if the "insert evil country here" decided to nuke michigan, yeah i was gonna take a direct hit at primary, secondary and tertiary AOs so i figured .. not gonna worry about a nuke attack, ain't gonna survive anyway, i'll worry about things i can control. And nukes ain't one of them.
To clear, I'm not looking at it for contingency planning purposes - for modern day, OPEN-RISOP is much better for that with much finer grain of detail and specificity. Looking for it for purely historic purposes - I know it's pretty esoteric, but I figure someone out there has a copy they managed to purloin/photocopy from an inter-library loan.
It's important to at the very least understand and be informed of which military bases in your AO are full bases with armaments, or if they are just admin centers and training facilities. It's also good to know which bases have deep underground facilities and storage. Here's some detailed information on just one: Raven Rock Inside Raven Rock Mountain Complex, Biden's Bunker in Face of Nuclear War
Unfortunately, that's the report, not the Aimpoint list. This is the NAPB-90 aimpoint list (but, as mentioned in the OP, I'm missing NY, CT, VT, PA, NH):
I remember when the US Military would publish those maps of targets, they had every courthouse, post office, dam, bridge, etc., marked for destruction and all of the congressmen would catch hell if they didn't vote for increased defense spending. I recall that our corner of northwest Alabama was "targeted" because we had courthouses, government offices, TVA dam, river bridge, National Guard/Reserve Armory, college (with ROTC program), airport, industry, river port, etc.! WE WERE DEAD! Actually, the worse we might expect around here is fall-out several days after an attack on missile and bomber bases west and northwest of us! TARGETS are population centers, military bases with offensive capabilities, ports, Washington D.C., etc., sorry but your little town in Kansas with a grain elevator and located beside a railroad isn't a target...it's just not nuke worthy!
I think the assumption was that the Russians did the same thing we did, which was classify every damn they could classify into a target database, and then prioritize designated ground zeros based criticality to either nuclear or conventional war fighting, or war fighting sustainment or recovery. So while technically, yes, a grain elevator or a community college in the middle of nowhere might land in the target database, it wouldn't rate a ground zero and a warhead allocation. But yeah, it was funny back in the day that everyone thought their city would be "first on the list" because of some reason.
BTW, E.L. on this board has or had the list, but he's been inactive since 2021. Was hoping someone on here managed to get it from him or E.L. was still lurking. U.S. Target List...in a Full Scale Nuclear War
Who the hell would nuke Caddo Lake in Texas? I mean, there ain't shit there but two shady bars, a pretty good fish restaurant, and a swamp full of gators for miles.
