There feel to me like two relevant questions here, which seem conflated in this analysis:
1) At what point did the USSR gain the ability to launch a comprehensively-destructive, undetectable-in-advance nuclear strike on the US? That is, at what point would a first strike have been achievable and effective?
2) At what point did the USSR gain the ability to launch such a first strike usingICBMs in particular?
By 1960 the USSR had 1,605 nuclear warheads; there may have been few ICBMs among them, but there are other ways to deliver warheads than shooting them across continents. Planes fail the “undetectable” criteria, but ocean-adjacent cities can be blown up by small boats, and by 1960 the USSR had submarines equipped with six “short”-range (650 km and 1,300 km) ballistic missiles. By 1967 they were producing subs like this, each of which was armed with 16 missiles with ranges of 2,800-4,600 km.
All of which is to say that from what I understand, RAND’s fears were only a few years premature.
There feel to me like two relevant questions here, which seem conflated in this analysis:
1) At what point did the USSR gain the ability to launch a comprehensively-destructive, undetectable-in-advance nuclear strike on the US? That is, at what point would a first strike have been achievable and effective?
2) At what point did the USSR gain the ability to launch such a first strike using ICBMs in particular?
By 1960 the USSR had 1,605 nuclear warheads; there may have been few ICBMs among them, but there are other ways to deliver warheads than shooting them across continents. Planes fail the “undetectable” criteria, but ocean-adjacent cities can be blown up by small boats, and by 1960 the USSR had submarines equipped with six “short”-range (650 km and 1,300 km) ballistic missiles. By 1967 they were producing subs like this, each of which was armed with 16 missiles with ranges of 2,800-4,600 km.
All of which is to say that from what I understand, RAND’s fears were only a few years premature.