The Pentagon's 1949 war plan against the Soviet Union ended with American troops in Moscow.

The Pentagon's 1949 war plan against the Soviet Union ended with American troops in Moscow.

Operation Dropshot, approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on December 19, 1949, called for 300 atomic bombs on 100 Soviet cities, followed by a ground invasion. The USSR would then be split into four occupation zones, with two US divisions in Moscow and one each in Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Murmansk, Gorky and Kuibyshev.

The plans had grown fast. In November 1945, three months after the war ended, US intelligence picked about 20 Soviet cities for atomic strikes. In January 1949, the Trojan plan targeted 70 cities with 133 bombs. Eleven months later, Dropshot needed 300 bombs.

The math changed in August 1949, when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. By 1957, the year Dropshot expected war, the USSR had the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. Dropshot stayed on paper.

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