[HN Gopher] United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; res...
___________________________________________________________________
United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear
transparency
Author : philipkglass
Score : 171 points
Date : 2024-07-22 22:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fas.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (fas.org)
| FredPret wrote:
| Max warheads = 31k
|
| Current warheads = 3.7k
|
| I wonder how long a nuke in storage lasts - ie, how much work
| does it take to maintain a stockpile of x nukes, and if you can
| turn those swords into ploughshares relatively easily.
| nulltxt wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2OUzBrLEFk is a interesting
| video about the transport of these weapons
| mikewarot wrote:
| Plutonium pits slowly transmute, and the emitted alpha
| particles are trapped and form helium bubbles. They have to be
| replaced periodically.
| wdh505 wrote:
| I think the tritium "preignition" has to be replaced every 10
| years.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| > how long a nuke in storage lasts
|
| Decades, certainly. All but the first few generations of bombs
| were designed for long periods of storage.
|
| Notably, many of the TOP500 supercomputers were built with the
| singular goal of simulating the ageing of nuclear weapons in
| storage.
|
| If a supercomputer is owned by the DoE or SANDIA, then that's
| what it is for.
|
| > turn those swords into ploughshares relatively easily.
|
| Yes! Cold-war era warheads from both the Soviet Union and the
| US have been used as nuclear fuel. A notable one was the
| Megatons to Megawatts program:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program
|
| The plutonium in bombs is essentially "super high grade"
| reactor fuel. Even degraded after decades in storage it is
| still far, _far_ better than what is typically used. It just
| needs to be converted into the MOX (metal oxide) fuel pellets
| and then used in a reactor, pretty much as-is.
| dekhn wrote:
| While many supercomputers were funded by stockpile
| stewardship, the goal was to produce high performance
| computers capable of a wide range of simulation needs.
|
| One good example would be NERSC at LBL- it's unclassified
| research only, and their series of supercomputers were never
| intended to simulate ageing nuclear weapons.
|
| Hard to say exactly what goes on in the classified
| supercomputers, but they certainly weren't spending much of
| their time simulating aging nuclear weapons- that was the
| _ostensible_ reason.
| philipkglass wrote:
| It takes quite a bit of work to maintain nuclear warheads. All
| active US weapons contain plutonium 239, which has a half life
| of 24,100 years. It's radioactive by alpha decay, which leads
| to changes in the material properties due to energetic
| collisions and the buildup of microscopic helium bubbles (alpha
| particles are merely ionized helium nuclei, so stopped alpha
| particles become helium). Since the US stopped testing actual
| nuclear warheads in the early 1990s, it takes a great deal of
| indirect theoretical and experimental evidence to make sure
| that nuclear warheads are reliable without live fire tests.
| That's part of "stockpile stewardship." [1] If the plutonium
| has deviated too far from its original mechanical behavior, it
| would need to be removed from warheads, purified, and
| remanufactured into replacements that match the original specs.
| And again, the rebuilt components need to be reliable but they
| can't actually be tested via explosion.
|
| US weapons also rely on tritium gas "boosting" to operate
| reliably and efficiently [2], and tritium decays with only a
| 12.3 year half life. The gas reservoirs of weapons need their
| tritium replaced at significantly shorter intervals. Even
| _manufacturing_ enough tritium to maintain the stockpile has
| become a challenge because the US has retired its Cold War era
| weapons-material reactors that used to operate at Hanford and
| Savannah River. Currently the US uses a power reactor owned by
| the Tennessee Valley Authority to make tritium for weapons [3].
|
| It's possible to make nuclear weapons (even thermonuclear
| weapons) with only uranium 235 for fissile material and no
| stored tritium. Such weapons could last a much longer time
| without active maintenance, since U-235 decays thousands of
| times slower than Pu-239. However, they would be larger and
| heavier for the same explosive yield, which complicates
| delivery. They would also lose certain safety features.
| Finally, without being able to perform full scale tests, it is
| doubtful that the US would have the confidence to replace its
| current high-maintenance weapons stockpile with a new
| generation of low-maintenance weapons.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockpile_stewardship
|
| [2]
| https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-3.html#Nfaq4.3....
|
| [3] https://www.wvlt.tv/2022/05/24/watts-bar-lone-source-
| nuclear... "Watts Bar lone source of a nuclear weapon material;
| TVA increasing production"
| Loughla wrote:
| How do you know all this? Is that a hobby or a job?
| philipkglass wrote:
| It's a hobby. I read a lot and I have enough formal
| education to digest primary sources (mostly; my highest
| qualification is auditing a neutronics course while in grad
| school).
|
| If you too would like to know way more about nuclear
| weapons than is useful in civilian life, I'd recommend
| reading:
|
| Richard Rhodes, _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_
|
| The nuclear weapons FAQ, authored by Carey Sublette, a
| hobbyist researcher who is extraordinarily dedicated to
| understanding nuclear weapons from declassified documents
| and physical principles:
| https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq0.html
|
| Anne C. Fitzpatrick's dissertation _Igniting the Light
| Elements: The Los Alamos Thermonuclear Weapon Project,
| 1942-1952_ : https://www.osti.gov/biblio/10596
|
| The Arms Control Wonk blog/podcast:
| https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/
|
| Nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein's blog Restricted Data:
| https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/
|
| The nuclear weapons subreddit, particularly posts on it
| authored by Alex Wellerstein, Carey Sublette, and a few
| others whose names currently escape me:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/nuclearweapons/
|
| Chuck Hansen's book "U.S Nuclear Weapons: The Secret
| History" (out of print, sadly; will have to pay $$$ or find
| a scanned pirate copy) and his massive book/PDF "The Swords
| of Armageddon" available for purchase here:
| http://www.uscoldwar.com/
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Let me add "Inventing Accuracy" to your list of
| recommended reading. It's fascinating, and it's a
| powerful microscope to reveal the relationship between
| strategic need and technological development
|
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262631471/inventing-
| accuracy/
| bamboozled wrote:
| I really wonder what the state of Russia's nuclear arsenal is
| like then? Better or worse? Maybe that still have a lot of
| the old Nuclear power stations running to better supply the
| materials to maintain their warheads ?
| danielodievich wrote:
| This is a frequent topic of discussion in various forums
| and I am sure by Very Serious People in Charge [TM].
|
| Extrapolating from the general sad state of the weapon
| systems in use by Russians where they are at this point
| unpacking tanks made in 1950, the quality of maintenance on
| their vehicles, and is difficult to plausibly claim that
| all the ancient rusty USSR stuff across the strategic
| rocket barrier is in any sort of usable shape.
|
| Now, if an order to launch is given, some rockets may
| launch, some of those may actually fly, some of those
| flying actually get somewhere, and perhaps some of THOSE
| may actually detonate should they reach the target, and
| maybe if you're lucky at the designed yield. The
| percentages in that funnel that aren't known. And nobody
| [perhaps except some crazies] wants to find them out
| because even one in the middle of big city is enough.
| hollerith wrote:
| >difficult to plausibly claim that all the ancient rusty
| USSR stuff across the strategic rocket barrier is in any
| sort of usable shape.
|
| There is no more ancient rusty USSR stuff -- at least in
| the Kremlin's _strategic_ nuclear arsenal:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41041532
| bamboozled wrote:
| Without evidence, that comment is an opinion piece.
| Hopefully we never have to find out.
| hollerith wrote:
| Could it be that the source of your skepticism is the
| fact that you have over the last 2 years seen many
| comments here on HN asserting that Russia's military is
| probably incapable of maintaining an effective strategic
| nuclear capability whereas my comment is the first one
| you've seen that takes the opposite position?
|
| According to one comment I saw here a few weeks ago,
| Russia's nukes are probably made of wood.
|
| I suggest searching the web for "Russian nuclear weapons
| modernization", restricting yourself to credible news
| outlets.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Still feels like an opinion, as the other commenter said,
| look at the state of their equipment when going against
| Ukraine, there is little indication their nukes or their
| silos, bombers are much better except your opinion.
|
| Opinions are fine, but the evidence against your opinion
| is currently stronger.
| hollerith wrote:
| When credible news organizations repeat Russian claims
| that they've completed a modernization of their strategic
| nukes then years and years go by with no expert or
| credible source (that I have noticed) contradicting the
| Russian claims, that is evidence. Who besides the Russian
| military might know about the state of Russia's
| stockpile? Spies for one. And until 2022 US nuke experts
| regularly inspected all Russian strategic nuclear sites
| per the START 3 treaty. They probably weren't able to
| disassemble any warheads as part of their inspections,
| but there's a lot you can learn merely by, e.g.,
| measuring the gamma rays produced by the warhead.
|
| Also, you do realize that Russia is currently winning in
| Ukraine -- in part because they have an equipment
| advantage over Ukraine? E.g., the glide bombs they
| recently developed have proven effective.
| racional wrote:
| _Also, you do realize that Russia is currently winning in
| Ukraine_
|
| They are not "currently winning". By any objective
| measure, the war on the ground is currently a stalement.
|
| Only problem is that in the long term -- stalemates never
| work out for the occupiers.
|
| In Russia's case: If the situation continues as it does,
| and moving at the glacial pace that it does, and draining
| 10 percent of its GDP every year -- they will ultimately
| have to give up on their optional neocolonial adventure,
| pick up their toys and go home.
| GJim wrote:
| > I really wonder what the state of Russia's nuclear
| arsenal is like then?
|
| Does it matter?
|
| The thing about a nuclear *deterrent* is that it doesn't
| have to work. There just has to be a realistic possibility
| that (at least some of it) it might.
| openasocket wrote:
| I think it's shorter than you would imagine. I recall an
| episode of the podcast Arms Control Wonk talking about the
| nukes in possession of Ukraine during the collapse of the
| Soviet Union. Professor Lewis stated that those warheads likely
| had a service life of 5-10 years. But that may be specific to
| those Soviet warheads, and I think that different components
| need to be replaced at different intervals.
| jmyeet wrote:
| So this varies depending on what kind of nuclear weapon is and
| the delivery system.
|
| The major deterrant is the LGM-30G Minuteman III [1]. Most of
| our rockets use liquid propellants. Since the alert window is
| under 10 minutes, you can't keep a liquid-fuelled rocket
| permanently fueled so the Minuteman was developed as a solid
| rocket fuel booster.
|
| There's a whole team responsible for maintaining the boosters
| and warheads of this first line of defense [2].
|
| But there are a variety of other systems. Some dropped by
| strategic bombers, others on mobile launchers, shorter range
| missiles deployed in Europe (eg MRBMs in Turkey), nuclear
| weapons deployed on submarines and so on. Also you have a mix
| of types. AFAIK the US was moved away from highly-enriched
| uranium weapons in favor of plutonium. Or at least, HEU
| reactors have shut down. Maybe there's a sufficient stockpile?
| Also, a lot of these weapons will be thernonuclear so you have
| to worry about the production and storage of tritium. IIRC a
| lot of tritium is a byproduct of plutonium production.
|
| Maintaining a significant nuclear arsenal is actually really
| complex and expensive.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman
|
| [2]: https://minutemanmissile.com/missilemaintenance.html
| lmm wrote:
| > Since the alert window is under 10 minutes, you can't keep
| a liquid-fuelled rocket permanently fueled so the Minuteman
| was developed as a solid rocket fuel booster.
|
| Huh? The Titan II was developed to do precisely that and
| worked that way for decades, they were liquid-fuelled and
| kept fuelled in their silos.
| openasocket wrote:
| Liquid propellants are generally less stable than solid
| fuel. I had read in multiple places (from reputable
| sources) that you generally couldn't keep liquid missiles
| permanently fueled like that. The propellants are extremely
| corrosive and dangerous.
|
| But you are right that the Titan II is liquid fueled and
| was kept permanently fueled in the silo. I'm not entirely
| sure how to resolve those two facts. The Wikipedia page
| about the Titan II does mention multiple accidents and
| fatalities related to propellant leaks, so I'm guessing
| that they were just more risky to operate?
| silverquiet wrote:
| There was an incident where a technician dropped a large
| socket down a silo that impacted the side of a Titan
| missile and set off a chain of events that ended in an
| explosion that nearly detonated a nuclear bomb on US
| soil.
| sillywalk wrote:
| The Damascus Incident[0]. There's a book called Command
| and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and
| the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser that details the
| incident, and a PBS based on the book about it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_mis
| sile_ex...
| knappe wrote:
| I was hoping this book would be a recommended. It really,
| really focused, reinforced is really not the right word
| to use here, my views on nuclear weapons.
|
| This should be required reading.
| mr_toad wrote:
| The main problem with traditional liquid fuelled rockets
| is keeping the propellant cold. It's not feasible to keep
| a rocket with liquid oxygen fuelled for long periods. The
| Titan missiles use hypergolic fuel which is more
| storable, but also extremely toxic and volatile. More
| than 50 people have been killed in accidents involving
| this rocket.
| justin66 wrote:
| It helps if you think of liquid-fueled rockets relying on
| cryogenics as something entirely different than those
| using hypergolics. Cryogenics can't sit there for a long
| time but hypergolics can.
| sitharus wrote:
| > you can't keep a liquid-fuelled rocket permanently fueled
| so the Minuteman was developed as a solid rocket fuel
| booster.
|
| You absolutely can! The Soviet doctrine was to use storable
| liquid propellants in their ICBMs - typically unsymmetrical
| dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) as the fuel and nitrogen tetroxide
| as the oxidiser. I don't know if they need the fuel/oxidiser
| replaced periodically but that combination is storable for
| over a decade.
|
| The US went with solid rockets as they are more reliable - no
| turbines or valves etc - at the expense of performance, but
| the US perfected making large solid rockets before the USSR.
| The USSR however perfected oxidiser-rich staged combustion
| which extracted a lot more performance.
|
| Storable liquid propellants are still used on satellites and
| deep space missions that need to perform large course
| corrections during their missions.
| sillywalk wrote:
| Forgive me if you meant all of your comment historically.
|
| > Most of our rockets use liquid propellants.
|
| Which ones? As far as I know the US only has solid fuel
| nuclear armed missiles. The Minuteman and the Trident.
|
| > others on mobile launchers, shorter range missiles deployed
| in Europe (eg MRBMs in Turkey),
|
| The US only has aircraft dropped bombs in Europe. The US
| retired their nuclear capable rockets and cruise missiles
| under the INF treaty in 1988. They retired their nuclear
| artillery etc at the end of the Cold War.
|
| The (liquid fuelled) Jupiter missiles were removed from
| Turkey in 1962 after the Cuban missile crisis, in exchange
| for the USSR removing their nukes from Cuba, though there are
| still US nukes in Turkey.
|
| > Also, a lot of these weapons will be thernonuclear
|
| All of them are.
| hollerith wrote:
| >I wonder how long a nuke in storage lasts
|
| Russia's nuclear stockpile -- at least the strategic warheads
| -- have all been built anew since the end of the Cold War. The
| US is also modernizing its stockpile in the same way, but it
| has not finished yet.
|
| "built anew": made with all new components except that the
| fissile material is recycled from an old Cold-War-era warhead.
| (They probably re-cast and re-machine the fissile material.)
|
| The reader might be asking, How can Russia, a poor country,
| afford that? Well, nukes aren't that expensive once you have
| the fissile material and the design and manufacturing expertise
| and infrastructure. The pay for the soldiers to guard the nukes
| and constantly be on the ready to launch them is more
| expensive, according to one report I saw recently (and Russia
| has low personnel costs).
| pythonguython wrote:
| Hans has always been the guy keeping count. Just about anytime
| you hear someone cite the US stockpile count, it's his number.
| Truly impressive how accurate he is able to be with no special
| accesses. Only 40 off.
| wahern wrote:
| The data had already been declassified up to 2020, so they only
| needed to estimate changes over the past 3-4 years:
|
| > Between 2010 and 2018, the US government publicly disclosed
| the size of the nuclear weapons stockpile; however, in 2019 and
| 2020, the Trump administration rejected requests from the
| Federation of American Scientists to declassify the latest
| stockpile numbers (Aftergood 2019; Kristensen 2019a, 2020b). In
| 2021, the Biden administration restored the United States'
| previous transparency levels by declassifying both numbers for
| the entire history of the US nuclear arsenal until September
| 2020--including the missing years of the Trump administration.
|
| Source:
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2024.2...
| pythonguython wrote:
| I was unaware they published in the 2010s. Worth noting Hans
| was counting even before then
| transcriptase wrote:
| Every time I've seen nuclear stockpiles and the reduction thereof
| discussed, I've wondered: Assuming for some reason the United
| States needed to ramp back up to an absurd number of warheads
| (ignore the MAD/political practicalities), how quickly could they
| do so? What's the lead time or rate limiting factors in
| production?
|
| Because if they could start churning out a dozen or a hundred a
| week within a short period of time, why does the standing arsenal
| really matter? Does it really make a difference in global safety
| or geopolitics? I don't know the first thing about the topic so
| this is all genuine curiosity, and I feel like the googling
| required to get an answer would put me on lists I don't really
| feel like being on.
| skellington wrote:
| There is no form of full scale nuclear war where the production
| apparatus for anything becomes a factor.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _no form of full scale nuclear war where the production
| apparatus for anything becomes a factor_
|
| Where full nuclear war means a full exchange of strategic
| fire, yes. For tactical nukes or bombardment of a non-
| retaliating state, less so.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| It's not clear there's any such thing as "tactical nukes"
| given that they're strategically useless, and it's actually
| not even clear there's such a thing as nuclear exchange
| that _isn 't_ full scale war. At least as told by Ellsberg
| in the Doomsday Machine, there was literally no _mechanism_
| for the US to launch a partial nuclear attack.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > no mechanism for the US to launch a partial nuclear
| attack
|
| Yep, the trajectory to North Korea (from US mainland) has
| to pass over Russia and the Russians have to trust that
| it's not coming for them.
|
| Not that Russia would be okay with us striking NK in the
| first place, but you get the point.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Are you saying that just because the great circle from US
| to NK goes over Russia? Can we not fire on a less optimal
| trajectory? Or from a submarine?
| crmd wrote:
| You can fire an SLBM from the Pacific or the Sea of Japan
| without traversing Russia or China.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Assuming you're striking first, yes. Nuclear subs take
| ~15 minutes to deploy, though, and that isn't the first
| option when counter striking. The U.S. president has six
| minutes to decide/launch a counter attack from the
| missile silos.
|
| Annie Jacobsen has a book "Nuclear War: A Scenario" on
| all this where she interviews high ranking officials and
| pries into government documents related to nuclear war.
| gpderetta wrote:
| On the other hand, NK is not launching a first strike
| that can take out all US land-bases ICBM sites anytime
| soon.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Isn't Jacobsen a bit of a crank? Some of her other books
| include ESP And Area 51.
| maxglute wrote:
| NK's geographic position is interesting. Unless US boat
| is launching east from PRC's Yellow / Bohai sea / PLAN
| bastion, there isn't a trajectory to NK that doesn't look
| like it's heading towards PRC mainland. And even then,
| unless timed during summer months, prevailing winds is
| going to push fallout / radiation towards BJ. During
| winter downwind will drift to SKR / JP / east coast PRC.
| I don't know what proportional counter retaliation is,
| maybe a few nukes off CONUS west coast urban centres, but
| PRC isn't going to sit there and eat incidental radiation
| over major population centres even if target is NK.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| Wouldn't it be more reasonable to Russia that the US is
| attacking NK and not just nuking Kamchatka?
|
| Can the trajectory of an ICBM be inferred by the height
| of it's arc?
| hypeatei wrote:
| > Wouldn't it be more reasonable to Russia that the US is
| attacking NK and not just nuking Kamchatka?
|
| I guess that depends on current relations between the two
| countries and assumes there wouldn't be a breakdown of
| communications when launches are detected.
|
| > Can the trajectory of an ICBM be inferred by the height
| of it's arc?
|
| From the book I mentioned in another comment, Russia has
| very flawed satellite systems for tracking nuclear
| launches. There is a lot of focus on the fact that you
| don't have much time in the event of an imminent nuclear
| strike so I don't think there is much calculations being
| done if the missile is (generally) coming towards your
| homeland.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| Thanks, that's helpful, I'll checkout that book
| sillywalk wrote:
| Against North Korea why would the US even use an ICBM?
| Why not a B-2 flown from Guam or from the continental US?
| tyingq wrote:
| I take tactical to mean something like "< 100 kilotons",
| meaning the damage would be much more limited than a
| large device. Those devices certainly exist. Where it's
| somewhat plausible a nation could use one and face some
| retaliation that doesn't escalate into a global doomsday.
|
| Depends a lot on who/where/why, how much primary and
| collateral damage, and so on. You may be right that any
| use of any nuclear weapon turns into a global doomsday.
| It's hard to say unless it really happens. I'm often
| surprised that terrible war related incidents end up not
| escalating beyond the general region where they happened.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| My gripe is not about the nomenclature but about the
| usefulness of such weapons.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense. Just drop it by a
| conventional non ICBM method
| cfraenkel wrote:
| All these other comments should just go read the book,
| it's worth it and a good, if horrifying read. What 'no
| mechanism' above means is that for many decades the SIOP
| consisted of 'launch everything'. The only way it was a
| 'plan' was to time the arrival times to avoid fratricide.
| This btw meant that even if there was a 'tactical'
| shooting event in Western Europe, all the targets in
| China would have been hit, even if they weren't involved.
| Needless to say, Japan was never informed of this....
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| From a MAD game theoretic perspective that makes a lot of
| sense. To avoid non-essential use of nukes, only give
| policymakers the option of launching everything. Then
| they will only launch in extreme circumstances. Hopefully
| only circumstances where there are already missiles
| inbound.
|
| This avoids the possibility of gradual nuclear
| escalation, which can be more easily miscalibrated.
| lumost wrote:
| This seems somewhat impractical, assuredly - plans would
| have been made in a dark drawer for the case that an
| earstwhile allied country became politically unstable.
|
| On both sides of the wall - it would have been feasible
| for a country to attempt to establish it's own alignment
| separate from the superpowers through the use of nuclear
| weapons
| nradov wrote:
| There are a limited set of scenarios where a major
| nuclear state might use a tactical weapon against a
| lower-tier state. For example, if the USA got into a
| conflict with Iran and we had actionable intelligence
| that they were assembling a nuclear weapon in an
| underground bunker then we might take it out with a small
| number of tactical nuclear ground strikes. I'm not
| recommending this but you can game out scenarios where
| this seems like the least bad course of action.
|
| B-2 bomber crews regularly train for this exact mission.
| umbra07 wrote:
| but why use a nuke? we have all sorts of non-nuclear
| weaponry. we have bunker busters that can penetrate
| hundreds of feet.
|
| even if iran can't retaliate with nukes, the geopolitical
| cost would be insane.
| jmpman wrote:
| Iran has some ultra tough concrete. I question if even
| our best bunker busters can penetrate them.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >"Iran's underground nuclear facility could be between 80
| meters (260 feet) and 100 meters (328 feet) below the
| surface... That could be a problem for the GBU-57 since
| the US Air Force stated that the bomb could rip through
| 60 meters (200 feet) of cement and ground before
| detonating. US officials have talked about detonating two
| of these bombs consecutively to guarantee the destruction
| of a location. However, the new depth of the Natanz
| tunnels still poses a significant obstacle." [1]
|
| [1] https://www.eurasiantimes.com/us-flaunts-massive-
| ordnance-pe...
| sophacles wrote:
| The US military has a long history of making technically
| true statements about it's weapons, but which are still
| misleading.
|
| If a bomb can actually rip through 200 meters of cement
| and ground, then the 60 meter statement is also true.
|
| It also has a history of revealing the actual limits of
| weapons systems, but only after better capabilities exist
| (with the limits of those still classified or
| understated) - that is the 60M limit was the max of the
| old bomb and they don't need to know about the new one.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Things would have to get very very dire to go the
| tactical nuke route for the US. Not only is there a fear
| of tactical nuclear war escalating to strategic war
| there's the fear of demonstrating tactical nuclear war is
| feasible. If it works and Iran's nuclear capability is
| destroyed and nothing else happens then it will be all to
| easy for another power to use tactical nukes and then
| nuclear weapons become a common component on the
| battlefield. That makes escalation to the big strategic
| weapons easier.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The main difference between tactical and strategic comes
| down to intended use. Tactical nukes are intended for
| battlefield use, strategic nukes are intended to end
| other civilizations. They also come in different delivery
| methods. For instance there are tactical nuclear
| landmines, artillery, and so on, whereas most strategic
| weapons are just going to be missiles and ICBMs in
| particular.
|
| But I do agree that the labeling is largely pointless
| because there are nominally "tactical" weapons with
| payloads exceeding 100kt. For contrast, Hiroshima (which
| was enough to destroy a mid-sized city and kill hundreds
| of thousands with a single bomb) was 16kt. So "tactical
| weapons" can easily destroy cities. Even if strategic
| weapons can be hundreds of times higher yield, at some
| point you're just beating a dead horse, or city as it may
| be.
| sillywalk wrote:
| > there are tactical nuclear landmines, artillery, and so
| on,
|
| Not sure about the landmines, but the US and USSR retired
| their nuclear artillery decades ago. I'm not sure how
| much effort it would be to put existing warheads inside
| shells, or about other countries.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I take the disarmament claims with some degree of
| skepticism. Alot of these weapons provide substantial
| flexibility and destructive capability, which superpowers
| are generally not fond of relinquishing. A lot of the
| nuclear disarmament stuff hit its peak in the years
| following the collapse of the USSR, at which point US and
| Russian relations looked very positive and optimistic
| moving forward. We're now back to lows not seen since the
| Cold War.
|
| In any case, for the specifics - Wiki gives 2004 [1] as
| the date the US reportedly dismantled its nuclear
| artillery, and in 2000 Russia reported that "nearly all"
| of its nuclear artillery had been dismantled. Nuclear
| landmines [2] fall under 'atomic demolition munitions'
| which are basically any sort of small/mobile nuke, so you
| get everything from landmines to the suitcase nuke
| weirdness.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_artillery
|
| [2] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_demolition_munition
| skellington wrote:
| I dunno...too hypothetical a question to answer, since we
| already have enough nukes to destroy everything and nobody
| is going to reduce their arsenal to one.
| slg wrote:
| That is assuming nuclear war breaks out with zero warning.
| There is usually a build up to wars that could involve
| ramping up production of a nuclear arsenal before any nuclear
| weapons are actually used.
| roenxi wrote:
| What type of warning do you expect to see? We currently
| have a war in Ukraine involving between 2-4 of the major
| nuclear powers depending on how you want to count them
| (Russia, US, UK, China). Russia is bleeding heavily and it
| is hard to tell how close they are to some sort of internal
| crisis or collapse into groupthink by the military leaders.
| There have probably been Able Archer style near misses and
| we could have a repeat of the Cuban missile crisis without
| much changing. China is building up its nuclear arsenal and
| the political positioning in APAC suggests that a US-China
| war is on the cards.
|
| If we escalated in to full-scale nuclear war this July
| that'd be unexpected but we're way past 0 warning. There
| are lots of warnings. In terms of raw risk the last few
| years might be the biggest risk of a nuclear war breaking
| out that the species has ever faced.
| slg wrote:
| Maybe we aren't at 0 warning at the moment, but if there
| is a spectrum from 0 warning to imminent, we are close
| enough to 0 that the distinction doesn't really matter.
| The US, UK, and China are not actively fighting in
| Ukraine and even if they were, this wouldn't be the first
| time these countries have directly fought each other in a
| proxy war in the nuclear age. So unless you think the
| Russian military personnel that would actually carry out
| a full scale attack on the West would prefer destroying
| civilization to losing in Ukraine, I would expect some
| type of escalation beyond the position we have been in
| for the better part of the last 80 years.
| roenxi wrote:
| > I would expect some type of escalation beyond the
| position we have been in for the better part of the last
| 80 years.
|
| We have escalated beyond the point we have been in for
| the last 80 years. Russia have lost more troops than in
| any war since WWII. That is a lot of dead Slavs. Their
| strategic nuclear defences have already been attacked [0]
| and NATO currently appears to be organising direct
| strikes on Russian territory. They've made it quite clear
| that they want the war to continue until something in
| Russia breaks. When more warnings are you expecting to
| see? There are a lot of warnings out there.
|
| We could easily discover that someone tried to launch the
| nukes already in this conflict. It would be precedented;
| the situation is more tense than it ever has been before
| and we've had fortuitous near misses in similar
| situations. We're already in territory where we are
| rolling the dice for a catastrophe with low odds.
|
| [0]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/world/europe/ukraine-
| dron...
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Is that NATO currently in the room with you?
| JakkTrent wrote:
| This is purpose of NATO - to prevent the lines on the map
| from changing. Ukraine may not be a member of NATO
| officially but it doesn't need to be - the Soviet era
| reason for Ukraine is the same as the NATO, a buffer
| state.
|
| Russian aggression reinforced the need for a buffer state
| - before it wasn't obvious, now it is. NATO is intending
| to force Russia to leave Ukraine and they are willing to
| play a very long game bc it's a buffer state in play, not
| a NATO state.
|
| The end result of this strategy is either Russia breaks
| or the war escalates.
| vasac wrote:
| Nope. NATO did change the lines on the map.
|
| But thanks for playing.
| ben_w wrote:
| The USSR asked to join NATO, which was quite funny to
| learn about.
|
| Russia-NATO relations were pretty good, even heading
| (slowly) towards such membership under Putin in 2000.
|
| Unfortunately, Putin didn't like GWB leaving the ABM
| treaty, and did like having the old USSR back, so
| aggression and all else as you say.
| slg wrote:
| One or more nuclear powers has been at war for basically
| the entire nuclear era. They have all had wars in which
| they have "lost more troops than in any war since WWII".
| Even if this is the end of the Putin regime, this
| wouldn't even be the first time that the Soviet
| Union/Russia collapsed. I don't know what the path you
| think you see from where we are now to "full scale
| nuclear war", but it seems incredibly silly to suggest
| "the situation is more tense than it ever has been
| before", especially after you have already name checked
| Able Archer and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
| yencabulator wrote:
| > They've made it quite clear that they want the war to
| continue until something in Russia breaks.
|
| Huh? I'd expect most non-Russian-aligned parties would be
| happy to see Russia retreat from Ukraine, pay
| reparations, and call that a peace. Russia only needs to
| break if Russia persists in occupying other countries.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > They've made it quite clear that they want the war to
| continue until something in Russia breaks.
|
| The war can end tomorrow. All that has to happen is for
| Russia to pack up and leave the territory of another
| sovereign country. It's really that simple.
|
| If Russia gives up, the war ends. If Ukraine gives up,
| there is a genocide.
| sandspar wrote:
| From ChatGPT: Normalcy bias is when people underestimate
| the possibility and impact of a disaster, believing
| things will always stay the same. It leads to inaction
| and unpreparedness during emergencies.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| "Civilization destruction" isn't a realistic scenario and
| I think people need to get over that. It's not the 1980s.
| It's almost certain what would actually happen is one or
| two pop off in a conflict zone like Ukraine and then
| nukes start getting used tactically like conventional
| weapons.
|
| The larger issue is once the "nuclear taboo" is broken
| nation states will start using them. Nukes aren't magic,
| they're just really big bombs. Most likely the smaller
| ones are more practical to deliver and will be used on
| military targets (Bunker busting, destroying
| fortifications, etc). It wouldn't play out like Mad Max
| but basically WWII but with small nukes and regional
| missile defense systems playing a huge role.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >but basically WWII but with small nukes and regional
| missile defense systems playing a huge role
|
| So a total war scenario, but with multi megaton nuclear
| weapons? That sounds civilization ending to me.
|
| "There was a strong wind that night and as I came out of
| the shelter, all I could see around us was fire...burning
| clothing, 'tatami' mats, and debris were blowing down the
| road and it looked like a flowing river of fire... I
| remember seeing other families, like us, holding hands
| and running through the fires...I saw a baby on fire on a
| mother's back. I saw children on fire, but they were
| still running. I saw people catch fire when they fell
| onto the road because it was so hot." [1] This isn't an
| account of the atomic bombs. This is the firebombing of
| Tokyo, which killed more people and destroyed more homes
| than either atomic bombs. The US was firebombing Japanese
| cities week after week, leveling over 60 Japanese cities
| and killing between 330,000 and 900,000 people (though we
| will never know for sure because the very records needed
| were obliterated in the conflagrations). WWII destruction
| was limited completely by the technology of the time.
| Total war means total war.
|
| [1] https://www.dw.com/en/tokyo-firebombing-survivors-
| recall-mos...
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| People can barely afford to exist now, not only would
| there be real wealth destruction through the course of
| the destructive war there would be a significant reverse
| wealth effect kicking in. A veritable economic implosion.
| WWII had a stimulus wealth effect following on from a
| Great Depression deflationary super-cycle capped by being
| able to destroy the completion by having them bomb each
| other. WWIII has none of those, so any belief that the
| impact to the average individual could be less than
| completely ruinous is completely misplaced.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I think it's common knowledge that preventing a tactical
| nuclear war from escalating to a strategic nuclear war is
| basically impossible. Even a tactical nuke targeting a
| military base in its entirety is strategic enough to
| warrant a response targeting an industrial center (city).
| Then there you have it, the strategic nukes launch on
| population centers.
|
| I think a Mad Max style post apocalypse type situation
| wouldn't come about until maybe 30 years after a full
| nuclear war. As disease and civilization continue to
| deteriorate over time eventually I can see much of the
| word getting to that state. Kind of like how a polluted
| lake doesn't kill all the fish immediately, it slowly
| dies over time.
| ben_w wrote:
| Nukes aren't magic, _but_ they are very compact:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54
|
| And they do have the potential for outsized impact:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pul
| se
|
| Interesting quote: "Physicists have testified at United
| States Congressional hearings that weapons with yields of
| 10 kt (42 TJ) or less can produce a large EMP."
| rurp wrote:
| This line of thinking is both wrong and frightening.
| Military escalation is always messy and uncertain, and
| history is full of wars that escalated beyond either
| side's overall interest. Imperfect information, poor
| decisions, and tactically reasonable but strategically
| catastrophic decisions are all ways that can lead to
| things getting out of hand.
|
| On top of all that, the only practical way to have any
| hope of "winning" a nuclear exchange is to hit the other
| side so unexpectedly hard and fast that they can't mount
| a strong enough response to completely destroy you in
| return. There were multiple serious high level
| discussions about doing exactly that at various points
| during the Cold War by both sides.
|
| We should all want the world to be as many rungs down the
| escalation ladder as possible. One or more countries
| breaking the prohibition on nuclear weapon use and using
| tactical nuclear weapons would bring the world
| dangerously close to a full nuclear war. Being a few
| short steps from such an event is _not_ a stable
| situation, and it is one that will break badly at some
| point.
|
| Our current situation is too unstable; deliberately
| making things much worse is a terrible notion.
| temporarely wrote:
| > (Russia, US, UK, China)
|
| +France
| justin66 wrote:
| During times of escalating tensions with a resourceful
| geopolitical adversary, you would try to cool things off
| with diplomacy but simultaneously... start building lots of
| new nuclear weapons?
|
| Smart!
| pythonguython wrote:
| Agreed. It's over in half a day. Ramping up production is a
| rung on the escalation ladder. It's generally good to have
| more rungs.
| _visgean wrote:
| Isnt the enriching process super slow?
| https://education.cfr.org/learn/reading/how-do-countries-cre...
| this article puts somewhere in months, but you are still
| limited by the number of centrifuges and probably some other
| factors.
| ianburrell wrote:
| The US has tons and tons plutonium from old nuclear weapons.
| Enough to build tens of thousands of nukes.
|
| Also, centrifuge aren't used by advanced nations to make
| nukes. They use plutonium from spent reactor fuel. The US has
| lots of spent fuel that could be reprocessed for the
| plutonium.
| ianburrell wrote:
| The US has plenty of any conceivable war. There is probably
| long time to restart production since haven't done it in a
| while.
|
| The big factor is that the deployment platforms are limited.
| There are 400 Minuteman III missiles sitting in silos. They
| could put more warheads on them, but those are sitting in
| storage. The same is true of Trident missiles on submarines.
|
| They could make nuclear gravity bombs but those aren't really
| useful. We also have lots of those in storage.
| lumost wrote:
| The final cost of an h-bomb at industrial scale was estimated
| at 10k in the 1960s (for low yield).
|
| However for practical purposes. One simply needs enough
| missiles and warheads of sufficient yield to overwhelm opposing
| interceptors, avoid risks of pre-emptive strike/miss-fires+500.
|
| After that there are rapidly diminishing returns for _more
| warheads_.
| GemesAS wrote:
| Pit production is likely the rate limiting factor.
|
| We disassembled a bunch of AFAPs so have a lot of weapons grade
| plutonium around. But Pu is nasty to work with & Rocky Flats--
| the previous pit production facility--closed down years ago.
| Pit production moved to Los Alamos but it is at a much reduced
| capability.
|
| Also, Pantex--where nuclear weapons are assembled--isn't
| exactly the model for speed & efficiency.
| holowoodman wrote:
| I guess mass produced nukes would rather be enriched uranium
| based, due to the far easier construction. No fiddly
| implosive lens assembly. No weird multi-phase cristallization
| that goes critical if you blink. Metal that is merely as
| dangerous and nasty as lead, magnesium or arsenic, not
| plutonium.
|
| If you really want to go carpet-bombing with nukes,
| miniturization isn't as important as having a lot, quickly
| and reliably.
| sadhorse wrote:
| Enriching uranium is more expensive than making plutonium
| by a long shot. Modern nukes are two point implosion, not
| really fiddly. And when was the last criticality incident
| related to phase transition? Can't remember one.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > Enriching uranium is more expensive than making
| plutonium by a long shot
|
| I'm not sure. This used to be the case in WW2, but today
| enriching uranium is quite inexpensive.
|
| Here's an enrichment calculator [1]. The cost of
| enriching to 80% (weapons grade uranium) is $80000/kg, so
| you can enough uranium for a Hiroshima-style bomb for
| about $5 million.
|
| $5 million for a nuclear bomb is basically nothing.
|
| [1] https://www.uxc.com/p/tools/FuelCalculator.aspx
| harshreality wrote:
| Does the U.S. make weapons-grade U235 anymore except for
| research? I thought gun-type fission weapons were phased
| out for safety and efficiency reasons. I also thought
| essentially all "fission" weapons today are fusion-boosted,
| and I thought the implosion type was the only production-
| ready design of fusion-boosted weapons.
| GemesAS wrote:
| The US isn't producing HEU anymore but still has a decent
| sized stockpile of it.
|
| A number of the pits in the active stockpile are actually
| composite Pu/HEU pits & you can actually use HEU in
| implosion weapons as well.
| bbatha wrote:
| Plutonium is very corrosive and sensitive to phase changes so
| it needs to be refurbished and replaced regularly. The
| weapons grade plutonium lying around is probably not bomb
| ready.
| lumost wrote:
| I'd have to imagine that this material is stored in
| glass/argon. Corrosion should be controllable over long
| time horizons.
| itronitron wrote:
| Well, surely we could train an AI to do the assembly. /s
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I suppose the easier solution (not that I'm advocating it)
| would be to lie about disposing of them in the first place.
| justin66 wrote:
| > Because if they could start churning out a dozen or a hundred
| a week within a short period of time, why does the standing
| arsenal really matter?
|
| Possessing an overwhelming amount of retaliatory force and the
| combined ability and willingness to deliver it immediately in
| the face of an enemy's first strike serves a useful purpose for
| deterrence. "Mutually assured destruction" means that both
| sides are prevented from attacking, because the other side can
| respond in kind. It's irrational for either side to attack,
| since everybody would just die. (and yes, MAD comes with its
| own problems)
|
| The ability to build a bunch of bombs in the future is entirely
| unrelated. I mean, who cares?
| HaZeust wrote:
| I'd also like to add to this; that the ability to
| consecutively create additional warheads is not of any
| particular inherent value, especially when our reserve count
| is more than enough to wipe out any and all civilization -
| regardless of target diversity.
|
| It's not like missiles or ammo, where the more we produce in
| times of conflict, the more of an upper-hand we have. We've
| already reached the ceiling for the finite amount of nuclear
| warheads required to do the most conceivable damage. Beyond
| is irrelevant.
| hollerith wrote:
| What do you imagine happens when thousands of nukes
| explode? The Earth splits into pieces?
| HaZeust wrote:
| Nuclear winter??? Strange question.
| hollerith wrote:
| It's not a strange question: many falsehoods get repeated
| over and over on the internet and here on HN.
|
| The conversation around nuclear winter focused on burning
| petroleum storage tanks because (in contrast to burning
| houses and burning trees) those kinds of fires produce
| the darkest smoke with a particle size small enough to
| get high in the atmosphere and to stay in the atmosphere
| for a long time. "100 oil refinery fires would be
| sufficient to bring about a small scale, but still
| globally deleterious nuclear winter," said one prominent
| paper.
|
| Then Saddam lit 700 oil wells on fire (and deployed land
| mines to slow down firefighters with the result that it
| took 7 months to put the fires out), and although there
| was some slight cooling effect, you really had to go
| looking for it with precision instruments to detect it at
| all:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells
| _in...
| HaZeust wrote:
| Who said anything about petroleum storage tanks? The
| conversation around nuclear winter in relation to nukes
| is because it's an understood consequence of 100-some
| Hiroshima-sized warheads being detonated between two
| major city centers:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Climatic_eff
| ect...
| hollerith wrote:
| >Who said anything about petroleum storage tanks?
|
| Repeating myself: before the 700 Kuwaiti oil fires, the
| most influential scientists warning about nuclear winter,
| like Carl Sagan, relied heavily on petroleum fires to
| make their argument.
| defrost wrote:
| As a completely serious question, what about the non-
| influencer scientists, the ones doing actual detailed
| physical modelling, what were they saying?
|
| As I recall from the time there were three camps on this:
|
| * pro MAD cold war political scientists who stressed that
| world ending Mutualy Assurred Destruction scenarios were
| essential to peace keeping,
|
| * antinuclear horrified scientists, Carl Sagan, Betrand
| Russell, et al who wanted disarmament and peace through
| understanding and stressed the world ending horror of
| nuclear weapons and nuclear winter and wrote a lot of
| papers light on detail.
|
| * actual working geophysicists modelling the world who
| seemed largely undecided about the actual threat of
| nuclear winter .. very much in the maybe | maybe not
| camp.
|
| ADDED: I just read through the wikipedia Nuclear Winter
| article and seems (by my recollection) to have been
| culled in the decade since I last read it when (by my
| recollection) it referenced a great many more papers that
| fell on the probably not catastrophic side. It now
| appears to emphasis only papers that agree with the
| nuclear winter hypothesis.
| JakkTrent wrote:
| I can't speak to the actual research but after reading
| various declassified documents from the Soviet Union and
| Maoist China, I can say truthfully that they did not
| believe the world would end with a nuclear exchange. Both
| countries had 1st strike scenarios - both believed some
| aspect of their government and country would survive.
|
| Mao was particularly disconcerting, to paraphrase,
| "Nuclear war doesn't scare me, we've got more than enough
| people and cities, we can rebuild"
|
| Upon further looking into it, I fear MAD may have been at
| the time an overexaggeration to prevent what would be the
| most devastating war. Could be true now tho - things have
| leveled up
| justin66 wrote:
| I don't recall petroleum fires being a huge part of the
| dialog, back when nuclear winter was a big public topic,
| such that I'd bring it up first thing and to the
| exclusion of other concerns.
|
| It was part of it, for sure. There was at least one
| apocalyptic science fiction story about the Soviets
| testing a bomb underground and accidentally setting a
| massive oil field on fire. (it was called _Anvil?_ Or
| written by Christopher Anvil? jeez, it 's been a
| while...) But it's strange to see it commented on as the
| main concern.
| Yeul wrote:
| I saw 9/11 cloud on TV. That was one building.
|
| If Earth's megacities get nuked I refuse to believe that
| it would not have consequences for the climate.
| CleaveIt2Beaver wrote:
| When Canada was on fire last year, we had smoke all down
| the east coast. I don't know if it affected the
| temperature, but it sure affected the environment. it
| doesn't need to go full ashen-winter to fuck up plant
| growth cycles for farms and whatnot, I'm sure.
| hollerith wrote:
| I never claimed it wouldn't have consequences for the
| climate, but there is a big difference between that and
| the assertion I am replying to, namely, "our reserve
| count [our current inventory of nukes] is more than
| enough to wipe out any and all civilization".
| somenameforme wrote:
| Let's talk about just how destructive nukes are, because I
| think most people grossly underestimate this. One bomb in
| Hiroshima killed hundreds of thousands. And that was a _tiny_
| little bomb relative to modern standards - 16kt of yield in a
| mid-sized city of ~350k people. Modern tactical weapons
| (weapons intended for battlefield use) can have yields
| exceeding 100kt. Strategic weapons (weapons intended to end
| other civilizations) go into the thousands of kt. The strongest
| weapon ever tested being "Tsar Bomba" which had a yield of
| 55,000kt, so a few thousand times greater yield than the
| Hiroshima nuke - which was by itself enough to instantly
| destroy a mid-sized city and kill more than 40% of its
| population.
|
| I think it's easy to lose scale/context when looking at things
| like nuclear test footage, so let's go the other direction.
| This [1] is the "Mother of All Bombs / MOAB / GBU-43" that was
| detonated in Afghanistan. It's the second largest conventional
| weapon ever fielded, weighing more than 20,000lbs and and 30+ft
| long (so that little blip on the screen is 30 ft for scale). It
| had a yield of 0.01kt. So now imagine something with literally
| hundreds of thousands of times greater yield - that's a modern
| nuke. Or, if it helps for visualization purposes, imagine
| hundreds of thousands of those raining down - same net effect.
|
| So if nuclear war ever breaks out it's not going to be
| countries using their nukes to target isolated (and nuclear
| fortified) launch silos and bunkers in the middle of nowhere -
| they're going to try to destroy the other country (targeting
| things like population, economic, health, agriculture), so that
| they can completely eliminate the threat. And suffice to say -
| it won't take many nukes. The only reason you'd have thousands
| is to overwhelm any sort of future-tech missile defense systems
| as well as to eliminate any possibility for an effective first
| strike attack attack against you. Although even the nukes
| themselves are also designed to deal with missile defenses,
| with one missile often breaking up into multiple independent
| warheads on approach. This also maximizes the damage for
| reasons outside the scope of the post.
|
| ---
|
| So the point of this is that thousands of nukes is already
| enough to basically destroy every single major city in the
| world and thus destroy basically every single country in the
| world. There's no scenario where suddenly you need to scale up
| to tens of thousands of nukes or whatever. In fact nations like
| North Korea already clearly have an effective deterrent with a
| stockpile that's in the tens of missiles.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6rSxJnpGNg
| knappe wrote:
| To add to this, the Tsar Bomba was so large, it created a
| shock wave that circled the globe _3_ times.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Another fun Tsar Bomba fact. If you build a thermonuclear
| weapon's bomb casing out of U238, the fast neutrons
| released by the fission/fusion reactions cause the U238 to
| fission, increasing the yield by about 50%, while also
| increasing the fallout. The Tsar Bomba variant tested was
| utilizing a lead casing, because the Soviets were worried
| that the 100MT version would kill the crew dropping it, and
| irradiate a significant amount of territory. It is weird to
| think about how the one tested was the half strength
| version.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > Soviets were worried that the 100MT version would kill
| the crew dropping it,
|
| another fun fact, the drop plane had only a 50% chance of
| survival with the 50MT version. They weren't _that_
| worried about the crew's fate.
| justin66 wrote:
| > So if nuclear war ever breaks out it's not going to be
| countries using their nukes to target isolated (and nuclear
| fortified) launch silos and bunkers in the middle of nowhere
| - they're going to try to destroy the other country
| (targeting things like population, economic, health,
| agriculture), so that they can completely eliminate the
| threat.
|
| There are at least two falsehoods here. _Of course_ missile
| silos will be targeted if it 's possible to do so. If you're
| the Russians you might need to make an honest assessment of
| whether your weapons are accurate enough to destroy a
| hardened silo, but the US believes they can target silos (and
| has since at least the eighties).
|
| And prioritizing destruction of enemy population over
| destruction of the enemy's nuclear weapons and other military
| assets would just be dumb.
| somenameforme wrote:
| It's not just about accuracy. Targeting silos comes with
| multiple problems. The first is that they are deep
| underground and fortified to withstand nuclear blasts. The
| second is that even _if_ you believe you can disable a
| silo, there 's a very good chance that by the time your
| nuke gets there - what was in the silo has already been
| launched. There are also other practical issues - you don't
| know where every silo is, there are likely dummy silos
| meaning you end up completely wasting a high yield weapon,
| and so on.
|
| US Cold War targets have been declassified. [1] That was
| from an era with less effective detection, and also where
| launching would generally involve planes, so airfields were
| targeted, but again you can see the extreme focus on
| agriculture, industry, medical, economic, and many targets
| simply labeled "population." The USSR's target list would
| have looked, more or less, identical. Modern target lists
| likely aren't even bothering with silos and just going for
| complete destruction of the enemy civilization.
|
| Nuclear war, has as a prerequisite, the end of any sort of
| norms. It's not about destroying the opponent's military,
| but about literally destroying the opponent's country.
| Military can be rebuilt and redeployed - by targeting
| population, industry, economic, medical, population, and so
| on you completely eliminate the enemy's ability to ever be
| a threat again.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/us/politics/1950s-us-
| nucl...
|
| [1] - https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-
| Nuclear... (a much more informative, but less approachable
| article/datacache)
| justin66 wrote:
| > It's not about accuracy.
|
| In the case of US silos, it sure is. Nobody believes the
| doors on those silos would survive a direct hit (edit:
| meaning, a hit with a US warhead's sort of CEP accuracy),
| but if the warhead lands a mile away...
|
| > The first is that they are deep underground and
| fortified to withstand nuclear blasts.
|
| If you have any references indicating that Russian ICBM
| silos have been deemed by the US to be indestructible, I
| would like to read about that. It is possible to build a
| bunker deep underground that is difficult to destroy with
| a single warhead, yes, but what we're talking about is
| actual silos where ICBMs are deployed.
|
| > but again you can see the extreme focus on agriculture,
| industry, medical, economic, and many targets simply
| labeled "population."
|
| I see that being referenced as one potential target
| (category number 275, out of how many I'm not sure) of
| many. Not the subject of "extreme focus" as you've said
| here, nor a target that would be prioritized over the
| enemy's military assets, as you suggest in a parent
| comment.
|
| (the real war crime is the design of that website)
|
| > Modern target lists likely aren't even bothering with
| silos and just going for complete destruction of the
| enemy civilization.
|
| I guess this is the gist of my disagreement with your
| comments. I have no idea why you would believe this. I'm
| not suggesting the people who do this kind of planning
| are humanitarians, nor am I suggesting I expect many
| people to survive a big nuclear exchange. My disagreement
| is: the idea silos would not be targeted by a party
| launching a first strike, in favor of hitting soft
| targets, is _silly._
|
| edit: there's enough wrong here that I could go a little
| crazy with responses. here's just a little more.
|
| > There are also other practical issues - you don't know
| where every silo is,
|
| If you're the US government, you view it as your job to
| know where all the silos, and to the fullest extent
| possible all the warheads, are. (and if you're the
| adversary, you're interested in using your silos as a
| tool for deterrence and negotiation, which wouldn't work
| if they all existed in secret)
|
| > there are likely dummy silos meaning you end up
| completely wasting a high yield weapon, and so on.
|
| Russia's strategy has included road-mobile ICBMs that are
| deliberately difficult to track, but if they've ever
| built _fake silos,_ I 've never heard about it. During
| the cold war that would have been problematic - the
| treaties involved inspecting silos. Post-cold war... I
| don't know, what's the point? In any case, do you have
| any evidence that this is something they've done?
|
| I guess a cynical person could wonder about how well
| maintained those Russian ICBMs are today, and whether
| they're all really "fake silos." _ahem_ You read pretty
| negative things, but I 've never seen anything that
| seemed better than rank speculation.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Reread the source. We were aiming for quote, the
| "systematic destruction" of urban industrial targets. To
| be clear, that quote is coming from the released
| documents, not the site covering it. We were explicitly
| targeting population in each and every city, alongside
| other non-military targets.
|
| A "dummy" silo does not mean a fake silo, though those
| may also be used, but simply a silo without a live
| weapon. Silos are cheap and be constructed extremely
| rapidly. Beyond dummies, there's also the issues of them
| having already launched their payload, hardened against
| attacks (which does not mean immune), and so on. Then
| there's also the nuclear triad in that weapons will also
| be coming from the sea and possibly from the air as well.
|
| The goal of this obfuscation and deception is not to
| avoid masking how many weapons you have, but rather to
| prevent the enemy from being able to meaningfully disrupt
| your nuclear retaliation capability; in other words - to
| protect yourself against a nuclear first strike. In
| modern times it's unlikely either side believes they can
| significantly disrupt the opponent's nuclear retaliation
| capability (unlike in the past when strikes would
| generally have come from the air and had far lesser range
| overall), and so it simply makes much more logical sense
| to optimize the damage caused by your own strikes in
| pursuit of your opponent's "systematic destruction."
| ein0p wrote:
| You don't have to imagine, here's a web site that lets you
| model the impact: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/. I
| positioned the "moderate" 1MT single warhead strikes at all
| nearby army and naval bases and concluded that I won't be
| incinerated right away, but will die of radiation sickness
| and starvation instead.
| fragmede wrote:
| > googling required to get an answer would put me on lists I
| don't really feel like being on.
|
| But asking in the clear under the pseudonym "transcriptase"
| here isn't going to get you put on the exact same lists? How do
| you think this list making process works?
| transcriptase wrote:
| I would assume that asking a question in the comments section
| of a relevant article, and making clear why I'm doing so is
| slightly less flag worthy than randomly googling questions
| about logistics and production.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| If lists like that are being made, then Googling would put
| you on a huge automatic list that would be queried only as
| part of a targeted inquiry. But asking in comment section
| of relevant article would put you on a short "immediate
| action" list.
| gosub100 wrote:
| You have good training for living under a police state,
| being submissive to authority and not asking why or having
| any concern for your rights. Your social credit score must
| be high. I'm curious did you learn this in "lockdown"
| drills in your elementary school?
| GJim wrote:
| This is the 'chilling effect' in action.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Because if they could start churning out a dozen or a hundred
| a week within a short period of time, why does the standing
| arsenal really matter?
|
| There's probably a declared number where this matters, but the
| current number of warheads is high enough that's there's no
| need to make more. 3,000 is plenty to retaliate against an
| opponent with 30,000. More doesn't provide a benefit.
|
| Nuclear disarmament, as practiced by the US and Russia is a
| negotiation to reduce the number of warheads in a coordinated
| fashion so that it's possible to convince warmongers on both
| sides that it's reasonable. The benefits are primary a
| reduction in cost to maintain and secure the warheads and a
| significant reduction in the risk of accidents related to the
| warheads. Mutual destruction is still assured --- you'd need a
| lot fewer warheads for that and involvement of other nuclear
| states; but then your question of production capacity would be
| more interesting.
| yencabulator wrote:
| > 3,000 is plenty to retaliate against an opponent with
| 30,000. More doesn't provide a benefit.
|
| I think a big part of this is that the long-distance
| missiles, when all of this was invented, were not very
| accurate. Sending 10 to do the job of 1 might have been
| necessary just to hit the intended targets.
|
| Modern missiles are quite capable of precision strikes.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > Modern missiles are quite capable of precision strikes.
|
| yes, this is also why yields have dropped considerably. I'm
| not sure if there are any > 5 MT weapons in the US arsenal
| anymore. I think most are in the 500-750KT range, the
| missiles and delivery vehicle are accurate enough to
| produce the same result as the larger warheads and 5-7
| (can't remember exactly) warheads can be carried by a
| single missile. So instead of having one missile launch one
| giant warhead that may hit 50 miles away from the target
| you have one missile launch 5-7 smaller warheads that hit
| within 50 meters of 5-7 different targets.
| _rm wrote:
| Nukes tend to blow up all your stuff quite a bit faster than
| you can build more of it.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Given the surprise with FOGBANK, I don't have high hopes for it
| going fast.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank
| jjk166 wrote:
| It works the same as industrial capacity for things like planes
| or artillery shells. Once you ramp up production you can
| produce lots very quickly, the US produced 70,000 between 1945
| and 1990, averaging 30 per week with a peak rate around 54 per
| week; but building out the factories to ramp up takes a long
| time - for the first 10 years the US averaged 6 per week. Most
| of the US's nuclear production capacity was dismantled. With
| WW2 levels of hustle and disregard for safety, we could
| probably build new facilities in around a year or two. These
| efforts would be pulling resources from attempts to ramp up
| production of other wartime necessities. Also you don't just
| need to build the nukes, you also need to build adequate
| delivery systems, which are all advanced aerospace
| manufacturing.
|
| If you eliminate your arsenal and then decide later you want it
| back, you're giving adversaries a lot of time to beat you to
| the punch, all the while advertising that you are pursuing
| nuclear as opposed to conventional weapons to fight your war.
| chasd00 wrote:
| full scale nuclear war where the full quantity of warheads is
| used would be over in maybe 1hr tops. Initial attack,
| detection, response. Then probably another attack and another
| response from remaining SLICBMs and then that would be it. I
| don't think any capacity to create more would survive or change
| the outcome and therefore is not much of a deterrent.
| fatbird wrote:
| Force replenishment in the event of nuclear war is a moot
| question, but if someone can go from 100 to 1,000 warheads in
| a couple months, that has a lot of relevance in a growing
| crisis--what would Russia have done in 2022 if Ukraine had
| kept the ability to manufacture them and was able to build
| 100/year?
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| 3000 nukes is better than Cold War highs, but it's still massive
| overkill.
|
| Even with a 90% interception rate, 300 nukes would be enough to
| kill tens of millions of citizens of any country from the blast
| alone. If an enemy leader isn't deterred by that, 2700 extra
| nukes aren't going to change their mind.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's still massive overkill_
|
| The bombs are there because "the only way to avoid being the
| victim of a nuclear first strike (that having the enemy hit you
| with their nukes) was being able to credibly deliver a second
| strike."
|
| "Thus the absurd-sounding conclusion to fairly solid chain of
| logic: to avoid the use of nuclear weapons, you have to build
| so many nuclear weapons that it is impossible for a nuclear-
| armed opponent to destroy them all in a first strike, ensuring
| your second-strike lands. You build extra missiles for the
| purpose of not having to fire them."
|
| https://acoup.blog/2022/03/11/collections-nuclear-deterrence...
| llamaimperative wrote:
| You don't need a huge number of nuclear weapons to achieve
| this, you need nuclear weapons in secret and ideally changing
| locations (i.e. submarines)
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Which is a lot more fallible than just having a huge number
| golergka wrote:
| Security through obscurity is fragile. Strength in numbers
| -- less so.
| justin66 wrote:
| The fixed missile silos out in the middle of nowhere (sorry
| Montana!) serve a lot of useful purposes. If you _do not_
| intend to be the one who pushes the button and destroys the
| entire world, it is nice having weapons like that precisely
| _because_ the adversary can see whether or not you 've
| fired them. If the enemy can see that your ICBMs haven't
| launched and your bombers aren't in range to fire their
| cruise missiles, they know you haven't gone all the way.
| Additionally, silos like that are something the adversary
| _must_ target if they have any hope to survive, which is
| one less warhead they can drop somewhere else (an air base,
| fleet, city, or whatever).
|
| A submarine is inherently less predictable, yes, and in
| terms of ratcheting down tensions that is not always great.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| One additional reason, that the enemy would have to
| destroy a large amount of American territory to
| realistically neutralize the threat. They can't just
| target some military bases and subs in an attempt to
| cripple us while attempting to keep it limited. No half
| measures.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| This doesn't work since you can't really prove that your
| opponent doesn't know the secret or changing locations -
| either out of sabotage or technical advancement.
| nradov wrote:
| I can't imagine any sort of sabotage that would make
| SSBNs easier to locate without also being obvious to the
| crew. As for technical advancements, what are you
| thinking of there within the current laws of physics? No
| other country has the economic resources to blanket the
| ocean with detection platforms. Some researchers have
| proposed using satellites to detect submarine wakes but
| that would take a huge constellation and could only even
| potentially work if the sub was moving fast at a shallow
| depth.
| ls612 wrote:
| SSBN stealth could be at risk by mid-century if current
| technologies continue to advance in surveillance and
| information processing. That would be enormously
| destabilizing from a grand strategic perspective but is
| still very much a future worry not a contemporary problem
| yet.
| maxglute wrote:
| PLAN copying / rotating fleet of DARPA ACTUV (ASW
| Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel). Park them outside sub
| home ports (outside of territorial waters / contiguous
| zone but within active sonar range) and blast sonar to
| keep continuous track once they're underway. Likely then
| hand off to faster/more powerful surface ASW platforms.
| Combine with rumored mini nuke boats from PLAN,
| especially if autonomous improves to drastically reduce
| manning (less mouths to feed to match endurance of big
| nuke boats), basically tailgate nuke boats the second
| they leave parking lot. Trumpet following girl meme.
| Economically, hard to say, but only fraction of very
| expensive to operate 14 boomers/SSNs on deterrent patrol
| at any given time.
|
| That said, IMO hardly matters, sea/air leg of triad can
| be replaced by redundant / distributed land, not silos
| but road mobile TELs in hardened shelters probably for
| MUCH cheaper per warhead - PLA/PLARF model. Can have
| 1000s of cheap TEL trucks / fake warheads to play shell
| game and be just as impossible to decapitation strike as
| a few SSNs with 20 missiles. Mobile land leg just
| politically not sensible because it means unambigiously
| painting target on homeland, not just empty silo fields
| in bumfuck nowhere. IMO half the reason of sea/air leg
| now is they're out of sight/out of mind doing distant
| patrols. No one wants to see a nuclear TEL driving down
| the highway and process implications. If anti missile
| defense improves, cost/benefit of limited magazine SSNs
| gets even worse - a tube on a 2.5B+ nuke boat cost 100m
| to acquire + likely very expensive operation costs per
| shot to field. You can buy 500+ HEMTT 8x8 to hull around
| solid fuel ICBMs for that price. PRC can probably buy
| 1,000. Economics of nuke boats as delivery platforms
| outside of psychology does not seem to make sense, but
| civilian psychology when it comes to nuclear planning is
| very important.
| nradov wrote:
| The level of resources it would take to even try
| something like that is way beyond what even China can
| afford. Just completely unrealistic.
| maxglute wrote:
| Which part specifically?
|
| Darpa toying with ACTUV expliclity because it was _dirt_
| cheap vs relying on large surface combatants + air for
| ASW - small hulls with 10-20k per day operating cost vs
| 500k-800k per day ASW destroyer (US costs). It would be
| cheap to build out a fleet of ~50 small autonomous /
| minimally manned surface/subsurface fleet to follow the
| handful of SSNs on deployment at any given time. 30-80
| ACTUV for surface ASW (US costs) is already 5-10
| shadowing each deterrent patrol SSN. Economy of scale
| enters picture even if nuclear powered - danger is mostly
| political, parking reactors in adversaries EEZs. PLA
| relative cost vs USN acquiring/maintaining SSNs likely
| much cheaper / lopsided. Look at PRC's 80 type 22s that
| existed basically on the hope that it can deter the 1-2
| carriers US normally throws in theatre.
|
| As for mobile TEL / mobile land triad, like 30k+
| HEMTT+LVSR has been built, and that's just Oshkosh
| Defense building tactical trucks. # of USD 300-500k
| heavy/tactical trucks globally in 100,000s. Add in land
| infra/tunnel/harden costs and you won't get close to 100m
| per shot. Can probably get Oshkosh to hammer out budget
| decoy TELs with autonomous driving without any of the the
| expensive TEL/launch hardware. Say what you will about US
| industry, US auto still pretty capable of building things
| that roll on wheels vs US ship building. SSNX is
| projected to be 5-7B per unit (200m+ per launch tube),
| that buys you a lot of road mobile launchers. E: USN
| plants to acquire like 30 of them. I would be very
| surprised PLAN needs to spend 150-200B on a ASW UAV fleet
| to counter that. That's ~400-600 054s frigates. An ACTUV
| drone would cost fraction of manned frigates. I think
| you're dramatically underestimating just how expensive US
| SSN force is / will projected to be and how economics
| will incentivize scope of counters.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _You don 't need a huge number of nuclear weapons to
| achieve this, you need nuclear weapons in secret and
| ideally changing locations (i.e. submarines)_
|
| No. Most fundamentally because secret deterrents are, by
| definition, unverifiable.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| They also have "dial-a-yield" now so the stockpile of larger
| weapons can be used on smaller targets without ridiculous
| fallout.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Thus, the need for the Air Force to appropriate a
| multitrillion dollar black-box budget to develop a Sub-
| Supersonic Invisible and Noiseless Defensive Second-Strike
| Offensive Attack Bomber that flies faster than light so that
| you can bomb someone yesterday.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| I could argue the claim on its merits, eg that the world has
| changed since _The Delicate Balance of Terror_ was written in
| (checks) 1958, that omnipresent satellite surveillance means
| that a first strike could never wipe out the enemy nuclear
| arsenal, etc.
|
| But I think that's giving Brett too much credit here. His
| argument rests purely in the realm of game theory and
| logical-sounding ideas. In actual practice, the US military
| has never in its existence ran an analysis of how many
| nuclear weapons would be necessary to achieve strategic
| objectives in any specific scenarios.
|
| Brett later points out that:
|
| > _This buildup, driven by concerns beyond even deterrence
| did lead to absurdities: when the SIOP ('Single Integrated
| Operational Plan') for a nuclear war was assessed by General
| George Lee Butler in 1991, he declared it, "the single most
| absurd and irresponsible document I had ever reviewed in my
| life," Having more warheads than targets had lead to the
| assignment of absurd amounts of nuclear firepower on
| increasingly trivial targets._
|
| Brett notes this, but it doesn't seem to give him pause or to
| cause his to reevaluate the validity of the doctrines he
| cites, even though those doctrines were largely written to
| justify what he rightfully describes as absurdities.
|
| The US military has always, from the moment the nuclear bomb
| was invented, operated with the mindset of "more nukes is
| better". There is no conceivable number of nukes that would
| make the military go "okay, that's enough, we have enough to
| achieve our strategic objectives in any plausible scenario".
| As the quote above points out, giving them more nukes just
| makes them assign more per potential target.
|
| The only administration that chose to conduct a survey of the
| SAC's war plan for deploying nukes, _the fucking Bush
| administration_ under Dick Cheney, found that the plan was
| ridiculously overkill (hence the quote above) which directly
| lead to the US signing the Strategic Arms Reduction
| Treaty.[1]
|
| HN commenters in this thread are giving a bunch of
| rationalizations why the US's nuclear policy is perfectly
| reasonable game theory, but any times military analysts with
| clearance actually looked at the US's nuke arsenal and the
| plans to deploy it, their conclusion was the same: "We have
| way more than we need".
|
| [1] https://asteriskmag.com/issues/01/the-illogic-of-nuclear-
| esc...
| trynumber9 wrote:
| They aren't targeting cities anymore but Russian and Chinese
| weapon installations. Consider the number of these. And that
| the ballistic missile defense is concentrated at these
| locations. It is surely more than 300.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| > They aren't targeting cities anymore
|
| Citation needed.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| From when the US had 3x as many warheads
|
| https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-91-319fs.pdf
| llamaimperative wrote:
| > We did not have access to the policy documents used by
| DOD'S war planners or the details of the U.S. strategic
| nuclear weapons targeting plans. This limited our ability
| to verify that the process of transforming policy into
| targeting options functions as described by DOD
| officials.
|
| This document is a description of the targeting _process_
| , which existed even when the actual output of that
| process was "every single city in Russia and China with a
| population greater than 50,000"
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| I already gave another in-depth reply, so I'll keep this one
| short: the idea that the current US nuclear arsenal would be
| fully needed to cripple Russia or China's military and
| industrial capacity is ridiculous, and has been thoroughly
| rejected any time military analysts were actually asked by
| the government to make a survey of the US's nuclear plans
| (which is, not that often).
|
| You don't need to bomb every station of a train line to
| cripple the line. If you want to stop car production, you
| don't need to blow up the car factory, the bolt factory, the
| windshield factory, _and_ every single rare earth mine in the
| country.
|
| Yet those are the kind of assumptions the US doctrine relies
| on.
|
| Quoting from [1]: again:
|
| > _Another jaw-dropping example: One part of the nuclear war
| plan called for destroying the Soviet tank army. As a result,
| JSTPS aimed a lot of weapons at not only the tanks
| themselves, but also the factory that produced the tanks, the
| steel mill that supplied the factory, the ore-processing
| facility that supplied the steel mill, and the mine that
| furnished the ore._
|
| [1] https://asteriskmag.com/issues/01/the-illogic-of-nuclear-
| esc...
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Good. It needs to be a threat with plenty of teeth.
| jupp0r wrote:
| There is no system in existence that would provide a 90%
| interception rate. Existing anti ballistic missile systems are
| designed to intercept smaller attacks with low single digit
| warheads, no MIRVs and no decoys not a full scale attack.
| starik36 wrote:
| Why did US disclose this number? Is there a treaty compelling
| them to? Did other nuclear powers disclose them?
| _visgean wrote:
| it has no reason not to, its a detterent, russia and china
| needs to believe that the nukes are working and that there is
| enough for them to ensure the mutual assured destruction.
| maxglute wrote:
| IMO context is: recent US/PRC nuclear talk broke down. US/RU
| nuclear monitoring also broke down post UKR war. There is no
| strategic monitoring system anymore between large nuclear
| powers. Only mind games now. Throw number out there for
| deterrence/mind game as everyone is either building out (PRC)
| or modernizing nuke force (US/RU). Maybe anchoring technique to
| limit proliferation range. That said, there's no reason US
| adversaries should believe # is credible. And even if it is,
| each country has different # of launchers/warheads for
| deterence posture due to different geopolitical/technological
| constraints. I.e. ballistic missile defense changes penetration
| ratios.
| holowoodman wrote:
| Everyone knows the rough number anyways I'd suspect. Publishing
| numbers is a part of all arms-control treaties, so unilaterally
| publishing it may be an attempt to show willingness and shame
| the others towards a new arms-control treaty.
|
| And of course, as the sister comment said, an announcement of
| dick-size.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| They're scared and they want to intimidate. Talking about them
| is the first step toward using them.
| hugh-avherald wrote:
| While generally it's an advantage to keep information about
| your true military capability secret, for nuclear weapons it's
| the opposite.
| no_exit wrote:
| positive press side of updating arms posture in Europe, like
| the B-52 flight Sunday:
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/american-b52-bombers-historic-nato-...
| justin66 wrote:
| How would you write treaties governing the number of weapons of
| various types each side deploys and where they deploy them, if
| you kept this information secret?
| johnohara wrote:
| Is it possible that over the years the number of nuclear devices
| per warhead has increased?
|
| 1, 4, 8, etc. per warhead, thereby increasing your capability
| while claiming a reduction?
| ianburrell wrote:
| Nuclear warhead is a single nuclear device.
|
| Are you thinking MIRV where multiple nuclear warheads are
| mounted to missile? The US has down rated lots of SLBMs and
| ICBMs recently. Many of the warheads in storage are from
| missiles. They could put them back, but then they would show in
| the active count.
| johnohara wrote:
| That's insightful because it means it may be strictly an
| accounting issue versus an actual reduction in the number of
| warheads i.e. the number of warheads counted == the number
| mounted, not the total number possessed.
| holowoodman wrote:
| The number of mounted warheads is a very important issue,
| because a nuclear war will take at most half a day. So all
| the mounted warheads at that point are the ones that can be
| used, nothing more.
|
| Of course if the war doesn't come as a surprise but with a
| lot of buildup, then you can remount everything over a few
| weeks.
| ianburrell wrote:
| The number mounted matters cause it determines how missiles
| can be used. With multiple warheads, ICBMs could be used
| for first strike. First strike won't work, but opponent
| still needs to worry about it. With one warhead, ICBMs are
| only useful for retaliation strike.
|
| Also, the US is still following New START treaty after
| Russsia pulled out.
| alexb23 wrote:
| No, a MIRV [1] missile has multiple warheads, each warhead has
| a single device and is counted as such.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targe...
| Scaevolus wrote:
| The US recently improved trigger accuracy, detonating warheads
| at precise distances to maximize kills on hardened targets,
| which had the effect of increasing the number of effective
| warheads.
| sillywalk wrote:
| I remember reading about this a few years ago... the MC4700
| "super-fuze"
|
| It looks like it was deployed back in 2009 on the warheads on
| Trident SLBMs. From [0]:
|
| "Before the invention of this new fuzing mechanism, even the
| most accurate ballistic missile warheads might not detonate
| close enough to targets hardened against nuclear attack to
| destroy them. But the new super-fuze is designed to destroy
| fixed targets by detonating above and around a target in a
| much more effective way. Warheads that would otherwise
| overfly a target and land too far away will now, because of
| the new fuzing system, detonate above the target.
|
| The result of this fuzing scheme is a significant increase in
| the probability that a warhead will explode close enough to
| destroy the target even though the accuracy of the missile-
| warhead system has itself not improved.
|
| As a consequence, the US submarine force today is much more
| capable than it was previously against hardened targets such
| as Russian ICBM silos. A decade ago, only about 20 percent of
| US submarine warheads had hard-target kill capability; today
| they all do."
|
| [0] https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-
| moderni...
| BMc2020 wrote:
| What you are thinking of is (or used to be, called a MIRV, a
| mulitiple independently-targeted re-entry vehicle). There's
| still only one atom bomb per warhead, but 6 warheads per mirv.
| Think of the MIRV like a cylinder on a revolver with 6 warheads
| per MIRV like the bullets in it. The warhead has the minimum
| amount of hardware necessary to make it blow up, while the MIRV
| has the computers and rocket engines on it. So the MIRV zips
| forward, backward, up down, then releases a warhead at the
| right moment for the warhead to fall to the ground. (which has
| no movement capability at all, not even fins). Then the MIRV
| zips around and releases another warhead and so on until all 6
| are gone.
|
| That being said, there are LOTS of ways to deliver warheads.
| The one that scares me the most is that the Russians have
| hidden ones pre-positioned in our 40 biggest cities or so.
|
| Fun Fact: The russians don't even have to fire their missiles
| to wipe us all out. They could set them all off in their silos
| and create a nuclear winter that would accomplish the same
| thing.
|
| edit: Sorry to pile on, you went from 0 to 3 replies in the
| time it took me to write this.
| johnohara wrote:
| What I was thinking was that whenever the U.S. enters into
| any form of weapons reduction agreement there has to be an
| enormous amount of internal reluctance to actually make those
| reductions.
|
| Reagan's so-called "trust, but verify" policy.
|
| I find it difficult to accept that any party to those
| agreements would actually reduce anything without having
| equivalent plans B, C, and D.
|
| I am not a weapons expert so thank you for your insight.
| holowoodman wrote:
| All those arms-reduction treaties are accompanied by some
| regime of mutual inspections and checks. Each party visits
| the other's facilities and counts stuff, assesses
| production and storage capabilities, paperwork, etc. And
| compares those results to their otherwise-obtained (read:
| by spies) data about the other party's weapons counts.
|
| Of course it isn't foolproof, and each party can and will
| maybe try to sneak a few more warheads somewhere. But those
| inspections at least provide some rough limit on the
| sneakiness, because if they had more than X% more, we would
| have noticed or so...
| hollerith wrote:
| Till 2022 Washington and Moscow were regularly inspecting
| each other's nuclear installations to verify compliance
| with the treaty.
| literallycancer wrote:
| The nuclear winter thing is based on the paper where they
| assume that there's zero days of stockpiled grain isn't it?
| When in reality we could go for years with just the grain
| farmers keep to balance out market volatility.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Fun Fact: The russians don't even have to fire their
| missiles to wipe us all out. They could set them all off in
| their silos and create a nuclear winter that would accomplish
| the same thing.
|
| There's a lot about nuclear winter that is controversial, but
| having nuclear weapons go off in their silos is one thing
| that almost everybody can agree _can 't_ cause a nuclear
| winter. The basic premise of nuclear winter is a) nuclear
| explosions on cities cause massive uncontrollable firestorms
| b) that pump soot into the stratosphere c) which causes
| massive global cooling. If any one of those links in the
| chain fails to hold, then nuclear winter just can't occur. A
| nuclear weapon going off in its silo will be more of a
| massive earthworks project than a firestorm, especially if
| the silo isn't located in the heart of a city with lots of
| juicy combustible material to cook off all at once.
| liamwire wrote:
| > The one that scares me the most is that the Russians have
| hidden ones pre-positioned in our 40 biggest cities or so.
|
| I find it hard to believe you seriously consider this, even
| in the absurd world of MAD-driven decisions.
|
| Simply put, for it to be even remotely likely would require
| that none of these devices had as of yet been discovered, nor
| the intelligence nor logistics surrounding them been
| compromised or otherwise intercepted.
|
| Consider that if such a situation were to be true, and
| uncovered, that the only possible responses would be either
| immediate action to have them removed, immediate retaliation,
| or allowing them to exist. In the first two scenarios, the
| weapons are no longer relevant, whether because they're
| removed or war has started. In the final scenario, we're
| functionally at the same place as we are with the traditional
| nuclear triad, albeit far closer to the precipice due to
| reasons made clear in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
|
| All of this to say, the challenges, costs, and risks of
| enacting such a situation, as utterly ridicule-worthy in
| their totality as they are, can perhaps be hand-waved away by
| pointing to other Cold War era events. However, to argue this
| has actually been done, despite the entire lack of any
| strategic benefit, and the immeasurable net loss of position
| and risk to the Russians that results? Come on.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| > _LGM-118 Peacekeeper_
|
| > _MIRV ICMB produced and deployed by the United States from
| 1985 to 2005. The missile could carry up to twelve Mark 21
| reentry vehicles (although treaties limited its actual payload
| to 10), each armed with a 300-kiloton W87 warhead. Initial
| plans called for building and deploying 100 MX ICBMs, but
| budgetary concerns limited the final procurement; only 50
| entered service. Disarmament treaties signed after the
| Peacekeeper 's development led to its withdrawal from service
| in 2005._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-118_Peacekeeper
|
| So, that's what we _had_ been doing for a couple decades. The
| most crazy ass nuclear cluster bomb.
|
| Now we're still trying to replace the LGM-30 Minutemen ICBMs we
| have had since 1962: Northrop Grumman's LGM-35 Sentinel. And
| it's taking forever & costing an unbelievable sum ($200B,
| $210M/missile including ground systems, although they're back
| to the drawing board to try to get costs down).
| https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/07/08/pentagon-keeps-co...
|
| This is after Minuteman was ~$7m/missile, a super-cheap cast-
| solid-fuel design, with McNamera shutting down efforts on more
| expensive & fancy Atlas and Titan missiles. Weighing 1/9th the
| weight of the monstrous Soviet R7. One persistent dude (Hall)
| convinced everyone we didn't need fancy we needed a survivable
| competent second strike capable missile swarm. Minuteman is
| wild. There are some _great_ submissions on it; the
| communication network submission from three days ago was
| fabulous & shows very much a Paul Baram of RAND/Arpanet style
| network resiliency idea.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41019604
|
| Also of note, Minuteman's original D-17B computer is also quite
| the thing. There are some great submissions on it. It uses an
| early hard-disk like thing as working memory. It uses diode-
| resistor logic (DRL) since diode-transistor-logic (DTL) wasn't
| reliable enough yet. Incredibly stunningly built guidance
| computer that was core to a reliable totally cutting edge
| inertial guidance system.
|
| Anyhow yeah, we built them decommissioned utterly crazy multi-
| warhead missiles. And are trying and having trouble going back
| and building a new single warhead ICBM.
| sillywalk wrote:
| Note that the Minuteman 3, the currently deployed one, also
| had (has?) a MIRV capability (3 warheads). I believe it's
| just a single warhead now because of treaties (which may have
| expired), and I don't know how difficult it would be to re-
| MIRV it.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Nobody asks how many anti nuke missiles. :)
| BMc2020 wrote:
| Funny enough, I know a little bit about this one. We have them,
| but they are all come-from-behind missiles, so the launch site
| has to be as close to Russia (or wherever) as possible, which
| angers the Russians.
|
| The head-on hit-a-bullet-with-another-bullet-is missile still
| impossible, although many would like us to believe they are
| already here. Nuh uh.
|
| Plus those are still useless against nukes delivered inside ton
| of cocaine.
| amenhotep wrote:
| Your contention is that GMD, THAAD, PAC-3 and Arrow are
| essentially expensive fireworks? Interesting. Russia and Iran
| will be delighted to hear that in fact their ballistic
| missiles were not intercepted.
| BMc2020 wrote:
| BMc2020: "I would have to be a complete nut to say Hitler
| was a great man."
|
| amenhotep: "You said Hitler was a great man."
| yodon wrote:
| I suspect in other contexts you're aware of this, but
| personal attacks generally don't land well here. Consider
| continuing to focus on making important points well, as
| that tends to work better, as does assuming the best when
| someone disagrees with you, since sometimes that's a sign
| your comment can be legitimately interpreted or read in
| ways you didn't expect or intend.
| BMc2020 wrote:
| He was trying to put words in my mouth and got caught.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| You were making claims that a particular technology does
| not work, and the other poster was ribbing you by playing
| along with that thought in a way that suggests the
| technology actually does exist and works. They did not
| put words into your mouth, but they did give specific
| examples of technology to highlight their point.
| holowoodman wrote:
| While an ICBM is a ballistic missile, the trajectory is far
| far higher than the usual short- to medium-range ballistic
| missiles. Velocity at the receiving end of the trajectory
| will be far higher. Visibility into the trajectory will be
| worse, because of the huge range and the earth being "in
| the way".
| dingaling wrote:
| That's incorrect, boost-phase or inflight head-on
| interception is the norm. In fact it's easier and more
| efficient than trying a pursuit interception.
|
| https://world-defense.com/threads/thaad-terminal-high-
| altitu...
| jjk166 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-Based_Midcourse_Defense
| fluoridation wrote:
| The GP specifically referred to head-on interception, when
| the missile is coming down towards its target. This is
| midcourse interception, when the missile is drifting
| horizontally from the launch site to the target.
| corry wrote:
| What an odd situation, where we can applaud "the transparency"
| (and I do, honestly) while the US is also simultaneously
| cheerfully delivering a public reminder that "we have more than
| enough to absolutely annihilate anyone and everyone... so don't
| fuck with us."
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| As they said at the end of Dr. Strangelove, these things have
| absolutely no value as a deterrent if you don't tell anyone you
| have them!
| golergka wrote:
| What's odd about this? Both a good things worth applauding to.
| nimbius wrote:
| Most of the stockpile remains or grows solely due to senators
| from colorado, Wyoming and montana who host the ground based
| strategic nuclear arsenal. Force reduction would mean lost jobs
| and revenue.
|
| At least the transparency can start a discussion hopefully.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| And nothing to do with russia invading its neighbors and
| threatening to nuke anyone helping them.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Probably not. The US nuclear triad is very well known and
| doesn't rely on exact numbers. It isn't like Russia would
| think "maybe they decommissioned all their SSBN nuclear
| subs and we are in the clear" until they saw the yearly
| numbers. The point is that we already have plenty enough to
| obliterate any nation on earth in either a first or second
| strike. The arms reduction treaties and transparency have
| always been to reassure war hawks that we still have plenty
| to kill everyone, so we don't need to spend money making
| more and risk an accident.
|
| If you want to saber rattle, you test new systems like
| hypersonic missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear
| warheads. Or you perform "military exercises" to show how
| capable and/or stealthy your nuclear subs and bombers are.
| refurb wrote:
| > so don't fuck with us.
|
| That's the entire point of nuclear weapons, isnit?
| switch007 wrote:
| What was going through their minds in the 60s when they amassed
| 5,000...10,000 but went on to amass over 30,000? Was there any
| point after a few thousand?
| smiley1437 wrote:
| I'd say it was a dick measuring contest against the USSR:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_and_USSR_nuclear_sto...
| sillywalk wrote:
| Watch Dr. Strangelove.
| voxadam wrote:
| "Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if
| you _keep_ it a _secret_! Why didn 't you tell the world,
| EH?"
| murderfs wrote:
| Keep in mind that Sputnik only happened in 1957, so the chances
| of a nuke actually hitting its target were much smaller during
| the build up than after the rollout of ICBMs. A lot of these
| were tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe to be launched
| at invading Soviet forces (including by infantry! Look up the
| Davy Crockett if you want to see Fallout's mini-nuke's real
| life counterpart)
| jjk166 wrote:
| Back in the day, most of these weapons were to be dropped from
| massed strategic bombers or launched on short range missiles.
| You needed lots both because a lot of these were never going to
| make it to the target and those that did would be highly
| inaccurate. This is combined with most of the nukes being
| intended to either take out the adversary's large stockpile, or
| survive the use of the adversary's stockpile.
| credit_guy wrote:
| I think the point of this sudden urge for transparency is to send
| a message to Russia and to the US allies about the tactical
| nukes.
|
| There is currently a perception of a disparity of capabilities in
| tactical nukes. There is parity in strategic nukes because of the
| New Start treaty [1].
|
| Here's a report to the US Senate about the tactical nukes [2]
| produced in April 2024, and here's a quote by Putin lifted from
| that report: > On June 16, 2023, President Putin
| declared, "We have more such [tactical] nuclear weapons than NATO
| countries. They know about it and never stop trying to persuade
| us to start nuclear reduction talks. Like hell we will .... It
| is our competitive advantage."
|
| Of course the US allies are worried that maybe the US nuclear
| umbrella is not that strong after all.
|
| Then how many tactical nukes do Russia and the US have? The
| perception was that Russia has between 1000 and 2000 and the US
| just a few hundred, but the numbers were uncertain.
|
| I think this report sends the message that the US has thousands
| of such tactical weapons, not just a few hundred. The message is
| not exactly spelled out but here's my reading.
|
| The only current tactical nuke in the US arsenal is the B61 [3].
| More than 3000 were built, but it's not clear how many are still
| available today. The latest versions are B61-12 and B61-13, of
| which 400 were supposed to be made (in total, not each). The
| current number of B61-12 and B61-13 is not available, and I saw
| an estimate of 100 [4].
|
| With this report, we can infer the total number of B61. How? The
| number of strategic warheads is capped at 1550. The latest US
| report [5] is that the number as of January this year was 1419,
| but this includes heavy bombers (B52, B1 and B2), of which there
| are 60, so actual deployed strategic warheads are 1359.
|
| The total number in the nuclear stockpile according to this new
| transparency report is 3748. The report explains what this number
| represents: > all types of nuclear weapons,
| including deployed and non-deployed, and strategic and non-
| strategic.
|
| Since we know the number of deployed strategic (1359) and the
| total number (3748), it follows that the rest (2389) is the total
| of the non-deployed strategic warheads and all the B61s (deployed
| or not).
|
| I can't find number of non-deployed strategic warheads, but I
| think it should be very small, otherwise the arms treaty is a
| total joke. The difference between deployed and non-deployed is
| quite minimal, for example the non-deployed weapons have their
| tritium bottles removed.
|
| So my guess is that the majority of the 2389 number above is B61
| tactical nukes. Not all of them are deployed or active, but they
| can become so in a very short timespan.
|
| I think this is the message that the US is trying to send.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_START
|
| [2] https://www.state.gov/report-on-the-status-of-tactical-
| nonst...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb
|
| [4] https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nuclear-weapons-
| who-h...
|
| [5] https://www.state.gov/2023-report-to-congress-on-
| implementat...
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