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The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

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Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#31

Post by boomboomsubban »

hirundo wrote: post #25
boomboomsubban wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In July of 1945, Szilard and a number of other scientists involved with the Manhattan Project, signed a petition asking that Japan be publicly informed of the terms of surrender and refused then before the bomb was dropped. Not only was that simple request ignored, the US Government tried to blacklist the scientists who signed that petition. Arguing that the bombs were necessary to prevent an invasion pretends that a…

In accounting for the costs of counterfactuals I think the question is less what is possible and more what is likely. The outsized response you describe to the simple request is evidence of the strong political will for more aggressive options.

I suspect that US military leaders would be much more hesitant to spend the lives of untold thousands of US soldiers, and a prolonged firebombing campaign would have been the most likely non-nuclear continuation. Whether that would have saved lives or cost more is impossible to guess

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#32

Post by michaelcampbell »

simplicio wrote: post #15
sleavey wrote: post #3

It'd be interesting to see a cost comparison to the USSR's program around the same time, leading up to the development of the first Soviet nuclear bomb.

I'd be interested in that as well. The US program was expensive in part because they were trying to do it as quickly as possible, didn't know exactly what a finished bomb would look like and basically pursued every possible method for isotope separation at massive scale all at once. A program that just pursued plutonium production and separation to produce implosion devices would presumably be a lot cheaper (though s…

> The US program was expensive in part because they were trying to do it as quickly as possible,

The US also was trying to just do it, whereas the USSR had the benefit of stolen research.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#33

Post by canada_dry »

sleavey wrote: post #3

It'd be interesting to see a cost comparison to the USSR's program around the same time, leading up to the development of the first Soviet nuclear bomb.

Well, thanks to the likes of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg the Russians were no doubt able to save a helluva lot of time and money.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#34

Post by derangedHorse »

Retric wrote: post #10
eru wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] lots of great, high paying engineering and manufacturing jobs came out of that program. That's a pretty bad excuse: leaving the same money with the taxpayers would have funded jobs that actually did something people wanted enough to pay with their own money.

It’s not purely an excuse. If somone makes 100k on one of these projects but would have made 50k if they did not exist then the economy is out 50k worth of labor. But, some of that delta between 50k>100k is payed back in additional taxes. There is plenty of waste, but it’s significantly smaller than the direct costs suggest. Especially when such programs reduce unemployment as the economy is not out useful labor, and…

The economy isn’t “out 50k of labor”, the government is saving 50k that it could use to pay someone else who wants to work at wherever their headquarter is.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#35

Post by chriselles »

I think the Manhattan Project is the exclamation point of what really decided the ultimate victors of WWII:

Industrial capacity and efficiency.

What’s interesting is that German industrial capacity, despite being bombed 24/7(US daylight and British nighttime raids often in excess of 1,000 bombers) were able to continue producing warfighting equipment in increasing record numbers often with the use of slave labour.

Despite increased German industrial production of warfighting equipment despite being bombed, the US strategic industrial depth ensured ultimate victory rather than tactical prowess.

What’s interesting in Stan McChrystal’s recent book “Team of Teams” is his mention that while 20th century conventional conflicts were about industrial capacity and efficiency, the 21st century will likely be about adaptability.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#36

Post by Animats »

This is known by everybody who's read about the Manhattan Project. The hard problem was separating uranium isotopes. The Hiroshima bomb was a nuclear IED. It could be built today by a good auto racing shop if they had the enriched uranium. Even machining uranium isn't that hard. There's a how-to guide from Union Carbide's tools unit. It takes some precautions, but not remote manipulators or anything like what's needed for plutonium.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#37

Post by Animats »

epberry wrote: post #28
herodotus wrote: post #19

> For example, one of the questions that people ask me again and again is how close the Germans were to getting an atomic bomb. The answer is, more or less, not very close at all. Why not? Because even if their scientific understanding was not too far away — which it was not, even though they were wrong about several things and behind on several others — they never came close to the stage that would be necessary to t…

The industrial base, and the fact that production could continue unabated by bombings on the American continent for years, was a deciding factor in the war. As were the Russians repelling Hitler. My historical perspective on this has shifted massively since first learning about the war in school. It wasn't D-Day or the Battle of Britain or Midway. All of those battles were key wins but the war overall was really orga…

Yes. Eisenhower was a logistics guy. D-Day was a triumph of logistics. The Allies built up enough resources to force a win before attempting the invasion. They were willing to wait because of the failures of Dunkirk and Dieppe. Those operations didn't have enough resources behind them.

We're under fire! Yeah - under fire!! Those five thousand ships the Allies couldn't possibly have, as you say - they've got 'em! Yeah, they've got 'em!! - Major Werner Pluskat, June 6, 1944.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#38

Post by lwansbrough »

chriselles wrote: post #35

I think the Manhattan Project is the exclamation point of what really decided the ultimate victors of WWII: Industrial capacity and efficiency. What’s interesting is that German industrial capacity, despite being bombed 24/7(US daylight and British nighttime raids often in excess of 1,000 bombers) were able to continue producing warfighting equipment in increasing record numbers often with the use of slave labour. De…

You may be interested in reading about the offset strategies employed by the US DOD. In the 60s the US military conducted a still classified analysis called Project Oregon Trail. Included (apparently) was a wargames exercise which completely undermined Eisenhower's doctrine of tactical nuclear weapons to fight a land war. Oregon Trail supposedly concluded that 20,000 tactical nukes would be required to win in Europe.

The result of Oregon Trail appears to be what led to the second offset strategy, which emphasizes intel, stealth, and precision guidance tech. But it also provided information by way of a two part study by a panel of historians. The historians studied 100 asymmetric wars throughout history, which lead to this key insight: if a government can figure out the reason people support the insurgents, and offer an alternative, then they would likely win. If they cannot find the reason, or are unable to win the hearts and minds of the people, they will likely lose. The more military force is substituted for politics, the less likely the government would be to win. We saw this outcome in Vietnam (and have to a certain degree seen the same in the Middle East).

I believe this insight is what has lead to the US' third offset strategy, which is deterrence of war through overwhelming technological advantage.

The point to all this being that industrial capacity and efficiency is just one cog in the machine. The bomb was a technological advantage. You don't need much industrial capacity or efficiency to make one. Inevitably, the best way to win a war is to convince the other side of your cause, and then they'll just stop fighting.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#39

Post by xixixao »

Nomentatus wrote: post #20
hirundo wrote: post #9

That most obvious savings generated by the Manhattan Project was probably the displacement of perceived need to invade Japan. It would be nice to see an estimate of the cost of that invasion as a comparison. But the primary cost of an invasion would have been the lives of Americans and Japanese, and it would be difficult to arrive at a consensus value for that. As part of that wider comparison the cost of the destruc…

John Toland et al, in contrast, see the Russian invasion of Manchuria as the final straw that forced Japan to surrender; Japan continued fighting after the bombs were dropped, but the U.S. did not immediately have more bombs to drop.

I read about this recently here:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...

Fascinating how much sense it makes. Likely the truth is somewhere in-between.

Re: The price of the Manhattan Project (2013)

#40

Post by jessriedel »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #30
gedy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this splits hairs a bit, as the Potsdam Declaration[1] already had warned of utter destruction unless Japan surrendered. Our firebomb raids had already demonstrated this resolve and killed more civilians than the atomic bombs, in likely more horrific ways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Declaration

One of the goals of the Potsdam Deceleration was to be intentionally vague about the terms of surrender, and the terms were never formally rejected. It doesn't fit the guidelines of the petition, and barely counts as an attempt at peace without bombing or invasion.

> One of the goals of the Potsdam Deceleration was to be intentionally vague about the terms of surrender

Do you have a cite that the ambiguity was intended to reduce the chance the Japanese would surrender? I don't know the history well.

I have the impression that, given the US's knowledge of its own military superiority, it would never have accepted anything besides total surrender and occupation. (This is not just vindictive; cease fires and truces are less effective for ensuring the enemy doesn't rise later.) Therefore, if the declaration was vague, this if anything would have been to encourage getting the Japanese to the bargaining table.

Wikipedia seems consistent with this:

> A major aspect relating to the Potsdam Declaration was that it was intended to be ambiguous. It is not clear from the document itself whether a Japanese government was to remain under Allied occupation or whether the occupation would be run by a foreign military government. In the same manner, it was not clear whether after the end of the occupation Japan was to include any territory other than the four main Japanese islands...This ambiguity was intentional on the part of the U.S. government in order to allow the Allies a free hand in running the affairs of Japan afterwards.

One can certainly criticize the US for not accepting conditional/partial surrender as a way to avoid unnecessary deaths, but the ambiguity of the declaration doesn't seem like the issue.

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