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United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

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Re: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

#161

Post by baybal2 »

ianburrell wrote: post #38
_visgean wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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Re: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

#162

Post by GJim »

fragmede wrote: post #115
transcriptase wrote: post #11

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 ti…

> 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?

This is the 'chilling effect' in action.

Re: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

#163

Post by GJim »

bamboozled wrote: post #22
philipkglass wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 testi…

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 ?

> 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.

Re: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

#164

Post by credit_guy »

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...

Re: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

#165

Post by gpderetta »

hypeatei wrote: post #60
crmd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can fire an SLBM from the Pacific or the Sea of Japan without traversing Russia or China.

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.

On the other hand, NK is not launching a first strike that can take out all US land-bases ICBM sites anytime soon.

Re: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

#166

Post by voxadam »

sillywalk wrote: post #150
switch007 wrote: post #90

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?

Watch Dr. Strangelove.

"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?"

Re: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

#167

Post by Yeul »

justin66 wrote: post #141
hollerith wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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 Christop…

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.

Re: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

#168

Post by temporarely »

roenxi wrote: post #72
slg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> (Russia, US, UK, China)

+France

Re: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

#169

Post by bamboozled »

hollerith wrote: post #112
bamboozled wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without evidence, that comment is an opinion piece. Hopefully we never have to find out.

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 sugg…

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.

Re: United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

#170

Post by wasteduniverse »

liamwire wrote: post #144
BMc2020 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 otherw…

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