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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

#231

Post by giantg2 »

sadhorse wrote: post #71
holowoodman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reliab…

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.

It's probably a lot easier if you're recycling the semi degraded stuff out of the outdated warheads that need to be dismantled anyways.

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

#232

Post by energy123 »

chasd00 wrote: post #201
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…

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.

Correct but it's still a deterrent to a conventional invasion even if it doesn't deter a nuclear first strike. Japan and South Korea are nuclear threshold states and that would factor into China's decision making.

Nuclear proliferation is the main reason I am pessimistic about nuclear power as the main global solution to decarbonizing. I don't think a world with 200 threshold nuclear states is a good idea, nor would that be in the interests of any of the major powers, most smaller countries should be aiming for a 100% renewables grid.

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

#233

Post by hypeatei »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #199
hypeatei wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't Jacobsen a bit of a crank? Some of her other books include ESP And Area 51.

I'm pretty sure she isn't. I take it as more of a research effort into highly classified areas of the government. She doesn't really push a narrative IMO.

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

#234

Post by topspin »

philipkglass wrote: post #7
FredPret wrote: post #2

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.

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…

> 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

That's peace time thinking. Little Boy was detonated over Hiroshima without ever having performed a full scale test of the design. Our knowledge and modeling capabilities today are more than sufficient to produce and stockpile a new design that is guaranteed to work -- without testing an actual weapon -- if that somehow became necessary.

There are many reasons why a nuclear power such as the US is unlikely to consider doing this, but lack of confidence in weapon design or manufacture is not among those reasons.

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

#235

Post by ClumsyPilot »

scott_w wrote: post #225
fatbird wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I know you asked a slightly different question but I watched a video about Ukraine’s nukes and the reality is they could never deploy them without Russia. The codes always stayed with Moscow and Russia would have forcibly maintained a presence on Ukrainian soil to protect their nukes. Ukraine returning the nukes was a pragmatic move that, at the time, removed Russian military presence from Ukrainian territory. Think…

If USA maintains nukes in Turkey that does not mean they have enough troops in Turkey to protect the base against the entire Turkish military, should they decide to steamroll it. They rely on nuclear codes more than they rely on tanks to stop nukes falling into the wrong hands.

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

#236

Post by rainworld »

racional wrote: post #183
hollerith wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

[flagged]

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

#237

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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…

> biggest risk of a nuclear war breaking out that the species has ever faced

I think this is absurd and I really don’t like this line of thinking. This is being blown away out of proportion.

Russia wants ukraine and China wants Taiwan. These are localised issues, nobody is invading Texas, and core territories of nuclear powers are not in danger.

Much bigger chunks of lands have changed hands over the last 60 years, think collapse of USSR, the debacle in Afghanistan, Vietnam war, etc. The world did not end.

In 2008 American banks did more damage to the world than Russia/China would by successfully taking these areas of land.

Starting a nuclear exchange over these relatively small-ish issues would be peak idiocy. Yes, it sucks for the locals but there are 3 civil wars in Africa and conflict in the Middle East causing the same amount of misery, they are easier to solve but no one cares.

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

#238

Post by Retric »

scott_w wrote: post #225
fatbird wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I know you asked a slightly different question but I watched a video about Ukraine’s nukes and the reality is they could never deploy them without Russia. The codes always stayed with Moscow and Russia would have forcibly maintained a presence on Ukrainian soil to protect their nukes. Ukraine returning the nukes was a pragmatic move that, at the time, removed Russian military presence from Ukrainian territory. Think…

Replacing the electronics is fairly trivial compared to building an atomic weapon from scratch.

Arming codes gives a nation time to recover or destroy them, but it’s not a long term solution.

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

#239

Post by lazide »

ithkuil wrote: post #227
roenxi wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 territo…

> organizing direct strikes in Russian territory Well. Ukraine just wants to shoot at the places where rockets and artillery are shooting at them. It happens that the Russians conveniently are doing so behind the border. They can shoot at you. But you can't shoot back. I honestly don't understand how people can spin this up as that NATO wants to strike Russia with a straight face.

It makes more sense when you figure it’s projection.

That’s when it gets scary too.

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

#240

Post by whartung »

sillywalk wrote: post #129
Scaevolus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 det…

More accurate warheads also means smaller warheads. The goal of the warhead is to take out the intended target. If you can't do that with precision, you brute force it raw power. As they say: "There's only 'close' with horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons".

But even that's not true. The hardened targets are designed to be hardened against the capability of the potential attacker, that whole arms race thing.

We dropped vast tonnage of dumb bombs in WWII simply because we had to contend with a) getting the bombers through in the first place, and b) ensuring the designated target was effectively damaged.

Replace a fleet of B-17s with a B-2 and some precision munitions, and you get a net win of effectiveness.

Same with nuclear weapons. When you can miss by a country mile, you need a warhead sized so that it doesn't really matter. Better precision in guidance and fuzing is a "good" thing.

The dark side, smaller weapons, potentially, are "more usable" with "fewer side affects" (which is also a "good" and "bad" thing).

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