Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

United States discloses nuclear warhead numbers; restores nuclear transparency

fas.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 363 posts

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

#271

Post by bagels »

GemesAS wrote: post #48
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…

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.

In case you didn't know what a pit was, like me:

“pits,” which are spherical shells of plutonium about the size of a bowling ball

I assume that when weapons are decomissioned, the pits are put in storage. So, if they were able to use the same pit design, they could be reuse them?

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

#272

Post by jiggawatts »

roenxi wrote: post #266
jiggawatts wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t understand tankie logic. The nation that has been your geopolitical rival for a century is suddenly the beacon of western civilisation and ideals, despite stating they hate you and everything you stand for, and then attacking a country for merely thinking of allying with you!? “I believe everything this former KGB operative says about my government! Finally, a neutral party without self-interests who c…

How often you you come across people saying any of that, though? That is a straw man position of the people pointing out that this conflict was quite a likely outcome of NATO's persistent expansion and that the strategic pressure on Russia has been extraordinarily damaging to US interests, European interests, Russian interests and the global security situation. The only people who ended up benefiting from NATO expans…

> How often you you come across people saying any of that, though?

I'm paraphrasing, but I have friends that believe 100% of Russian propaganda they hear on the Internet and 0% of western mainstream media. "What the BBC is saying is just propaganda!" is a common comment I hear from people quoting Russian disinformation verbatim.

> likely outcome of NATO's persistent expansion

That is literal Russian disinformation. If they cared about NATO expansion, they would have invaded Finland to stop them joining. Or would have bolstered their border defence with them instead of reallocating the local troops to go fight in Ukraine, as they have.

They only cared about Ukraine joining NATO because that would have stopped them invading, as they were planning for over a decade and are doing right now.

A thief that plans to rob you cares deeply about your security system being upgraded! Not upgrading your security to appease the thief will not stop the robbery.

PS: Alexander Lukashenko accidentally let slip in early 2022 that the next target for invasion after Ukraine would have been Moldova. Guess which country Trump suddenly thought shouldn't be joining NATO right after meeting Putin?

Not any other country in Europe. No. Just Moldova, very specifically. Trump was very concerned about it, a country he would not have known the name of or been able to place on a map the day before that meeting. (Or, most likely, even after that meeting.)

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

#273

Post by bagels »

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…

We have the warning. Now would be the time to start building more weapons. Maybe that is what the transparency report is about, so we can show that we've done so next year?

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

#274

Post by 1992spacemovie »

lbotos wrote: post #260
jjk166 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disma…

I'm sure someone here knows -- how many actively procured munitions could have their payload swapped for a nuclear payload? Are there "rules" against building "nuclear compatible" munitions?

Yes. And yes. Treaties for arms reduction deal with not only warheads but also delivery vehicles. Protocols include mutual inspection of disabled vehicles, etc.

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

#275

Post by ls612 »

nradov wrote: post #253
ls612 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which technologies specifically?

The two which I’ve read are concerning are using the ferromagnetic material in a sub to detect tiny variations in the magnetic field using supercooled sensors and just better computers and acoustic sensors to extract more signal from well below the noise floor.

There’s also some more science fiction level technologies proposed like using the nuclear signature of a sub’s reactor or using space based LIDAR to detect signs of the wake of a submerged submarine but I’ll defer judgment on those for now. But longer term I wouldn’t completely count them out.

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

#276

Post by Iwan-Zotow »

JakkTrent wrote: post #198
TiredOfLife wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that NATO currently in the room with you?

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…

[flagged]

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

#277

Post by Iwan-Zotow »

ben_w wrote: post #216
JakkTrent wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Perhaps, he saw the result of NATO aggression against Serbia?

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

#278

Post by floam »

JakkTrent wrote: post #203
defrost wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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…

If you have any links handy for the documents from China and the USSR, I’d love to read that.

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

#279

Post by Spooky23 »

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.

Russia has very good influence operations and seeds this type of propaganda. It’s all over on social media.

See Maria Butina and the total ownership of the NRA. Starting with Putin bare-chested riding horses in the GWB “I’m looking into his soul” era to today, the American right wingers are pretty much pro-Russia… amazing feat considering that killing Russians has been historically a priority for them since 1917.

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

#280

Post by morkalork »

jjk166 wrote: post #192
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?

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.

Then there's the crazy use cases where they made nuclear weapons fitted for air-to-air missiles carried by interceptors as well as ground based air defense. The motivator being the poor accuracy of missiles at the time as well as why shoot N missiles at N incoming bombers when you can fire 1 and take out a whole formation. There must have been hundreds of warheads produced for those purposes alone.
Post reply on HN