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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

#301

Post by racional »

hollerith wrote: post #263
racional wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only one side has had meaningful advances. That's not true, as Ukraine has scored significant non-territorial advances (like forcing most of the occupier's fleet to retreat from Crimea) in the same time frame. Also you're setting an arbitrary time window of 1 year (when if we want to evaluate the conflict meaningfully, we need to look at how things are moving now compared to the start of the conflict. Which is defini…

>But it does seem pretty clear which side you're cheering for Whether Russia has the upper hand is an important question for deciding on what policies the NATO countries should pursue, but we cannot have a fruitful public discussion on the question if anyone giving evidence for one side of the question is shouted down as a traitor.

You can try having a fruitful discussion with them if you want to.

Based on the carefully worded sibling comment to yours - it would seem they have other goals in mind.

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

#302

Post by 542354234235 »

sophacles wrote: post #219
542354234235 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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…

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 th…

This feels overly dismissive of the difficulty, but here is a more detailed article if you are interested.

https://www.twz.com/iranian-underground-nuclear-facility-may...

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

#303

Post by rainworld »

racional wrote: post #301
hollerith wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But it does seem pretty clear which side you're cheering for Whether Russia has the upper hand is an important question for deciding on what policies the NATO countries should pursue, but we cannot have a fruitful public discussion on the question if anyone giving evidence for one side of the question is shouted down as a traitor.

You can try having a fruitful discussion with them if you want to. Based on the carefully worded sibling comment to yours - it would seem they have other goals in mind.

What other goals would that be?

>carefully worded

The Project 2025 promise: A Russian under every American bed.

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

#304

Post by jvanderbot »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #281
1992spacemovie wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have a hard time imagining that anybody with the resources to secure a nuclear warhead in the first place would later be prevented from using it just because it wasn't plug-n-play compatible with their existing trebuchets or whatever.

It's not about "later" it's about "now". You don't inspect standing stockpiles and delivery mechanisms to say "See? We will never have the capability to nuke you", you do so to show that you're not currently building and are not currently sitting on a pile of nukes.

As mentioned probably two posts up, any ramp up would be obvious to adversaries, have some lead time, and would take away from other production efforts.

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

#305

Post by pjc50 »

roenxi wrote: post #140
slg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

Nuclear war is the one situation Putin can't guarantee his own survival, which is ultimately the only metric he cares about.

The chances of a Russian fizzle are very high given the maintenance issues with the regular army, but nobody wants to take that bet.

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

#306

Post by pjc50 »

roenxi wrote: post #282
jiggawatts wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I…

[flagged]

Moldova is already occupied (Transnistria).

> The issue is there is no reason for there to be any wars involving Russia

Do they know that? Russia (well, Putin, who is the state) seems to think there is a reason for Russia starting a war involving Russia.

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

#307

Post by pjc50 »

roenxi wrote: post #264
slg wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Able Archer was one of a series of (annual) scheduled training exercises. The Cuban missile crisis was a fairly civil dispute over w…

> fairly civil dispute over where people stationed military assets

Your argument is that USSR stationing assets, including nukes, in Cuba isn't a provocation against the US while the mere thought of Ukraine joining NATO (not involving any actual NATO assets in Ukraine before the invasion in 2014!) is a provocation?

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

#308

Post by pjc50 »

somenameforme wrote: post #114
llamaimperative wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 labeli…

The question is "does the other side start launching their second strike against your cities once the first 'tactical' mushroom cloud is seen"?

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

#309

Post by oremolten »

yencabulator wrote: post #189
toast0 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

This is a big part of why the long lines bunkers/sites were abandoned. Once the accuracy increased to more than 1mi the resilience of the bunkers and sites were folly. (built to withstand multiple mt within 1mi)

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

#310

Post by scott_w »

Retric wrote: post #238
scott_w wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you do that when the Russian military won't let you near the weapons?
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