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

141–150 of 363 posts

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

#141

Post by justin66 »

hollerith wrote: post #133
HaZeust wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about petroleum storage tanks? The conversation around nuclear winter in relation to nukes is because it's an understood consequence of 100-some Hiroshima-sized warheads being detonated between two major city centers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Climatic_effect...

>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 Christopher Anvil? jeez, it's been a while...) But it's strange to see it commented on as the main concern.

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

#142

Post by TiredOfLife »

transcriptase wrote: post #130
fragmede wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I would assume that asking a question in the comments section of a relevant article, and making clear why I’m doing so is slightly less flag worthy than randomly googling questions about logistics and production.

If lists like that are being made, then Googling would put you on a huge automatic list that would be queried only as part of a targeted inquiry. But asking in comment section of relevant article would put you on a short "immediate action" list.

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

#143

Post by somenameforme »

justin66 wrote: post #122
somenameforme wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about accuracy. Targeting silos comes with multiple problems. The first is that they are deep underground and fortified to withstand nuclear blasts. The second is that even if you believe you can disable a silo, there's a very good chance that by the time your nuke gets there - what was in the silo has already been launched. There are also other practical issues - you don't know where every silo is, the…

> It's not about accuracy. In the case of US silos, it sure is. Nobody believes the doors on those silos would survive a direct hit (edit: meaning, a hit with a US warhead's sort of CEP accuracy), but if the warhead lands a mile away... > The first is that they are deep underground and fortified to withstand nuclear blasts. If you have any references indicating that Russian ICBM silos have been deemed by the US to be…

Reread the source. We were aiming for quote, the "systematic destruction" of urban industrial targets. To be clear, that quote is coming from the released documents, not the site covering it. We were explicitly targeting population in each and every city, alongside other non-military targets.

A "dummy" silo does not mean a fake silo, though those may also be used, but simply a silo without a live weapon. Silos are cheap and be constructed extremely rapidly. Beyond dummies, there's also the issues of them having already launched their payload, hardened against attacks (which does not mean immune), and so on. Then there's also the nuclear triad in that weapons will also be coming from the sea and possibly from the air as well.

The goal of this obfuscation and deception is not to avoid masking how many weapons you have, but rather to prevent the enemy from being able to meaningfully disrupt your nuclear retaliation capability; in other words - to protect yourself against a nuclear first strike. In modern times it's unlikely either side believes they can significantly disrupt the opponent's nuclear retaliation capability (unlike in the past when strikes would generally have come from the air and had far lesser range overall), and so it simply makes much more logical sense to optimize the damage caused by your own strikes in pursuit of your opponent's "systematic destruction."

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

#144

Post by liamwire »

BMc2020 wrote: post #39
johnohara wrote: post #25

Is it possible that over the years the number of nuclear devices per warhead has increased? 1, 4, 8, etc. per warhead, thereby increasing your capability while claiming a reduction?

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 otherwise intercepted.

Consider that if such a situation were to be true, and uncovered, that the only possible responses would be either immediate action to have them removed, immediate retaliation, or allowing them to exist. In the first two scenarios, the weapons are no longer relevant, whether because they’re removed or war has started. In the final scenario, we’re functionally at the same place as we are with the traditional nuclear triad, albeit far closer to the precipice due to reasons made clear in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

All of this to say, the challenges, costs, and risks of enacting such a situation, as utterly ridicule-worthy in their totality as they are, can perhaps be hand-waved away by pointing to other Cold War era events. However, to argue this has actually been done, despite the entire lack of any strategic benefit, and the immeasurable net loss of position and risk to the Russians that results? Come on.

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

#145

Post by [deleted] »

llamaimperative wrote: post #34
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's still massive overkill The bombs are there because “the only way to avoid being the victim of a nuclear first strike (that having the enemy hit you with their nukes) was being able to credibly deliver a second strike.” “Thus the absurd-sounding conclusion to fairly solid chain of logic: to avoid the use of nuclear weapons, you have to build so many nuclear weapons that it is impossible for a nuclear-armed oppo…

You don't need a huge number of nuclear weapons to achieve this, you need nuclear weapons in secret and ideally changing locations (i.e. submarines)

[deleted]

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

#146

Post by JumpCrisscross »

llamaimperative wrote: post #34
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's still massive overkill The bombs are there because “the only way to avoid being the victim of a nuclear first strike (that having the enemy hit you with their nukes) was being able to credibly deliver a second strike.” “Thus the absurd-sounding conclusion to fairly solid chain of logic: to avoid the use of nuclear weapons, you have to build so many nuclear weapons that it is impossible for a nuclear-armed oppo…

You don't need a huge number of nuclear weapons to achieve this, you need nuclear weapons in secret and ideally changing locations (i.e. submarines)

> You don't need a huge number of nuclear weapons to achieve this, you need nuclear weapons in secret and ideally changing locations (i.e. submarines)

No. Most fundamentally because secret deterrents are, by definition, unverifiable.

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

#147

Post by sillywalk »

jmyeet wrote: post #14
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.

So this varies depending on what kind of nuclear weapon is and the delivery system. The major deterrant is the LGM-30G Minuteman III [1]. Most of our rockets use liquid propellants. Since the alert window is under 10 minutes, you can't keep a liquid-fuelled rocket permanently fueled so the Minuteman was developed as a solid rocket fuel booster. There's a whole team responsible for maintaining the boosters and warhead…

Forgive me if you meant all of your comment historically.

> Most of our rockets use liquid propellants.

Which ones? As far as I know the US only has solid fuel nuclear armed missiles. The Minuteman and the Trident.

> others on mobile launchers, shorter range missiles deployed in Europe (eg MRBMs in Turkey),

The US only has aircraft dropped bombs in Europe. The US retired their nuclear capable rockets and cruise missiles under the INF treaty in 1988. They retired their nuclear artillery etc at the end of the Cold War.

The (liquid fuelled) Jupiter missiles were removed from Turkey in 1962 after the Cuban missile crisis, in exchange for the USSR removing their nukes from Cuba, though there are still US nukes in Turkey.

> Also, a lot of these weapons will be thernonuclear

All of them are.

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

#148

Post by knappe »

sillywalk wrote: post #123
silverquiet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an incident where a technician dropped a large socket down a silo that impacted the side of a Titan missile and set off a chain of events that ended in an explosion that nearly detonated a nuclear bomb on US soil.

The Damascus Incident[0]. There's a book called Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser that details the incident, and a PBS based on the book about it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...

I was hoping this book would be a recommended. It really, really focused, reinforced is really not the right word to use here, my views on nuclear weapons.

This should be required reading.

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

#149

Post by sillywalk »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #135
johnohara wrote: post #25

Is it possible that over the years the number of nuclear devices per warhead has increased? 1, 4, 8, etc. per warhead, thereby increasing your capability while claiming a reduction?

> LGM-118 Peacekeeper > MIRV ICMB produced and deployed by the United States from 1985 to 2005. The missile could carry up to twelve Mark 21 reentry vehicles (although treaties limited its actual payload to 10), each armed with a 300-kiloton W87 warhead. Initial plans called for building and deploying 100 MX ICBMs, but budgetary concerns limited the final procurement; only 50 entered service. Disarmament treaties sig…

Note that the Minuteman 3, the currently deployed one, also had (has?) a MIRV capability (3 warheads). I believe it's just a single warhead now because of treaties (which may have expired), and I don't know how difficult it would be to re-MIRV it.
Post reply on HN