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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

#31

Post by [deleted] »

_visgean wrote: post #26
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#32

Post by llamaimperative »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #17
skellington wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no form of full scale nuclear war where the production apparatus for anything becomes a factor.

> no form of full scale nuclear war where the production apparatus for anything becomes a factor Where full nuclear war means a full exchange of strategic fire, yes. For tactical nukes or bombardment of a non-retaliating state, less so.

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.

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

#33

Post by _visgean »

starik36 wrote: post #16

Why did US disclose this number? Is there a treaty compelling them to? Did other nuclear powers disclose them?

it has no reason not to, its a detterent, russia and china needs to believe that the nukes are working and that there is enough for them to ensure the mutual assured destruction.

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

#34

Post by llamaimperative »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20
PoignardAzur wrote: post #12

3000 nukes is better than Cold War highs, but it's still massive overkill. Even with a 90% interception rate, 300 nukes would be enough to kill tens of millions of citizens of any country from the blast alone. If an enemy leader isn't deterred by that, 2700 extra nukes aren't going to change their mind.

> 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)

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

#35

Post by llamaimperative »

trynumber9 wrote: post #21
PoignardAzur wrote: post #12

3000 nukes is better than Cold War highs, but it's still massive overkill. Even with a 90% interception rate, 300 nukes would be enough to kill tens of millions of citizens of any country from the blast alone. If an enemy leader isn't deterred by that, 2700 extra nukes aren't going to change their mind.

They aren't targeting cities anymore but Russian and Chinese weapon installations. Consider the number of these. And that the ballistic missile defense is concentrated at these locations. It is surely more than 300.

> They aren't targeting cities anymore

Citation needed.

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

#36

Post by Scaevolus »

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?

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.

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

#37

Post by openasocket »

lmm wrote: post #19
jmyeet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Huh? The Titan II was developed to do precisely that and worked that way for decades, they were liquid-fuelled and kept fuelled in their silos.

Liquid propellants are generally less stable than solid fuel. I had read in multiple places (from reputable sources) that you generally couldn’t keep liquid missiles permanently fueled like that. The propellants are extremely corrosive and dangerous.

But you are right that the Titan II is liquid fueled and was kept permanently fueled in the silo. I’m not entirely sure how to resolve those two facts. The Wikipedia page about the Titan II does mention multiple accidents and fatalities related to propellant leaks, so I’m guessing that they were just more risky to operate?

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

#38

Post by ianburrell »

_visgean wrote: post #26
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…

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.

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

#39

Post by BMc2020 »

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 MIRV zips forward, backward, up down, then releases a warhead at the right moment for the warhead to fall to the ground. (which has no movement capability at all, not even fins). Then the MIRV zips around and releases another warhead and so on until all 6 are gone.

That being said, there are LOTS of ways to deliver warheads. The one that scares me the most is that the Russians have hidden ones pre-positioned in our 40 biggest cities or so.

Fun Fact: The russians don't even have to fire their missiles to wipe us all out. They could set them all off in their silos and create a nuclear winter that would accomplish the same thing.

edit: Sorry to pile on, you went from 0 to 3 replies in the time it took me to write this.

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

#40

Post by ianburrell »

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…

The US has plenty of any conceivable war. There is probably long time to restart production since haven’t done it in a while.

The big factor is that the deployment platforms are limited. There are 400 Minuteman III missiles sitting in silos. They could put more warheads on them, but those are sitting in storage. The same is true of Trident missiles on submarines.

They could make nuclear gravity bombs but those aren’t really useful. We also have lots of those in storage.

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