US Revamping Its Nuclear Arsenal 342
FreedomFirstThenPeac writes: As a former Cold Warrior (both launch officer side and staff analytical mathematician side), I now appreciate the bitterness I saw in former WW2 warriors when they would see a Japanese car. According to the NY Times, a new assembly plant in Kansas is "part of a nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for 'a nuclear-free world' and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy." Mind you, Mutual Assured Destruction is a dangerous path, and one we managed to negotiate only because we were lucky (and we were) and because we were careful (and we were).
As a strategy, it only works with rational people (e.g., world powers with lots to lose) who might have irrational expectations that they will win in the long run. (The rapid fall of imperialist Russia was helpful — I have seen blackboard talks on this as a mathematical result in game theory. This speed minimized the time we spent in the high-risk regions while transiting from MAD to where we were in the 1990s). The Times article says, "The original idea was that modest rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling nuclear complex would speed arms refurbishment, raising confidence in the arsenal’s reliability and paving the way for new treaties that would significantly cut the number of warheads. Instead, because of political deals and geopolitical crises, the Obama administration is engaging in extensive atomic rebuilding while getting only modest arms reductions in return."
As a strategy, it only works with rational people (e.g., world powers with lots to lose) who might have irrational expectations that they will win in the long run. (The rapid fall of imperialist Russia was helpful — I have seen blackboard talks on this as a mathematical result in game theory. This speed minimized the time we spent in the high-risk regions while transiting from MAD to where we were in the 1990s). The Times article says, "The original idea was that modest rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling nuclear complex would speed arms refurbishment, raising confidence in the arsenal’s reliability and paving the way for new treaties that would significantly cut the number of warheads. Instead, because of political deals and geopolitical crises, the Obama administration is engaging in extensive atomic rebuilding while getting only modest arms reductions in return."
And Russia (Score:2)
Is supposed to renew their whole arsenal to 2020 rather than 70% of it I think I read earlier today or possibly yesterday.
Guess it may be weak enough to not deserve to be posted.
Better get a source so you don't quote me on it:
http://rt.com/politics/189604-... [rt.com]
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It's a MAD world.
I Voted For Kodos. (Score:2)
Really, I did a write-in.
there's only one choice (Score:2)
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I voted for Kang.
Really, he was on the ballot.
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This comment actually makes more sense than all of the sentences in the article summary combined.
I know it's cool to bash to the quality of Slashdot "editors," but has anyone else noticed that the last week has been particularly awful? Above and beyond even the typical political and iOS/Android flamebaiting, I mean, with just more awful story approvals and summary editing? Did all the grownups at Slashdot go away on vacation, or did Dice halve the editors' IQ scores so somehow cut costs? (Remember, there mu
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MAD (Score:2, Interesting)
Mutually Assured Destruction, making sure the psychopaths that own the corporations who make the weapons, the corrupt politicians who buy the weapons and fire the weapons, die as well. That's all they care about, as for the rest of us, we are all cannon fodder and millennia of psychopathic war has shown the will use and kill us without limit or mercy, only our refusal to play their game, puts limits on it. A multi-lingual internet where people communicate from all over the world would likely make that refu
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MAD prevented WWIII. I don't care whether the people who build them or the people who authorize their construction are corrupt, or worship a giant statue of a sexually aroused Beelzebub, the fact is that we are kept largely secure from would be Napoleons, Hitlers and Stalins by the mere fact that these weapons exist.
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Are we secure from the Putins though? He seems to have fun with the idea his nukes let him do whatever he wants.
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They can invade just about anywhere else, and no one will touch them.
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They can invade just about anywhere else, and no one will touch them.
If by "anywhere else" you mean not a NATO country, China, India or Pakistan, then sure. Oh, and any of the Middle Eastern states where the US has presences and treaties. That even includes former Soviet Bloc countries like Poland - one step across that border would invite a major military response. And of course nothing in the Western Hemisphere since that would violate the Monroe Doctorine.
So basically Putin can do whatever he wants with impunity, so far as that involves former Soviet Socialist Republics,
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Nukes dont actually scorch that big a patch of earth. I think theres some ~12k nukes on the earth, and if all of them were aimed perfectly spaced at the US I think you could take out most of the buildings in the US. Thats a far sight from destroying the world.
Dont know about the fallout though, that'd probably be pretty nasty.
Re: MAD (Score:4, Funny)
Subtle troll is subtle. Well done.
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Will US insiders quit whining about spending 5 billion dollars to give the Crimea back to Russia for free after a Ukrainian leader of the Soviet Union stole it and attached it to his homeland. Seriously how many Russian died fighting the Nazi's including their Ukrainian Allies over that bit of territory during the second war world, hundreds of thousands, ever seriously think they were just going to let it go. They saw everything the US was plotting and scheming in the Ukraine that Russia wouldn't seek to c
Re:MAD (Score:5, Insightful)
MAD prevented WWIII. I don't care whether the people who build them or the people who authorize their construction are corrupt, or worship a giant statue of a sexually aroused Beelzebub, the fact is that we are kept largely secure from would be Napoleons, Hitlers and Stalins by the mere fact that these weapons exist.
Hitler would have pushed the button just before he pulled the trigger.
MAD only works when all the owners of knukes are reasonably sane.
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Our real nuclear threat is that someone either 1) demonstrably not entirely sane, or 2) with little to lose, will gain control of a working nuclear weapon and deploy it. IT doesn't matter where.
And there are lots of slightly insane actors on the global stage who give us the very clear impression that they would absolutely do this. There need be only one.
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<quote><p>MAD prevented WWIII. I don't care whether the people who build them or the people who authorize their construction are corrupt, or worship a giant statue of a sexually aroused Beelzebub, the fact is that we are kept largely secure from would be Napoleons, Hitlers and Stalins by the mere fact that these weapons exist.</p></quote>
<p>Hitler would have pushed the button just before he pulled the trigger.</p><p>MAD only works when all the owners of
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> he was going to suicide
"Suicide" is not a verb.
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> he was going to suicide
"Suicide" is not a verb.
Yes, it is.
Definition 4: http://dictionary.reference.co... [reference.com]
verb (used without object), suicided, suiciding.
4. to commit suicide.
Webster says it's a verb: http://www.merriam-webster.com... [merriam-webster.com]
As does Oxford: http://www.oxforddictionaries.... [oxforddictionaries.com]
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In english you can verb nouns if you want. However, like Hobbes [gocomics.com] said, verbing weirds language.
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MAD only works when all the owners of knukes are reasonably sane.
The reason people relied on MAD, and the reason the US kept developing larger and larger nuclear weapons throughout the 50s, is because the alternative is letting the other guy win.
Re:MAD (Score:5, Insightful)
MAD prevented WWIII
WWIII is the war on terror.
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Not really. We aren't seeing US/EU making drafts and sending 500,000 troops to Iraq and Syria. Not sure if that'd work anyway, but these wars are half-assed. Either make war or don't make it? The US refused to make this choice in 2003, and destroyed Iraq with criminal incompetence (not enough occupations troops. + disband the iraqi army and fire a ton of civil servants, yeah right..)
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Either make war or don't make it?
Exactly, this is the mindset that has you thinking that there isn't a world war going on now. We got used to (?) large numbers of people dying at the hand of bullets, flame-throwers, grenades, mines, or non-nuclear bombs. But WW2 ended due to nuclear bombs (yeah I know that Germany surrendered prior to the bombs dropping on Japan, but Japan would have only continued the war which would have still been called "WW2"). Ever since then, the whole act of war changed because, "Holy SHIT! We can blow up the pla
Re:MAD (Score:4, Insightful)
MAD only prevented WWIII from going nuclear. The damage is far more insidious than a brilliant flash and a three mile wide mushroom cloud, the State are fucking our kids.
They block, obfuscate, ridicule and incarcerate using false accusations such as arson, those who try and go public with their experiences in State abuse situations (Melanie Shaw, who attempted to go public with her survivor's tale of sexual abuse, trafficking and murder in Nottinghamshire got her jailed without access to medication or any medical help whatsoever - not even a visit from a chaplain - and no access to legal advice to challenge her unlawful incarceration AKA abduction while her repeatedly-delayed "swift trial by jury" (actually, a summary hearing by a single judge as it is more likely to end up being) is now put back until NEXT YEAR. Today she went on hunger strike at privately-run high security jail Peterborough). They've been doing this shit for years and as recently as 2010 they changed the Law so that children who were being abused in State "care" were not allowed to file grievances against the local authorities.
Fuck your nukes, I don't care about them. Let's talk about what we're going to do about these paedophiles in power.
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Re:MAD (Score:5, Insightful)
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The multilingual internet will be the prime catalyst of the next global war. Nuclear or otherwise. The Internet is the strategic propagandists most effective weapon. Influencing public opinion has never been easier for both governments and civilians. And there is absolutely no possibility of the US, Russia, China, or any other nuclear powers given up their nuclear arsenals so you can stop wasting your breath and pick another world injustice to protest. All of the past nuclear arms treaties are meaningless.
More lucky than careful... (Score:5, Informative)
For fifteen years, our launch codes were a string of zeros. Only poorly placed Dippy Bird and we would have all died.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
Re:More lucky than careful... (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, you didn't even read the article you linked:
However, amid the renewed hype over the easily cracked code, a crucial element has been largely overlooked: Though the physical code preventing an unauthorized missile launch may have been all zeroes, the process of arming the actual nuclear warhead was much more involved, according to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. This is the seemingly made-for-Hollywood process involving the simultaneous turning of keys, "Emergency War Order" safes and verified launch codes, which presumably were not all zeros.
An unarmed missile is barely a dirty bomb.
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True....and false.
An unarmed missile IS barely a dirty bomb, but a wave of missile launches, say from 1962 to 1989 or so, would likely have prompted the other side to launch their counterstrike (the point was to get them launched and in a high ballistic arc before the other guy's landed as the fear was that successive EMPs might deactivate crucial circuitry in your outgoing warheads).
So yes, your unauthorized launch in and of itself was not even a V1-level explosion.
What it would have likely started might h
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Those were the PAL codes, basically a safety. On top of that, you've got the two-man rule and the authorization codes (the ones the President carries), plus dozens of safeties against accidents. The PALs were really there to secure it when on loan to other countries - like the nukes positioned in Europe.
Yes, it was dumb. They've remedied that now. However, the British didn't even have that, and to this day there is no similar safety on British nuclear weapons.
That was a political requirement and subverted (Score:2)
The "password" just created the illusion that civilians were in charge of operational mili
Folks need to see 'The Day After' (Score:5, Interesting)
Back during Cold War I, one of the big TV networks made a movie about nuclear war (and aftermath) called The Day After. Every sane and rational person should watch it every 5 or 10 years to remind themselves of the horrific nature of nuclear war. Ironically, the film is set between Kansas City and Lawrence, KS. The film hopefully cools the excitement about nukes. Probably best not to show the film to radical jihadists as it would likely have the opposite effect.
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I also watch "United 93" the way Israelis visit Masada and vow, "Masada shall not fall again! [israeltour.com]". Not for the heroics at the end, but for the many presentations of people struggling to understand what was going on. A fight we all are waging all the time, nowadays.
Folks need to see 'The Day After' (Score:5, Informative)
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A few more at the bottom of this [imdb.com] page on IMDB.
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Except movies rarely (if ever) appeal to rationality.
In this particular case, a sane and rational person might ask himself, how do they know, it will be so bad? There has never been an experiment attempted... Not even close...
I'm unaware of any excitement about nukes, that needs cooling. I am aware of the largely irrational fear of
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GP is a chickenhawk. People like him are the reason for the current mess in Iraq. Besides, the mess in Korea was American's fault in first place - they have supported a bloody dictator for the sole reason of being an anticommunist. It was so bad that up to the 1970ies North Korea had higher standard of living. Without that meddling things could have been way better.
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This was not an "ad hominem". This was an insult. Don't you know the difference?
And now I am going to call you an idiot (another insult, by the way) for assuming that Obama would be somehow mine, even though I am from Germany, never been to USA and not planning to go to.
The current mess in Iraq has been caused by toppling Saddam Hussein. And then by arming the crazies who were rebelling against Assad. Like I said, chickenhawks like you.
You are seriously calling the Southern regime back then "kindler gentler
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Nope. I didn't say that your argumentation is wrong because you are an idiot - that would be ad hominem - I have called you an idiot because of your stupid arguments: which basically consist of "kill the evil commies" and "military f
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People should walk at least once in their lifetime the radius of destruction in Hiroshima up to the Atomic dome to get a real sense of the level of destruction that a small nuclear bomb can do. I sort of did it last summer, from Hiroshima Castle and halfway the path to the Atomic dome I was crying, the carnage that could come in a modern city even with that old small weapon is mindblowing, what kind of barely sane person would do that now?
Shudder (Score:3)
It seems to me the use of strategies like this assume that the people involved are relatively rational.
In our current world this doesn't seem to be that good an assumption.
And it doesn't help places like the Ukraine at all. Russia just says we has nukes so neener neener.
Re:Shudder (Score:5, Interesting)
"It seems to me the use of strategies like this assume that the people involved are relatively rational.
In our current world this doesn't seem to be that good an assumption."
Nor in the past world. Read "The Guns of August" by Barbara Tuchman.
My first thought was "What were they thinking?" My next thought was "There was no thought involved." 17 million dead by the end, and not a nuke in sight. They didn't even discover the neutron until 1932.
Logical Steps to MADness (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you identify yourself as personally involved in both the tactical, and theoretical side of an issue that spans generations now, and then you extend that back to WW2. Skip forward to current-day Kansas, link in the politics of the current president, quoting (hopefully accurate) political campaign rhetoric (with an undercurrent of disdain).
Now, throw in the logical statement "Mind you, Mutual Assured Destruction is a dangerous path" ... really, it's a dangerous path?
Then, jump to the strategic level where we assume you are correct that it only works with rational people (and let's also assume you are assuming that American people (voters) and politicians are rational too).
now throw in some blackboard theory from the 90's.... and viola!
Obama's policies don't get enough peace in return....
I imagine there's maybe 1, or 2 people in the world who can navigate sanely though that argument chain.... certainly not me. So. This is one of those.... blah blah blah posts that says more about submitters to slashdot than American policy.
Re: Logical Steps to MADness (Score:2)
If I had mod, I'd give a +1 Insightful ...
Not MAD. (Score:5, Interesting)
*Sigh* A former cold warrior you may be, but all you do is give proof to what I've long said - a worm's eye view doesn't make you an expert. Or even knowledgeable. (And yeah, the view of a launch control officer is pretty low level). Having been an SSBN weapons tech (and FTB to be precise), I'm quite aware of just how little can be seen from the operating level.
America's nuclear strategy isn't MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), and hasn't been for a couple of decades now. The strategy we're working towards now is Minimal Deterrence - the smallest number of weapons needed for deterrence.
Re:Not MAD. (Score:5, Informative)
America's nuclear strategy isn't MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), and hasn't been for a couple of decades now. The strategy we're working towards now is Minimal Deterrence - the smallest number of weapons needed for deterrence.
Based on the numbers, it's not simply deterrence. That may be where some folks want to go, but certainly not where we are today. Reduction to be just a deterrent only is heavily dependent on where other countries maintain their stockpiles.
Most comments I have seen so far only discuss one edge on this blade, and like it or not it is a double edged sword. The number of weapons we have has been negotiated down with our biggest rival. ~1500 multiple warhead weapons is still enough to blow up the world several times over, and this does not account for the tactical nuclear weapons. Further, we can only hope that some other countries like China and India are being honest with the numbers they claim. The US and Russia may be completely outpaced and not know it.
At present, the goal is to modernize the weapons we have. This improvement process is not simply to make weapons better, but required to maintain them safely. The latter seems to be overlooked.
The concern I gathered from the article is really that these same new modern facilities could be used to increase our weapons base by future administrations. Something I agree should be considered in all big political decisions (not to be confused with refusing all political decisions).
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That's the folly of the Cold War and the Cold Warrior mentality - WE MUST HAVE MORE THAN THE OTHER GUY. Weapons piled on weapons piled on weapons neither increases security nor improves the chances of "winning" a nuclear exchange. Once you have enough to dismember the Other Guy (or to at least put him in the national equivalent
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That's a scary thought, that China might be sitting on 15 or 20k weapons, but claiming sub-1k.
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~1500 multiple warhead weapons is still enough to blow up the world several times over
No, its not, not even remotely close.
(figures taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org])
* Nuclear warheads have an area of destruction of some 180mi^2 (1MT, "destruction of buildings" = 6 miles).
* The US is 3,717,813 miles^2
* 3,717,813 / 180 = 20,000 1MT warheads to cover the US in "moderate destruction".
It gets better.
The world's land area is 57.53 million square miles. That means you need a hefty 320,000 1 MT (quite a large warhead, MUCH bigger than the ones we used at Nagasaki
Re:Not MAD. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're thinking "world" = "surface area". I strongly suspect the GP is thinking "world" = "modern civilisation". Deploy even a fifth of those 1500 MIRVs against the planet by strategically targeting urban population centres in order of descending population, and the world as we know it would be gone.
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Today, 54 per cent of the worldâ(TM)s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 66 per cent by 2050
http://www.un.org/en/developme... [un.org]
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From the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Russia and US have rough parity, then it's France/China/Britain, then Israel/Pakistan/India, then North Korea, in descending orders of magnitude.
http://bos.sagepub.com/content... [sagepub.com]
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~1500 multiple warhead weapons is still enough to blow up the world several times over,
No it's not. The very idea is preposterous. Blast radius of a 1mt Minuteman warhead is about .48km. Assuming an absurdly unrealistic "destroyed" zone 100 times the area of the blast, and assuming perfect coverage with no overlap, 1500 warheads gets us an area of 1.1 million square kilometers.
Making up numbers are we? The destruction radius of a typical 400 kT modern warhead (urban airburst) is actually larger than the "4.8 km" you pulled out your nether regions for a 1 MT warhead. Far from being "absurdly unrealistic", your urban destruction radius is actually a low-ball. In a nuclear urban annihilation attack (multiple warheads against large cities) a destruction radius of 7 km is reasonable (anyone outside is fatally burned, buildings are damaged enough to serve as efficient furnaces as the m
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Thats not just wrong, its hillariously wrong. "Destroying the earth" would require several hundred thousand very high yield nukes (1MT); there arent more than a bit over 10k in the world and the info I was able to find indicates theyre generally much smaller than 1MT (so, perhaps a million nukes to be sure).
Im not sure exactly how much uranium would be required for "several million 500kt nuclear warheads), but Im quite certain noone has that much.
Nukes radiate. Radiation breaks things. (Score:4, Informative)
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chronologies: we haz it (Score:2)
Imperialist Russia fell 30 years before nuclear weapons were first used, and longer than that before the start of the Cold War. Unless you are referring to the USSR?
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The author use small "i' imperialist - yes, the USSR was imperialist Russia in many senses. No, it was not Imperialist Russia..
It's now assured destruction. (Score:3)
For the peacenicks, The policy of MAD has been around for 50 years, might be more. No one has died. Perhaps millions have lived. If you don't remember the 60's...
either you where there
Second problem.
We've planted our own seeds of need. We can shoot down missiles. The Russians are getting close. The Chinese are working on it.
The plants aren't for more weapons, just new ones.
The sometimes more than slightly crazed world governments have managed not to start a nuclear war in the past 60 years. Though I admit they came close at times. Effective deterrents are important.
The disarm at all costs idiots fail to understand the US can't afford a nuclear war. It would destroy the economy, period. US nuclear weapons are only a second strike weapon. But, for that to work, the second strike has to be decisive, at least in the eyes of an aggressor. But good bet the test needs to be real.
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The people who own us (Score:2)
I remember a few years ago a bunch of Pakistani terrorists hit a major building in India. There was strong evidence the Pakistani gov't was aware of the impen
What's old is new... (Score:2)
MAD to rely on these things (Score:2)
If a rational person wouldn't use nukes due to Mutually Assured Destruction, what is to stop another rational person who has nukes from simply taking whatever he wants and if you try to stop me it's nuke time? After all, rationally speaking the worst result possible is turning your country into a glass parking lot. So, if you want your ownership of nukes to defend you against other things, such as bombing with conventional weapons or invasion, then you need to be willing to be the first to use nukes. But if
Japanese Cars versus rearmament (Score:4, Insightful)
As a former Cold Warrior (both launch officer side and staff analytical mathematician side), I now appreciate the bitterness I saw in former WW2 warriors when they would see a Japanese car.
Grumbling at a Japanese car because "We beat the Japs, now you won't buy American cars!" isn't quite the same as "I manned a US nuclear silo during the Cold War, and now the USA is refreshing the nuclear weapons stockpile". Maybe "we beat the Ruskies, and now you order brides via mail from Russia!" or "I manned a US Flying Fortress during WWII and now the USA is refreshing the Air Force with new bombers" might be closer to the two expressed sentiments. One is "I've been trained to hate a particular enemy", the other is "War. War never changes."
joshua (Score:2)
Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.
chest thumping... planet of the apes (Score:3)
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Because some world and group leaders aren't sane. The only thing holding many of them back is the fact that other players are holding a much bigger hammer.
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Because threatening a nuclear war raises the cost of the war.
Take Ukraine currently. Russia's slowly nibbling away at its territory. If Ukraine was a nuclear power, it could very well raise that as a deterrent and perhaps Russia would decide the increased cost of destabilizing Uk
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If Ukraine was a nuclear power, Ukraine would have sold all the nukes years ago just as they have sold 90% of their normal military hardware. Who knows where they would have landed.
Besides, as silly as the current Ukrainian government is (their minister of defence has actually recently claimed that Russia nuked Ukrainian forces in Donetsk), even they would use them in the current conflict.
Long lead time (Score:2)
No reason to be surprised (Score:2)
Wrong Nuclear Technology... (Score:2)
The US should be revamping Nuclear reactors for power instead of nuclear weapons. But hey, the stupidity of NIMBY and keeping Yucca Mountain closed continues... Of course, Yucca Mountain funding was cut under President Obama's watch as well.
I get that the Nuclear arsenal needs to be replaced as, like most things, age degrades both the weapons and the systems. Technology moves forward and old parts can no longer be manufactured and old systems no longer interface with current technology. Plus, I'm sure t
Putin's ambitions... (Score:2)
The sad history of US nuclear weapons. (Score:5, Informative)
It's amazing how bad many nuclear weapons were, and perhaps are. The Hiroshima gun bomb wasn't much better than an IED. If the Enola Gay had crashed, it probably would have gone off. (The crew was under orders not to land with the bomb; if they had to return to base, they were to dump it in deep water.)
For a while after WWII, the US didn't actually have any functional nuclear weapons. This was a major secret at the time. The war designs weren't suited for long-term storage. Nobody wanted another gun bomb, and the first generation electronics for triggering implosion didn't store well. A "GI-proof" line of bombs had to be developed.
The first round of Polaris missile warhead wouldn't have worked. This was learned only after there were SSBNs at sea with functional missiles and dud warheads. That took over a year to fix.
In recent years, there was a period for over a decade when the US had lost the ability to make new fusion bombs. The plant to make some obscure material had been shut down, and the proposed, cheaper replacement didn't work.
There was a tritium shortage for years. The old tritium production reactors were shut down years ago, and no replacement was built. The US is now producing tritium using a TVA power reactor loaded with some special fuel rods. Commercial use of tritium (exit signs and such) is way down from previous decades. (Tritium has a half-life of around 11 years, so tritium light sources do run down.)
The US was the last country with a gaseous-diffusion enrichment plant. The huge WWII-vintage plant at Oak Ridge was finally dismantled a few years ago. There's a centrifuge plant in the US, privately run by URENCO, a European company.
The US had a huge buildup of nuclear capability in the 1950s, and most of the plants date from that era. They're worn out and obsolete.
And that's the stuff we know about. Being a nuclear superpower isn't cheap.
Re:What is there to renew? (Score:5, Informative)
Fissle material, explosives, lubes, seals, etc all need to be refreshed from time to time or the reliability of the weapon drops over time.
Re:What is there to renew? (Score:5, Informative)
They're wearing out. Yes. Nuclear warheads have a lifespan, even if they sit around unused. There is a lot of radioactive decay to them.
Not only are the warheads not working, we also have launch facilities that don't secure. The airforce has a silo where they have to prop open a blast door with a crowbar. The weapons maintenance facilities are even in worse shape. The NYT article talks about a Tennessee facility so decrepit, its roof is caving in and they have people wear hard hats to stay relatively safe. Not exactly the place I want spent nuclear materials to be reprocessed in.
Ironically, it is precisely because we're not on hair-trigger alert for nuclear war, that we've let things get so bad. We just kind of forgot about it. But just because we're no longer worried doesn't mean the stuff is safe. We need to spend money to keep it that way.
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The primary nuclear deterrence of United States is the ballistic missile submarine fleet anyways.
Those things are definitely not sitting around decaying from neglect.
Re: What is there to renew? (Score:2)
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We were never able to destroy the world several times over...
Over 1,000 nuclear weapons have been detonated on Earth in the past 50+ years...
We're all still here...
It would take more than we've got to kill everyone, much less do any real lasting harm to the planet...
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Just the US and Russia have almost 16k warheads between them. Your sense of "real lasting harm" is skewed severely if you believe the fallout from all of those being launched won't significantly alter the biological capability of the Earth. Sure, most of them will be targeted at specific sites instead of spreading out equally, but it will still cause horrific damage and may trigger enough atmospheric dust to kill most life on Earth.
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So did the 6 mile rock that killed the dinosaurs... Earth survived that, 16k nuclear weapons (most of which are tactical, not strategic), won't do as much.
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No, they weren't...
I'm also not under the mistaken impression that the survival of Earth requires that every last human live...
90% of our species might be wiped out, but I doubt we'd go extinct...
It would set us back, to be sure... In a million years (a small time period to Earth), the planet wouldn't never notice...
The comment was in regard to "destroy the world many times over".
Yea, we can't do that.
Re:"imperialist Russia" (Score:5, Insightful)
The Soviet Union (USSR) included Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgiziya (now Kyrgyzstan), Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia (now Moldova), Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Its sphere of influence, the Warsaw Pact nations (the Iron Curtain), included Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungry, Bulgaria, East Germany, Romania, Albania and Yugoslavia.
The USSR's influence extend well beyond these nations, to North (and now South) Vietnam, North Korea, various Central and Latin American nations.
This extended Russia's 'borders' greatly.
Claiming the U.S. was a uniquely global empire from the 50s to the 80s is disingenuous. Even now, I'n not sure we can claim a global empire, whether by design or incompetence being a question for the scholars.
Re:It is all pork barrel politics (Score:5, Interesting)
Political cronyism, sure... Most American rockets weren't built in Alabama because that is where all of the rocket scientists were born, rather because of who chaired which committee, just like the Johnson space center isn't named after Goddard. If the government is going to spend money, politicians are going to represent their electorate
Since you already went there, what is on the other side of the aisle if Obama was to unilaterally allow our nuclear arsenal age out of usefulness while Russia enters into an aggressive posture, China continues with their Long March series of missile, India/Pakistan/Korea expand their arsenals, etc...
I'll tell you what, The GOP would be livid about American impotence in the face of threats, leading to a long slide into a second-rate has been... rant fume, etc...
And they would be right to some degree, with their red faces and spittle flecked chins, and even Obama seems rational enough to realize that you are not going to negotiate with Putin, etc, from a position of weakness
Russia recently stopped all shipments of processed Uranium from Russia to America for fuel processing, a move that indicates they have no intention of reducing their arsenal. Why would we reduce our arsenal in that situation?
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China continues with their Long March series of missile, India/Pakistan/Korea expand their arsenals,
Perhaps if America stopped selling them Nuclear Reactors because the plutonium has to come from somewhere.
Russia recently stopped all shipments of processed Uranium from Russia to America for fuel processing, a move that indicates they have no intention of reducing their arsenal. Why would we reduce our arsenal in that situation?
So instead of dealing with one failing nuclear weapons infrastructure we have to deal with two, actually four - on both sides whilst being manipulated by tewworwists who practice asymmetrical warfare to politicians, press and public struggling to deal with the situation. Great from a MAD world to an INSANE one.
We will look back at the 90's and say Clinton should have been impeached for not taking a ful
Re:It is all pork barrel politics (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because Obama's campaign slogan was "A Nuclear-Free World" doesn't mean he can't lie
This isn't evan a lie. The best way to get a nuclear free world is not to simply chuck them in the bin while Russia, China, etc still have them. That's the best way to get your ass handed to you on a plate in 20 years time. And after the ass-handing has happened the world still won't be nuclear free.
Sure there are countries that have done it, but their just cheap-ass freeloaders, relying on the US, the UK and France spending the money to not do it and thereby indirectly keeping them safe. It's great to say "hey I'm nuclear free" when you're close to two nuclear powers and allied to a third all of which have a good incentive to not let you get invaded. It's still freeloading.
As for revamping, the stockpile stewardship is and has been for a long time an ongoing process. Assuming a nuclear free world is in abstract a good idea, as I mentioned, simply getting rid of the nukes is not the way to do it. If you've decided you need them, keeping them unmaintained, on obsolete decaying missiles is also not a good idea.
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The only reasonable thing we can do is reduce the stockpile so we can eradicate humanity only once, instead of ten times and ensure that the weapons are safe (when idle). They may be necessary to prevent nuclear extortion, but we don't have to sink more money into it then necessary.
Unfortunately not. Simply reducing the stockpile isn't enough. A continuous stewardship programme is needed otherwise you'll very soon end up with a workable stockpile of zero, since these things decay over time.
The "kill the wor
Re:It is all pork barrel politics (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually you can win a nuclear war in the modern age. Russia or China Can't nuke the USA but North Korea or ISIS(insert group here) can.
With Nukes you don't even have to be up close. a single rich man's yacht can literally motor right up the Chesapeake and detonate a bomb capable of wiping out DC without ever touching american soil and thus not subject to any nuclear scans or customs searches. Another yacht can pull up next to NY or under the golden gate bridge and detonate. How many of our major cities are found next to the ocean?
Think outside the box. Sure if someone were to launch a really big rocket the targeted country could respond. So don't launch a rocket. send something they won't expect. Nukes are Area effect weapons. Like horseshoes getting close counts.
The columbia island Marina can take up to 50' boats so very few people would question a 50-60' boat parking less than a half mile from the Pentagon. Go a little farther up the potomac and you can get the white house, the capital building and the pentagon in one shot no matter the yield nuke you have.
Re:It is all pork barrel politics (Score:4, Informative)
Expect a knock on your door from some friendly US Government employees in 3... 2... 1...
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"Sure if someone were to launch a really big rocket the targeted country could respond."
This is exactly why countries have 1000's of warheads. The inability to stop anything. Regan tried to implement StarWars program of ballistic defense, but like the movie was mostly fiction on the part of defense contractors skimming money. There are really only 4 ways to do it. The first is ICBM's. Emphasis on ballistic. You are not going to be able to intercept these with anything. On the plus side, making them is liter
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The only way to determine what a boat is carrying is by boarding. Long range gieger counter might provide a clue if they are installed and functioning correctly. However just looking from afar won't tell you what boat has what inside.
I give it a 50% chance of getting through without ever raising an eye brow. This comes from years of practical on the water experience crossing into and out of the USA. Our border can't keep out drugs do you think it can keep out other things?
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