US Forgets How To Make Trident Missiles

Hugh Pickens writes "The US and the UK are trying to refurbish the aging W76 warheads that tip Trident missiles to prolong their life and ensure they are safe and reliable but plans have been put on hold because US scientists have forgotten how to manufacture a mysterious but very hazardous component of the warhead codenamed Fogbank. 'NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s, and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency,' says the report by a US congressional committee. Fogbank is thought by some weapons experts to be a foam used between the fission and fusion stages of the thermonuclear bomb on the Trident Missile and US officials say that manufacturing Fogbank requires a solvent cleaning agent which is 'extremely flammable' and 'explosive,' and that the process involves dealing with 'toxic materials' hazardous to workers. 'This is like James Bond destroying his instructions as soon as he has read them,' says John Ainslie, the co-ordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, adding that 'perhaps the plans for making Fogbank were so secret that no copies were kept.' Thomas D'Agostino, administrator or the US National Nuclear Security Administration, told a congressional committee that the administration was spending 'a lot of money' trying to make 'Fogbank' at Y-12, but 'we're not out of the woods yet.'"

Comments

Good reason to get shut

[Computershack]

Excellent. Lets hope they can't make it and it means they have to get rid of them. Due to the current economic crisis, hopefully they can't afford to come up with a replacement.

In the current global climate, there's no point in having nuclear missiles. Those who could strike us are no longer interested and are now allies and those who are hostile and nuclear capable can't reach us.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[AKAImBatman]

What the funding should go towards is creating weapons that do effectively just as much damage without the radiation fallout.

Not to put too fine of a point on it, but... Why?

Is there any particular target you can think of that would be a viable candidate for a nuclear weapon strike? Cities would seem to be the most viable option, but we'd kill millions of innocents along with the bad guys. The brass once suggested that armies in open areas could be wiped out with a single nuke. However, no modern army is going to just line up and wait to be nuked short of a parade or show of force. (And definitely not in an unpopulated area.) Supercarriers and other large ocean-going vessels are good "soft" targets for nukes, but to what effect? Only the US floats supercarriers. With over a dozen in service plus hundreds of supporting vessels, all other navies are already outclassed.

In the end, our nuclear arsenal serves one purpose: deterrence. Whoever might want to lob nukes out way is aware that we have nukes of our own to lob back. And we WANT those nukes to be as eco-unfriendly as possible so that they won't do any stupid calculations like "we'll take out 20 million of their's in exchange for 1 million of ours." Instead, the calculation should be, "if we kill 20 million of their's, we die."

Re:Good reason to get shut

[xch13fx]

And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...

you mother fucking idiot. There has been war for thousands of years and will continue to be as long as there are haves and have nots. You think erasing the flash in history that is the U.S. is gonna fix the world? those mother fuckers with glass parking lots have been throwing rocks a lot longer then we have been dropping bombs....

Re:Good reason to get shut

[Spazztastic]

the best thing to do in response to a nuclear attack by a terrorist organization would be to STFU and fucking NOT retaliate.

I'm playing devils advocate in my post, I forgot to mention it. The problem is that trying to explain that to the POTUS and the joint chiefs would prove to be far more complex after millions of citizens were killed and millions more will die from the fallout.

I would love nothing more than to have world unity and nothing but love all around, but look at after 9/11. Scorched fucking earth in Afghanistan. The American people called for retaliation, and they got it. Look in Israel, a few of their people are killed in suicide bombings and they level city blocks in neighboring countries. It always seems like the political figures take Sean Connery's line from The Untouchables to heart:

He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[Shakrai]

And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...

You think the US is the only country that would respond in kind? Newsflash: Both the British and the French have reserved the right to respond to terror attacks with nuclear weapons. I suspect the Russians or Chinese would do so as well.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[drinkypoo]

What the funding should go towards is creating weapons that do effectively just as much damage without the radiation fallout.

We already have them. They are called fuel-air bombs.

The point of having nuclear weapons is being able to have mutually assured destruction. Even if we have an enemy whose homeland is vague, if one is detonated on US soil expect something bad to happen to anybody we suspect.

That's why non-nuclear weapons with megaton yields aren't enough. You have to know that the land will be uninhabitable for years on both sides.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[VShael]

That's a logical, clearly reasoned and well thought out response to a hypothetical situation.

Which is why it will never be done.

9/11 was a far, FAR less traumatic event than a nuclear blast. And look at the fear-based trigger response that had, and the innocent people who took the brunt of that American fear response.

Governments are made of people. And people are stupid.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[Shakrai]

Scorched fucking earth in Afghanistan. The American people called for retaliation, and they got it.

That's generally what happens when you provide logistical support and a base of operations to a terrorist organization that attacks a Great Power. You think Afghanistan would have come out better if Bin Ladin had murdered ~3,000 Chinese or Russians instead of ~3,000 Americans?

It always seems like the political figures take Sean Connery's line from The Untouchables to heart:

For better or worse that's how the world works. The only reason we don't see more of it is because nuclear weapons made total war too horrible to contemplate.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[Spazztastic]

That's generally what happens when you provide logistical support and a base of operations to a terrorist organization that attacks a Great Power. You think Afghanistan would have come out better if Bin Ladin had murdered ~3,000 Chinese or Russians instead of ~3,000 Americans?

I think it would be the same as it always has been. We would provide millions of dollars in aide for them, there would be peace rallies and movements to bring them supplies, but ultimately we (The US) would leave it to them to resolve the problem on their own.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[AKAImBatman]

No offense, but stuff it. The US does not set out to kill as many people as possible. If we did, we would have nuked Bagdad and left. But we didn't. We put our men and women on the line to die for the war. Now people here and in other countries can argue whether that was the correct decision or not. But we do NOT set out to slaughter people en masse.

And for the record, your figures are complete bunk. 91,060 - 99,433 is the complete total for civilian deaths in Iraq. If you want to blame the US for each and every one of those deaths, that is your prerogative. But having a hundred thousand people die due to being killed by their own people (#1 cause) and accidental deaths during live fire are a LONG way from heartlessly killing millions of people.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[Rich0]

I think it would be the same as it always has been. We would provide millions of dollars in aide for them, there would be peace rallies and movements to bring them supplies, but ultimately we (The US) would leave it to them to resolve the problem on their own.

Of course the US would leave them to resolve the problem on their own - the US wasn't attacked in the parent's hypothetical scenario. Why would the US care if somebody killed a few thousand Chinese citizens?

The Chinese (or Russians), on the other hand, would have almost certainly launched an invasion of some kind. Why do you think nobody messes with them?

Now, they might or might not have launched a full-scale takeover of Afganistan. I suspect that their style would be more along the lines of doing covert operations. Then again, the Chinese at least might look forward to an internationally-sanctioned opportunity to get some field practice for their army.

The point was that the US did what any other country in a similar position would have done. The Chinese or the Russians certainly wouldn't have given them a slap on the wrist.

Going back to the original point of this thread - I doubt any major nation would launch a knee-jerk nuclear strike in response to a terrorist attack. If the terrorists were state-sponsored they would almost certainly retalliate at least conventionally, but if the terrorists were wackos from Kansas I doubt they'd wipe Kansas off the map.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[Shakrai]

The Chinese and Russians are every bit as barbaric as Americans

What you call barbarism I call self-defense. You don't respond to a terrorist attack by filing a lawsuit -- you respond by killing and/or imprisoning those responsible.

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -George Orwell

Re:Good reason to get shut

[Mr. Slippery]

Given the relative positions of "guns" and "butter" on ye olde national shopping list, you really don't want things to be bad enough that we can't afford guns.

Or, you know, we could reprioritize the list. We might just decide that spending ten times more than any other nation on "guns" is too much, cut it down to, say, five times, spend some of the saving on "butter" and some on repaying the loans we started taking out back in the Reagan days to buy all those "guns", and tell the military-industrial complex to go on a fscking diet already.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[xch13fx]

Around some parts, the word "patriot" is synonymous with "racist". Some countries are actually proud of other things than just owning the most guns.

yea thats what the US is all about. we haven't contributed any technologies to the world, agriculture, charity. We all just sit at home cleaning our guns looking at our sisters funny. You sir sound like a racist that has America pinned.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[LandDolphin]

Greed is "the root of all evil", Money is just a tool.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[Beardo the Bearded]

Money isn't the root of all evil.

The expression is "love of money is the root of all evil."

That's assuming you believe in arbitrary black and white distinctions of morality.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[Beardo the Bearded]

And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...

you mother fucking idiot. There has been war for thousands of years and will continue to be as long as there are...

...people. Not everyone abides by the rules of a convention. The kinds of people who will throw acid at little girls for going to school aren't the type of people who will sit around the breakfast table to discuss their problems over a croissant.

Sometimes the only solution is violence. Done neatly, and done correctly, it can permanently fix the problem.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[wes33]

But how would nuking Iraq help secure oil supplies?

Re:Good reason to get shut

[Shakrai]

And killing 100 times as many innocent bystanders in the process -- that's ok how?

Because there are no "innocent" bystanders. Those "innocent" bystanders allowed a Government to come to power that provided support to the terrorist group that attacked the United States. I always find it amusing how the anti-war crowd clams that all Americans have blood on our hands because we allowed GWB to come to power but don't apply the same argument to the civilians placed in harms way by the actions of other governments......

Re:Good reason to get shut

[totallyarb]

It's not so much "haves and have nots" but "I have and you can't have" that's the problem.

You're being unfair. No one (or nearly no one) is saying "you can't have", they're saying "this is mine, get your own". Wealth isn't a fixed pie to be divided up; it's something that's actively created by people's actions. Your wealth does not cause my poverty.

Money isn't the root of all evil; the desire to get money without earning it is. And that moral failing exists irrespective of the dominant economic system; it just expresses itself in different ways. Under capitalism, it's unfair and exploitative trading practices. Under socialism, it's welfare parasitism and government corruption. Different symptoms of the same disease.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[dfenstrate]

A flamebait moderation here is completely unfair. Violence is always around us, even when we pretend it's not. Pointing out that violence has legitimate uses is 'flamebait' to the hopelessly naive.

Let's say you call the police because someone has broken into your home and is attacking a family member. Let's make the ridiculous assumption that the police get there in time to make a difference.

What do you think they're going to do to stop the criminal? Ask him nicely? Maybe once. After that they're going to beat the hell out of him or kill him. And if the criminal DOES stop after being asked nicely, it will be only because he fears the coming violence.

The police are subcontracted violence, generally used to a legitimate end.

The parent poster made the point that violence is inherent in human society, and at best we can aim to have it wielded by the competent and just. This is not flamebait, this is the plain truth.

Re:Good reason to get shut

[shutdown -p now]

6,000 rockets that killed a total of 15 people in 8 years?

Not for the lack of trying. Or are you saying that there is some magic body count number that Israel should have to wait for until it is permitted to respond by force?

Yes, that's exactly what we'd do. What we certainly wouldn't do is respond with missile strikes into apartment buildings and other densely populated areas that killed thousands over the same period.

Look at Britain and the IRA. Spain and Basques. US and gangs or drug cartels. None indiscriminately use military-level power on the civilians the way the Israelis do. It's disproportionate and ineffective.

When you know where a terrorist is, you arrest them, you don't send a missile into their apartment building.

What do you do when missiles are fired from those apartment buildings, but when you come there, there are no uniformed enemy combatants, only "civilians", who all just shrug and say that they didn't see or hear anything, nuh-huh...

What do you do if the terrorist who you know to be commanding the operation is also a prominent political figure elected by those civilians, and attempt to arrest him is treated as an act of war by the other side?

Re:Good reason to get shut

[MikeBabcock]

So the breastfeeding mother on the side of the road bore responsibility for the tank that helped take over her block? Her responsibility was what, exactly? To be a human shield (and die, so we wouldn't kill her later, taking the city back) or maybe to throw rocks?

There's a reason we believe in a distinction between warriors and civilians.

Golly

[sbierwagen]

Maybe we shouldn't be refurbishing these warheads, then? Who, precisely, will we be using them on?

Re:Golly

[Culture20]

We've been using them on countries for decades. Nuclear Deterrence. Perhaps you thought their intended use was to blow up?

Re:Golly

[BrokenHalo]

Perhaps you thought their intended use was to blow up?

Hmmm. In that case, they could just make the missiles out of cardboard and felt (like the Clangers) and nobody would be any the wiser.

Disinformation

[Demonantis]

I think this speaks of a larger problem in how the US government organizes itself. NASA had the same issue with some spaceship components because new people were not trained on how legacy systems were built. This issue is happening through many departments in the US government. The US government's extreme isolationism and disinformation for public forums allows them to be years ahead in technology that could help the general public, but means that the people can't benefit from the technology they fund until it has been independently discovered or rendered a relic by some new technology.

Re:Disinformation

[AKAImBatman]

NASA had the same issue with some spaceship components because new people were not trained on how legacy systems were built.

I hope you're not referring to the "we lost the blueprints to the Saturn V" urban legend. Because if you are, you need to be aware that the US has all the plans and the experience it needs to rebuild these craft. What it doesn't have is the heavy industrial base. Material science has moved the US significantly forward from the heavy metal construction and high noise/high latency electronics used in the original SatV. Rebuilding the SatV would be more effort than just designing a new spacecraft.

If you're just referring to a few components here and there, then I have to argue that these things just happen. Systems age, get out of date, and certain challenges arise in maintenance. For someone like NASA, they're not that difficult to solve. It can take quite a few man hours to understand the part properly and re-machine it (even if original staff are on hand; people tend to forget things over time), but the job still gets done with a minimum amount of fuss.

This issue is a far more worrisome problem. Due to the need for secrecy (there was a HUGE concern that the USSR would obtain our technology), many of the steps were maintained as secrets in people's heads rather than on paper. That makes it difficult to combat the brain drain that invariably happened both as the engineers and researchers aged and the Cold War wound down.

I have this really novel idea

[hellfire]

How about you just decommission the warheads and missiles?

I mean Obama is all about curtailing military spending. Here's a good cut, right? /hippyliberalantiweaponcommentary

CS students and weapons engineers take note!

[east coast]

This is why it's important to document your code... or your warheads. Either or.

just when the warranty runs out ...

[petes_PoV]

Typical, now I suppose we'll all just have to buy the new "improved" nuclear weapons.

There is a serious side to this. The US hasn't actually built any nukes, stuck 'en on a rocket, fired them and had a successful BOOM for well over 40 years. That must be coming up for 2 generations of rocket / nuclear scientists and the third generation is now in training. That means that the "new guys" will learn from people who didn't have any practical experience and in turn learned from the people who actually *did it* nearly 50 years ago.

Advanced Engineering

[jpmorgan]

See, this is what happens when you don't continue to spend money on extremely advanced engineering projects: you lose the technology. Technology isn't just a textbook and some blueprints, it requires the experience and knowledge of scientists and engineers. It's a living thing: shelve it, and it dies.

It would be nice to think this would serve as an abject lesson to congresscritters, next time they think about cutting funding for something 'we don't need right now.' Although I'm cynical enough not to believe that.

Reality..

[evilkasper]

Nuclear weapons are not meant to "win". They are meant to ensure everyone loses. That in and of itself is the deterrent to using nuclear weapons.

Re:Reality..

[Lumpy]

Correct. Nukes are Mutually assured destruction. They are there only as a endgame.

It's Exactly like a room with 10 people in it, all of them covered in dynamite and a detonator in hand that you have to keep the button pressed, and guns pointed at each others heads. Pull the trigger and we all die. Problem is the 11th guy in the room without a bomb strapped to him can hold the rest hostage by threatening to kill any one of the others. The USA is hostage to the Nuclear weapons. if someone attacked North Korea, they would launch blind, that launch will trigger a cascade.

WW-II was a fluke. we had something that nobody else had so we had no fear of retaliation. That changed really fast after that day.

Re:Ah the naivety of youth

[TheRaven64]

Yes, because making a rocket go a few extra thousand miles is such a challenge compared to developing a nuclear bomb.

Actually, it is. The USA got nukes well over a decade before creating the first ICBM (1957). The first nuclear bombs were dropped from a plane. Developing the kind of aircraft that could get through the defences of the average nuclear power is even harder than developing an ICBM. You can't just load it into a conventional bomber and hope for the best. WW2-style bombing raids were only viable because the planes were cheap and it didn't matter if a load of them were shot down.

Just lay back and enjoy it?

[Chas]

I think if you want to survive, as a nation, the best thing to do in response to a nuclear attack by a terrorist organization would be to STFU and fucking NOT retaliate.

This is the equivallent of telling a rape victim to lay back and enjoy it.

No.

On second thought, HELL NO.

You, sir/madam, are an imbecile.

As to the rest of the manure you're shoveling about the world being a better place if the US disappeared? Well, that really doesn't require an answer, now does it?

Re:Just lay back and enjoy it?

[MadKeithV]

Retaliation with nuclear weapons is more akin to telling the rape victim to wear a huge explosive belt and detonate it when a rapist strikes. Sure, you kill yourself and a potentially a bunch of bystanders, but at least you got the would-be rapist!
Remember, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Or dead, in this case.

Re:Just lay back and enjoy it?

[Clandestine_Blaze]

This is the equivallent of telling a rape victim to lay back and enjoy it.

No, it's not equivalent. It's nowhere NEAR the same thing. A rape victim gets raped by one person or multiple people. DNA is sometimes left behind or the victim is able to identify their attackers based on a combination of identifiable markings, voice, etc. If the system works correctly, those responsible for raping the victim will be brought to justice. You don't start killing random people in hopes that one or few of those that you kill happened to be the attackers.

I don't think you quite understood what the parent was saying. I don't think that they were saying "don't attack", I think they were saying "don't lob random nukes." Using the parent's logic, some terrorist organization manages to detonate a nuclear bomb inside America. So you decide that you want to retaliate with a nuclear bomb of your own. Where do you drop it? If you can find any shred of evidence that this terrorist organization was backed by some government or state, then that makes the job easy. But if the organization was decentralized? Do you continue to lob nukes indiscriminately within an entire region until everyone is dead?

Would you press the button to kill millions of individuals who had nothing to do with the attack? What happens if you manage to kill millions of people in countries a, b, and c, but the terrorists were hiding out in countries x, y, and z? That's the problem with terrorism. Outside of Hezbollah, they're typically not backed by any state, so you're going to have to start killing a whole lot of innocents until you find the right people.

MAD works quite well when it's between states and countries. Citizens of country X elected the officials who have the power start a nuclear war. In some way, those citizens are responsible. Those same citizens most likely don't want to die, so hopefully as educated voters, they make sure not to vote nutjobs into office. But what happens when you have a terrorist organization who is not tied to any country or state and who is not elected? There is no question that there would be retaliation, but unless I didn't understand the parent correctly, I thought they meant NOT retaliate with nukes since you have no fucking idea what you're attacking.

I'm not some hippie either. I would move to find and crush those responsible, but I don't see how killing millions in the process, on purpose, fixes anything. Those that were responsible are not afraid to die and couldn't care less if those around them died as well.

Re:Ah the naivety of youth

[Kell Bengal]

because making a rocket go a few extra thousand miles is such a challenge compared to developing a nuclear bomb.

Quite so. There are plenty of horrible, horrible non-nuclear weapons out there that can be delivered by ICBM that aren't nearly as difficult to develop. A good solid hit on downtown Washington and you've made as much as a political statement as a mushroom cloud. Nukes are only 'The Bomb' because of their emotional impact. Consider: people turned aircraft into weapons and now every airline passenger is treated like a criminal. Arguably more people have been effected by the World Trade Centre attacks than nuclear weapons. The sad truth is that you can kill people with a cricket bat if you try hard enough. Disposing of nukes, or guns or cricket bats won't stop violence. The only way to ensure lasting peace is through diplomacy and not engaging in international dipshittery.

Securing peace by getting rid of the US

[qbzzt]

And people wonder why I think the best way to secure peace is to get rid of the US...

I don't know why you think that, but the rest of the world doesn't exactly have a good track record in keeping the peace. Look at Europe before the US started stationing soldiers there in 1941 - two world wars. Or look at the parts of the world the US isn't interested in, such as Sub-Saharan Africa.

Re:Securing peace by getting rid of the US

[qbzzt]

My lord, are you actually suggesting that the reason there's been peace in Europe is US troops?

Given how many wars were fought in Europe in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, and how many in the second half of the 20th, something must have happened.

If it wasn't US troops, what was it? Why were the horrors of WWII enough to convince Europeans not to fight each other, when the horrors of WWI weren't?

Re:Securing peace by getting rid of the US

[SatanicPuppy]

WWII was basically caused by the war reparations demanded by the "winners" of WWI. WWI wasn't as clear cut as WWII; everybody was basically looking for an excuse for war and everyone was working under the assumption that there was going to be a war, so it's no surprise that one started.

It ended up being such a nightmare because both sides lost so many people that the governments were afraid that they'd be overthrown by their own people if they didn't "win" the war, so no one was willing to stop fighting.

Then the US decides to come in, and our assistance allowed France and the UK to declare themselves the winner, and to subjugate the axis countries to the point where they couldn't help but try it again in a few decades.

Lot of people actually saw it coming. Hell, J.M Keynes actually wrote a book that predicted WWII in 1919...It was one of the things that cemented his fame as a great economist.

I think it's safe to say though that Europe lost its taste for war after WWII. It basically ended their reign as world powers, cost them an entire generation of young men (the second in a row), and laid waste to the bulk of the fricking continent.

Re:Rumor has it..

[Daravon]

Didn't you read the article/summary? The torrent is dead, because all the seeds went away.

On the other hand, we should just ask China. I'm sure they have some copies of the recipe laying around...

Re:Not the only time

[Rich0]

I'm not usually the conspiracy-theory type, but I suspect that the USAF already is flying an SR-71 replacement and this is why they have been retired.

Spy Satellites and UAVs certainly cover parts of the SR-71 mission profile. However, what about battlefield survailence of a major military adversary? Current UAVs cannot survive in combat. Sure, they can loiter over Basra all day when nobody has anything other than a rifle to shoot at them with. Try to get footage of downtown Tehran with a UAV and you'll just have UAV-parts raining all over the place. Satellites certainly work better, but they're very limited in coverage and have no loiter capability. They're also very vulnerable if somebody is determined enough to actually start shooting them down.

I'm not saying you couldn't do the job with a UAV with SR-71-like capabilities. That is certainly an option. Perhaps one already exists. However, neither satellites or the currently public UAV options make the SR-71 completely obsolete. Either the US doesn't think it needs ariel recon of hot areas, or it has some other way of doing it that nobody knows about.

Re:Rumor has it..

[jc42]

you can download the instruction from the Pirate Bay...

Just wait a few weeks; you might be right ...

My immediate thought was related: The US government probably does have the info hidden away in some obscure department's archives, hidden behind a wall of secrecy and classification. The repair guys just don't have the right clearances, and instead of saying "We can't give you that information", the agency says "We don't have that information".

It could also be a case of Clarke's third law. The information is stored away somewhere, but the repair crews don't know the name of the archive or who runs it, and the people at the archive haven't heard that anyone's looking for it. And chances are that if you ask for the info using the part's name, they won't be able to find it; you have to tell them the code number (or whatever they call it) for that particular part.

That is, the information could be hidden by ignorance and incompetence, not by any active efforts to hide or eliminate the information. That happens all the time any large organization, businesses as well as governments.

Actually, my other thought was "Did they google it?" Chances are that google could tell them the part number(s), and maybe also the torrent name at the Pirate Bay.

Re:Rumor has it..

[mabhatter654]

My wife and I do this all the time. We hide stuff from the kids in a "safe place"... only a week later we can't remember where the safe place was.

I think that's what happened here. Every body properly changed their passwords and cleaned out file drawers... and nobody did the diligence to make sure all the pieces were accounted for... because that would be "insecure" for there to be a checklist. The instructions are probably buried, like you said, and the only people interested in looking thru the archives don't have clearance... I'd venture even the archivists don't have clearance to open files not requested...

I agree with the other guy too. The DoD has been pushing to restart Nuclear Manufacturing of NEW devices since the last prez came to office. If only for the shock value of making new weapons to put some fear out there. I can't believe the current prez would fall for the ruse and burn that kind of international goodwill he's trying to muster.

Re:Rumor has it..

[cayenne8]

"I agree with the other guy too. The DoD has been pushing to restart Nuclear Manufacturing of NEW devices since the last prez came to office. If only for the shock value of making new weapons to put some fear out there. I can't believe the current prez would fall for the ruse and burn that kind of international goodwill he's trying to muster."

Well, the current prez doesn't need to look like a pussy in front of the rest of the world either. In that article, the push was for updating making replacement warheads and the like, with no new capabilities other than to replace again cold war stock. The Russians and Chinese are keeping their nukes up to date....why should we not do the same?