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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.'"
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.
This is why it's important to document your code... or your warheads. Either or.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
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."
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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....
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.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
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.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
We've been using them on countries for decades. Nuclear Deterrence. Perhaps you thought their intended use was to blow up?
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.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
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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.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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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.
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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
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
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...
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
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.
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.
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.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Greed is "the root of all evil", Money is just a tool.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
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.
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.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
But how would nuking Iraq help secure oil supplies?
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.
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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.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
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?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........