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Sidestepping Tactical Nuclear Weapons Limits With Strategic Bombs
Lasrick writes "Benjamin Loehrke describes the rather odd definitions of what is a 'tactical' nuclear weapon and what isn't. 'There is enough ambiguity surrounding the capabilities of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons to render the term "tactical" all but useless for arms control purposes. As the United States and Russia pursue new arms control treaties, they should drop the tactical distinction and limit the total number of all nuclear weapons — strategic, tactical, or other.'"
....How does it work and is it that good in real life?
SDI works like a condom. It blocks incoming nukes. It might provide protection, or it might not. It may prevent unwanted wars or it may not. The only sure way is abstinence. But what's a loose nuke among friends anyway?
The purpose of having so many is relatively simple: Modern SOP in regards to nuclear war is "Retaliation after Ride-out". "Launch on Warning" is simply impractical given the short time between the launch of a first strike and the warhead reaching its target. Therefore a country thinking about defense will have to work on the assumption of a large portion of its nuclear weapons being destroyed in the first strike, even after extensive hardening of the launching platforms. Depending on who you ask, the military assumes a worst case scenario where between 90-95% of its strategic nuclear weapons will be destroyed/damaged in a first strike. So if you have 5,000 strategic nukes, ICBM, SLBM, bomber launched cruise missiles, that means that after ride-out you should expect to have only 250 to 500 weapons operationally available with which to immediately retaliate against the aggressor nation.
Then also remember that you don't want to use all your working weapons against the first aggressor nation, there are other nations that may take advantage of the strike to attack you, so you need to hold back some weapons in reserve in case you need to use them against other aggressor nations.
Going from 5,000 to 1,000, assuming 90-95% losses in a first strike, means you now only have between 50 to 100 warheads with which to retaliate with. When you look at it that way,you can understand why having 10,000 nukes is not seen as excessive by many in the military. They don't see us having 10,000 nukes. They see us having 500-1000 nukes after a first strike. less in fact when you consider that many will be offline for maintenance. Figure retaining half for continued deterrence and then you only have a max of 250-500 nukes to immediately retaliate with.
Of course then there is the fact that nuclear disarmament would probably make large scale war MORE likely. With nukes you do not need a large standing army for national defense. (For national OFFENSE, what the US is doing today, you do.) Without them you have to expend vast resources maintaining a conventional military for purely defensive purposes. Seriously, why DIDN'T the Soviet Union just steamroll until they got to Gibraltar? They could have done so with conventional forces largely at any time during the Cold War. Because they knew full well that such an action would result in nuclear retaliation.
The number of weapons required to malfunction to cause serious problems: ONE. Even if it's a 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001% probability; the more weapons you have in more places, the more likely something goes wrong.
With you until you said that. Nuclear weapons are not stored in an armed state, and they aren't designed to keep a critical mass in such a configuration that it could turn into an uncontrolled fission. The absolute 100% worst case scenario possible would be that the non-nuclear part of the payload (which is used to mash the nuclear components together and trigger a critical mass detonation) could go off prematurely, but as the weapon is not stored in an armed state, that would not trigger a nuclear detonation (in the un-armed state, the physical position of the nuclear fuel is such that it would be blown away from each other, not towards, in the event that the explosive went off accidentally). It would, essentially, be a dirty bomb whose effective area would be contained to the storage facility in which it went off... dirty bombs are most effective when they're used outside where the local weather can carry the nuclear contaminants. Even that is not very likely, because the type of explosives they're using in modern weapons are extremely difficult to set off accidentally. (check youtube for a video of somebody cooking their lunch with burning c4... that stuff does not accidentally explode).
A *far* more likely scenario than anything you suggest would actually be some nuclear fuel "going missing". The problem with stealing a bomb is that somebody will notice it pretty much immediately. They're big, and difficult to transport. While you could fit one in an 18-wheeler, you'd have a hard time sneaking that truck into a military facility without being noticed. On the other hand, the nuclear fuel is significantly smaller and easier to transport. In theory, somebody could take the nuclear fuel from a weapon while working on it, and sneak it out in a briefcase. I would be extremely surprised if anybody ever managed to successfully do that, because my understanding is that they film people when working on nuclear weapons, and that nobody's ever left alone with a bomb.
You're right, it only takes one, but there are safeguards in place that provide an extremely small chance that any of the situations you suggest could ever happen. I would prefer nuclear disarmament too, but given that it's never going to happen, I'm comfortable with the safeguards in place. The engineers who designed these things are not morons, and designed them to fail safe (or at least, as safe as you can get with several kilograms of nuclear fuel involved).
Pretty much that. I grew up close to the Czech border in Germany. Wasn't that much of a fun place in the 80s. Our history teacher was military reserve - he used to tell the occasional story about how they nuked our hometown during the last training exercise. Roads were prepared with access shafts to place explosives to destroy the infrastructure, should the Soviets decide to move, lots of fun stuff like that.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Not to mention that even IF you steal one, good luck arming one. Nukes that are on active standby are heavily guarded and the detonators require pass codes to arm. Talked with someone whose duty was to guard nukes and his orders were, "ONE warning, if you do not get IMMEDIATE compliance, shoot to disable. If you can't shoot to disable, shoot anyway." People working on the weapons accidentally breaking procedure did happen on occasion, where they have to tell everyone to stop everything until the guards can sort everything out. Obviously everyone immediately complies because they know what the guards orders are and know if they get shot it's their own fault. Not unreasonable given what they are working on.
You can't just rip out the pass-coded detonator and wire all the blasting caps on the explosives together, to get the explosive "lens" in an implosion type weapon requires some blasting caps go off before others to take the core super-critical.If that timing is off all you get is a dirty bomb
Weapons that are not on active standby have vital parts removed including, when possible, the nuclear core.
This is done not only for safety, it prevents a saboteur from detonating a warhead. Worrying about a nuke accidentally going off is like me worrying about my car accidentally starting and driving over a little kid while I sit here in my house. Sure my car could accidentally catch fire, the horn could accidentally go off, but for the engine to accidentally start, the transmission accidentally shift into reverse, and the parking brake to accidentally disengage is an event so improbable that it is not worth considering.
They also don't store nukes in downtown New York, even though sometimes I think they should.