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US Revamping Its Nuclear Arsenal
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."
"I say we blow the fuckers up." -- Booger, Revenge of the Nerds.
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-...
Really, I did a write-in.
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
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 refusal global.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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/...
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
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.
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.
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.
.. if only.
*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.
Fissle material, explosives, lubes, seals, etc all need to be refreshed from time to time or the reliability of the weapon drops over time.
I refuse to settle for the lesser of two evils! Cthulu 2016!
You can only replace the tritium so many times before seals fail and injectors break. The fissile material, Pu-239 and U-235, and the tamper material, U-238, although not highly radioactive, do emit alpha particles, which break electronics. Throwing alpha particles at high explosives and detonators also doesn't make them any more stable or effective. Therefore, you either rebuild warheads constantly or find a design which is more immune to embrittlement and other alpha-related damage.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
Whoever believe proclamation from politicians deserved to be betrayed
Just because Obama's campaign slogan was "A Nuclear-Free World" doesn't mean he can't lie --- and the "change" he promised us turned out to be the "spared change" we have left in our pockets
The re-arming of America's nuclear arsenal has everything to do with pork barrel --- as most of the sites related to the re-arming programs are located in the Democrat controlled districts, it is nothing more than typical practice of cronyism - political cronyism
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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.
BritVids THREADS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and The War Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... are also adequately cautionary.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
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?
Any rogue faction than uses nuclear arms (they may have 1 or 2) against the US can be assured their cause will not survive. ... or most likely you weren't.
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.
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.
You mean a self-serving reaction that only shows a short-sighted consideration of attitudes, rather than appreciating the value of industrial development and economic exchange over keeping Japan and Germany in some kind of economic fiefdom as the USSR attempted to do?
I'm glad that the countries of Germany and Japan produce cars and other products worth buying, I'm even somewhat glad China is doing the same. I'm a bit chagrined at the pollution and labor exploitation issues, but even that can be addressed with a bit of patience and prudence.
We just need the A-team on the case. Unfortunately, too many of the smart guys are seeing their own immediate profit and finding ways to game the system as opposed to ways to win the game.
the fact that we are capable of destroying the world a lesser numbet of times over due to decaying warheads, yet you seem unconcerned at all by the danger of being so armed. But regardless, you don't seem to see what an enormous waste of money this is, spent on toys that will nullify the very meaning of money if used.
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The primary nuclear deterrence of United States is the ballistic missile submarine fleet anyways.
Those things are definitely not sitting around decaying from neglect.
will never allow us to blow each other up. The Soviet Union/Russia was not and is not a threat. This is Wargarble that serves one of 3 purposes: to keep the economy going with the military industrial complex (since real socialism is a pill Americans can't swallow), an excuse for ever lowering standards of living or just plain 'ole war profiteering.
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 impending attack and said nothing. I was all set for WWIII and then... nothing. Not so much as a wimper.
See, dropping bombs on people that can't fight back from $2 million dollar drones is profitable. Real, large scale total war isn't.
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We have an ex-KGB Cold War nostalgist on the other side of the table. Is it suprising that we're reacting with "what the fuck do we do with an ex-kgb douche jerking off over the cold war to stop being a global fuckwit?"?
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 that's allowed, nukes go from being an expensive defense against getting nuked to an invaluable general defensive weapon, and everyone will want one. This is something people should think about when they say that nukes prevent WWIII -- this requires the various nations to be willing to launch the first nuke.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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."
Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.
The world has gone insane!!! Why would anyone threaten or rationally consider using nuclear weapons against any country all over the political leanings and chest thumping of the leadership of some other country?! It's insanity.
There's a long lead time with these things and effort needs to be maintained, so sorry guys, you can't just blame one person or one party for this. Instead it's the hawkish culture driven hard by the sort of people Eisenhower warned us about, the sort of people that view the rise of Putin with joy and the sort of people that are not ashamed with stuffing the wallets of elected officials.
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.
Reading comprehension. Submarine fleet and their armaments aren't being neglected.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
That was a political requirement imposed that clashed with the requirement of the person on the spot being able to do the task they were trained and employed for. Thus to tick the box and not get in the way the password was set to all zeros. If you or I got into the right building with the "password" we wouldn't have had a clue how to launch missiles, we'd just have a number but wouldn't know the procedure to use it.
The "password" just created the illusion that civilians were in charge of operational military matters. It was set to all zeros so that they were not, so that an order to start a war would be a "one step" thing from a civilian authority and not micromanaging.
Besides, who would you trust more with final launch authority, a group of military personal prepared to shoot anyone that wasn't going by the book in an operation that required several people or the likes of Dan Quale, Spiro Agnew, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton?
Our current president will be remembered at the most conservative president to date in American history. So far the president who his playbook of actual actions has most closely resembled has been Reagan. Being as Reagan got us through the cold war by convincing the Russians that the Star Wars Missile Defense was real, we should expect a similar moonshot approach from Obama when he seeks to cement his own legacy.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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 that targeting systems and other electronics have drastically improved.
Like others have commented, I agree that it would be good to continue to see a reduction and an eventual elimination of nuclear arms. However, this isn't going to happen in our lifetimes, so the more practical move is to decommission the old weapons and replace them with more reliable versions. Maybe along the way we see how much is being spent and rethink about whether it's worth the cost.
were not considered also. We have Putin threating nuclear war over Ukraine and pulling out of a treaty that Medvedev signed and ramping up production of nuclear weapons. So it makes sense in this day and age unfortunately.
Yes, you're right - submarine armaments are indeed being renewed now, which is what this discussion is about. And are you wishing for better reading comprehension or are you just being a turd?
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
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 Ukraine wasn't worth it. On the other hand, Russia is a nuclear power, which raises the cost to anyone who wants to interfere with Russia's expansion.
Is it ideal? No. But a nuclear threat does give a nation bargaining power.
Another example would be Pakistan/India. Both nuclear powers, both with a history of pointless border conflict (they hold the record for the highest battleground - they've actual fought over a mountain glacier that was so inhospitable that only a tiny fraction of the casualties were due to combat and not the environment). Being nuclear powers, even the pointless border wars have a strong incentive not to spiral out of control, because if vast amounts of territory were lost, the nuclear option would be considered.
Is this insane? To a degree, yes. Has it worked so far? To a degree, yes. Hopefully someone doesn't screw things up.
He got a nobel peace prize for what exactly? Sure presidents start with good intentions, but then find out the whole political system constraints them to a well defined path.
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.
... that Russia (at that time, USSR) made in 1980ies. The result is predictable.
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.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Telling other countries they cannot have nuclear weapons, but keep on building themselves.. what a bunch of f-ing hypocrits....
I don't like North korea or Iran having nuclear weapons, but if the US has them and keeps on making them, then I won't blame those countries for trying to create some themselves..
If the US is really serious about other countries not having nuclear weapons, then they should stop making them themselves and ditch the ones they have.. otherwise it's just a bunch of crap..
Just one small correction - Albania and Yugoslavia were not members of the Warsaw Pact ;)
There aren't even hundreds of countries on earth. There are 195. That's a nickel short of "hundreds".
and the last lunatic imperialist regime on earth that routinely attacks other countries, in its own imperial interests
You need to pick up a newspaper some time. They contain information vital to making you not look like an idiot.
Nobody wants to sell a group like ISIS a nuke, because it could just as easily be used on the seller.
Should ISIS ever be accepted as an actual government, they will be seen as a pariah who will make North Korea, Myanmar, and Iran look like a good cooperative players on the world stage.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Want to know WHY we have so damn many warheads ?
The weapon folks try to figure out what the target defenses are capable of before the warheads reach their target, the really smart people start crunching numbers and come up with a solution designed to over-saturate their ( known ) defenses. We don't throw one warhead at a target, we throw several to ensure one gets through.
This snowballs as delivery systems get smarter or bigger ( supersonic+ cruise missiles, smart re-entry steering and evasion, multi-mirv's, remember the MX-Peacekeeper platform ? lol ) and as countermeasures do the same. ( Hypersonic projectiles, high energy zero time of flight systems, etc )
Same thing for conventional weapons ( especially cruise missiles ) for both land and sea targets.
Ship of X class has defenses Y. In order to ensure a kill on target, we need Z birds from multiple directions all with similar time on top capability to overwhelm said defenses and destroy target. If you compensate for additional platforms in the vicinity that may be protecting each other, ( Eg: A battle group ) you may have to throw a ridiculous amount of ordinance at your target ( say . . . the carrier ) in the hope it gets through at all.
Ditto for land targets. We never use one cruise missile on a building folks. . . . . we use a half a dozen or more lol
TBH though, our land based delivery systems are pretty much honeypot targets anymore. Bomber, sub and cruise missile delivery are much harder to target due to their mobility and not knowing if a sub is sitting just off your coast in the event you do something stupid is quite a deterrent in its own right.
However, put one of these weapons in the hands of a fanatic who has no issues about beheading folks, or volunteering to become a suicide bomber to kill infidels in the name of some pretend deity in the sky and all the deterrent in the world isn't going to stop them. Deterrent doesn't work with these types. You have to render them inoperable for lack of a better way to phrase it.
They know it and we know it. If they ever DO get one, it had better be the most closely guarded secret of all time or we'll end up leveling entire regions to ensure it never gets deployed.
FreedomFirst, for having worked where you have, then you know that nukes are expensive and we really do NOT want to do this.
O tried to get Russia AND China to work on verifying and lowering the warhead counts. China refuses to participate.
However, if another nations top leaders believes that a nuke war IS winnable, and is building new warheads underground, along with creating a massive shelter, such as 3000 miles of underground tunnels, then by cutting our number down, it invites first strike.
And if you ran the numbers, then you know the ONLY way to stop such leaders, is to prevent them from thinking that a nuke war is winnable.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Here:
https://www.facebook.com/bochk...
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
There's an English version of the same thing; it's called "Threads" and it's much, much more horrible. It's presented as a docudrama with lots of explanations of how and why damage occurs and people die. Everyone should see it, too.
Chuck Norris: Socialism == a thousand years of darkness.
"This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for 'a nuclear-free world' and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy."
you missed the part where he's a pathological lier. The only thing he's done that he promised was to fundamentally change this country. mission accomplished.
Obama's views on nuclear weapons are shaped by the 'neo realists' of Dr Ken Waltz. And Waltz believed proliferation was a GOOD thing not a bad thing, that the MORE countries have atomic weapons the MORE stable the world is. Waltz, and his acolytes Walt and Mearscheimer have Obama's ear on this topic more than any other advisers. This is why Obama quietly doesn't really worry about Iran. He would like to see them acquire The Bomb.
"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." This is racial profiling regardless but there were Japanese fighting on the allied side.
Don't say Jap
This happens with every presidency, regardless of party. Near the end of their potential term, they cave in to pressures from the military forces within and start deploying the war machine. It makes you wonder what pressures they were put under to discard their ideals.
Russian colonial expansion was normally to move into adjacent areas and annex them. They grabbed a very large area, but since it was legally Russia and contiguous it didn't look anything like British and French colonialism.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The cold war was over. reagan kept it going. That idiot raised more taxes on Americans than any other president; ran up the most massive deficits; ran like a coward from lebanon after he had been told to NOT go there; etc. etc.
That man, along with W, were 2 of the worst fucking president that America has had.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
'I now appreciate the bitterness I saw in former WW2 warriors when they would see a Japanese car. '
Can you elaborate on this? It looks bad without context.