Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Well, those same psychopaths have big ass bomb shelters with enough supplies to last at least a century. Do you really think that they would launch without being in their bunkers? Even better, do you believe that peons will be invited inside? Psychopaths are not stupid. Immoral and egotistical sure, but not stupid.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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.
"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.
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
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
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.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
MAD prevented WWIII
WWIII is the war on terror.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
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.
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."
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?
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.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
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.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Expect a knock on your door from some friendly US Government employees in 3... 2... 1...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Subtle troll is subtle. Well done.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz