Sounds like a good idea, right? After all, it's got "reliable" right there in the name and who doesn't like reliability? The only problem is that developing a new nuclear weapon is incredibly counterproductive to all our important non-proliferation goals. Naturally, as Brian Beutler explains, the Bush administration just can't quit the idea.
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Reliable Replacement Warhead
03 Apr 2008 11:12 am
Comments (17)
Steve Duncan: I know. One would think we store nuclear weaponry parts in a separate warehouse than helicopter batteries.
Re: Replacement Warhead
The only defensible argument I've heard for manufacturing new nuclear weapons/parts is to prevent radioactive pollution (the newer technologies are supposedly "cleaner")
I know this seems counterintuitive...but it's the only positive thing I can find to say about it...
Also suggests that the existing ones are all unreliable. Good to know.
DukeJ, "reliable" simply means, "If we call it a 300 kiloton warhead, it will go off at 300 kilotons and not at 275 kilotons." The idea that our nuclear weapons policy should be at all focused on making sure we can blow up the entire world 5.8 times over or whatever, rather than the "unreliable" figure of 5.5 times, is utterly disgusting. All of our efforts on nukes should be aimed at living up to our Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations to negotiate a treaty on worldwide, total nuclear disarmament.
As far as I'm concerned, the less confidence the military has in the "reliability" of our nukes, the less likely they are to want to use them. And so much the better.
Back in the mid-90's I was selling parallel supercomputers to the weapons labs. At that time they had some reasonable concerns about the reliability of the weapons stockpiles. Before Clinton, they checked reliability by taking a few nukes out of the stockpile every now and then and detonating them in deep holes in the Nevada desert. A crude approach, but effective. After Clinton halted testing, they were scrambling to find alternative approaches - a combination of sub-critical tests and big computer models. But there are real technical problems: plutonium is funny stuff with weird physical properties; then over years or decades constant high radiation causes microstructure changes; and most modern bombs designs also have tritium, which decays quite rapidly.
However, I believe recent research has established that the existing weapons will work fine for a long time to come (maybe 90 years ?).
So there isn't really any need for new designs.
There is also a social/cultural concern that once you stop designing weapons, then a body of knowledge and experience is lost as experts retire or die, and it gets harder and harder to start up again.
However, all these issues really pale into insignificance against the facts that a) the damn things are useless anyway, and b) building new designs would be massively harmful. So it's still
a stupid idea.
The idea that the US, because in Lefty eyes all problems and military issues are the fault of America - will trigger and arms race of nukes after 60 years and 115+ different bomb designs tested is asinine. All the other nuke stuff did not trigger nations to rush into bomb building anymore than a jet fighter race was triggered by US and Soviet fighter upgrades.
Nor have we awful evil Americans with 6,000 warheads suddenly triggered an insane rush to have other nations match our threat when we and the Soviets had about 30,000 apiece just 30years ago. Many far larger and dirtier than current nukes.
We see proliferation now, not because the US tested the MK-55 in 1953 or the W-87 in 1976, but because nations outside the bipolar nuclear umbrella like India, Pakistan, Israel and S Africa determined it made strategic sense for them to get nuke weapons.
The "reliable" is directed at two weapons - the W-76 to address issues raised by whistleblowers that a design flaw exists as plutonium ages and we either make lots of fresh, new PU-239 or we redesign the weapons for a long shelf life.
And the 2nd rests on the idea that we can take out Command, WMD bunkers dug in rock 300 feet to 800 feet below surface, but until we get a small reliable bunker buster of 1-5 KT, we are stuck intead with 10-15 megaton weapons that will not only produce 20,000 times the radioactivity and blast, thermal pulse of the smaller weapon - but none of the effects would be confined to the bunker area but spread out lethally over several hundred square miles.
Some argue we might use smaller nukes sooner, but in certain scenarios where we are hit with chem, nuclear, or bio WMD it's either the 15-20 MT 3-stage hydrogen bomb or the new penetrating nuke weapon if we wish to stop short of eradicating most of the population with a spread or 400-600KT thermonuclear weapons. One might not cause any civilian deaths. The other might roast several cities (lethal blast radius of 30 miles) plus spread lethal levels of fallout into adjacent areas, possibly even a country we are not at war with...
W-76 reliability makes sense if we are to maintain a credible strategic DETERRENT.
Creation of a small bunker buster might save several hundred thousand to several million people in certain war scenarios.
chris ford, would these bunker busters be launched into WMD bunkers that an administration such as the current regime absolutely assured us contained WMD? Maybe bust out the launch codes and fire away after the SecState testified before a UN committee about all the evidence we had justifying their use? You're nodding your head "yes". Whew, I feel better..........
Chris, you're basically telling the rest of the world that their alternatives are to be hit with little, delicate nukes or with humongous, bomb-them-back-to-the-stone-age nukes. Is it any wonder that "nations outside the bipolar nuclear umbrella like India, Pakistan, Israel and S Africa determined it made strategic sense for them to get nuke weapons"?
The nuclear powers made a deal with the non-nuclear states back when the NPT entered into force in 1970: they agreed not to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, and we agreed eventually to get rid of ours. Our Senate ratified that treaty for the initial 25-year period, then re-ratified it. It's the law of the US. Our nuke policy is hypocritical, stupid, dangerous, cynical, and in the end self-destructive. We invented nuclear weapons, and brought the world into the age of nuclear weapons and the possibility of a kind of war that could destroy all civilization and virtually all life on the surface of the planet. We need to get rid of nukes. Period. Not develop new designs that will eventually get leaked or stolen and brandished at us.
"All the other nuke stuff did not trigger nations to rush into bomb building anymore than a jet fighter race was triggered by US and Soviet fighter upgrades."
France. China. Israel. South Africa. India. Pakistan. North Korea.
Anyhow, this is beside the point. When the USA
signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it accepted the obligation to seek nuclear disarmament. That was the deal: countries without nukes agreed not to seek them, as long as the nuclear powers would share peaceful nuclear technology and disarm.
If we stop disarming, or - even worse - start re-arming, then the whole bargain falls apart.
And actually China, Iran, France, and others
continue to develop new fighters - at least in part because they can't risk being vulnerable to whatever the superpowers might choose to provide to their possible opponents. So of course there
is an arms race. Can we stop it ? I don't know,
but we have to *try*. And it wouldn't hurt to save a few billion dollars here and there, when we owe China about $1T and have a $10T national
debt and a continuing big deficit. Heck, China doesn't need to *fight* us; carry on like this for a few decades and they'll *own* us.
"until we get a small reliable bunker buster of 1-5 KT, we are stuck intead with 10-15 megaton weapons that will not only produce 20,000 times the radioactivity and blast, thermal pulse of the smaller weapon - but none of the effects would be confined to the bunker area but spread out lethally over several hundred square miles."
Get real. If the USA drops a nuke on anyone else
(except possibly in response to a nuclear
detonation in a US city), even if it's only
0.1KT, then the effects - diplomatic and moral
effects - will be instantaneous and worldwide.
And those losses would far exceed any possible
military benefits.
This is crazy talk. The same kind of crazy talk that
led us into using just a little bit of torture.
Torture is torture. A nuke is a nuke.
The effects of existing nuclear bunker busters were simulated concerning an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
This is what Cheney plans to unleash and Chris Ford approves of:
"A simulation of RNEP [Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator] used against the Esfahan nuclear facility in Iran, using the software developed for the Pentagon, showed that 3 million people would be killed by radiation within 2 weeks of the explosion, and 35 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India would be exposed to increased levels of cancer-causing radiation (see Figure 1)"
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/the-robust-nuclear-earth-penetrator-rnep.html
Pesto - The nuclear powers made a deal with the non-nuclear states back when the NPT entered into force in 1970: they agreed not to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, and we agreed eventually to get rid of ours. Our Senate ratified that treaty for the initial 25-year period, then re-ratified it. It's the law of the US.
Except it does not require the US to unilaterally get rid of all our nuke defense, nor prohibits us from upgrading the weapons we do retain to more modern technology and reliability. Lefties never use the actual language when they talk about "the law sez we must disarm ourselves!!!"
Article VI of the NPT: The states undertake to pursue "negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament", and towards a "Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control".
And negotiations have proceeded between us, the Russian/Soviets, and Chicoms in good faith, reducing arsenals by 70-80% and negotiations continue though no one trusts the idiot brother in laws of 3rd world dictators and Euroweenie and Arabs running the bulk of the UN to ever be able to "rise" to where Russia, China, or America, or even India and Israel ever trust the UN to protect their citizens from an aggressor with a "surprise!!!" WMD capacity....
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HACK - "A simulation of RNEP [Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator] used against the Esfahan nuclear facility in Iran, using the software developed for the Pentagon, showed that 3 million people would be killed by radiation within 2 weeks of the explosion, and 35 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India would be exposed to increased levels of cancer-causing radiation (see Figure 1)"
HACK quotes a cooked "report" by the Union of Concerned Scientists, which critics have called a load of shit. Common sense says it is a load of shit because the redesign we want is for a 1-5KT penetrating bomb where most radiation and all thermal and blast effects are kept underground. The facility the "concerned Scientists" assholes said would cause 3 million deaths is located out in the Iranian desert, 30 km from a major city.
3 million deaths for a 5 KT bomb out in the middle of nowhere?
Right!!!
The 20KT bomb dropped right ON Nagasaki killed 70,000 people, not 3-8 million. Numerous above ground testing in Nevada of 1-100KT weapons at a distance similar to their study distance to Reno and Las Vegas killed none "immediately from radiation", let alone 3 million...and may have increased cancer mortality by 2-3,000 patients.
(Just as the same assholes were off by factors of 20 to 1800 in estimating Chernobyl deaths from radiation).
****************
If the USA drops a nuke on anyone else
(except possibly in response to a nuclear
detonation in a US city), even if it's only
0.1KT, then the effects - diplomatic and moral
effects - will be instantaneous and worldwide.
And those losses would far exceed any possible
military benefits.
This is crazy talk. The same kind of crazy talk that
led us into using just a little bit of torture.
Torture is torture. A nuke is a nuke.
Posted by Richard Cownie
The "black and white" mind of a Lefty is an amazing thing. Same with their moronic "all or nothing" logic. All nukes are the same, anything under someones "torture definition" from laughing at a terrorist and humiliating him to skinning someone alive is morally the same thing, since torture is torture and nukes are nukes....
Just as there is no moral difference between jaywalking and murder because crime is crime....
For 60 years, to no diplomatic outrage but the Commies and human-flesh eating African nations too stupid to understand distinctions, we have said we would respond to a conventional invasion of Europe that could kill millions by conventional forces of the Red Army, with nukes.
Later, when we abandoned chem and nuclear weapons, we did so despite two dozen nations continuing to deploy them by saying "we will nuke you" if nerve gas or biowar in "sufficient lethal quantity" is used on our civilian populations or our troops.
Clearly with 60 years of keeping our civilians safe, except for the Islamoid attack of 9/11 and other Islamoid terror acts - readiness to use nukes in certain circumstances has military value that far exceeds Lefty or African Gaboonian outrage - it's kept the peace, it has deterred not just nuke attack, but conventional and any nation from thinking of using biowar or nerve gas against us or our allies.
Chris, I've posted Article VI myself, on this very blog, at least once in the past. I can't help it if you didn't read it before or can't remember it. And "lefties" constantly quote it because rightwingers like to imagine that the NPT involved a trade of permanent vassalage for non-nuclear nations in exchange for a few power plants.
As for our "good faith" -- bullshit. The US has never announced a "no first-use" policy or a "no use against non-nuclear states" policy. It is explicitly our policy to nuke whomever we want, whenever we want to -- and in fact of both Dem candidates left AFAIK, believe the US should reserve the right to nuke non-nuclear countries. We continue to deploy land, air, and sea-based nukes; in the 1990s we built the National Ignition Facility to enable us to test without violating a testing moratorium (by using "sub-critical" tests). And that despite the fact that we still haven't ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
We continue to research Star Wars, the Pentagon continues to release statements of our defense posture that assert the need to maintain nukes indefinitely. And we're funding work on designing and building new warheads. If you think this indicates a good faith effort to negotiate disarmament, I'm sorry but you're a complete idiot. We didn't agree to negotiate down to 2,500 warheads. We agreed to negotiate to zero. We've done virtually nothing in the last 40 years to indicate that we're serious about that, and we've done an enormous amount to show the rest of the world that we value the ability to threaten the world's non-nuclear nations with annihilation.
Ford Asshat babbles: "Common sense says it is a load of shit because the redesign we want is for a 1-5KT penetrating bomb where most radiation and all thermal and blast effects are kept underground"
Note that the physics of penetration mean that there is NO WAY that blast effect, and radiation can be kept underground. Read the fucking article, moron.
You keep nuclear effects underground by dropping down a hole a couple thousand feet - not the lousy few yards the "penetrator" can do in the best case scenario.
Sure, a 1-5KT weapon would be better than what we've got. But all that means is that it would far less effective than the larger weapon due to the physics. So you'd have to drop more and more of them to get the same effect.
Moron.
The only reason they want this shit is to PAY FOR IT WITH TAXPAYER MONEY which is then shuffled back in bribes to the Congress that happens to have $200 million in investments in defense industries.
"For 60 years, to no diplomatic outrage but the Commies and human-flesh eating African nations too stupid to understand distinctions, we have said we would respond to a conventional invasion of Europe that could kill millions by conventional forces of the Red Army, with nukes."
Casual racism ? Check. Mindless militarism ?
Check. In favor of torture ? Check.
I think we've found an authentic George W Bush
fan. It's a little exciting: they're a rare species these days. Poisonous, but harmless as
long as you keep them in their natural habitat
(talk radio) and away from legislation, power,
and most of all weapons.
Good article here on the physics involved - bottom line: you can't penetrate far, and you'll kick up a big cloud of nasty stuff that will kill probably tens of thousands. Not a good idea.
Conventional explosions to seal off entrances are
a better military solution, quite apart from the
moral and diplomatic issues.
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-11/p32.html
Though possibly if we dropped John McCain from a
sufficient height he might be dense enough to
penetrate further than conventional materials :-)
On the issue of penetration before exploding, I seem to recall that during WW 2, the British attacked the German battleship Tirpitz with a 12,000 bomb called a tallboy from 20,000 feet. The bomb penetrated the ships' main deck and several lower decks, eventually exiting the bottom of the ship before exploding and blowing a tremendous hole in the bottom causing it to sink. It would seem then, that it should be possible to develop a nuclear weapon along these lines that would have considerable penetrating power. After all, a bomb capable of penetrating a foot or more of armor plate should be capable of penetrating a distance of more then a few feet in dirt.
Comments closed April 17, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Slightly off topic, but how many people here suspect that shipment of warhead components to Taiwan was actually "accidental" as explained to us by the DoD? And to strain credulity further, Taiwan says they never even looked at them?
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Thu March 27, 2008 AFP
Nose cone assemblies containing the fuses were recovered on Monday from Taiwan where they had been held in storage after being shipped there as helicopter batteries, senior Pentagon officials said.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has ordered an investigation into the incident and a comprehensive review of the US inventory of all nuclear-related components as well as of policies and procedures, the officials said. -- AFP
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Hey Bob, grab me some helicopter batteries, a box of cotton swabs, a case of coffee creamer and a barrel of axle grease. Be careful please, it's all stored over there in the corner with the nuclear weapon components.
Posted by steve duncan | April 3, 2008 11:39 AM