U.S. military to ‘modernize’ nuclear arsenal: report

The Russians withdrew from the ABM treaty with the United States because the previous moron president made a big issue of a missile shield to protect the United States.

Now the Russians are free on the topic to design and employ such weapons, and they've already started employing weapons that can potentially defeat an ABM shield, such as missiles that carry multiple decoys to mask the entry of a real warhead or missiles that can randomly change direction to avoid accurate tracking.

That was the basis of some the "I cut you choose" logic of SALT II.

We had more boosters, they had more warheads and higher capacity boosters.

So one side would argue rockets, and the other side would argue warheads.

MIRVS and decoys are not new, but became of heightened interest as an SDI countermeasure, yes. But they were working on MIRV's for a long time because of the emphasis on thrust capacity in their rocket program.

cue the Lee Greenwood music!

The idea that the US is supported by the deity of choice, that we are "blessed". And that others are not. It results in a reduced ability for self correction, and a simple way to foster divisiveness(those perceived as loved by god, and as a result, those perceived as unloved by god).

God bless the world without WoM!

(sing along)

imagine the cost of transporting the necessary conventional equipment halfway around the world to take out one major city or military installation.

The problem is that we want (and thus must pay for) both the conventional and nuclear capacity to do this.

If I were in charge I would say we should keep a powerful and reasonable nuclear deterrent as a last resort to keep a WWII situation from starting up again while reducing our conventional forces to a more reasonable level with those that are easiest to replace in a short period of time (ie infantry) taking the hardest hit.

Any country with nukes has to do this. They do not last forever. The emissions degrade the components and the weapons become unreliable and dangerous to handle. It is part of being a nuclear power.

I leave it to others to debate the ethics of nukes (which I am against) but this is why upgrade may be essential for the US, or any other nuke country.

Maybe true, but a 5,000 nuke, 350 billion dollar upgrade is going a bit far no?

But then there's another problem, and unfortunately it is one which tends to propagate lots of nuke weapons. What the fuck do you do with all that enriched Plutonium? It is the almost the most exquisitely poisonous substance known to humans. That ignores that it's radioactive with a half-life measured in many thousands of generations.

If you are going to decommission thousands of nukes (highly desirable), what the fuck do you do with all that enriched plutonium?

I almost would prefer that they'd keep them in weaponry so that we don't find out out decades from now that Soylent Green is Plutonium. Just kidding, but just barely.

It is a tough topic. No good solution exists. What would you do if you had to make a decision? Knowing that Plutonium isn't a natural substance on earth?

I would launch it into the Sun, but that is extremely difficult. Maybe better to launch it into the moon. But we may want to establish colonies. We can bury the shit, but where? No easy solution here.

Plutonium can be used in reactors as "mixed" fuel. Plutonium is created in commercial reactors and there is a modest "reprocessing" program in Europe to reuse the plutonium.

But what the fuck do you do with the waste then? Yucca fucking Mountain? Nevada doesn't want it, especially in an active earthquake zone. The stuff only has a half-life of 10^5 years.

I think they ought to bury it in a geologically stable salt mine. Wichita comes to mind. Or, maybe Detroit. Both have deep salt deposits and neither are close to geologic activity. These salt deposits are dry, no water table incursions to worry about, even over the tens of thousands of years involved.

It would take some geological work-up, but it is the only practical solution that I've heard of.

There are just earnings for Areva, Westinghouse, First Energy, etc

mainstream Chicago School economics.

So they can either redecorate, or wait until "retro" style becomes popular again.

Shag carpeting, bean bag chairs and beaded curtains... It's a sight to see at NORAD.

we would just abolish the damn things wholesale, and ask Russia and our Allies to do the same. If you can get India to agree, PROBABLY you can get Pakistan on board, and then it's just N. Korea, Iran, and Israel and China. Israel can maybe-probably be convinced to do the right thing. The people of Iran might be able to get their Government to fold on this if international pressure and an acknowledgment of the Iranian PEOPLE'S desire for peace and legitimacy on the world stage are conveyed by the West. That leaves China and N. Korea. Not sure how you would get China to go along (maybe by showing them they have no enemies left to point their nukes at) and if China is on board, pressure from the rest of the glob would either get the government of N.Korea on board or destroyed.

I propose this because I think the damn things are Lucifer Incarnate, and Humanities very best chance to destroy ourselves. I don't think they are necessary to maintenance of the "world order" as it exists today, and I want them gone.

I know the genie can't be put back in the bottle, and I'm not saying we shouldn't be able to build them and deploy them IF NECESSARY. I do think that HAVING them deployed on a regular basis leads others to the idea that they need to "keep up, or if possible, catch up" to our level of firepower, and that's a bad thing for our species.

If we want to lead the world, we had better be willing to do it by example.

and formally, via the UN, since 1972 I believe.

It would cost up to $110 billion to build 12 replacements for the aging Ohio-class submarines, the paper added, citing estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
...
At the same time, a nuclear-capable fleet of F-35 strike aircraft is being built to replace existing aircraft at a cost of $162 million an airplane, the paper pointed out.

and I am assuming you are refering to the SSBNs, the ICBM carrying Subs, is and has been the only weapon that that US has that scares the total crap out of any other nation that has a desire to attack the USA.

The SSBN's are the only real insurance policy this country has.

Get rid of the SSBNs then you best increase the size of the rest US military as insurance.

Everyone knows where the landbased missles are.
Everyone knows were the bombers are parked.
Everyone knows were the Aircraft Carriers and other ships are at all times.
Everyone knows were the troops are at.

The ONLY thing people do not know were they are is the SSBN's once they leave port. Not even our own Government, only the people on the sub know where they are at.

In the big picture of weapons systems our government buys, SSBNs are a bargin for what you get in return.

The Ohio Class SSBNs are almost 30 years old now and they are reaching end of life. A submarine is designed to last at least 30 years, ships 40. Most times the life is longer then what they were designed for. It is time to replace them.

Should we get rid of the F-35's, yes waste of money IMHO, other aircraft could be used or a less expensive design to do the same job.

thanks for your response

Frank, and others in Congress, published a lengthy analysis of real military needs for this century. The Ohio-class subs with their huge capital cost and huge labor costs were the nuclear attack system with the least value.

Nobody is going to ambush the USA and wipe out our Minutemen-3 and MX missile sites.

or at least the name of it and which agency produced it.

www.readthenewspapers.com

but I do know for a fact any real analysis of the SSBNs will come out of Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) Office and SSP does not release much real info for public consumption.

But I will keep digging for the truth or just make a few phone calls tomorrow and get a copy of the analysis if it exists in a unclassified version.

If the Russians decided to attack the locations of our bomber bases and missile silos and other launch platforms, we'd pick up their warheads and bombers on radar.

Hell, if you got a Russian ballistic missile sub as close as 200 miles off the west coast and decided to empty all the silos on the sub in a bid to knock out the missile silos in the great plains region of the US, that would still give missile crews at least 5 to 10 minutes to put their nukes into the atmosphere heading to targets in Russia. I'm not sure how good Russian subs are at evading naval detection, but I would assume the US Navy is very versed in tracking and picking up the movement of Russian subs, especially ones carrying ballistic missiles that are anywhere near US shores.

350 billion is a lot of money. And I don't think the US can afford that. Hopefully it might prove a good opportunity to reduce the nuclear arsenal.