Current Nuclear Weapons Development

Shoes31 said:
Would a B61 fit in the weapons bay of an F-35B?
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I think so, it's about as big around as a 1000lb bomb. And IIRC the -Bs got their bay doors reshaped to allow for more space inside.


Shoes31 said:
Obvious answer for their deterrence needs would be a nuclear tipped Hyunmoo sub launched missile.
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At least 4 separate subs, with ~3 of them at sea at any given time.
 
“Presumably, the return to transparency has been calculated to encourage other nuclear-armed states to divulge similarly detailed information.”

Please no one hold their breath waiting for China (or any other nuclear nation) to be more transparent.
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I still find it amazing what we did in the first two decades of the Cold War, basically 0-32,000 warheads, the ability to build concurrently a Triad consisting of a couple dozen SSBNs, hundreds of bombers and thousands of missiles (we actually LIMITED what we built) to the state of the nuclear enterprise today.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Something tells me that will be short-lived.
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The number quoted is the number in the stockpile and doesn't include the deployed amount.
thebulletin.org

United States nuclear weapons, 2024

The United States has embarked on a wide-ranging nuclear modernization program. We estimate that its maintains a stockpile of approximately 3,708 warheads.
thebulletin.org thebulletin.org
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Forest Green said:
www.defensenews.com

North Korean charged in cyberattacks on US bases, defense firms

A North Korean military intelligence operative is accused of targeting U.S Air Force bases and defense firms, among other entities.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com
breakingdefense.com

US, South Korea warn North Korean hacking group Andariel targets defense, aerospace firms - Breaking Defense

"This is the group that if Kim Jong Un wants something done, something done in-house, ‘Hey, we need a missile program, we need to do this,’ Andariel's the one to go out and find the blueprints,” Mandiant's Michael Barnhart told Breaking Defense.
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com
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Forest Green said:
www.yahoo.com

Russia's Lavrov says US-South Korea nuclear guideline adds concern, media reports

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday a recently announced guideline on the operation of U.S. nuclear assets on the Korean peninsula is certain to add security concern in the region, South Korean and Russian news agencies reported. Speaking at a meeting of the Association of...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com
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IMO Lavrov lost any credibility in the West years ago, he's just Putin's lapdog/yes-man now.
 
www.spacewar.com

Putin threatens to restart production of mid-range nuclear weapons

Moscow (AFP) July 28, 2024 - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday threatened to relaunch production of intermediate-range nuclear weapons if the United States confirmed its intention to deploy missiles to Germany or elsewhere in Europe.
www.spacewar.com
LOL, he already has them deployed:

missilethreat.csis.org

9M729 (SSC-8) | Missile Threat

The SSC-8 is a Russian ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 2,500 km. Its development prompted the 2019 U.S. withdrawel from the 1987 INF Treaty.
missilethreat.csis.org missilethreat.csis.org
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Forest Green said:
breakingdefense.com

US needs more nuclear subs, mobile ICBMs and tactical nukes: Heritage report - Breaking Defense

The conservative Heritage Foundation presented the new report as a potential draft Nuclear Posture Review for the 2025 presidential administration.
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com
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The submarine part I agree with, though there is no practical way to expand production significantly. So really that is decision to be made in the distant future - once you get to the planned twelve, just keep building. Mobile sentinel I think is pointless, but in any case it would only come after the silo based missiles are established.
 
Josh_TN said:
The submarine part I agree with, though there is no practical way to expand production significantly. So really that is decision to be made in the distant future - once you get to the planned twelve, just keep building. Mobile sentinel I think is pointless, but in any case it would only come after the silo based missiles are established.
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I think in a future that includes space-based GMTI, mobile ICBMs are a waste of time. Whilst it's true that submarine detection from space might be possible one day, I think that's much further away and could probably be combatted with some kind of submarine stealth technology.
 
Forest Green said:
I think in a future that includes space-based GMTI, mobile ICBMs are a waste of time. Whilst it's true that submarine detection from space might be possible one day, I think that's much further away and could probably be combatted with some kind of submarine stealth technology.
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Crud, as far as I know submarine detection from space can be avoided with an operational change: having the subs cruise around at depths over 100m. Plus, add a photo diode to see if a blue-green laser has swept over the sub. If you're at 100m and do get swept by the laser, immediately change course 90deg and dive for 200m.

200m is the approximate max depth for water penetration for the best wavelengths (blue-green light) in open ocean.

In coastal areas the light penetration is even less, only around 50m, and the best frequency shifts to a yellow-green color.
 
Josh_TN said:
Actually surprised how inexpensive it is.
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When it's that cheap, I suspect that all they did to denuke those planes was physically remove the PAL lockbox in the plane and left all the wiring in place. $4.5mil across 30 birds is only $150k per. Remove blanking plate and wire caps, reinstall PAL box, reinstall PAL box circuit breakers, test. 15 hours per plane.
 
NMaude said:
Not zero, as I understand it probably two or three dozen a year at most, Pit production at Rocky Flats for example needs to be reestablished.
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When you had a nuclear infrastructure that produced 3000 W76s in five years with five other warheads in various stages of development and production I stand by my “basically zero” comment.
 
I'm sure that the DOE could reestablish the Cold War production capacity but it would be very costly both in time AND money, they are no doubt deeply regretting letting the US's capacity to manufacture new nuclear-warheads to badly wither.
 
There are almost 4000 complete warheads in inventory; that should easily allow for growth in the deterrent. Additionally I believe there are a large number of pits in storage that could be recycled.
 
Josh_TN said:
There are almost 4000 complete warheads in inventory; that should easily allow for growth in the deterrent. Additionally I believe there are a large number of pits in storage that could be recycled.
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I’ve been on several Teams calls for the National Institute for Deterrence Studies with guys who’ve been part of the nuclear sectors for decades. No one knows the state of our stored warheads nor how quickly they could be recertified.

Some of the attendees and speakers were former NNSA directors, chiefs of arm control under Obama and recent authors of Strategic Posture Reviews.

I asked the question “how quickly can we upload our missiles and what is the state of the “ready reserve” answer “we don’t know”
 
Josh_TN said:
Additionally I believe there are a large number of pits in storage that could be recycled.
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There literally thousands of pits in storage (IIRC at the PANTEX facility in Amarillo, Texas) along with thousands of secondaries in storage at the Y-12 facility in Tennessee. But with the pits to turn them into usable warheads you need to design, build assemble the the HE-lens package to implode it along with the fusion and firing sets to detonate it. If you're talking about a TN-warhead then in addition to building the new primary one of those secondaries (Along with the primary) need to be encapsulated in a new radiation-case. I strongly suspect that this is easier said than done.
 
bobbymike said:
I’d be much more interested in the cost (probably classified) of restoring warheads in storage seeing that we basically have ZERO capacity to build new weapons.
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Thats a total lie. We have ongoing pit production at this time. It is not as much as we want but it is being expanded at multiple sites. We also have tons of old pits being reused and re-certified. We can't do 600 W76s a year, but we don't need to do 600 W76s a year.
 
Do you understand what “basically” zero means?

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4510010-plutonium-pits-us-nuclear-ambitions-sentinel/amp/
Overseeing the production is the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is pushing to get Los Alamos whirring to life this year to start making plutonium pits, with the hopes of eventually producing 30 per year at the site. The agency also plans to open a brand-new plutonium pit production plant in South Carolina, known as the Savannah River site, to meet an ultimate target goal of 80 pits a year.


But the NNSA hasn’t done large-scale pit production since the early 1990s, creating unease about restarting the process after decades of inactivity. And the agency is plagued by schedule delays, workforce challenges and budget concerns.
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, but for nearly three decades, the United States has not had the ability to produce them in the quantities required for the nuclear weapons stockpile.
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Yes basically zero.
 
Some of the old pits especially the ones several decades old should be remanufactured so that the accumulated Americium-241 (The decay product of Plutonium-241 which has a half-life of 13.2 years IIRC) can be removed from the Pu-Ga alloy.
 
us.yahoo.com

US says secret nuclear strategy not a response to single country or threat

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A classified nuclear strategic plan approved by President Joe Biden this year is not a response to a single country or threat, the White House said on Tuesday, after the New York Times reported it reoriented the U.S. deterrence strategy to focus on China's expansion of its...
us.yahoo.com us.yahoo.com
 

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