Current Nuclear Weapons Development

Scott Kenny said:
4 subs with a dozen or so birds each is the bare minimum deterrent.

There is no real possible reduction for UK or France, not without dropping below the minimum actual requirement.
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Then probably USA should agree to reduce the number of American deployed warheads on the same number as Britain and France have deployed?
 
Dilandu said:
Then probably USA should agree to reduce the number of American deployed warheads on the same number as Britain and France have deployed?
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The US has a larger threat faced at present, since it's highly unlikely that China is going to launch at Britain and/or France.

The US minimum deterrence means having subs available to target Russia, China, North Korea (possibly shared with China), and probably India and Pakistan as well. Note that I said available to target, not targeting.

So that might theoretically be as low as 8 boats, but the USN has said 12 is their minimum. And that's with the Columbia-class never needing a midlife refit. The Ohios needed a midlife refueling, so that meant 14 boats under whichever START it was that forced the retirement of 4x SSBNs into SSGNs. When the Ohios were first designed in the 1970s, the requirement was 18 boats each with 24 birds.
 
bobbymike said:
Why Japan Australia and S. Korea should immediately develop independent nuclear arsenals.
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Japan and RoK can likely do so pretty quickly. They both have large nuclear power programs and reprocess fuel. Plus a large number of very robust mathematical and physics schools able to crunch the numbers to design an implosion lens.

Australia doesn't have any good ways to get there. Yes, they have uranium mines and a crapton of uranium ore, but I can't see if they have a refining plant. No refining plant, no weapons-grade uranium. They only have 1 reactor, which means they can't easily breed plutonium. And then there's the problem of the implosion lens.
 
If ROK, Japan and Australia can no longer count on US military support, which US allies are left as candidates for military support? Would US global involvement be reduced to protecting trade routes? From which bases?
 
NMaude said:
That is something they could do easily as HE lens tech is a mature field, the major bottle-neck for any country in becoming a nuclear power is access to fissile and futile material.
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Funny, I've always heard that the other way around: that the technically-challenging part of designing a nuclear weapon is the implosion lens.

Access to fissionables is the expensive and very-obvious-what-you're-up-to part, but getting a working implosion lens is quite difficult.
 
It all depends on the amount and type of nuclear material you have. If you have a ton of U235, you can get away with a gun-type design. As you move to designs with less and less nuclear material the complexity of the HE goes up. So it all depends on where the expertise lies, nuclear material production/refinement, or HE design. It is also a lot easier to hide the HE design and testing than the nuclear production/refinement.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Access to fissionables is the expensive and very-obvious-what-you're-up-to part, but getting a working implosion lens is quite difficult.
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If the country in question has the time, money and the needed people it's just a matter of time to develop, test and manufacture an HE lens design.
 
Desertfox said:
It all depends on the amount and type of nuclear material you have. If you have a ton of U235, you can get away with a gun-type design. As you move to designs with less and less nuclear material the complexity of the HE goes up. So it all depends on where the expertise lies, nuclear material production/refinement, or HE design. It is also a lot easier to hide the HE design and testing than the nuclear production/refinement.
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And if you're using plutonium you must use implosion designs.
 
Germany's looking for a replacement to existing 'joint key' nuclear weapons provision.

France isn't offering that.
I'm not sue Paris is even willing to discuss that.

London might and it has no 'ambitions' in the way Paris does.
 
zen said:
Germany's looking for a replacement to existing 'joint key' nuclear weapons provision.

France isn't offering that.
I'm not sue Paris is even willing to discuss that.
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I could maybe see France willing to discuss Dual-Key nukes with NATO. More likely to discuss that with Poland than Germany, however.

Still too much bad blood from the 20th Century.



zen said:
London might and it has no 'ambitions' in the way Paris does.
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London currently only has Trident nukes under their control. No other nuclear weapons unless they decide to rebuild WE.177s and offer those to NATO as the replacement for US Dual-Key.

So Germany would either 1) get British Trident RBAs that could possibly get put on various-sized ballistic missiles (as small as ATACMS size), or 2) the UK gets back into the bomb-building business by reprocessing however much German spent fuel and going to town!
 
Scott Kenny said:
I could maybe see France willing to discuss Dual-Key nukes with NATO. More likely to discuss that with Poland than Germany, however.
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My understanding is they talked, but when Germany's people rocked up to Paris to talk about the decision system, they got told Paris will decide.
Scott Kenny said:
Still too much bad blood from the 20th Century.
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Which is where the UK comes in.
The partner trusted by both EU and US on European security.
The one without grandiose ambitions on Europe.
And the only one the US would trust on this topic.
Scott Kenny said:
London currently only has Trident nukes under their control. No other nuclear weapons unless they decide to rebuild WE.177s and offer those to NATO as the replacement for US Dual-Key.
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Which is effectively what I'm saying, though I'm not sure we could say it's going to be German uranium.
In fact I'm not sure the UK committed to law any stricture on designing and building new nuclear weapons. Others will correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I could maybe see France willing to discuss Dual-Key nukes with NATO. More likely to discuss that with Poland than Germany, however.
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France and Germany have been cooperating in NATO and the European Union over the decades. French and German governments have carefully avoided stepping on each others' toes. So much, in fact, that it raised concern among some observers in the USA and the UK. In the current international climate, I expect the two to cooperate even more.
 
www.twz.com

USAF Air Base In England Is Nuclear Capable Again: Watchdog Report

All evidence points to RAF Lakenheath being nuclear-capable again, although the long-term plans for storing weapons there are unclear. All evidence points to RAF Lakenheath being nuclear-capable again, although the long-term plans for storing weapons here are unclear.
www.twz.com www.twz.com
 
Scott Kenny said:
Every time you make a new computer model, you need to do a test shot to validate it.

What you're saying is that the computer models we have are 30+ years old and therefore SUCK.
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Additionally, the US hasn't produced new plutonium in decades, and the isotropic and chemical composition of plutonium changes as a it ages. Atomic weapons are dependent on extremely complex processes, and even tiny changes can have huge impacts. Likewise, othr components aging can impact their functioning, through the conventional components can be more easily replaced.

Bottom line, the longer we go without testing the more uncertainly there is in reliability of the arsenal. While it may not matter, at some point it does become significant.

Further, strategic deterrence depends heavily on perception and a complex mix of certainly and uncertainty. An adversary thinking our weapons might be unreliable is destabilizing, even if it's a false assumption, especially since there's no way short of actual testing to refute the assumption. Weapons testing provides visible proof to back up deterrence.

Desertfox said:
Yes they could reprocess the Pu, but they would first have to build the facilities to do so. All their civilian reactors are LWR which produce significant (~50%) amounts of Pu-240 while you need to get down to <7% Pu-240 for weapons-grade Pu. They may have a lot of Pu lying around, but its not usable as is.
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It is rather buried in the engineering discussion on this page, but the point is made several times that the need for weapons grade Pu is somewhat exaggerated, and with boosting and other techniques it's possible to get a quite effective weapon with reactor grade Pu. Admittedly it requires a rather more sophisticated design and various special materials, fabrication techniques, etc., but is probably well within the reach of a 1st or advanced 2nd world country.

https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq1.html
 
sdmuleman said:
Additionally, the US hasn't produced new plutonium in decades, and the isotropic and chemical composition of plutonium changes as a it ages.
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It would cost a fair bit of money but remanufacturing the warheads primaries pits would deal with this change in chemical and isotopic composition due to ageing.

sdmuleman said:
It is rather buried in the engineering discussion on this page, but the point is made several times that the need for weapons grade Pu is somewhat exaggerated, and with boosting and other techniques it's possible to get a quite effective weapon with reactor grade Pu.
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Again as this would cost a fair bit of money but both reactor-grade plutonium from spent fuel-rods and recycled weapons-grade Pu-239 could be purified to 99.999% Pu-239 purity by isotopic-separation.
 
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Forest Green said:
www.spacewar.com

A French-UK nuclear umbrella for Europe? Not likely, say analysts

Paris (AFP) Feb 27, 2025 - France and Britain are unlikely to include European allies in their nuclear deterrence, analysts said after future German leader Friedrich Merz called for European defence independence and a possible nuclear sharing.
www.spacewar.com
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Seems that the simplest solution would be for EU to just buy missiles and warheads from France. Of course, the EU would be forced to operate them.
 
Britain’s ability to rely on the US to maintain the UK’s nuclear arsenal is now in doubt, experts have warned, but working with European states to replace it will be costly and take time.
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However, calls for Britain to make alternative plans have been joined by the former UK foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who initiated talks in the 90s between the UK and France on nuclear weapons cooperation.

“It really is necessary for Britain and France to work more closely together because if American reliability ever came into question, then Europe could be defenceless in the face of Russian aggression,” he said.

“The contribution by America must now be to some degree in doubt, not today or tomorrow, but over the next few years and certainly as long as Trump and people like him are in control in Washington.”
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Defence analysts are emphasising the need to plan for a scenario where a transatlantic relationship fractures to the extent that the US declines to give the UK missiles.
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Dr Marion Messmer, a senior research fellow at Chatham House and an expert on nuclear weapons policy, said: “It would be a big risk if it wasn’t being planned for, but it’s something the UK government can’t be too public about, as it wouldn’t want to give the Trump administration or Russia any ideas.”
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“You wouldn’t necessarily be able to take the warheads which the UK uses for submarine launches and fit them for air launch. You would very likely need to develop a whole second warhead. That would require everything from new assembly facilities and workforce planning, but it could be a worthwhile investment for Britain,” she said.

“You could hope that France – the most obvious contender for Britain to work with – has a delivery vehicle similar to Trident that could easily be adapted, but it would require the French government and the French nuclear enterprise being willing to share those designs with the UK.”
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www.theguardian.com

US support to maintain UK’s nuclear arsenal is in doubt, experts say

Malcolm Rifkind joins diplomats and analysts urging focus on European cooperation to replace Trident
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Defense Updates has put out this video concerning the M51 armed Triumphant-class SSBN:


American President Donald Trump’s policies have made Europe wary, they are no longer sure if they can depend on the U.S. for military deterrence if ‘push comes to shove’. Confronted with the possibility that the United States could abandon them during Donald Trump's presidency, European Union leaders initiated emergency discussions on Thursday to strengthen their own security measures and guarantee continued protection for Ukraine.
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The 27-member alliance is also warming up to reports that French President Emmanuel Macron would consult with EU leaders on the potential deployment of France’s nuclear arsenal as a shield against Russian aggression on the continent.Currently, Europe’s deterrence rests mainly on one country and specifically one platform - it is the French Triomphant class ballistic missile submarine armed with M51 missiles.
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It's crucial to note here that unlike Britain’s American-made Trident II SLBM, the French system has been independently developed.
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In this video, Defense Updates analyzes why M51 SLBM-equipped French Triomphant ballistic missile submarines are Europe’s best deterrence against Russia?
#defenseupdates #TriomphantSubmraine #m51SLBM
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Chapters:
0:00 TITLE
00:11 INTRODUCTION
02:05 TRIOMPHANT CLASS SUBMARINES
03:41 ARMAMENT
06:01 ANALYSIS
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Germany’s chancellor-to-be, Friedrich Merz, has said he will reach out to France and Britain to discuss the sharing of nuclear weapons, but cautioned that such a move could not be a replacement for the US’s existing protective shield over Europe.

“The sharing of nuclear weapons is an issue we need to talk about,” Merz said in a wide-ranging interview on Sunday with the broadcaster Deutschlandfunk (DLF). “We have to be stronger together in nuclear deterrence.”
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www.theguardian.com

Germany to reach out to France and UK over sharing of nuclear weapons

But Friedrich Merz cautions such a move could not replace the US’s existing protective shield over Europe
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Scott Kenny said:
"not a replacement for the US's existing protective shield" my ass.
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The goal is too still have the door open where the Nato sharing system is used. That said an secondary system outside of nato could be build for user who wants it. That said sutch solution in an fast timeline would mean buying Rafales and using ASMP's. Any new weapon solution would take mutch longer und SSBNs are problematic....
 

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