Russia still has the most Nuclear weapons

Russia and the United States have really toned down their arguing etc., since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then numerous nuclear arms reduction treaties have been made resulting in the destruction of thousands of warheads and their launch vehicles. I thought the purpose of these treaties was to limit each sides arsenals so both have the same amount. Why does Russia still have over 4,830 active warheads, to our 2,852? I know it is ridiculous to talk like 2852 is not alot, but does it not give them an advantage? I mean they can use their first half in a preemptive strike, and if they have any left afterwards they can use the remaining if we don't surrender. I know neither side would win, but theoretically they could wipe most of our nuclear forces in a first strike, then have enough to make us do what they want. I was wanting to know what fellow ats members thoughts were on this?

thebulletin.metapress.com...
thebulletin.metapress.com...

reply to post by USamf

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Meh.. If either side tries to nuke the other, the game is up. There's no such as as a "we strike you first with nukes, and all your nukes go up in flames so we're totally protected and you = dominated." I just don't see it working like that. Maybe I'm wrong..

[edit on 26-5-2009 by Kaytagg]

No. it does not give them an advantage. In fact it is a disadvantage, these weapons have to be stored. protected and maintained. They have to be dismantled and disposed of in a safe and secure manner and those remains guarded, forever. There are no winners in nuclear war, you die quick or you die slow but nevertheless you die.

warheads are one thing but the ability to deliver them is another

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Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

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Some things to keep in mind when looking at those charts.
1) Most of the Russian military's advantage in numbers comes from non-strategic nuclear weapons. If you look at the 'overall' nuclear picture, those are matched up against the nuclear forces of Great Britain, France, and (quite possibly) China.

2) "Deployed" doesn't always equate to "Deliverable". The U.S. manned bomber force is (at least on paper, it's obviously never been tested in reality) more capable than the Russians. I'd also give the Ohio-class SSBNs a slight but significant qualitative edge over their Russian counterparts. This isn't to say that the Russian systems aren't extremely dangerous, just that the USN's are slightly better. That impacts the at-sea time of the weapons, and the odds of them being fired when called upon. The Soviet (and now Russian) military has historically had serious problems with maintenance (one reason that Russian warships carry so many different missile launchers and radar antennae), and if the missiles (or the vehicles that carry them, be they TELs or SSBNs) aren't mission-ready, the warheads aren't much good.

3) You can only kill things so dead. Either side's nuclear arsenal is more than adequate to reduce any potential adversary to a Stone-Age level of technology. After that point, bigger numbers are just showing off.

Very true^^. I did not notice the not strategic part. Well, I can see now why they have the extra. to keep their deterrence up. They do have ALOT of land to protect.

yeah i think its not fair at all. i mean, what gave them the right to have over 4k nuclear warhead and we only have 2k? they've never used it to kill off women and children and we have. that alone should justify our possession of said weapons. since we don't allow anyone else to nuclear power, i say we just confiscate 1k of theirs to make us even. how dare these Russians, how dare them!!

reply to post by DOADOA

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Calm down you

2000 or 4000 who cares. All you need is to have one go off and it will ruin your whole day.


Do you realize it would only take less than 1/4 of them to pretty much wipe each other out? Even with the reductions these weapons are way beyond the levels of what little Kimmy is popping off or even what Iran might produce.

i`ll try and find the link but a study has been made to how many warheads it would take to cripple a country to the point of collapse (not destroy it - but totally cripple it) and that number is alot less than the bombs they have - IIRC for israel the number is 1 and the UK its 4

Hi slayer,

Normally it takes less than a nuclear explosion to ruin my day, call me sensitive.



Actually both countries used to have tens of thousands of operational ( or stored operational) nuclear weapons and had them not because they wanted to show off but due to the fact that they would need them to actually destroy all the targets presented in a third world war for Europe. The current nuclear arsenals are relatively modest and the yields are smaller too so it's not enough to devastate as much of the 'enemy's' economy and force structure as was thought needed two decades ago.

The whole idea that you can 'wipe out' each other ( but mostly the USSR in this case) with a few thousand nuclear weapons were never borne out by factual analysis or took into account all the active and passive defenses that could be, and in the USSR were, put in place.



Yes, overwhelmingly so. Basically for lack of a formal peace treaty with the US ( The US has refuses to sign up to a formal end to the Korean war) the North Koreans are forced to continuously bankrupt themselves in self defense spending which now involves holding Seoul 'hostage' in the truest sense of the word.

And before you point fingers the US military spending is now at about 1000 billion dollars per year despite the fact that half a million Americans are losing their jobs each month.

Stellar

Hi Stormhammer, will do my best to keep them in mind....



Agreed, the Russian federation and US forces is relatively balanced with the US weapons being on the whole more accurate and the RF weapons amounting to about double the yield. As for Britain and France , to say nothing of China, i sincerely doubt they would get involved unless their own nations comes under attack. They just don't have the numbers of weapons required to significantly change the balance of forces in a early war nuclear exchange and have thus invested in a second strike capacity at sea.



I would disagree but would openly admit that our disagreements and agreements would be 'on paper' only given the 'tactical/theather' nature of such deployments.



In terms of the current Ohio's yes, but the three Typhoon's that will eventually be redeployed , as well as the newly build Borei's, will make whatever true 'gap' there is very small indeed. As for the qualitative edge the boats can fire their arsenals from berthing locations in port ( or just outside within bastions protected by significant land and sea based ASW assets ) on US continental targets so any discussion about a lack of 'quality' has, certainly in my reading, since the late 70's been largely moot.



They don't have to be at sea to be in range of their targets. As for the maintenance they did keep older systems in use as long as humanly possible which logically resulted in the oft commented upon inefficiency. That's what they were willing to do to gain and maintain the significant, again in my reading, strategic edge they had established by the late 70's.



Actually they tend to have different tasks or be different incarnations/developments on the same idea which is largely why they are not stuck with the Harpoon and Tomahawk's as standard land and ship attack weapons despite the clear failure of those systems to live up to expectations. It is hard enough to change from one system to another but to keep on deploying new generations of ships with older generations of weapons isn't logical and thus not what they did.

As for the mission ready rates of the TEL's and SSBN's the Israeli's and USA can tell you all about how effective Russian SAM's are even in the hands of third world nations who have little or no experience with them, the experienced personal to operate them, or national networks that would massively enhance their lethality. As for the Russian SSBN's their land based forces were more than sufficient deterrent power and SSBN's isn't exactly a resource that doesn't wear out when used. The years in harbor may not have been good for the ships ( and they may not have been maintained as well as were planned for) but what could have happened at sea during underfunded operations would likely have been rather more severe.



But the nuclear weapons never reached levels where one would in fact just be bouncing rubble as was clearly understood by both sides. Both active and passive measures could , and certainly did in the USSR, be used to greatly dimish the damage sustained and the only way to make up for that would be to deploy even greater numbers of weapons. I have gotten involved in many such discussions so you can , if you wish, take a look at what i have introduced into evidence in the past.

Stellar

Is that excluding the U.S.A. ?

reply to post by GEORGETHEGREEK

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did you read the link? of course it includes the USA

their nuclear devices are also supposedly better than any other nations, due to the fact that they use "red mercury", which allows for smaller bombs with bigger explosions.

Red mercury is pretty neat stuff, it looks like honey or amber and it's use or beneficial properties (other than in bombs) is mentioned in several ancient texts.

reply to post by warrenb

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and is also completely made up and doesn`t in fact exist.

American perceptions of Russia are still tinted by a Cold War view of things. People want their constituents to believe the Russians are inferior, but at the same time, their rhetoric makes the Russians out to still be the Soviet Union. Yet I think anybody who does the research can see that the U.S. has the qualitative edge, as you say. The Russian Air Force and Navy are just shadows of their former selves.



An organization at the beginning of the decade did a study in which they found that just a single Ohio-class SSBN was more than capable of doing unbelievable amounts of damage and killing more than its fair share of people. It suggested, as a result, that nuclear stockpiles be reduced even further, because the damage that a single delivery system can do is far higher than any of us can even imagine.

In 2002, I was in the USAF and I actually worked on the silo's. I was part of an EMT (Electrical Maintenance Team) At the time, the STARK treaty (Ill find a source later) There were Russians at the training facilities where I was attending tech school at the time. After most of them had left we started asking our instructor about the treaty and what it entailed. He told us that we were reducing the amount of Nuclear warheads that were in service or "active". The only ICBM (InterContinental Ballistic Missile)nukes he knew about were the Peacekeeper missiles. We went from 150 active warheads to 50.

Active, via my instructor, just means that the warhead is actually loaded onto the missile. I assure you that we have MANY more warheads than the Russians. The Peacekeeper missile is able to hold up to 10 warheads each. We only have 5 flights of Peacekeepers (10 per flight) that we are told about and work on. As I am sure there are more (if i knew of any, I wouldn't tell you). I knew of another 15 flights of MMII (Minuteman II) missiles. They are capable of holding only 3 warheads each. The instructor didn't know how many of them were "deactivated" but MMII's usually had only one warhead active each. It wouldn't take us more than a week to fully load all of our ICBM's. If we did that, the number of "active" nukes would jump about 8 times the active count today.

That's just our ICBM count. We have MANY more ALCMs (Air to Land Cruise Missile) and quite a few Nuclear armed submarines.

***This knowledge is true to the best of my recollection. It has been a few years since I was enlisted and things may have changed***

[edit on 27-5-2009 by Sliick]

reply to post by Harlequin

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en.wikipedia.org...

and

www.homelandsecurityus.net...

orly?

[edit on 27-5-2009 by warrenb]

reply to post by warrenb

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This is true. Although the Russian rockets are not quite as accurate as ours (not much of a difference, but still...), they don't need to be. The "red mercury" can add a bit more of a punch to the explosion.

All that tells me is that they have not been honoring the nuclear treaties (which doesn't suprise me). I am concerned with the fact that Russia has had a history of not protecting them well, and many many nuclear and other weapons have a habit of going missing, especially since the fall of communism.