US Ready To Select New Nuclear Warhead

Originally posted by Arcane Demesne
Odd...

I thought this was a bad thing...considerig the non-proliferation treaty and all that.

Well, a lot of it is that we don't produce tritium anymore. We recycle it through Savannah River, which has had their share of problems in filtering tritium in the past year or two. So we bought some from Canada for a while under the table but now they are cranky and hard to please. So rather than crank up a tritium producing reactor, the thought was that we could get rid of the need for it altogether.

Right now, we have to replace the initiators and boost gas about once a year. There's a lot of weapons in stock, and every one of them has to be maintained. That's a lot of tritium, although we recover every little bit.

It would be nice not to have to do that anymore. It would be nice not to make more tritium.

For the longest time, it wasn't thought possible to do. That's not true anymore, maybe. I still think they should test, the new designs are oddball and very different.

The other issue is that new technology enables some other things too, so why not design that while you're at it. Awfully tempting, I suspect. That's where your proliferation will come in.

I really don't see a need for new nuclear bombs. Why not spend the money on armour, education, better fuel technology, fusion, or even free energy.

Well, with the Dems coming into power, you might push for reactivation of that Naval Weapons project that got cut last year. I'll have to go dig up the code designator for it. I can see it now:

"Dear Hillary:

Now that you are queen, I would like to reactivate NW project 02-2334 (not the real number). You might not have heard of it, because it's TS. Please stroke Doc B 100 million bucks, and let's get on with it. Please do not let them use it exclusively for attack subs. I'd like one down the street, please, preferably in the next five years. Then we don't have to worry about the damned Middle East anymore, and we can fence the whole thing off, sort of like Escape from New York, toss over some food and knives occasionally.

Signed,
Arcane"

Originally posted by fritz
Westy, I'm not too sure whether this is still an ongoing project or not, but here is the link:

Yes it is still an ongoing project, it was NOT cancelled, however it's not a cruise missile, it's a hypersonic bomber. It is intended to take off normally and fly up to near 130K at speeds around Mach 11, it will have a range of 9,000 miles. It will have roughly a 12K payload and carry several glide vehicles which will each carry a 1,000 lb payload and have an initial range of 3,000 miles. Later on the range will be extend to 9,000 miles.

Oh yeah, it will cost more than 24 million a piece and it will be very difficulty to maintain and operate.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam

Right now, we have to replace the initiators and boost gas about once a year. There's a lot of weapons in stock, and every one of them has to be maintained. That's a lot of tritium, although we recover every little bit.

It would be nice not to have to do that anymore. It would be nice not to make more tritium.

So basically, it's to save what materials we already have made...I guess that makes since. Isn't there anything we can make from the left over materials that aren't bombs?

Dear Hillary: ...

That made me feel sick for some reason, ha. Not to bring politics into this, but I sure hope she doesn't get in. That probably sounds weird coming from such a liberal as myself...

[edit on 1/12/2007 by Arcane Demesne]

Originally posted by Arcane Demesne

So basically, it's to save what materials we already have made...I guess that makes since. Isn't there anything we can make from the left over materials that aren't bombs?

Well, you can convert the pits to MOX fuel for nuclear reactors.

That made me feel sick for some reason, ha. Not to bring politics into this, but I sure hope she doesn't get in.

That probably sounds weird coming from such a liberal as myself...

Um, me too. I'm sort of hoping Joe Lieberman will run as an independent. Split the gubmint up three ways. LOL never pass anything, which would be good.

New Nukes means small nukes means low rad count nukes means we use Chinese scientists 'hired by Clinton' and get what we pay for when the high energy physics compression wave data shows up on CNN and Mr. Smirky goes home from Sandia 'a local hero'.

i.e. The cat is already out of the bag on a lot of this tech.

That said, nuclearly deterrence is a complete spectrum effect and until you face the facts regarding Theater Wide/Upper Tier and all the other 'baloneyum' solutions to being able to smack junior in the teeth EXACTLY as hard as he nukes you /immediately/ you are looking at a scenario in which the threat can always control the escalation chain with something that runs like this-

1. X blows up a nuke under a task force or at an SPOD/APOD or even during the invasion.

2. X says "You are not wanted here, if you try something the next TEN nukes will go off in your cities."

3. President Numbnuts backs down because his is a 'political decision', not a Strategic One.

Not so if the commander on the ground has his own nuclear options as current units more or less do not (everything is at least 'one theater away' in a freefall depot condition which is /probably/ not even assembled and ready to go so you have to bring the delivery platform to the nuke, mate them up and fly on into theater).

If you invest in a followon to AGM-131T. An ARRMD aeroballistic cruise and an ATACMS modified Lance followon, you make the enemy quake in his boots because now it is _THE U.S._ who have the 'untargetable SCUD' option. And they are in the hands of rabid butchers who smiled when they heard about Abu Ghraib. Because they knew that what they did 'in the field' was ten times worse.

A range of deterrents means a tiering of response levels and authorities. Single Tier through StratCom and Der POTUSian Putz Brigade only opens up the response window to the point where the muzzle mutts suffer for nothing because nuclear terrorism WORKS at the on-the-street level of hostaged counter value.

Such is the essence of idiocy in our kid glove handling of the rabid dogs in Norkia and Shiaville. They have nothing worth stomping. They will soon have a fair arsenal (all of which will be small from the start) and while such may not be 'suitcase level' it will certainly be small enough to ingress a 9,000 mile border home of the Great Shaitan.

If you make the threat look credible at the battlefield and theater levels (which have /long/ since outmoded the freefall solution), you make THEIR politicians worry that you are indeed 'planning for the inevitable' by which a very short reaction window gets them DEAD before they can implement their 'negotiative position'.

Don't believe me? We're losing Iraq and 20 billion barrels of "If not Osama, then all you hold dear...." _intimidation value_. When that happens USD currency status as the fiat crude payment of choice will go the way of the dino. Iraq will become fundamentalist overnight. And Osama will ride laughing into The Kingdom with the results of his conniving visible as a function of U.S. panywaisted foreign policy.

THAT is what will drive the world back into nuclear brinksmanship.

And the sad irony is that the very tactic we used against the USSR (fund a conventional force in the face of overwhelming nuclear response) in NATO Europe will be turned against U.S. as they export nuclear technology to every idiot that wants it and laugh while we rush to 'diplomatically' put out the fires.

All the while sanctions won't work or won't be backed because U.S. economic status will be fast-fading. And the shift in power diplomacy will go to the countries whose barbarian ways are KNOWN to be 'unwilling to put up with bleep'.

All because we made some very bad choices with INF/CFE and the NPTR.

I doubt seriously if anything we do now as a bunch of glad handing peaceniks will reverse course. But the one thing that can be said is that nukes are cheap enough to be worth the investment in counter-terror. IF you put them forward with the slavering slaughter dawgs who will use them.


KPl.

Soooo.....you know too what they do at Sandia..among other things.

Orangetom

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
For the longest time, it wasn't thought possible to do. That's not true anymore, maybe. I still think they should test, the new designs are oddball and very different.

This intrigued me, I have been studying all aspects of nuclear weapons for years, I am curious what these new designs are ? Do you have any information on this with regards to your above statement.

Do they use features which are different from floatng pit or flying plate primary implosion designs ? Are they doing away with teh Tellar-Ulam configuration altogether ? I am familiar with designs up to the W-89.

PS. Found this interesting article on the RRW program.

The RRW Program is unnecessary: current nuclear warheads will remain highly reliable for at least 50 years.

All the evidence indicates that the current stockpile of nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads is highly reliable and that it will remain so for many decades. Since 1997, the DOE has annually certified the U.S. nuclear arsenal to be safe and reliable. Concerns about the longer term reliability of these warheads centered on the plutonium "pits" at their core, and the DOE argued that new RRW designs were needed to compensate for the potential effects of plutonium aging. However, last month the JASONs—an independent panel of scientists and engineers that has long advised the U.S. government on nuclear weapons issues—concluded that the plutonium components in U.S. nuclear warheads have lifetimes of at least 85 years, and possibly much longer. Since the oldest warheads in the U.S. nuclear arsenal are less than 35 years old, U.S. weapons will remain highly reliable for at least the next 50 years. Even then, there would be no need for new weapons designs, since the plutonium pits could simply be remanufactured.

www.ucsusa.org...

Originally posted by rogue1

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
For the longest time, it wasn't thought possible to do. That's not true anymore, maybe. I still think they should test, the new designs are oddball and very different.

This intrigued me, I have been studying all aspects of nuclear weapons for years, I am curious what these new designs are ? Do you have any information on this with regards to your above statement.

Do they use features which are different from floatng pit or flying plate primary implosion designs ? Are they doing away with teh Tellar-Ulam configuration altogether ? I am familiar with designs up to the W-89.

PS. Found this interesting article on the RRW program.

The RRW Program is unnecessary: current nuclear warheads will remain highly reliable for at least 50 years.

All the evidence indicates that the current stockpile of nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads is highly reliable and that it will remain so for many decades. Since 1997, the DOE has annually certified the U.S. nuclear arsenal to be safe and reliable. Concerns about the longer term reliability of these warheads centered on the plutonium "pits" at their core, and the DOE argued that new RRW designs were needed to compensate for the potential effects of plutonium aging. However, last month the JASONs—an independent panel of scientists and engineers that has long advised the U.S. government on nuclear weapons issues—concluded that the plutonium components in U.S. nuclear warheads have lifetimes of at least 85 years, and possibly much longer. Since the oldest warheads in the U.S. nuclear arsenal are less than 35 years old, U.S. weapons will remain highly reliable for at least the next 50 years. Even then, there would be no need for new weapons designs, since the plutonium pits could simply be remanufactured.

www.ucsusa.org...

Heh, you're looking for a sigma 15 clearance guy to pump for info. I'm just an old WER dude, long gone on to other things. At any rate, I'm way more interested in the explosives aspect than the physics package, since I used to blow things up for a living. It's still a hobby. Let's say there is still something like boost but it's not from injected tritium, and the pit configuration is similar but not as thin-walled on the outside.

On the other hand, the Jasons report is correct, but.

Let me interpret a bit. The pit itself doesn't undergo significant radioactive decay leading to it becoming less fissile or something. The decay rate of PU is pretty dang slow. What does happen, however, is that every spontaneous decay (mostly from PU240) which causes a neutron emission creates a small localized defect in the pit's crystalline structure with some hydrogen in it. The question was whether an accumulation of such defects over time would affect

1) the dimensions of the pit - the defects cause a near unmeasurable "swelling"

2) the phase behavior during compression - pu is crappy enough about shifting into various mechanical phases. We dope with gadolinium to suppress about half of them but they weren't sure if introducing mechanical defects would add back some new and undesirable behavior.

3) the "evenness" of the compression - would the defects somehow induce Munroe jets

The conclusion they came do by studying early 1950's pits is that they are good for a long time, and the defects aren't significant.

What ISN'T good for a long time is the boost gas and the initiators. That, and making sure you don't have any electronics defects that have cropped up are what's being maintained for the most part. But it's a maintenance that has to be done with disgusting regularity.

No boost, and an initiator that doesn't require tritium, that's the ticket to a "wooden bomb". Well, that and the new explosives don't age out like nitrates do.

Is it possible to hollow out and then fill some of these old missile casings with rubber chickens? Then possibly launch these into the cities of our enemies. When the angry mobs run to the center of town to stomp on the apparent duds, they will angrily hold up rubber chickens in amazment, then no doubt the other soldiers will begin laughing and pointing at eachother, then we will all have a big laugh at how pointless world war really is.

Originally posted by super70
Is it possible to hollow out and then fill some of these old missile casings with rubber chickens? Then possibly launch these into the cities of our enemies. When the angry mobs run to the center of town to stomp on the apparent duds, they will angrily hold up rubber chickens in amazment, then no doubt the other soldiers will begin laughing and pointing at eachother, then we will all have a big laugh at how pointless world war really is.

Pointress? I respectfurry disagree!

Love,
Emperor Hirohito

I think it is advantageous for security and proliferation reasons to continue to use tritium---because high quality no-tritium-but-still-boosted long-lifetime nukes are better for terrorist uses. I assume that the ideas and techniques will eventually leak out.

I think that technology ought to stay uninvented/undeployed so that high-tech states with economic apparatus and systems to procure and recycle tritium will continue to have a large advantage.

Suppose Osama did get those supposed "suitcase nukes"----the fact that undoubtably something of that vintage needed boosting and tritium to be compact like that would result in short lifetime outside of state control, entirely for physics reasons even if anybody 'jimmied' the PAL system with insider knowledge.

The requirement to own a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator to maintain nuclear weaponry is good.

And in an alternate scenario with lots of tactical nukes?

1. X blows up a nuke under a task force or at an SPOD/APOD or even during the invasion.

1b. Y blows up their nuke under X's task force or equivalent during the invasion.

2. X says "You are not wanted here, if you try something the next TEN nukes will go off in your cities."

3. President Numbnuts backs down because his is a 'political decision', not a Strategic One.

Global thermonuclear war. Funny game. Nobody wins.

Originally posted by mbkennel

I think it is advantageous for security and proliferation reasons to continue to use tritium---because high quality no-tritium-but-still-boosted long-lifetime nukes are better for terrorist uses. I assume that the ideas and techniques will eventually leak out.

I think that technology ought to stay uninvented/undeployed so that high-tech states with economic apparatus and systems to procure and recycle tritium will continue to have a large advantage.

Suppose Osama did get those supposed "suitcase nukes"----the fact that undoubtably something of that vintage needed boosting and tritium to be compact like that would result in short lifetime outside of state control, entirely for physics reasons even if anybody 'jimmied' the PAL system with insider knowledge.

The requirement to own a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator to maintain nuclear weaponry is good.

*That* is actually a good point. If you lose one, in a couple of years, it's unlikely you can detonate it, in five it's definitely not going off. But not with the new ones.

Of course, the really crappy part of life is that if you don't mind it being heinously inefficient, you can make a very functional Pu nuke in the 1kT range with no boost and a single point initiation. We actually built some like that long long ago, but they weren't fielded for long. They don't meet the "bible" requirements for safety. All you need is Pu. Most people don't have it to throw away on low yield crappy weapons though.

MBKennel,

>>
Global thermonuclear war. Funny game. Nobody wins.
>>

Don't quote a childish Hollyweird interpretation of how NORAD would be replaced with WOPR-as-Skynet to me young man. Not least because Joshua would have pressed the button if he could have won a single game of tictactoe but humans aren't that deterministic and thus tend to 'play each other' as much as the game on a threat-to-residual-value basis of statistical weighting.

Indeed, the fact of the matter is that this scenario has ALWAYS worked to the advantage of our foes. Because it trades value for value at a higher level than we can afford to lose.

In the Cold War it was about destroying deployed Euro units (especially USAFE) before REFORGER could even stand up and destroying the carriers which sought to 'stand in' for them before they could begin to have a tacnuke stabilizing frontal effect themselves.

Anything less and fighting a kodiak in a coat closet at 5:1 numeric odds looks a helluva lot like Desert Sabre.

And, if you use nukes yourself, killing a CVBG is /simple/.

Past which, the Russian premiere can call up on the hotline and say: "Here are the at-anchor coordinates for every non-submarine Naval asset I have. The first strategic nuke which falls on Russian or European soil will be followed in 30 minutes by an attack on 20 major U.S. urban targets."

Click.

Which is why, peacenik treehuggers aside, our 'best defensive' status ALWAYS came down to Gryphons and Pershing IIs being less than twenty minutes away from Moscow _prestaged_ to NATO. And all the bull# with F-14/15/16/18 and Abrahms and Bradley and MLRS and AEGIS and and and was exactly that. Wasted Money to look good in far-flung-dung theaters doing all of NOTHING useful.

The same applies to todays environment wherein to get 'equal blood value' from the Arab turnip, we would have to have a one-as-all intent to obliterate multiple nations _based on their shared religion_.

As the sole means to genocidally influence the locals to act in OUR best interests to stop whatever rogue terror organization claimed responsibility.

That would ALSO not be viable. Because the rest of the world would hoot and holler and call U.S. names for taking such an extreme view.

And because of the oil.

Which means that the first nation which can nuke a deployed theater force while hostaging a civillian one will have the seated POTUS by the balls.

And the only thing we could possibly do would be to start a manhunt /after/ we withdrew. Given we have can't find 9 missing Arab students who failed to start classes last summer, it's rather unlikely we could adequately police 320 million people (without auschweiss level mentalities on all travel) and 20,000 miles of border/coastline to even catch them getting away.

And so the U.S. would be humiliated by a nation WILLING TO GO BEFORE ALLAH as a mass casualty for the chance to /ruin/ 'the survivors' of a U.S. nuclear terrorism incident.

As the ultimate Mouse The Roared endgame which is **not** GTNW because politicians are skilled in the art of damage avoidance as a function of conditional defeats it simply denies U.S. the option to intervene conventionally _anywhere_.

Are you so naieve that you fail to realize THIS is why so many 'threat nations' want nukes which they nominally can't use? Why nations like Russia and China and France are so willing to give them weapons capable systems and the delivery means to use them while 'standing back' waiting for the explosion?

THAT is why I said and maintain that it is foolish to create a scenario by which any possible enemy thinks they can stage a propoganda solution (Lebanon for an immediate example) 'in the interim' between attack and response by which said blackmail could happen.

i.e. You give the murdering bastards in uniform nukes and this scenario becomes untenable because they can use them before the diplomatic messenger can even arrive to be speared.

Fail to do so and you are stopping the tide with a teaspoon worth of 'missile defenses' that simply won't work against prepositioned threats ('Remember the Reagan!' as a nuclear port or approaches mine incident which may not even be /taggable/ to a given in-theater reactor-as-designated-threat because everyone trades from outside their regional thumbprint of source material).


KPl.

ch1446, lets skip all your pointless babble. Summarise what you want to say in 3 lines, the rest is complete BS and tedious to wade through. I dont want to want your abstract ideas from the fictional technothrillers you've read.

Ok ?

[edit on 18-1-2007 by rogue1]

Ok, here is a good question, and one that should be addressed. Now the reasoning for upgrading the nuke arsenal is because the old ones are deterating and are steadily becoming unreliable. And that the plan is to take and strip down the old nukes and replace them with new more effecient and more secure weapons. Now please bear with me, but a nuke has several components like say a gun. The actual radioactive parts are the bullets of a gun. Now if you replace the old bullets with new bullets, what is the use of the old radioactive materials? What happens to it and where does it go. I would think that as a country, concerned about security, would want to know and have accountablilty for all of the radioactive materials that they are replacing. Does this make sense?

All nuclear materials are controlled substances in this country. USA. You dont move any of it anywhere without strict tracking, labeling, and accounting......ever. I speak particularly of materials used as fuels or weapons grade. There are very strict proceedures for handling this material and several trained, qualified, certified people must be onboard and sign off on every process/proceedure. By this I mean you dont even move it across the aisle from its present location without accountability.

Not only this ..even the specialty tools used in handling this material are controlled equipment ..tagged, marked , and accounted for in the same manner. THese are often one of a kind tools.

Fuels and other nuclear materials are reprocessed in different manners depending on the end usages to which these materials are slated to be subjected or scheduled.

THe costs for refining fuel from ore is very expensive and complicated. Weapons grade material is further refined..once again meaning costs. They are not wont to waste these materials after justifying such huge costs for it.

THanks,
Orangetom

What he said.

Pits are removed from old weapons and stored, generally at Pantex but some of the labs (LA, Sandia) have some for research etc.

If they're "structured", i.e. floating concentrics etc they might be disassembled into the components.

The material is accounted for down to fractions of milligrams. You have constant audits.

The tritium from initiators and boost gas is taken back to Savannah River and reprocessed and then reused. The old explosive material is deflagrated in some manner, most of it will just burn.

I think Alcoa gets the slappers back for life testing, they grind the electronics and gas-triggered switches to powder, the beryllium and DU is recycled. There's not like a big garbage dump of old bomb innards, if that's what you were getting at.

THank you for your description of events. Much better than I could have told it.

And yes ..there is not a huge dump of bomb material somewhere waiting around.

THanks,
Orangetom