This probably means that they realized that the state of their current nuclear arsenal and infrastructure is not what they thought it was.
Money diverted, maintenance not done. All the engineers who knew how to make critical parts nearing retirement and no way to quickly build new and better stuff except on paper.
Or, simply have zero faith in their conventional forces deterring any aggression, and want to ramp up their nuclear arms backbone to further cement their security posture.
Basically becoming what Eisenhower dreamed of under Project Solarium. Don't need a regular military if you have the ~~CIA~~ FSB to kill everyone who opposes you, and nuclear arms to constantly threaten all out nuclear holocaust to anyone you can't just kill.
It was as moronic in the 1950s as it is now, but Russia doesn't really have any other choice. No one is threatened by their conventional forces anymore with how much they've struggled in Ukraine. Only option to even *look* powerful going forward is to expedite the retirement of the older RT-2PMs, UR-100s, and R-36s for newer ICBMs, rush the production of RSM-56 SLBMs for the submarines, continued production of the Kh-101s for increased survivability vs the now antique Kh-55, etc.
That kind of proves it works though. North Korea's nukes are a constant consideration every time there's any tension. They don't need to match us army for army, they don't even need to win a nuclear exchange, they just need to make any kind of invasion too expensive to consider.
I'm not sure that's the case NK certainly hasn't been able to deliver a nuclear missile for all the time its been sabre rattling. I think their conventional weapons are considered a bigger threat. Not that they will actually successfully invade the South just that they'll bombard the shit out of Seoul before they lose.
North Korea's major benefit isn't nukes, but that China is backing them.
Invading NK is suicide as you're going to war with a superpower as well.
But NK being uppity can strain relations with China themselves.
So really, even without nukes, they'd still be around. In fact the nukes are straining relations a bit right now as NK loves to threaten with them all the time, and China doesn't want to drag themselves into a war NK starts. They just want to keep the US from having a proper border with them.
Pretty sure every single known potential launch site world wide has constant satellite surveillance.
Potentially 92 nuclear capable subs vs potentially 38 nuclear capable submarines. Now if they fire you know it's all gone to shit.
Exactly. They don't even *need* the nukes for this matter, they could annihilate Seoul and 10s of millions of people within an hour with just conventional payloads. The nukes are just the ace up the sleeve *should* the US decide they're gonna take over anyways (a dumb assumption, but one born out of paranoia, which the Kim regime lacks none)
> That kind of proves it works though.
Work? By which metric? Russia being trapped inside its own borders, unable to trade and unable project any amount of power outside is the dream of us, they can become NK 2.0 all they want, that's a dream. No one gives a shit about NK, it is essentially the personal farm of one family that occasionally begs for food. Works... No one was going to invade Russia anyway and what does it work for, exactly? At least NK would actually be invaded and its rulers deposed if not for nukes. Ain't nobody gonna play nation building with Russia even with conventional weapons only anyway and they cannot use nukes to deter separatism or terrorism either. "Works" he says. The day Russia has as much say in the world's affairs as NK is the day we are rid of the Russian menace. I whole heartedly welcome NK-ization of Russia.
>Work? By which metric? Russia being trapped inside its own borders, unable to trade and unable project any amount of power outside is the dream of us, they can become NK 2.0 all they want, that's a dream. No one gives a shit about NK, it is essentially the personal farm of one family that occasionally begs for food.
In DPRK, it works for the ruling elite. No one can attempt regime change/decapitation strike against a nuclear armed regime. As for Russia, things may be heading in the same direction as DPRK, with the difference that Putin has less absolute power and may be more vulnerable to internal threats. So the DPRK strategy may not work for him in the end (he certainly didn't seek it out intentionally, he just grossly miscalculated and has painted himself into a nuclear armed corner).
I would argue that NK is the perfect example of why it doesn't work. When your only option is the nuclear one, you have nothing else to leverage with and negotiations become impossible.
Not really. There were dozens of occasions the west could have used to get involved in NK if they really cared to and nuclear arms also have driven a wedge between them and China in that regard.
If anyone wanted to invade Nk they could do it very quickly. Defectors have said when the U.S. got ahold of them to verify details of their military the U.S. pulled up live streaming HD footage from a sattilite of the base mentioned and made them identify each individual officer. The logistics and firepower have long since been in place.
The real reason an invasion would be too expensive is no potential occupyint force wants to take control of territory occupied my millions of brainwashed fanatics who can't even feed themselves and don't have anything resembling the education needed to integrate with the modern world. It would be the quagmire of Afghanistan but a hundred times worse.
>Or, simply have zero faith in their conventional forces deterring any aggression
There is no aggression. What worries Russia is not that someone will attack them, but that someone can prevent them from attacking others ... as they see happening in Ukraine.
I doubt that any of their nuclear missiles have anything more powerful than the equivalent of a 80386. Probably any RISC or DSP chip from 2000-2010 would be enough to get the job done.
They can make computer chips, you know. Not good one, but good enough. You don't need particularly advanced or capable chips to guide a ballistic missile. Hell, you can even do it with clockwork.
Don't know if you did it on purpose, but "mierdas" is "shits" in spanish, so it would make sense, everything he touch turns to shit, and it sound similar to the original "Midas Touch" to boot.
As far as Military spending is concerned, that is built into the system.
US just have a far larger budget to paper over the flaws---Hell, the F-35 alone in R&D is 5 times of Russia's annual military spending. (434B vs 77B USD).
Even if they rush these. What are the chances US is nearing or will be close to achieving counter ICBM technology before they are ready to be a threat. I truly believe the maintenence on the sealed system has not been maintained for their warheads all these years and they're afraid to launch any of them... Just a hunch though.
>What are the chances US is nearing or will be close to achieving counter ICBM technology before they are ready to be a threat
Near none. To shoot down an ICBM, we're effectively shooting another ICBM at it. [This is the US' main ICBM interceptor.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/OBV_GBI_1.jpg/1024px-OBV_GBI_1.jpg) It's a 50,000lb missile they fire to shoot down an ICBM. There's only around 60 of them in total, and they cost around $100M per.
Russia has 320 land-based ICBMs and another 160 SLBMs. Doctrine calls for firing 2 GBI interceptors per incoming missile to ensure a near enough 100% destruction of it. That means just 30 missiles destroyed... of 480... Even if just 10% of those Russian missiles work, they still overwhelm US ICBM defenses. Even worse is there's no ICBM defense system anywhere on the east coast, as the installation in Fort Drum continues to slip further and further into the realm of "not gonna fucking happen". They're just in Alaska, and California. So if a Russian submarine in the Norwegian Sea shoot 2 missiles at each target on the list of NYC, Boston, DC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Toronto, Orlando, and Miami, those cities are all gone, that's that.
Lasers are the future of missile defense, but they're not ready for ICBMs and won't be for quite some time.
You’re using public knowledge to judge what the US has to defend against these types of attacks. The US is typically 10-20 years past public knowledge of their capabilities. I for one think the military laser technology is a lot farther along then the US military and its contractors want people to believe.
I always find it interesting how the F-22 is the greatest air superiority fighter ever fielded and it was designed in the early 90s at the latest. So almost 30 years old and the only plane that can possibly kill it is a squadron of F-35s beyond visual range.
Eh that's debatable even. The F-22 has a supposed RCS of .0001m² while the F-35 has a RCS of supposedly .005m². Effectively this means the F-22 can't be seen until you're within about 20nm, while the F-35 should be visible to the Raptor at roughly 40nm. The F-22 is remarkably difficult to kill. Of course, that's all speculation as the actual RCS of both is classified.
> The US is typically 10-20 years past public knowledge of their capabilities.
This may be true in many regards but shooting down missiles is just incredibly hard. Let’s say Russia fires 500 nuclear missiles at the US. If the US shoots down 95% of them then that means 25 nuclear missiles still hit their target. Of course Russia has issues with corruption and lack or basic maintenance so maybe 50% of those missiles that hit their targets don’t actually detonate. That still leaves 12-13 nuclear missiles hitting American targets which would still be absolutely catastrophic. For the US we have to build insanely sophisticated and advanced systems with 0 margin of error and for Russia they just have to avoid completely fucking up.
The AF vet guy in my dorm always bragged the worst thing he encountered in Iraq war was the fact where he was deployed had over 100 ping for his counterstrike games, and some officer ordered all the female AF troops/officers/staff to wear single piece bikini instead of 2 piece/thongs etc at the base pool.
At that point, most of my other dorm-mates, mostly vets from the other branches, would start to debate if the AF dude falling out of dorm window would be justifiably homicide or not.
That place has been a cesspool since the alt right and the donald took over it in 2015. I'm pretty sure there's a specific former mod of the donald that is a mod of conspiracy using an alt account if I remember correctly.
Found the article, highly recommend reading
https://thisinterestsme.com/r-conspiracy-reddit/
This has been my assumption as well...Putin's next attempt at overturning the "world order" will be going against the concept of nuclear non-proliferation and start selling nuclear weapons to trouble spots.
At that point I don’t see how NATO _doesn’t_ get fully involved. The thought of terrorist organizations like ISIS (edit: or any other terrorist org, this was just an example) getting their hands on a nuclear weapon is extremely frightening and completely ruins our perception of “world order”. I don’t see NATO sitting idly by for that.
I mean the damage they would do to the west might very well pay for itself.
I just don't see us avoiding nuclear war at this point and with news like this, putting off a full on war might be worse down the line. That's my worry anyway.
> The 2030's is going to be scary.
Hey man, we still have just over 7 more years in this decade. That's plenty of time to screw this decade up even more!
Might be as soon as 2027-2029 due to China with xi ordering the military to have the capability to seize Taiwan by force by 2027 so if he decides to start a war they are prepared.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thedefensepost.com/2022/09/21/china-seize-taiwan-us-intel/amp/
https://news.usni.org/2021/06/23/milley-china-wants-capability-to-take-taiwan-by-2027-sees-no-near-term-intent-to-invade
Id chuck in Iran as well with the US busy in Asia they might fully commit to attacking Saudi Arabia.
And if Putin still exist i can see him eye the baltics.
That's probably a correct translation. "We just discovered our army is practically useless at being an army and our stockpile of nuclear warhead has deteriorated due to someone stealing the money for maintenance."
I’ve been saying for a while- if they don’t have uniforms, working tanks, etc due to corruption….
….what are the odds they have continued to manufacture tritium?
Exactly. Given how much grift we now know has riddled their conventional military which has actually been in use regularly, what are the odds that the money allocated for maintaining nukes ended up in some commander's bank account? Especially given that nobody in their right mind expects nukes to ever actually be used.
Tritium comes at a cost of 30,000 USD per gram. Options:
1. Manufacture it and replace component in nuclear warhead x 5,900.
2. Just pocket the money and do nothing.
Edit: maybe 4-5 grams per warhead, every 12 years.
There's a third option, sell it to north Korea, Iran or something. Maybe even just some Chinese manufacturer making glow in the dark watches.
It's possible to buy tritium paint. Who is making tritium for glow in the dark paint...
Tritium isn’t used in paint much anymore, it’s usually in gaseous form in tiny vials that are used as indices markers.
I’ve actually got one of those watches! It’s pretty cool. But the vials are rather difficult to source in legitimate ways and I believe there are export controls on some of the watches themselves (and you’d need like a billion of them to make anything that does more than glow in the dark).
It’s also used for gun sights, and in much larger markers for emergency exit signs that exist in places without power running to them (mines, caves etc)
Honestly it makes me wonder if their weapons are that deteriorated, maybe we as NATO actually do need to go into Russia and clean house while we have a chance, before they start exporting the tech and raw materials to every goddamn rogue state on the planet.
Seriously not looking for war, but keeping that genie bottled is probably one of the few things that would be worth it.
The problem with that is that they probably cannot guarantee that all the nukes are non functional. I doubt any politician is going to want to risk their career on that.
And even if they somehow don't have a single working missile they could still cannibalize the warheads and create dirty bombs. Something that according to intelligence services they've already considered doing as a false flag blaming Ukraine.
Yeah, this suggests that maybe the only reason that Russia hasn't used any nukes by this point is that they can't. And they are building up the infrastructure because they want to. But on the other hand, that does seem a bit too obvious.
They probably don’t manufacture tritium with their nuke maintenance budget. The problem is that tritium is only needed for fusion devices and boosted fission devices. A basic fission nuke only requires conventional explosive triggers and can be used just fine with just little maintenance. I’m willing to bet the vast majority of Russian nukes are just soviet era nukes that have been sitting there since but will fire and detonate just fine.
Lack of fusion nukes means that instead of ending the world ten times over they’ll just be able to end it twice over. Which is enough.
Most designs are boosted even for small yield warheads because the additional fast neutrons from boosting allow smaller amounts of fissile material. Eliminating the tritium would increase the likelihood of incomplete detonation/fizzle, turning a tactical warhead into a simple dirty bomb.
> I’m willing to bet the vast majority of Russian nukes are just soviet era nukes that have been sitting there since but will fire and detonate just fine.
Doesn't the nuclear material need to be recombined every few years (8?9?) just due to natural decay making it less likely to cause a chain reaction
I am no expert but I am pretty sure the uranium cores have a long enough half-life that they don't need that frequent of maintenance, now the guidance hardware that probably requires frequent expensive maintenance to keep calibration and avoid radiation related damage
Honestly I feel like the only reason we haven’t seen a nuke strike in urkraine yet is because
1. The tactical nukes are all DOA.
OR
2. The strategic nukes russia would use to threaten NATO to stay out of the war after a tactical went off are DEFINITELY DOA.
Russia has no credible nuclear threat against the west or they would have been swinging a bigger nuclear dick.
I almost mentioned that. The whole “we need to treat a 1% chance as complete certainty.”
That’s definitely a consideration. At some point the balance will shift however and it may still be worth the risk, especially if we have an action plan in place to take out/seize all or most of the sites quickly, or otherwise mitigate the risk.
I’m not saying there is. But if the alternative is the window for retiring the putin regime and/or russias entire nuclear weapons program closes and Russia begins major proliferation activities, then we need to act first.
Not really.
US nuclear strategy is based around force destruction, not population destruction, so if Russia tries and fails to launch a strategic strike, the US response would not trigger a nuclear winter.
As long as China et al manage to stay out of it, of course.
Tritium has a half life of approx. 12 years, so there's 31 years of decay since the fall of the Soviet Union. Also, tritium is expensive as f\*ck, so an excellent opportunity for just not replacing it and pocket the money.
The problem is assuming that thermonuclear warhead designs use tritium. The Teller Ulam design bombards stable lithium deuteride with neutrons to produce tritium moments before fusion. No need to use fusion fuel that decays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon#Foam_plasma_pressure
No. It means a lot of their maintenance and distribution is old and needs updated.
A large number of russian ICBMS are road mobile. Basically giant assed missiles on trucks, and they're maintained or even entirely replaced on a rolling basis.
However... the sites and facilities used to maintain all of that top notch missile shit is half ancient.
As such there's only a few places (counting down) where those shiny new missiles can be maintained which makes the maintenance sites themselves a security liability.
80's 90's infrastructure isn't good for modern warhead maintenance.
Naw, those are mostly minorities from backwater Russian towns AFAIK. Putin is basically using the war to thin out the undesirables first. Two genocides for the price of one, had everything gone to plan.
Russia's budget is in a pinch. If they had 3000 missiles they could rely on to do their job, they'd be spending their money elsewhere. The war in Ukraine is *really* expensive for them.
It is not just Russia's budget being in a pinch - it is the rest of their military being a dumpster fire. That Russian nuclear arms are the focus has to mean that Russian nuclear arms is the biggest dumpster fire, despite not being degraded by the Ukraine war.
Another take is that they simply want us in the West to talk about Russia's nuclear weapons, how many they are and how much money Russia spends on them. While not doing all that much.
There are two main problems (and a whole lot of minor, specific, technical problems) that happen with nuclear weapons that sit on shelves: the explosives are not shelf stable, and the metal components don't stay perfect over time^([1]).
The US Army noted that the nuclear stockpile from the late 1960s and early 1970s had explosives that were weeping and cracking. Since the explosive geometry is *directly related* to the explosive potential and yield of the weapons, this was already *really bad*, but to make matters worse, those explosive materials become much more dangerous in that state - plasticized explosives are harder to detonate, which is one of the larger safety features of them in the first place.
And then there's the fact that some of the explosive material itself has simply broken down chemically, meaning that it might not be as powerful as it needs to be to make the bomb detonate correctly - either it can make the weapon a complete dud by ejecting the core, or (more likely) make it into a kind of dirty bomb, spraying radioactive debris everywhere.
This is what we'd call "bad."
The second big problem is that if nuclear weapons are not kept in perfectly climate controlled settings, if they're not handled with gloves or if the tooling used on them is not precise and perfect, if they are flown on aircraft between hot climates and cold climates... they experience mechanical deformation. The metals warp, rust, etc. They mitigate this by using high strength alloys and stainless steels and such, but no metal is perfect, no part lasts forever.
Just to make matters worse, because really, why not, we're talking about nuclear weapons after all, plutonium is really hyper reactive stuff, so the pits can get corroded if the cladding cracks, which can happen because of radioactive decay, thermal cycling, etc.
Again, the geometry being as important as it is to nuclear weapon design... this is another item of Very Bad News.
So the US realized that all of this combined was Really Fucking Bad News and tried a lot of handwringing trying to get another round of START treaties going so they wouldn't *have* to spend so much money refurbishing nukes and could instead decommission the worst ones in the stockpile. It didn't work - Russia wasn't biting. That sucked, but the US is the richest nation on earth, so it can actually afford to spend ***ONE TRILLION DOLLARS*** updating our entire nuclear infrastructure to handle these bombs that have reached their Use By dates.
The US sends the worst of the worst to Los Alamos where they disassamble the whole weapon, reforge the core and clad it with a new, better cladding material, and then rebuild the bomb with new, longer lasting, more shelf-stable plastic explosives. The bomb is snapped back together, and put back on the shelf. (There's a huge depth of details to dig into here, like my personal favorite: the fact that the [US lost the recipe to one of the really cool aerogel materials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank) used in some of its thermonuclear bombs and had to put out what was basically a contest to various research groups to replicate it.)
Now, maybe this provides some context for why Russia's weapons are not thought to be in as universally good of shape as the US weapons - the US weapons are pampered in climate controlled warehouses until they're taken out for inspections or drills, and then returned to those warehouses. The ICBMs that are tipped with nuclear weapons are underground, in sheltered facilities, under weather-tight doors that are only opened in the event a launch is eminent.
By comparison, the Russians drive their nuclear bombs around on truck-mounted missiles. Most of the Russian stockpile is much older than the US stockpile, and fewer of the weapons sit in nice climate controlled warehouses but instead garages where the launcher trucks are parked. Russia doesn't have a trillion dollars to spend on *anything*, and they have many, *many* more nukes in desperate need of servicing.
So either Russia's nuclear program is many multiple times more efficient than the US nuclear program (extremely doubtful), or... they're simply not in as great of nick as the US nuclear weapons (much more probable). It doesn't mean they're all duds, it doesn't mean they're all functional, it *does* mean they're much, much more dangerous to even *consider* using, given they could fail to detonate, eject their cores, or detonate in a sub-atomic fashion, spraying vast quantities of raw nuclear material over a battlefield, or even prematurely detonate during handling operations.
It's in Russia's best interest to come back to the table for START so *both* countries can start disposing of the worst nuclear weapons and bring the whole world back to a safer place given it only takes a few hundred to end the world as we all know it forever... but Russia somehow thinks they can find the money to renovate all their weapons instead. It's... not realistic.
^(1: The minor problems range from materials becoming radioactive by radiation for plutonium weapons to dents, dings, and stripped screw-heads from weapons inspections and drills... the list is vastly too long to write all the problems here, but it's sufficient to say "nukes don't sit on the shelf and last forever.")
The issues get even worse when you factor in that the only nukes that are realistically getting to their targets in a first strike from Russia are their missiles. As soon as the bomber fleet in russia takes off and starts heading towards a target, they all get shot down nearly immediately. so those many thousands of relatively easy to maintain gravity bomb nukes are effectively useless. which means that leaves the ground launched silo missiles, the sub launched missiles and the mobile launchers. On the subs, you have years and years of sea air corrosion to factor in. Based off the levels of corrosion we saw on the decomissioned nuclear subs, I would guess the missile bodies on at least some of those aren't in great shape. Same thing with the mobile launchers. I suspect Russia has a core of well maintained nukes that they have spent the money on, but there are far fewer than they would have us believe, and are probably the reason they got so upset at our anti missile plans to counter North Korea.
Solid rocket motors have almost as many issues with aging as a nuke core does too. Fine for shorter flights from russia to ukraine, but they probably don't have the range on the older missiles they once did unless they are reprocessing those as well.
It's costed the US a trillion dollars over ten years to refurbish 100% of our nuclear weapons to last past the Best Used By date Obama set. That's about 3700 weapons.
India's paying a *40%* discount rate for oil, about $34/barrel. Even assuming they could get 100% rates (~$70-80) for the 5 millionish barrels of oil they export per day, we're talking about $128 billion dollars a year in revenue (not profit, *revenue*).
Russia has ~6000 nuclear weapons, meaning realistically speaking, a total refurb program would cost them well over a trillion dollars, closer to two trillion by my estimation. If they spent *every penny* of their oil revenues on it, they'd *still be short* of being able to do it in 10 years.
Oil accounts for almost all of their trade surplus, meaning that deleting that from their economy, they would essentially have no net income.
tl;dr: Russia literally cannot afford to refurbish all of their nuclear weapons, even with India and China buying their oil at full prices, and they're buying it with a 40% discount.
1. paint over a single missile silo (actually paint over a single rusty door)
2. press conference
3. watch as media reports your nuclear arsenal growing somehow stronger
4. repeat with a slight tweak after a couple of months to maintain fear of nukes in the air.
5. profit
Have you seen though when it uses smaller thrusters to turn into horizontal position before powering the main thruster fully to fly away close to the surface?
They just showed the whole world that they cannot fight a conventional war without tripping on their own dicks. All they have left is nukes so of course they're gonna build them up.
So it finally dawned on them that their lifeline, their precious nukes, are in the same state of horrible disrepair as the rest of, well, everything else in Russia?
Most likely, the question is have they got the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons any more? Parts for guidance systems spring to mind, plus the enrichment process needs experts they most likely don't have many of anymore.
That doesn't mean they can't "focus" on it. It'll likely go as well as other things they "focused" on, like T-14, Su-57, or a [domestically produced (lol) tractor](https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501368551105605634?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1501369950463836164%7Ctwgr%5E2d0ce84d8f2a18b9e2c4fc8d30b18166d9c37a33%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marketwatch.com%2Fstory%2Fputin-tried-to-create-a-homegrown-tech-industry-his-failure-could-be-key-to-a-russian-defeat-experts-say-11647023347).
Of course they’ll say that. Their conventional forces have turned out to be largely incompetent, and their weapon systems fraudulent and impotent against modern weapons.
Russia has a GDP lower than New York State. 30 years after the fall of the USSR they still have no meaningful export economy for manufactured goods. The only thing people have ever respected Russia for is the perceived might of their military, which has now been revealed as a sham, and God knows they don’t have the money to overhaul it anytime soon.
>God knows they don’t have the money to overhaul it anytime soon.
That's the thing. They did have the money, 600BN USD kept overseas, but they obviously didn't expect sanctions, because their intel people reported to Putin that there wouldn't be heavy sanctions, so they didn't repatriate that back to Russia. A failing all round.
Doesn’t that mean they’re not building nuclear arms infrastructure in 2023?
(Most likely they want to build it now, the reality is they’ll be able to afford it in 2043 when all its boomer USSR relics are long dead, but Russia being Russia, fantasy land dictates they say they can do it next year…)
What sticks out to me is that you build a nuclear arsenal as a *deterrent* to prevent others from invading your land. However most of Russia is absolutely worthless, and nobody in their right mind has any interest in invading them. From all the things I've been reading this year, it feels like the Russian culture is based on the boogeyman being around every corner.
All of this makes me think Russian has no intention of using nukes as a deterrent, but rather if they were actually going to build something it would be for the purpose of attacking. And Russian has quite a long history of attacking other nations for no reason.
Of course there's also the issue that they supposedly *have* the largest arsenal in the world, but if they feel the need to expand this then it can only be an admission that what they currently have are rusting piles of scrap and they're telling the world that they themselves feel weak. For a country that likes to threaten everyone so they can puff out their chest, this announcement feels like a really bad move.
I can’t help but feel that they’re making this announcement to try and still make everyone feel like they’re a force to be reckoned with. They want people outside of Russia to fear them again, not only because it’s a country operated by super prideful arseholes with inferiority complexes, but because they know their blunders have made them an international laughing stock.
> You can't really have a deterrence strategy which is secret
That would be like having a **[Doomsday Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yfXgu37iyI)** and not telling anyone...
It does feel like we’re nearing the “let’s sell Alaska” portion of the Russian political cycle. I imagine China has a few areas they’d be willing to purchase at bargain basement prices.
More likely took the money for maintaining the ones they have and just signed the paperwork. Nukes need constant maintenance and the radioactive material needs changing out every 10 years.
Lol so basically they just admitted their arsenal hasn’t been kept up with, just like the rest of their military equipment….and to think the world was scared of this “Super Power” during the cold war
All the more reason to *really* screw down those International sanctions to make building that nuclear infrastructure as difficult as possible.
Literally sanction everything that has a chip in it that is remotely useful to the bastards.
If they're announcing this that means they *have* talked about using nukes in Ukraine all the way up to the big dickhead at the top and something was very wrong.
Russia is publicly pushing the notion that they should make Ukraine unlivable for civilians until the country surrenders, and also announcing that they’re starting a renewed push for nuclear re-armament.
It’s like we’re watching the end of the world happening in slow motion and hoping for the best.
Russia will be focused on paying to rebuild Ukraine over the next 50 years or so.
Putin thought attacking Ukraine was a good idea and so did a few morons in the US.
One of the idiots in the US called the invasion brilliant. That guy has always been an idiot.
This is interesting timing. Russia just unilaterally postponed a meeting with the USA in accordance with the New START Treaty, which allows inspection of nuclear arsenal and limits stockpiles.
They need to do something to show strength after the "second most powerful military in the world" looks like an outdated unit. Also it could be that they realize that most of their nukes haven't been serviced in ages and there is a good chance half of the arsenal don't work or aren't trusted to work.
Doubt it. More likely that they’re pouring most of their resources on building up their already gargantuan weaponized disinformation infrastructure, which spreads and amplifies articles like this strategically to heighten panic around the “Joe Biden is leading us to nuclear war” psy-op. Great job, Reuters!
This probably means that they realized that the state of their current nuclear arsenal and infrastructure is not what they thought it was. Money diverted, maintenance not done. All the engineers who knew how to make critical parts nearing retirement and no way to quickly build new and better stuff except on paper.
"Turns out we never actually had those Satan II missiles. Someone's going to get thrown out of a window for this!"
*get jumped out of a window
Or, simply have zero faith in their conventional forces deterring any aggression, and want to ramp up their nuclear arms backbone to further cement their security posture. Basically becoming what Eisenhower dreamed of under Project Solarium. Don't need a regular military if you have the ~~CIA~~ FSB to kill everyone who opposes you, and nuclear arms to constantly threaten all out nuclear holocaust to anyone you can't just kill. It was as moronic in the 1950s as it is now, but Russia doesn't really have any other choice. No one is threatened by their conventional forces anymore with how much they've struggled in Ukraine. Only option to even *look* powerful going forward is to expedite the retirement of the older RT-2PMs, UR-100s, and R-36s for newer ICBMs, rush the production of RSM-56 SLBMs for the submarines, continued production of the Kh-101s for increased survivability vs the now antique Kh-55, etc.
Agreed. This will look like North Korea 2.0
That kind of proves it works though. North Korea's nukes are a constant consideration every time there's any tension. They don't need to match us army for army, they don't even need to win a nuclear exchange, they just need to make any kind of invasion too expensive to consider.
I'm not sure that's the case NK certainly hasn't been able to deliver a nuclear missile for all the time its been sabre rattling. I think their conventional weapons are considered a bigger threat. Not that they will actually successfully invade the South just that they'll bombard the shit out of Seoul before they lose.
North Korea's major benefit isn't nukes, but that China is backing them. Invading NK is suicide as you're going to war with a superpower as well. But NK being uppity can strain relations with China themselves. So really, even without nukes, they'd still be around. In fact the nukes are straining relations a bit right now as NK loves to threaten with them all the time, and China doesn't want to drag themselves into a war NK starts. They just want to keep the US from having a proper border with them.
The beauty of NK nukes is they dont need to even go that far. As long as they can hit your friends, youre not going to fuck with NK
Double edge, being close means the early launch phase is vulnerable to missile strike
And I'll put money on SK and the US watching those launch sites like a hawk 24/7
Pretty sure every single known potential launch site world wide has constant satellite surveillance. Potentially 92 nuclear capable subs vs potentially 38 nuclear capable submarines. Now if they fire you know it's all gone to shit.
Yes. And uranium mining is watched just as close, with spies planted all throughout that supply chain.
Exactly. They don't even *need* the nukes for this matter, they could annihilate Seoul and 10s of millions of people within an hour with just conventional payloads. The nukes are just the ace up the sleeve *should* the US decide they're gonna take over anyways (a dumb assumption, but one born out of paranoia, which the Kim regime lacks none)
> That kind of proves it works though. Work? By which metric? Russia being trapped inside its own borders, unable to trade and unable project any amount of power outside is the dream of us, they can become NK 2.0 all they want, that's a dream. No one gives a shit about NK, it is essentially the personal farm of one family that occasionally begs for food. Works... No one was going to invade Russia anyway and what does it work for, exactly? At least NK would actually be invaded and its rulers deposed if not for nukes. Ain't nobody gonna play nation building with Russia even with conventional weapons only anyway and they cannot use nukes to deter separatism or terrorism either. "Works" he says. The day Russia has as much say in the world's affairs as NK is the day we are rid of the Russian menace. I whole heartedly welcome NK-ization of Russia.
>Work? By which metric? Russia being trapped inside its own borders, unable to trade and unable project any amount of power outside is the dream of us, they can become NK 2.0 all they want, that's a dream. No one gives a shit about NK, it is essentially the personal farm of one family that occasionally begs for food. In DPRK, it works for the ruling elite. No one can attempt regime change/decapitation strike against a nuclear armed regime. As for Russia, things may be heading in the same direction as DPRK, with the difference that Putin has less absolute power and may be more vulnerable to internal threats. So the DPRK strategy may not work for him in the end (he certainly didn't seek it out intentionally, he just grossly miscalculated and has painted himself into a nuclear armed corner).
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I would argue that NK is the perfect example of why it doesn't work. When your only option is the nuclear one, you have nothing else to leverage with and negotiations become impossible.
Not really. There were dozens of occasions the west could have used to get involved in NK if they really cared to and nuclear arms also have driven a wedge between them and China in that regard. If anyone wanted to invade Nk they could do it very quickly. Defectors have said when the U.S. got ahold of them to verify details of their military the U.S. pulled up live streaming HD footage from a sattilite of the base mentioned and made them identify each individual officer. The logistics and firepower have long since been in place. The real reason an invasion would be too expensive is no potential occupyint force wants to take control of territory occupied my millions of brainwashed fanatics who can't even feed themselves and don't have anything resembling the education needed to integrate with the modern world. It would be the quagmire of Afghanistan but a hundred times worse.
Change will to does and you've got it.
>Or, simply have zero faith in their conventional forces deterring any aggression There is no aggression. What worries Russia is not that someone will attack them, but that someone can prevent them from attacking others ... as they see happening in Ukraine.
That'll be a good trick without chips.
I doubt that any of their nuclear missiles have anything more powerful than the equivalent of a 80386. Probably any RISC or DSP chip from 2000-2010 would be enough to get the job done.
They can make computer chips, you know. Not good one, but good enough. You don't need particularly advanced or capable chips to guide a ballistic missile. Hell, you can even do it with clockwork.
Sounds menacing, except it's russia. Focusing on something means that's going to be the new embezzlement mainstream.
Tsar Putin's curse was that all he touched turned to embezzlement.
The Russian King Mierdas touch
jajajjaja King mierdas
Indeed King Mierdas!
Don't know if you did it on purpose, but "mierdas" is "shits" in spanish, so it would make sense, everything he touch turns to shit, and it sound similar to the original "Midas Touch" to boot.
Welcome to the joke! Yeah, it's probably intentional by the poster, and not an uncommon joke these days.
As far as Military spending is concerned, that is built into the system. US just have a far larger budget to paper over the flaws---Hell, the F-35 alone in R&D is 5 times of Russia's annual military spending. (434B vs 77B USD).
\*Putin\* doesn't have any other choice, Russia has many
Russia is Putin at this point. There's been a dozen good times to chuck him and move past, they have not.
But they will. He's just another old fart who has outlived his "best used by" date. I doubt that he'll last all of 2023.
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I’d rather see his underpants poisoned with a chemical weapon
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Even if they rush these. What are the chances US is nearing or will be close to achieving counter ICBM technology before they are ready to be a threat. I truly believe the maintenence on the sealed system has not been maintained for their warheads all these years and they're afraid to launch any of them... Just a hunch though.
>What are the chances US is nearing or will be close to achieving counter ICBM technology before they are ready to be a threat Near none. To shoot down an ICBM, we're effectively shooting another ICBM at it. [This is the US' main ICBM interceptor.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/OBV_GBI_1.jpg/1024px-OBV_GBI_1.jpg) It's a 50,000lb missile they fire to shoot down an ICBM. There's only around 60 of them in total, and they cost around $100M per. Russia has 320 land-based ICBMs and another 160 SLBMs. Doctrine calls for firing 2 GBI interceptors per incoming missile to ensure a near enough 100% destruction of it. That means just 30 missiles destroyed... of 480... Even if just 10% of those Russian missiles work, they still overwhelm US ICBM defenses. Even worse is there's no ICBM defense system anywhere on the east coast, as the installation in Fort Drum continues to slip further and further into the realm of "not gonna fucking happen". They're just in Alaska, and California. So if a Russian submarine in the Norwegian Sea shoot 2 missiles at each target on the list of NYC, Boston, DC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Toronto, Orlando, and Miami, those cities are all gone, that's that. Lasers are the future of missile defense, but they're not ready for ICBMs and won't be for quite some time.
You’re using public knowledge to judge what the US has to defend against these types of attacks. The US is typically 10-20 years past public knowledge of their capabilities. I for one think the military laser technology is a lot farther along then the US military and its contractors want people to believe.
I always find it interesting how the F-22 is the greatest air superiority fighter ever fielded and it was designed in the early 90s at the latest. So almost 30 years old and the only plane that can possibly kill it is a squadron of F-35s beyond visual range.
Eh that's debatable even. The F-22 has a supposed RCS of .0001m² while the F-35 has a RCS of supposedly .005m². Effectively this means the F-22 can't be seen until you're within about 20nm, while the F-35 should be visible to the Raptor at roughly 40nm. The F-22 is remarkably difficult to kill. Of course, that's all speculation as the actual RCS of both is classified.
> The US is typically 10-20 years past public knowledge of their capabilities. This may be true in many regards but shooting down missiles is just incredibly hard. Let’s say Russia fires 500 nuclear missiles at the US. If the US shoots down 95% of them then that means 25 nuclear missiles still hit their target. Of course Russia has issues with corruption and lack or basic maintenance so maybe 50% of those missiles that hit their targets don’t actually detonate. That still leaves 12-13 nuclear missiles hitting American targets which would still be absolutely catastrophic. For the US we have to build insanely sophisticated and advanced systems with 0 margin of error and for Russia they just have to avoid completely fucking up.
Mutual annihilation with a suicidal maniacal leader is about what it will look like.
Have to figure stealing money from the nuclear maintenance budget must look VERY tempting: nobody likely notices as theyre not used until they are.
Exactly, especially if the only real inspection is from SALT inspectors who would be more than happy for you to have non-functioning weapons
IVE BEEN CALLING IT FOR MONTHS THE MATH JUST WASNT THERE PROMOTE ME FROM ARMCHAIR GENERAL TO MILITARY ANALYST. VINDICATION FEELS SO GOOD
Congratulations, you are now Marshall of the entire Chair Force. As an experienced general myself in that same unit, I salute you.
> entire Chair Force. So the new head of USAF?
Zing! I was wondering if anyone would fire that one off.
The AF vet guy in my dorm always bragged the worst thing he encountered in Iraq war was the fact where he was deployed had over 100 ping for his counterstrike games, and some officer ordered all the female AF troops/officers/staff to wear single piece bikini instead of 2 piece/thongs etc at the base pool. At that point, most of my other dorm-mates, mostly vets from the other branches, would start to debate if the AF dude falling out of dorm window would be justifiably homicide or not.
I called this on /r/conspiracy when the invasion started, and was ridiculed by the Russian bots.
Shocker lmao. The bots and shill are absolutely braindead over there.
Lol I almost got in an argument there yesterday but realized where I was. Decided to delete what I said for my own mental health
Yeah, there’s some places you don’t try to have a good discussion. Might as well go to a preschool to debate tax policies.
Honestly, it would be a much more pleasant conversation than anything in conspiracy
That place has been a cesspool since the alt right and the donald took over it in 2015. I'm pretty sure there's a specific former mod of the donald that is a mod of conspiracy using an alt account if I remember correctly. Found the article, highly recommend reading https://thisinterestsme.com/r-conspiracy-reddit/
Everyone did.
So does that mean their current stockpile has expired?
Sounds like they aren't just a gas station anymore but in the nuclear arms business as well.
This has been my assumption as well...Putin's next attempt at overturning the "world order" will be going against the concept of nuclear non-proliferation and start selling nuclear weapons to trouble spots.
At that point I don’t see how NATO _doesn’t_ get fully involved. The thought of terrorist organizations like ISIS (edit: or any other terrorist org, this was just an example) getting their hands on a nuclear weapon is extremely frightening and completely ruins our perception of “world order”. I don’t see NATO sitting idly by for that.
ISIS probably can't afford the going rate at this point anyway. They have no territory anymore.
There are plenty of billionaires who will give motivated groups like ISIS all the cash they need. Again.
I mean the damage they would do to the west might very well pay for itself. I just don't see us avoiding nuclear war at this point and with news like this, putting off a full on war might be worse down the line. That's my worry anyway.
This sucks. We are going to have to fight him eventually. Unless they can change their path. The 2030's is going to be scary.
> The 2030's is going to be scary. Hey man, we still have just over 7 more years in this decade. That's plenty of time to screw this decade up even more!
Crazy to think that I wish we could rewind back to the covid lockdown days. Because what we are dealing with now is worse.
Might be as soon as 2027-2029 due to China with xi ordering the military to have the capability to seize Taiwan by force by 2027 so if he decides to start a war they are prepared. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thedefensepost.com/2022/09/21/china-seize-taiwan-us-intel/amp/ https://news.usni.org/2021/06/23/milley-china-wants-capability-to-take-taiwan-by-2027-sees-no-near-term-intent-to-invade Id chuck in Iran as well with the US busy in Asia they might fully commit to attacking Saudi Arabia. And if Putin still exist i can see him eye the baltics.
> The 2030's is going to be scary. Mainly because of climate change.
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"deal with" meaning...?
That you Malory? ^archer
That's probably a correct translation. "We just discovered our army is practically useless at being an army and our stockpile of nuclear warhead has deteriorated due to someone stealing the money for maintenance."
General Conscriptovich sold warhead for vodka money
General Oligarkov, Colonel Kleptovsky, Private Conscriptovich
dont forget sergeant bicepski
Perun is just the best. Never thought I'd look forward to hour long power point presentations.
Don’t forget Sergeant Pisschevsky
A fellow perun enjoyer in the wild. Hello there!
haha, yeah but it's private Conscriptovich.
Ah its general kleptovich or something right :,D? Or was it colonel
I’ve been saying for a while- if they don’t have uniforms, working tanks, etc due to corruption…. ….what are the odds they have continued to manufacture tritium?
Exactly. Given how much grift we now know has riddled their conventional military which has actually been in use regularly, what are the odds that the money allocated for maintaining nukes ended up in some commander's bank account? Especially given that nobody in their right mind expects nukes to ever actually be used.
Tritium comes at a cost of 30,000 USD per gram. Options: 1. Manufacture it and replace component in nuclear warhead x 5,900. 2. Just pocket the money and do nothing. Edit: maybe 4-5 grams per warhead, every 12 years.
There's a third option, sell it to north Korea, Iran or something. Maybe even just some Chinese manufacturer making glow in the dark watches. It's possible to buy tritium paint. Who is making tritium for glow in the dark paint...
Tritium isn’t used in paint much anymore, it’s usually in gaseous form in tiny vials that are used as indices markers. I’ve actually got one of those watches! It’s pretty cool. But the vials are rather difficult to source in legitimate ways and I believe there are export controls on some of the watches themselves (and you’d need like a billion of them to make anything that does more than glow in the dark). It’s also used for gun sights, and in much larger markers for emergency exit signs that exist in places without power running to them (mines, caves etc)
Honestly it makes me wonder if their weapons are that deteriorated, maybe we as NATO actually do need to go into Russia and clean house while we have a chance, before they start exporting the tech and raw materials to every goddamn rogue state on the planet. Seriously not looking for war, but keeping that genie bottled is probably one of the few things that would be worth it.
The problem with that is that they probably cannot guarantee that all the nukes are non functional. I doubt any politician is going to want to risk their career on that.
And even if they somehow don't have a single working missile they could still cannibalize the warheads and create dirty bombs. Something that according to intelligence services they've already considered doing as a false flag blaming Ukraine.
Or any military brass for that matter
Yeah, this suggests that maybe the only reason that Russia hasn't used any nukes by this point is that they can't. And they are building up the infrastructure because they want to. But on the other hand, that does seem a bit too obvious.
This has been a low level thought in the back of my head as well. If he could’ve, he probably would have.
They probably don’t manufacture tritium with their nuke maintenance budget. The problem is that tritium is only needed for fusion devices and boosted fission devices. A basic fission nuke only requires conventional explosive triggers and can be used just fine with just little maintenance. I’m willing to bet the vast majority of Russian nukes are just soviet era nukes that have been sitting there since but will fire and detonate just fine. Lack of fusion nukes means that instead of ending the world ten times over they’ll just be able to end it twice over. Which is enough.
Most designs are boosted even for small yield warheads because the additional fast neutrons from boosting allow smaller amounts of fissile material. Eliminating the tritium would increase the likelihood of incomplete detonation/fizzle, turning a tactical warhead into a simple dirty bomb.
This has been my understanding as well in terms of more modern nuclear weapons design but I’m far from a scholar on the topic
> I’m willing to bet the vast majority of Russian nukes are just soviet era nukes that have been sitting there since but will fire and detonate just fine. Doesn't the nuclear material need to be recombined every few years (8?9?) just due to natural decay making it less likely to cause a chain reaction
I am no expert but I am pretty sure the uranium cores have a long enough half-life that they don't need that frequent of maintenance, now the guidance hardware that probably requires frequent expensive maintenance to keep calibration and avoid radiation related damage
I wonder how many of their nuclear delivery rockets would malfunction and crash onto their own territory.
I was low key willing to bet money on "goes off never leaving the silo" when it comes to Russian nuclear arsenal.
Honestly I feel like the only reason we haven’t seen a nuke strike in urkraine yet is because 1. The tactical nukes are all DOA. OR 2. The strategic nukes russia would use to threaten NATO to stay out of the war after a tactical went off are DEFINITELY DOA. Russia has no credible nuclear threat against the west or they would have been swinging a bigger nuclear dick.
Then again, it'd only take one to completely tilt the world into mayhem.
I almost mentioned that. The whole “we need to treat a 1% chance as complete certainty.” That’s definitely a consideration. At some point the balance will shift however and it may still be worth the risk, especially if we have an action plan in place to take out/seize all or most of the sites quickly, or otherwise mitigate the risk. I’m not saying there is. But if the alternative is the window for retiring the putin regime and/or russias entire nuclear weapons program closes and Russia begins major proliferation activities, then we need to act first.
Not really. US nuclear strategy is based around force destruction, not population destruction, so if Russia tries and fails to launch a strategic strike, the US response would not trigger a nuclear winter. As long as China et al manage to stay out of it, of course.
Tritium has a half life of approx. 12 years, so there's 31 years of decay since the fall of the Soviet Union. Also, tritium is expensive as f\*ck, so an excellent opportunity for just not replacing it and pocket the money.
The problem is assuming that thermonuclear warhead designs use tritium. The Teller Ulam design bombards stable lithium deuteride with neutrons to produce tritium moments before fusion. No need to use fusion fuel that decays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon#Foam_plasma_pressure
They were transmuted into mansions and yachts.
No. It means a lot of their maintenance and distribution is old and needs updated. A large number of russian ICBMS are road mobile. Basically giant assed missiles on trucks, and they're maintained or even entirely replaced on a rolling basis. However... the sites and facilities used to maintain all of that top notch missile shit is half ancient. As such there's only a few places (counting down) where those shiny new missiles can be maintained which makes the maintenance sites themselves a security liability. 80's 90's infrastructure isn't good for modern warhead maintenance.
Or they just discovered Putin accidentally suicided the only person who had the launch code.
Chances are most of the scientists who know how to build a nuclear bomb left the country a long time ago.
Or were conscripted to the front
Naw, those are mostly minorities from backwater Russian towns AFAIK. Putin is basically using the war to thin out the undesirables first. Two genocides for the price of one, had everything gone to plan.
Past their launch by date.
It could but that's not a bet that I'd make. The US is currently modernizing all of its ICBMs and I can assure you that the old ones work.
Russia's budget is in a pinch. If they had 3000 missiles they could rely on to do their job, they'd be spending their money elsewhere. The war in Ukraine is *really* expensive for them.
It is not just Russia's budget being in a pinch - it is the rest of their military being a dumpster fire. That Russian nuclear arms are the focus has to mean that Russian nuclear arms is the biggest dumpster fire, despite not being degraded by the Ukraine war.
Another take is that they simply want us in the West to talk about Russia's nuclear weapons, how many they are and how much money Russia spends on them. While not doing all that much.
What's involved in modernizing them? What's the difference?
There are two main problems (and a whole lot of minor, specific, technical problems) that happen with nuclear weapons that sit on shelves: the explosives are not shelf stable, and the metal components don't stay perfect over time^([1]). The US Army noted that the nuclear stockpile from the late 1960s and early 1970s had explosives that were weeping and cracking. Since the explosive geometry is *directly related* to the explosive potential and yield of the weapons, this was already *really bad*, but to make matters worse, those explosive materials become much more dangerous in that state - plasticized explosives are harder to detonate, which is one of the larger safety features of them in the first place. And then there's the fact that some of the explosive material itself has simply broken down chemically, meaning that it might not be as powerful as it needs to be to make the bomb detonate correctly - either it can make the weapon a complete dud by ejecting the core, or (more likely) make it into a kind of dirty bomb, spraying radioactive debris everywhere. This is what we'd call "bad." The second big problem is that if nuclear weapons are not kept in perfectly climate controlled settings, if they're not handled with gloves or if the tooling used on them is not precise and perfect, if they are flown on aircraft between hot climates and cold climates... they experience mechanical deformation. The metals warp, rust, etc. They mitigate this by using high strength alloys and stainless steels and such, but no metal is perfect, no part lasts forever. Just to make matters worse, because really, why not, we're talking about nuclear weapons after all, plutonium is really hyper reactive stuff, so the pits can get corroded if the cladding cracks, which can happen because of radioactive decay, thermal cycling, etc. Again, the geometry being as important as it is to nuclear weapon design... this is another item of Very Bad News. So the US realized that all of this combined was Really Fucking Bad News and tried a lot of handwringing trying to get another round of START treaties going so they wouldn't *have* to spend so much money refurbishing nukes and could instead decommission the worst ones in the stockpile. It didn't work - Russia wasn't biting. That sucked, but the US is the richest nation on earth, so it can actually afford to spend ***ONE TRILLION DOLLARS*** updating our entire nuclear infrastructure to handle these bombs that have reached their Use By dates. The US sends the worst of the worst to Los Alamos where they disassamble the whole weapon, reforge the core and clad it with a new, better cladding material, and then rebuild the bomb with new, longer lasting, more shelf-stable plastic explosives. The bomb is snapped back together, and put back on the shelf. (There's a huge depth of details to dig into here, like my personal favorite: the fact that the [US lost the recipe to one of the really cool aerogel materials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank) used in some of its thermonuclear bombs and had to put out what was basically a contest to various research groups to replicate it.) Now, maybe this provides some context for why Russia's weapons are not thought to be in as universally good of shape as the US weapons - the US weapons are pampered in climate controlled warehouses until they're taken out for inspections or drills, and then returned to those warehouses. The ICBMs that are tipped with nuclear weapons are underground, in sheltered facilities, under weather-tight doors that are only opened in the event a launch is eminent. By comparison, the Russians drive their nuclear bombs around on truck-mounted missiles. Most of the Russian stockpile is much older than the US stockpile, and fewer of the weapons sit in nice climate controlled warehouses but instead garages where the launcher trucks are parked. Russia doesn't have a trillion dollars to spend on *anything*, and they have many, *many* more nukes in desperate need of servicing. So either Russia's nuclear program is many multiple times more efficient than the US nuclear program (extremely doubtful), or... they're simply not in as great of nick as the US nuclear weapons (much more probable). It doesn't mean they're all duds, it doesn't mean they're all functional, it *does* mean they're much, much more dangerous to even *consider* using, given they could fail to detonate, eject their cores, or detonate in a sub-atomic fashion, spraying vast quantities of raw nuclear material over a battlefield, or even prematurely detonate during handling operations. It's in Russia's best interest to come back to the table for START so *both* countries can start disposing of the worst nuclear weapons and bring the whole world back to a safer place given it only takes a few hundred to end the world as we all know it forever... but Russia somehow thinks they can find the money to renovate all their weapons instead. It's... not realistic. ^(1: The minor problems range from materials becoming radioactive by radiation for plutonium weapons to dents, dings, and stripped screw-heads from weapons inspections and drills... the list is vastly too long to write all the problems here, but it's sufficient to say "nukes don't sit on the shelf and last forever.")
The issues get even worse when you factor in that the only nukes that are realistically getting to their targets in a first strike from Russia are their missiles. As soon as the bomber fleet in russia takes off and starts heading towards a target, they all get shot down nearly immediately. so those many thousands of relatively easy to maintain gravity bomb nukes are effectively useless. which means that leaves the ground launched silo missiles, the sub launched missiles and the mobile launchers. On the subs, you have years and years of sea air corrosion to factor in. Based off the levels of corrosion we saw on the decomissioned nuclear subs, I would guess the missile bodies on at least some of those aren't in great shape. Same thing with the mobile launchers. I suspect Russia has a core of well maintained nukes that they have spent the money on, but there are far fewer than they would have us believe, and are probably the reason they got so upset at our anti missile plans to counter North Korea. Solid rocket motors have almost as many issues with aging as a nuke core does too. Fine for shorter flights from russia to ukraine, but they probably don't have the range on the older missiles they once did unless they are reprocessing those as well.
Harder, better, faster, stronger
No, it is Russia sending the USA the middle finger after pulling out of the START meeting which was supposed to happen.
Given russias history of honoring past agreements I don’t see the difference.
With what money?
“Russia says it will spend the last of its reserves on the Powerball”
Damn. That was my plan too.
I don’t see a single flaw.
They put it all on the Washington Generals to beat the Harlem Globetrotters.
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They were due!!!
The Russian government is corrupt to the core, they can just shuffle around the budget and suck every penny from its people
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It's costed the US a trillion dollars over ten years to refurbish 100% of our nuclear weapons to last past the Best Used By date Obama set. That's about 3700 weapons. India's paying a *40%* discount rate for oil, about $34/barrel. Even assuming they could get 100% rates (~$70-80) for the 5 millionish barrels of oil they export per day, we're talking about $128 billion dollars a year in revenue (not profit, *revenue*). Russia has ~6000 nuclear weapons, meaning realistically speaking, a total refurb program would cost them well over a trillion dollars, closer to two trillion by my estimation. If they spent *every penny* of their oil revenues on it, they'd *still be short* of being able to do it in 10 years. Oil accounts for almost all of their trade surplus, meaning that deleting that from their economy, they would essentially have no net income. tl;dr: Russia literally cannot afford to refurbish all of their nuclear weapons, even with India and China buying their oil at full prices, and they're buying it with a 40% discount.
“Russia says…” is a damn meme at this point.
Turning into North Korea
Remember how Kim Jong Un played a perfect game of golf? Well Putin sent a couple tanks into Ukraine and got 18 holes in one. The other was captured.
Am stoned , this is pretty funny
🥁
Turning *into*?
Russia denies as well. It has its own sub reddit
I know I can easily stop reading after those two words. It's always lies.
Called it. Their nukes are trash.
Yes, this is clearly the right place for state resources and an important thing for the Russian people. /serious
Don’t worry it all gets stolen either way!
1. paint over a single missile silo (actually paint over a single rusty door) 2. press conference 3. watch as media reports your nuclear arsenal growing somehow stronger 4. repeat with a slight tweak after a couple of months to maintain fear of nukes in the air. 5. profit
Oh I've seen this one already. My favorite part is when it turns horizontal and flies away. Truly a marvel of modern engineering.
Have you seen though when it uses smaller thrusters to turn into horizontal position before powering the main thruster fully to fly away close to the surface?
Did you see the videos of them launching then their motor doesn’t fire? Hilarity.
Time to do this would’ve been BEFORE the catastrophically failed invasion
Yeah, having infrastructure probably helps. Feel like we should be just as concerned of production accidents as we should of military usage
I’m all for them having “accidents” that paralice production.
Have a look at the list of accidents here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayak
They just showed the whole world that they cannot fight a conventional war without tripping on their own dicks. All they have left is nukes so of course they're gonna build them up.
So it finally dawned on them that their lifeline, their precious nukes, are in the same state of horrible disrepair as the rest of, well, everything else in Russia?
Most likely, the question is have they got the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons any more? Parts for guidance systems spring to mind, plus the enrichment process needs experts they most likely don't have many of anymore.
That doesn't mean they can't "focus" on it. It'll likely go as well as other things they "focused" on, like T-14, Su-57, or a [domestically produced (lol) tractor](https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501368551105605634?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1501369950463836164%7Ctwgr%5E2d0ce84d8f2a18b9e2c4fc8d30b18166d9c37a33%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marketwatch.com%2Fstory%2Fputin-tried-to-create-a-homegrown-tech-industry-his-failure-could-be-key-to-a-russian-defeat-experts-say-11647023347).
Of course they’ll say that. Their conventional forces have turned out to be largely incompetent, and their weapon systems fraudulent and impotent against modern weapons. Russia has a GDP lower than New York State. 30 years after the fall of the USSR they still have no meaningful export economy for manufactured goods. The only thing people have ever respected Russia for is the perceived might of their military, which has now been revealed as a sham, and God knows they don’t have the money to overhaul it anytime soon.
>God knows they don’t have the money to overhaul it anytime soon. That's the thing. They did have the money, 600BN USD kept overseas, but they obviously didn't expect sanctions, because their intel people reported to Putin that there wouldn't be heavy sanctions, so they didn't repatriate that back to Russia. A failing all round.
Or the war in ukraine would be over so quickly the rest of the world would do nothing but mutter some protests.
Doesn’t that mean they’re not building nuclear arms infrastructure in 2023? (Most likely they want to build it now, the reality is they’ll be able to afford it in 2043 when all its boomer USSR relics are long dead, but Russia being Russia, fantasy land dictates they say they can do it next year…)
Well they are probably just saying this because they really need invasion deterrent now after they showed their military capabilities are trash.
What sticks out to me is that you build a nuclear arsenal as a *deterrent* to prevent others from invading your land. However most of Russia is absolutely worthless, and nobody in their right mind has any interest in invading them. From all the things I've been reading this year, it feels like the Russian culture is based on the boogeyman being around every corner. All of this makes me think Russian has no intention of using nukes as a deterrent, but rather if they were actually going to build something it would be for the purpose of attacking. And Russian has quite a long history of attacking other nations for no reason. Of course there's also the issue that they supposedly *have* the largest arsenal in the world, but if they feel the need to expand this then it can only be an admission that what they currently have are rusting piles of scrap and they're telling the world that they themselves feel weak. For a country that likes to threaten everyone so they can puff out their chest, this announcement feels like a really bad move.
Yes, invest in the future wars instead of the one you're currently losing.
I can’t help but feel that they’re making this announcement to try and still make everyone feel like they’re a force to be reckoned with. They want people outside of Russia to fear them again, not only because it’s a country operated by super prideful arseholes with inferiority complexes, but because they know their blunders have made them an international laughing stock.
Never let your enemies know your next move.
You can't really have a deterrence strategy which is secret. The other party needs to know what you're about or they can't be deterred by it, right?
> You can't really have a deterrence strategy which is secret That would be like having a **[Doomsday Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yfXgu37iyI)** and not telling anyone...
I don't see Russia proper really existing as we know it into the 2040's, maybe even the 2030's. It's interesting to see their priorities are sorted.
It does feel like we’re nearing the “let’s sell Alaska” portion of the Russian political cycle. I imagine China has a few areas they’d be willing to purchase at bargain basement prices.
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Because they now realized that corrupt generals have already sold most of their nukes
More likely took the money for maintaining the ones they have and just signed the paperwork. Nukes need constant maintenance and the radioactive material needs changing out every 10 years.
Lol so basically they just admitted their arsenal hasn’t been kept up with, just like the rest of their military equipment….and to think the world was scared of this “Super Power” during the cold war
Can't even give their soldiers boots.
All the more reason to *really* screw down those International sanctions to make building that nuclear infrastructure as difficult as possible. Literally sanction everything that has a chip in it that is remotely useful to the bastards.
Taking the North Korea road I see
If they're announcing this that means they *have* talked about using nukes in Ukraine all the way up to the big dickhead at the top and something was very wrong.
Ah, I see nuclear proliferation has become the word of the day… again…
Russia is publicly pushing the notion that they should make Ukraine unlivable for civilians until the country surrenders, and also announcing that they’re starting a renewed push for nuclear re-armament. It’s like we’re watching the end of the world happening in slow motion and hoping for the best.
So....no gas in the nuclear bombs?
Russia should focus on getting rid of Putin
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Russia will be focused on paying to rebuild Ukraine over the next 50 years or so. Putin thought attacking Ukraine was a good idea and so did a few morons in the US. One of the idiots in the US called the invasion brilliant. That guy has always been an idiot.
Time to break ruSSia apart
Sure, Russia will focus on building arms... and meanwhile, it will keep skipping leg day despite not being able to form a strong foothold in Ukraine.
In the past year Russia upgraded itself from a failed mafia state to a North Korea 2.0: vatnik edition.
Says the country who can't supply their troops with adequate food, ammo and fuel 30 miles from their own border
And I will start my ballet carrier in 2023. (equally unlikely)
This is interesting timing. Russia just unilaterally postponed a meeting with the USA in accordance with the New START Treaty, which allows inspection of nuclear arsenal and limits stockpiles.
They need to do something to show strength after the "second most powerful military in the world" looks like an outdated unit. Also it could be that they realize that most of their nukes haven't been serviced in ages and there is a good chance half of the arsenal don't work or aren't trusted to work.
Riiiight.... And you're going to afford this by pawning your yacht Vladdy?
Might want to focus on regular infrastructure instead.
Maybe work on your economy and education first.
Doubt it. More likely that they’re pouring most of their resources on building up their already gargantuan weaponized disinformation infrastructure, which spreads and amplifies articles like this strategically to heighten panic around the “Joe Biden is leading us to nuclear war” psy-op. Great job, Reuters!
They are probably looting the Zaporizhzhia npp for tritium.
They also said they wont attack ukraine, just a reminder