Russia’s Nukes Probably Don’t Work – Here’s Why
wesodonnell.medium.com
wesodonnell.medium.com
While there are a lot of cities in the EU and the US critical infra is concentrated in a much smaller number of locations.
We know from Ukraine that Russia has no problem destroying civilian targets, and it's at least plausible that a nuclear first strike would be aimed at population centres, not - as doctrine has it - at missile sites followed by military and industrial targets.
So even if only 10% of Russia's nukes still work, that's still a very bad day for everyone.
And "work" isn't a binary. A nominal 1MT weapon that fizzles and produces "only" 25kT is still a huge problem.
Let's assume that 100% of the warheads never reach the US but 10% of them detonate domestically. Effectively, Russia nukes itself with 600 warheads.
The world consequences will still be devastating.
But what if only Russia fired their missiles, 90% of them failed, and the remaining 10% exploded in their launcher? Most of those launch tubes are deep underground to protect them from first-strike by the USA, and would not release the same kind of soot as if they exploded in the air.
Even an exchange between India and Pakistan would result in almost 30 million of dead **, but again, that's using math where nuclear weapons (one-hundred 15Kt warheads) are detonated on or above ground.
I'm not remotely suggesting we try out and find out, I like not starving to death, tymv. The math, however, is interesting in a morbid curiosity sort of way.
* https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00573-0 ** https://thebulletin.org/2022/10/nowhere-to-hide-how-a-nuclea...
What "world consequences" would there be? Are you talking about the effect on the Russian population and country and subsequent political economic and social upheaval from the result of Russia deciding to make a nuclear attack that backfires on itself, and also brings a retaliatory strike upon itself (which would be far more devastating than the malfunctioning nukes in the first place),? I agree would have pretty significant global consequences.
The global environmental effects of the nuclear exchange itself wouldn't be all that significant though would it? Might slow down global warming for a couple of years which could be nice.
it has no place whatsoever in intelligent conversation.
a 50 year old bullet may not work. are you going to put a gun in your mouth and test it? (ironically, there is a name for that)
it makes zero difference whether russia's nukes work or not. if they launch, then the US launches also, and the fallout and nuclear winter kills untold numbers.
if russia really thinks their nukes will have a high failure rate, then they will just launch more, and the US will launch more in retaliation before they ever hit.
the hot takes of twitter arm chair warriors have no place in reality. if you are even thinking of taking this bs seriously, please don't.
Given the subject, quite ironic. Or not, since maybe it's less ironic and more exactly what were talking about.
>twitter arm chair warriors
The people coming up with these insane warmongering narratives are not random everyday Americans. They are all US foreign policy apparatchiks. People working at “think tanks” in Washington DC or ex-CIA analysts writing for corporate media outlets. They are not a grass roots phenomena.
who are, unfortunately, pretty much just that. there is an enormous risk in the US, which has not fought a war on its own soil since the civil war, and has not been in a real existential battle since WWII, that the younger the decision makers get, the more detached from the reality of actual war they become.
the biggest war mongers are generally people who have no combat experience at all and have never face any real adversity in their lives. but even combat experience, when it is limited to being part of a vastly superior force that slaughters its opponents at will, is nothing compared to the experience of having your own country invaded.
In March, three US officials with intelligence on Russian warheads claimed that around 60 percent of Moscow's missiles do not work.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1615231/putin-news-russ...
US government officials and armchair generals on social media are not exactly the same thing.
If the fears turn out to be unfounded, you win.
If the fears turn out to be correct, well...the performance of your stocks may not be your primary concern.
If the only way your corruption is likely to be found out is the end of the world, there really isn't much downside.
More worrisome is the risk of a corrupt Russian official selling nukes (or parts thereof) to some other organization.
It theoretically could happen at small scales though, eg. The Apollo Affair where Israel's nuclear program was allegedly kick-started by the illicit diversion of nuclear fuel from the US.
Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations would absolutely want it for the dirty bomb potential.
Thinking the other side is incompetent or in the brink of losing is the kind of thinking kept the 20 year, $2.313 trillion Afghanistan War going, and we know how that ended.
I don't know, losing for example New York City would be kind of rough. In reality probably every major US city.
Your analogy doesn't quite check out.
But nuking Russia is still bad since it would cause trouble (nuclear winter for example?) for other countries/whole world
Any large exchange of thermonuclear weapons is going to break most supply chains and lead to a great simplification of society and the deaths of at least 90% of the population in the process as industrial farming stops being a thing.
Obviously.
Historically, with real tanks seen to be performing in action, then cardboard tanks additionally performed exactly as the deterrent fake ones were intended to do.
Also in tank warfare when the majority of tanks have not been brought into action, the cardboard ones accomplished the same things as the majority of real ones.
Edit: not everyone can be expected to believe it's true, some are just more easily fooled than others
Plus my bad, there were a lot of inflatables historically for even better deception:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/ghost...
Nuclear weapons will not actually make a huge difference. Neither on the battlefield nor on civilian targets.
Decision makers get their information from other, probably more accurate, sources.
How many times have you heard the line "nobody expected that Russian army was so useless" in the past year?
I'm sure some people knew.
We don't know, we won't know until much later.
History - and perhaps the game of Risk - has taught you well.
The USA has lost nukes.
Russia isn't the only country to be worried about when it comes the black market.
Is it even feasible for a terrorist group to transport and detonate a nuke?
In the west we see memes about Russia being all sorts of things, but we've got to remember they're a still a strong military power, a major geopolitical player, and overall a functioning country in spite of lots of interest for their demise, for a reason.
The serious argument is that their real life battlefield readiness amounts to a joke based on cartoonish[0] levels of corruption, so never say never.
There's a considerably less serious one that has established historical precedent.[1][2][3][4]
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-colonel-accused-stea...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtmW0_MV2rk#t=144m53s
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtmW0_MV2rk#t=86m02s
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7xiK-snyJk (context)
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2191634 (further context)
The movie review page is linked indirectly via an old comment that specifies item #4 - the Tom Clancy Plot Generator.
It was intended as a humorous nostalgia trip for some, while making the point that in real life the Russians last month arrested a senior military official for selling T-90 engines, and that anything's possible in those conditions.
Real life can sometimes be more cartoonish than fiction, unfortunately.
During the Cold War and the ensuing Cuban Missle Crisis[0][1], those relatively few of us remaining who were in Florida (a much less populous state) at the time, preparing more seriously than most other states to "survive" nuclear attack, might remember why they called him Boris Badenov[2][3].
Yes he was bad enough, but never entirely competent.
Americans had no trouble understanding that was a very unrealistic cartoonish exaggeration.
[0]https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis >October 1962
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis >Arguably, the most dangerous moment in the crisis was not recognized until the Cuban Missile Crisis Havana conference, in October 2002. . . [only after 40 years had passed] Unknown to the US, it [Soviet submarine] was armed with a 15-kiloton nuclear torpedo. Running out of air, the Soviet submarine was surrounded by American warships and desperately needed to surface. An argument broke out among three officers aboard [the sub] . . . including submarine captain Valentin Savitsky, political officer Ivan Semyonovich Maslennikov, and Deputy brigade commander Captain 2nd rank (US Navy Commander rank equivalent) Vasily Arkhipov. An exhausted Savitsky became furious and ordered that the nuclear torpedo on board be made combat ready. . . Thomas Blanton, director of the [US] National Security Archive, said, "A guy called Vasily Arkhipov saved the world."
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Badenov
[3]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Boris+Badenov&iax=images&ia=images
It should make the Russians and their allies doubt their capabilities even more than they do now. If the strategic forces doubt they will work will they still launch?
Nothing will change in the West. The gun is still loaded. But how many rounds do they have? That's a question the Russians and Chinese have to answer.
Should always at least try and adjust for purchasing power parity in these comparisons.
Of course the sums are not directly comparable for other reasons, such as corruption in Russia and procurement dysfunction in the US. But those factors would need to be estimated explicitly.
(EDIT: Thanks for the replies, I hadn't heard that there also exist specific estimates of "defense-sector PPP", so I acknowledge what I wrote above was wrong.)
That being said though when the budgets are off by an order of magnitude there's no way to make that back just via lowering wages a bit
Maintenance requires labour. Labour has different prices in different countries. You can compare that labour cost.
e.g. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/debating-defence-budgets-why-...
Strong polarization of believes that not backed by ground truths but just indoctrinated by mass media is staggering, and it will get much worse, the more quality of education will drop in western world and more censorship industrial complex get smarter at fabricating and bending reality according to interest of particular elites.
Probably nothing will go wrong if we invade Russia, then? Not a great threat model.
subtext: Xi Jinping will be annoyed by this as well
[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/politics/patriot-missile-...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-hypersonic-missile...
Ever heard of debris? A Patriot system so minimally damaged that it’s already repaired does in no way suggest, as you seem to imply, it being directly hit by Kinzhal missiles. Especially considering that it was actively targeted.
I don't think anyones advocating firing a few nukes at Russia on the basis they can't retaliate, so I don't see decision as being reckless.
"Toxic" like in "toxic" masculinity or in toxic chemical?
With Putin’s Russia, we knew that everything sort of worked superficially in the oligarchic-capitalist way, but the evidence was dwindling whether the nukes actually work.
By invading Ukraine he blew up his biggest asset: the fog of war around the actual competence of the paper-formidable Russian army, now shown to be less off a superpower and more of a paper tiger. With this new data at hand, it shouldn’t be taboo to ask questions about the nuclear arsenal.
My thoughts exactly.
Even if the nuclear arsenal does work, I can't see any incentives the current Russian government has to use it.
There is no way out of this.
For that reason, there is no variation of the Russian government that can escalate to nukes and win, even if 99 out of 100, or 999 out of 1000, don't even launch and blow up where they stand. If they must empire-build and that is their only remaining option, they and we are already dead.
I hope we're not, but it's not up to me. Our planet will continue to have humans as long as Russia doesn't nuke, even as they lose everything. It's pretty much on them, because much like the tritium in the nuke serves to ignite the explosion, Russia attacking serves to ignite retaliation, and there is no option other than retaliation, because if they nuke once they will continue to do so until nothing is left alive.
Besides, we can be sure that it does not share its nuclear technology and nobody had stolen it. If there are 4000 nukes or just 500, it doesn’t really matter. Though I’m sure nuclear arsenal in Russia is maintained much better than anything else.
Why?
I've previously mused whether there are any nuclear powers that merely pretend. After all it is a deterrent, when it gets to the point you have to use it you've already lost. The point of a nuke isn't to use it, it's to stop the other guy using theirs. A silo full of cardboard ICBMs is functionally as useful as a silo of actual icbms
The other side still needs to believe that your nuclear weapons are a threat. Those cardboard missiles would need to be very realistic. At least some of them.
In that context it seems possible that they’d lose the nuclear capacity and not even notice because the tradition of Potemkin villages is so pervasive.
You don't need nukes. You just need others to believe you do.
Can we really assume this? This is the section of the military where the middle managers could calculate they’d be most likely to get away with grift and non-delivery simply because nobody between 1992 and 2022 expected the arsenal was likely to be ever deployed.
That kind of short-term self-centered thinking is a hallmark of Putinism. Why wouldn’t they lie to the President about the nuclear capability if they were 99.9% sure they could get away with it during their lifetimes.
We used to test nukes all the time, landing one or two would cause a devastating loss of life, but not nuclear winter. If 90% of their nukes don't work, what are the odds they can actually cause true mass scale planetary destruction? Maybe they know which 10% are their best bet to fire, and aim them at the most important targets, but those are also the targets we're most likely to adequately protect.
If we assume the US nukes are in working order, then if Russia attempts a first strike, we’re doomed - regardless of the efficacy of their weapons.
Probably a minor point of note in the things to worry about column, but Russia has nuclear missile subs (as does the US). In the event that the mainland is wiped out, they exist to exact vengeance, completing the MAD circle.
On the nuke side of things, the fear is that Putin will have nothing left to win the war and will resort to nukes; even if it’s the only one they think might have a chance of working.
Separately, I think the article makes a good point about the costs of maintaining a nuclear arsenal. I doubt they’ve been doing a good job at this.
What is the equivalent of Pantex in Russia? Who services them?
(Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian arsenal has been replaced: the only parts that survive from Soviet times, I think, is the fissionable material.)
I think that's when people stopped taking his threats seriously. NK is better at this than Putin.
Russia is honoring its treaty commitments not to test nuclear weapons.
Your assumption that Russia cares about following the treaties it signs upto is admirable but not reality. Russia never follows treaties when it doesn’t want to, so either they don’t want to test a nuke or can’t.
you are the one making assumptions and imputing negative intent.
i do agree that it ultimately does come down to the point that they "don't want to," because of course a treaty is just words on paper, so it is always a choice whether to follow it or not.
on the other hand, to assume that Russia's choice to abide by its treaty obligations is because their nukes "don't work" is a wild leap of fantasy based on no evidence or logic whatsoever.
Russia is clearly massively outgunned both militarily and economically by the US/NATO and nobody disputes this.
logically it is in Russia strategic interests to pressure the US into nuclear treaties that reduce US nuclear capacity so that Russia can be more competitive militarily at a lower cost.
Russia would not be able to maintain even their war in Ukraine without the support or acquiescence of their allies and countries that see a benefit in remaining somewhat neutral (china, india, brazil, turkey, saudi arabia, iran, and many others). Russia would have zero chance whatsoever in direct all out warfare with US/NATO and they are well aware of this and so they have to play to the court of international opinion in order to stay alive.
consequently, it is in Russia's interests to avoid escalation, especially nuclear escalation, as much as possible, and this is the course they have been following so far.
i am not making any assumptions about Russian intent (which i know nothing about) but the objective facts of their strategic situation mean that launching (or testing) nukes would be suicidal and so, assuming that they are rational enough to have basic survival instincts, this seems highly unlikely unless it is a last ditch mutually assured destruction play where they know they are going to be conquered either way.
North Korea dangerous because it has a (comparatively, tiny) nuclear stockpile, but in the grand scheme of things, it's rather irrelevant.
Russia is all those things above that North Korea isn't. Neither Russia nor the USA have performed nuclear tests in the 21st century and that was a huge step that took insurmountable diplomatic work to achieve. Starting nuclear tests again would not only be a huge step back diplomatically, but also open a whole other can of worms that thankfully still remains closed. As things currently are, it's a smart move geopolitically to not be the country that takes that step back, or that opens that can of worms.
That's sounds a bit too rational, not MAD enough, you know? Putin clearly wasn't thinking rationally, otherwise there wouldn't be a war to begin with.
If you're going to threaten with nuclear weapons, then saying that you gonna do it and then repeating it a few times isn't it.
The US said the same thing in Iraq, no?
I’m not sure that Putin is irrational, and I don’t think it’s wise to assume so.
I'm from Mexico and am currently down here and not in the USA. What strikes me as the biggest difference in news coverage of the war isn't so much the stance— in both countries the war is seen as a horrible invasion that's led to unnecessary death— but the treatment and overall depiction "rationality".
It's the little things— the adjectives, the tone, the comments, the headlines. In the USA one somehow ends up feeling Russia is a weak nation Putin managed to drag into a reckless and little-thought-out war that'll be over any minute now given the sheer incompetence of the Russian side. The same events might get coverage in Mexico, and the Russian side might be equally denounced, but one doesn't end up feeling Russia is an irrational, weak or stupid actor.
It might have to do with the smugness? After all the USA has the largest military in the world but Mexico's doesn't compare with either side's. Or perhaps culturally the USA sees Russia as "the remains of that adversary we beat last century", but in Mexico we learn about the Cold War from a third person perspective?
IMO, over a year into the war now, this war doesn't seem _that_ stupid and irrational. It's still wrong to invade another country, but the move doesn't seem "dumb" on Putin's end. He is still in power, the rubble bounced back, BRICS are as strong as ever, and if anything the USA is in a pre-electoral bind— do they keep pouring resources into supporting Ukraine or do they start focusing on Taiwan? Can both be done?
I think it's a big mistake to underestimate an enemy, and I wonder if people in the USA are underestimating Russia too much. The general population that is. I don't think the government has yet fallen into that trap of underestimating them too much.
I don't see why it would be reckless to consider the possibility of the poor state of the russian nuclear arsenal. The article even points that the tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons are probably just fine.
It doesn't mean that the west is suddenly going to suddenly going to act as if russia didn't have nuclear weapons.
Way to twist things around. No, it's reckless because you're gambling about the end of the world.
Seems to me you are reading about a pretty factual article about the cost of maintenance of nukes but interpreting it as « let’s declare war to Russia, their arsenal probably doesn’t work ».
God, what a reckless sentence.
It kind of remember me how the possibility of covid lab leak got discredited early on in the Lancet without any proof and then backfired spectacularly, creating doubts about the scientific community in the population.
I don’t think thought censorship ever helps, we have to push for nuanced views.
It's implicit in any threat that it might be a bluff.