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Comment by cameron_b | Hacker News Reader

It should probably be restated that instead of the conflict in Ukraine catching our production capacity off guard, that rather it was our production posture along with denuclearization and disarmament of Ukraine that set the stage for the conflict.

I’m not a “team America world police” advocate, much more the opposite. Even as stated in the article, most production is more interested in a deterrent. Hate ‘em or hate ‘em, nukes are a deterrent to open war. Reference our posture toward retaliating against Iran-backed groups this week.

Russia didn’t like a nuclear neighbor, it said. So the US brokered a nuclear disarmament of Ukraine with the interests of reducing the tension (sic) with Russia, and on the assurance of support from the US should they need it.

The stage was set on the thin hope of peace.

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Ukraine wasn’t real a nuclear power though. They some of Soviet arsenal and some facilities required to maintain but it would have required significant investment to make it actually usable longterm. That was totally unfeasible during the economic collapse of the early 90s

To add, the keys, targeting coordinates, orders, and control of the weapons was with the Russians in the Kremlin. Kazakhstan and Turkey also housed nuclear weapons. No one argues they were a nuclear power stripped of their defense.

Missiles were built by Ukraine.

Rocket engines, which were dual use with peacetime space exploration, I might add. They did not build warheads.

Warhead were built in closed cities, but research was done in institutes, mostly by Jews and Ukrainians. Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology was known as "Laboratory №1" for nuclear physics. Many nuclear physicists were trained there.

Ukraine only housed Soviet nuclear missiles. They (Ukraine) would never ever had access to launch codes. That it is stated in Budapest memorandum along with the rest of the Soviet army leaving does not in any way make Ukraine a former nuclear power.

We had Soviet nukes stationed in Czechia too. Does that make us a former nuclear power? I thought not...

Slava Ukraini

> would never ever had access to launch codes

What do you think, how many hours does it take to remove and jury-rig launch signal electronics for a motivated nation state at the cutting edge of weapons technology? If the Soviet troops had agreed to leave the bombs in situ, Ukraine would have had some sort of nuclear capability within the week. (And even if the Russians had sabotaged it, Iran and NorK prove that obtaining or refining the fissile material is far harder than explosives lensing and ballistic missile delivery.)

'Launch signal' isn't the issue, you'd need to work past the PAL used for the weapon to be any significant threat, and soviet PALs were relatively complex based on multiple path lengths and timing deviations.

You could just rip the PAL out and build a new detonation timing system, but then you'd be re-doing a large part of the trial-and-error phase of the manhatten project.

It's not something that could happen in hours or weeks. Realistically more like months or years.

"Ukraine would have had some sort of nuclear capability within the week."

For how long?

Nukes need maintenance. To maintain them, you will need to rebuild the entire supply chain on Ukrainian territory. Do you even have the necessary know-how? What percentage of GDP are you willing to spend on it?

Until today, Ukraine has lower GDP than Czechia. In the 1990s, it was even worse. With their economy destroyed by decades of Soviet rule, they were happy to survive somehow.

Tangentially, it is well possible that Russian nukes are actually under-maintained, for the very same reason: it is expensive to keep them in working order, and Russian economy is not very strong. Perhaps most of them would not explode. But we'd better not find out.

Much of the supply chain was already on Ukrainian territory; in USSR, significant parts of the missile&turbine manufacturing capacity were located in Ukrainian SSR, and the same applies for nuclear industry.

Maintenance of nuclear missiles was done in Ukraine prior to the war. Ukraine built missiles, so Ukraine performed their maintenance.

That nation couldn't find the money to maintain 'their' fleet. Maintaining nuclear weapons cost way more.

Ukraine had various facilities and personnel used for manufacturing and maintaining the missiles. Not having the launch codes means they can't launch them at a moments notice, it wouldn't prevent them from taking the missiles to a workshop and changing the launch codes.

Even if ukraine had kept their nuclear weapons and processed them into something useable, would that really have deterred russia? And who knows, I wouldn't be surprised if they have nukes again, or are working on a bomb. They certainly have the know-how and access to fissile material. Not that that would help much...

Ukraine was a nuclear power in the same way Japan, Germany, or Turkey are now. No control over the actual nukes, just being protected by them as deterrence, but also thereby becoming a target in case of a hot conflict. Oh, and also the capability to develop the capability on their own, since they have lots of nuclear reactors and nuclear scientists.

> Hate ‘em or hate ‘em, nukes are a deterrent to open war.

This is demonstrably false. Nukes have allowed those who have them, to bully (wage asymmetric warfare on) those who don't.

Would the USA have been so cock-sure about murdering 5% of Iraqs population, if it didn't have nukes?

Unfortunately that is an illustration of what I mean. Iraq and Ukraine participated in nuclear disarmament and monitoring. Iran has continued to pursue nuclear development and gets very diplomatic kid-gloves from even US military retaliation on Iran-backed groups in the area.

The US was very clear in not attacking Iranians, though Iranian support was the vehicle by which US troops were attacked. Iran got a measured response for its allies because Iran 'carries a big stick'

How would the US not having nukes helped Irak? Conventional invasion of the US is impossible unless the the attacker has total sea superiority or a strong forward base in the Americas. The US can and will maintain its dominance there with conventional means.

Air or missile strikes against US territory are very difficult to pull off. Only China or Russia would have any chance to overwhelm US missile defenses. Anything small-scale would be answered by conventional strikes and a ground invasion. No nukes are warranted unless entire cities get slagged or nukes or biological or chemical weapons are used.

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