America's nuclear arsenal to cost $946B over next decade
breakingdefense.com
breakingdefense.com
Creating a world that results in that conclusion may go down as one of the greatest policy failures in history, and if we do in the end have an atomic war I think that's where the responsibility lay.
Ultimately we have failed as a species to rise morally above "might makes right" and I think we are going to pay for that.
We really need to get out of the economy of scarcity. Without that, war and aggression are unavoidable.
You can see evidence for this as one of the first things Russia did was reopen those canals so water started flowing to Crimea again.
That might not have been the only goal, but it was certainly one of the bigger reasons for the attack.
The war in Ukraine is only a war of resources in very minor ways. It is much more about egos, nationalism and the idea that Russia deserves to be an empire.
That wasn't a war though, nobody called it a war between Ukraine and Russia at the time. Read news from the time, no mention of war between Ukraine and Russia.
The Ukraine war was very different than Russia other aggressions, the resource scarcity likely triggered this extra aggressive behavior. You can say this resource scarcity was ultimately their fault, but a starving beast will fight very aggressively regardless whose fault it is that its starving.
If the Crimean water crisis didn't happen then likely Russia would just have continued to incite rebellions and annex territory that way, and not declare a full scale war.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/world/europe/ukraine.html
>The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then supported Russian paramilitaries who began a war in the eastern Donbas region... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War
It not being in US news doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Russians tried to occupy Ukraine and destroy Ukrainian culture and identity for centuries. That is the real goal.
The war was inevitable. Here is from 2014: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28229785
In a scarcity economy we use scarcity to assign value to goods. We also game the system by manufacturing scarcity when needed (blocking export of critical minerals, manipulating supply and availability to avoid price fluctuations, and so on).
IMHO that's almost the definition of civilization.
Those bombs were Ukraine's in the same sense that the bombs in Minot AFB are North Dakota's. If the US were to suddenly fall apart (as the USSR did), North Dakota wouldn't suddenly become a nuclear power just because the bombs are physically stationed there. They could use them to jump-start a nuclear program, but those are otherwise orphaned bombs with no one having immediate means to control them.
Russia even threatened invasion if Ukraine started messing with those nukes.
But everyone including the US acknowledges that they don’t need the ridiculous number of nuclear weapons any longer. Especially given that as Trump said Europe is responsible for itself now.
You can only lose trust once.
You see, for instance, a lot of high tech weapons come from the US and, presumably, have all sorts of kill switches. We, at least, need to stop buying those.
[0] https://apnews.com/article/trump-china-russia-nuclear-bbc1c7...
You should peruse the obligations the USA signed up to in Article VI of the NNTP.
The ICJ (the UN one the US congress ratfied) ruled waaay back in 1996 that article VI of the NNPT implies "There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control."
International rule of law and all that.
Why would the US start a nuclear war over reserve currency? You are an idiot.
Any country attempting to build a military nuclear capability will need to invest in manufacturing fuel from mining to highly enriched forms suitable for weapons. This is not something easy to hide, as Iran found out the hard way a couple times.
OTOH, nobody is going to invade North Korea now.
And yet we should build and struggle toward the conditions which would allow a massive reduction of the nucelar arsenal.
This would require a level of strategy and clear-mindedness as well as strengthening the US Alliance system so we can push against the autocracy superpowers in a united front, by nonviolent means.
Instead we get high school age kids with flash drives stealing the most sensitive federal government data and potentially injecting unknown code.
So the best bet is this $946B will flow down to other innovations and market translation through the small business set-aside laws. One can always hope.
I’m not going to say that a country doesn’t need nuclear weapons in the modern era. As disappointing as that is.
But I really do not see why we need 3500
Surely, 1500 nuclear bombs is an effective deterrent
Whatever that number is, the 31,000+ we used to have was stupid. 3,500 in a historical context is a relief.
The real conundrum these days is that you can't test more. You want to be 100% certain it goes off when needed, but it's pretty hard to test that theory without... testing one.
If all that could be done with 1,500 I'm all in. Just a lot of 'practical' considerations that go into whatever 'x' number is.
This is why the DOE has the most powerful supercomputers in the world. They have to simulate nuclear explosions because they can't test them.
We're a far cry from that at the moment. In my view, US democracy is being contested (to say it with understatement), and US and Allied security also -- both more than probably any time in the Cold War. Worse than this is the threat to the alliance system.
The difference is now, China is ramping up its nuclear arsenal and has the economic backing to make it happen. The Russians can't be ignored either as their systems are very advanced and quite numerous. So I think to get past our internal problems in the Western world, we need a time margin of maybe 20 years.
Seen in this light, $956B over 10 years is not extreme, assuming it will indeed produce many other economic effects and technological breakthroughs (not just more graft for the billionaires). It's just I'd rather also see a massive increase in NASA funding with clear programmatic goals (instead of 'worship SpaceX'), international cooperation, and tie it to restoration of funding at the civilian agencies. We're far from that being viable at this point, however.
It’s kind of a running joke that in order for your propulsion research to get funding it needs military applications. So, unless you can make the case to put a nuke in front of your highly efficient electric thruster, you are fighting for scraps.
The estimation is that the sea has 4E9 tones of disolved uranium.
I'd better not try, but there is already a lot of natural radioactive materialas in the sea.
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Acording to a ramdon Reddit comment https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/96oprs/comment/... a core of a warhead in your hand gives 0.5S.
That is like 5E6 bananas, that is like 3E3 tones of bananas.
Assuming 3500 warheads on each side, thats line 2E7 tones of bananas.
The anual production of bananas is 8E7 tones of bananas per year. So dropping all the warheads in the see is like dropping 3 months of the banana production.
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Anyway, most of the radioactivity of bananas is due to potasium, that is very soluble so it goes to the pee that goes to the river that goes to the sea. So it's not necesary to sink the ships, just eat the bananas and wait.
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Anyway, potasium is very soluble and does not accumulate too much in animals and plants. I'm bot sure about plutonium.
You also have to consider that nukes have to be distributed around the world, so that you can target enemies throughout the world, so that enemies don’t know where to target their missile defense systems, and so that you still have adequate threat if sites are attacked.
Not if ABM programs such as Golden Shield (I’m inclined to call it Phantom Menace, because it’s a crappy sequel to Star Wars) succeed. If you launch all your 1500 warheads and only 15 reach their targets, you’ll need a lot more warheads.
At the very least every country including my own should have a way to drag the enemy down to the hell should all else fail.
Are you aware that gaza has been under siege for decades? When Egypt refused to allow israeli ships throught the canal, Isreal invaded. According to israel, a blockade is cause enought for war.
Also why do you think gaza is so small? When did they lose access to the rest of the land around it? Why are there so many settlements?
You can really only say it's unprovoked if you ignore all of history before october 7th.
Oh and indiscriminately killing civilians is bad. Shame only one side of this 'debate' agrees.
You'd think so too if your supplies and trade with the world were disrupted while your neighbours are waiting for you to blink before destroying your entire society.
The entire way the State was established was an unfortunate choice. Neglecting local politics and disrespecting the rights of the people already occupying the land was obviously going to lead to conflict and long term instability. While it’s impossible to undo the sins of the past, we can at least think of solutions to move forward without causing more harm.
of course.
It also seems misleading to talk about Israel's blockade of Gaza with no mention of all the rocket attacks that prompted it. A blockade might be an act of war, but it's sort of moot when it's preceded by acts of war from the other side.
Good luck convincing other countries to trust the US.
I wouldn't use the word "cheap," but it doesn't look all that unreasonable, given what we're dealing with here.
But, to the extent that the bean counters can, somehow, draw a bunch of arbitrary lines in the sand and directly attribute some 11% of the US military budget to the nukes keeping the peace on behalf of the entire Western world, it doesn't appear excessive.
At some point there may be a phase change where the US abandons this goal. In that world, the rational strategy becomes one of strategic disengagement, so that if nuclear war breaks out (or a conventional war that risks going nuclear) the US is not drawn in. The lesson becomes that of WW1, not WW2.
So say you. This is a discussion about costs, as opposed "goals." Were I to stipulate the claim you make, then it's all be a terrible failure: at least three US allies have built and currently operate a nuclear arsenal.
That’s probably a good thing; certainly the people complaining here about costs would not suggest we go back to doing so.
Similarly, part of the reason the UK has repeatedly decided to retain its remaining nuclear weapons (Trident submarines) is that nukes were and are, pound for pound, very inexpensive compared to other weapons.