Who has the most nukes?

[Ulmita]

I think a bit of context needs to be put into this quote (and others). While personally I find what you're linking, which I've seen before, fairly compelling, nuclear weapon environmental effects, politics, use in warfare, strategy is all historically highly politicized. Disarmament groups obviously emphasizing that their entirely unusable and other groups advocating their normalization as just-another-weapon.

Right now for example, the Obama Adnimistration is backing the development of a next generation air launched cruise missile to replace the AGM-86 ALCM (and the newer AGM-129 ACM that was retired on cost grounds a few years ago). And the various parties are at work trying to explain why a new nuclear cruise missile would be a terrible thing despite being in the arsenal since 1974, or by contrast, be supremely useful and essential, despite the advanced AGM-129 being a resistance-free cut for marginal cost savings, even though it is vastly more capable than the older AGM-86.

It's highly political. So when sources say that a nuclear war would light the atmosphere on fire or in fact, nothing bad would happen at all or something, look very carefully at who is writing the article. More carefully than you normally would. There are few defense policy subfields where agendas are so blatant.

What is fairly definitive though is that modern models of human population growth show that the human race could wipe out 2 billion people mid century due to some cause (such as a nuclear war), and the global human population would fully recover within 50 years (by 2100).

I agree and that was especially true during cold war. I've read article on that.

This is different though. There are too many different sources from different countries besides RU and USA that confirm the same with models.
I too believe that a full out nuclear exchange between USA and Russia would mean the end of the life as we know it in this planet. I am not sure if its extension but definitely increase of cancer 1,000,000 % etc

As for the new cruise missile thats nothing. They are pushing for 1 trillion nuclear overhaul, as your ICBM is shit and your SLBMs are nothing unique.

[Deleted]

Always makes me laugh that the country with the shittest nukes (NK) does the most with them.

[Skroe]

Thank you for explaining that. What of Israel though?

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I advocate the reduction of nuclear weapons. Because there's no need for so many nukes... in fact, I do believe there's barely any need for any nukes at all. On all sides.
And I believe that because I don't live in paranoia-land, thinking everyone has 100s of nukes hidden somewhere and is just waiting to nuke me. Russia and USA are special cases since they reached those huge numbers each to show the other they're better. Thankfully they're lowering the numbers, but really, countries like UK, France have a reasonable amount of nukes.

Israel has Jericho ICBMs

THe one they have by far the most of is the Jericho II which entered service in 1989. It has a 7800km range, which makes. This makes it at the upper end of intermediate range ballistic missile. Israel could strike all of Europe, most of Russia, all of China, most of Africa and the entirey of West Asia and the Middle East with it. However it could not reach North and South America or Asia-Pacific.

Israel is believed to be replacing the Jericho II with the Jericho III which carries twice the payload and has MIRV capability, but a much smaller range (4800km). This makes sense for Israel because it keeps Pakistan and Iran within the radius of it, but increases payload... it's not important for Israel to have a missile that can hit the UK or something.

Something that I forgot to mention is warhead size. This is essential when talking about missle ranges. The US, with the Trident II D5, Minuteman III and B61 Mod 12 possesses, by far, the most accurate nuclear weapons in the world. The Minuteman III has an accuracy of 120m. The Trident II D5 has 90m accuracy and 5m accuracy for the missles that have receieved the Life Extension upgrade (which will eventually be all of them). The same goes with the B61.

By contrast Russia's missiles have, at best, 200m accuracy, and often 300m-700m. Same with China, and Israel, Pakistan and so forth.

Because a missile (or bomb) can miss by so much, the historic approach, dating to the first and second generation of nuclear weapons (from the 1950s and 1960s) was to make them bigger. That is why the multi-megaton city busters showed up in the 1950s and early 1960s in the US and USSR arsenal, and went down to about 500kt on average in the decades to follow, once accuracy got better - if accuracy was higher, there was no point to having a larger warhead/bomb when a target would be missed by up to 300m instead of up to 1400m.

The B61 Mod 12 is a perfect example of this. The B61 at 349kt, as it exists is a much smaller bomb than the B83, at 1.2Mt. But the B61 is also physically smaller and more accurate. The B83 was preserved to date as a "city buster", despite being unguided because of it's yield, while the smaller B61 was considered a battlefield tactical nuclear weapon, to drop on Russian tank formations, air fields, and large swathes of Sibera in the great Mobile ICBM hunt. However with the Mod 12 kit that adds JDAM-level guidance, it could be dropped on a city as well with extremely high accuracy, allowing the US to retire the B83 (and save money).

the crappiness of non-US, non-French, non-Russian and non-modern Chinese warheads and missiles is underscored in that even a country like Israel attempted to make them large to make up for their rocket's lack of accuracy and only in 2011, added true MIRVing.

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I agree and that was especially true during cold war. I've read article on that.

This is different though. There are too many different sources from different countries besides RU and USA that confirm the same with models.
I too believe that a full out nuclear exchange between USA and Russia would mean the end of the life as we know it in this planet. I am not sure if its extension but definitely increase of cancer 1,000,000 % etc

As for the new cruise missile thats nothing. They are pushing for 1 trillion nuclear overhaul, as your ICBM is shit and your SLBMs are nothing unique.

The 1 trillion overhaul is because our platforms will reach the end of their service lives over the next 20 years and unlike your favorite country in the world, the US actually replaces it's old stuff with new stuff, rather than just saddling itself with the new stuff indefinetly.

Remember it is Russia, not the US, that is crippled by the fact that its nuclear budget is twice that as a percentage of it's defense expenditure compared to the US, because it has too many legacy systems it has failed to rid itself of. Why is there even one Typhoon in the fleet for example?

As for our ICBM, the Minuteman III is thoroughly modern. The rebuild over the last few years basically made an all new missile in all but name, and put the very modern Peacekeeper MX's W87 warhead on top. They are more accurate than anything Russia has.

For our "nothing unique SLBM", just keep in mind, the Bulava, of which there is a couple dozen mostly non-operational missiles, is a less capable, less accurate version of the Trident II D5, a missile the US has hundreds of and has owned since the late 1980s.

Most of the $1 trillion modernization is forward looking and for the big budget projects. The AGM-86 won't retire until late in the 2020s. A huge percentage of it is in the Ohio Replacement Program and the B-21 bomber, neither of which Russia is close to be able to matching. The "New ICBM" is at the very tail end of that effort, beyond 2030, and will probably overlap significantly with the Trident II D5 replacement program. They may even be modernized (for the 2030s) Trident II's) with a new stage for longer range.

Frankly, it doesn't matter what they are, because MIRVing with 5m accuracy is pretty much as good as it gets. From there on out, most important feature is cost effectiveness, and Russia is decades behind in that.

You want proof of that Statement? Why hasn't Russia retired every single one of it's Delta IIIs and Delta IVs? Keep in mind, those can't fire the same missiles that are carried by the last Typhoon in service or the Boreis. Four sub classes, four missile families, four bills to pay.

Meanwhile the US has one sub class, one missile family, and with Ohio Replacement program will use the same missile and Ohios will be rapidly retired in favor of the ORP subs, just like the Benjamin Franklin class was.

[caervek]

North Dakota was a world major nuclear power at one time.

So was Ukraine, bet they regret disarming haha.

[Deleted]

Gandhi. And he isn't afraid to use them.

[caervek]

Israel has Jericho ICBMs

I never really understood why considering that basically all of their enemies either share a border with them or countries that do haha.

[Adam Jensen]

Inb4 the usual suspects in charge of not having a fucking clue about nuclear weapons.

Fallout is fanfic, not documentary.

You mean, there's no chance nuclear detonations will turn me into a kick-ass immortal ghoul?

[Skroe]

Always makes me laugh that the country with the shittest nukes (NK) does the most with them.

They just wave it around the most.

The US, Russia and China, are all doing far more. They just talk about it less. Nuclear detonations aside of course. But I wouldn't put it past Putin to stage a test in the next five years, especially if Russia pursues a new warhead design.

If Russia does that, all bets are off. THe US has advanced warhead designs on the books, that were never built because they could never be tested due to our observance of the CTBT. If Russia tested, Congress would fund a test the next day. And then China would follow suit.

In particular the US has been itching to unify it's entire Warhead family (W88, W87, W80, W76, B61, B83) into one warhead design, likely an evolved version of the W88 of the Trident II D5 which was the last US design to go into full production, and the W89 and W91 which are similar.

Why? Money. Imagine the cost savings of supporting one common warhead (with a different re-entry-vehicle/cap) for SLBM, ICBM, Bomb, ALCM and cruise missile purposes? The US did this 20 years ago with conventional bombs and rid itself of legacy costs.

Gizmo-features are besides the point at this point. You really can't beat small, light, 5m accuracy, able to evade ABM systems and MIRV-capable. But money matters.

[Adam Jensen]

And nobody takes into account that the main targets of nuclear warheads will be the launchers of nuclear warheads? Long before even 5% of land is damaged, there will be nothing to shoot with.

Except a few hundred nuclear submarines.

[Deleted]

They just wave it around the most.

The US, Russia and China, are all doing far more. They just talk about it less. Nuclear detonations aside of course. But I wouldn't put it past Putin to stage a test in the next five years, especially if Russia pursues a new warhead design.

If Russia does that, all bets are off. THe US has advanced warhead designs on the books, that were never built because they could never be tested due to our observance of the CTBT. If Russia tested, Congress would fund a test the next day. And then China would follow suit.

In particular the US has been itching to unify it's entire Warhead family (W88, W87, W80, W76, B61, B83) into one warhead design, likely an evolved version of the W88 of the Trident II D5 which was the last US design to go into full production, and the W89 and W91 which are similar.

Why? Money. Imagine the cost savings of supporting one common warhead (with a different re-entry-vehicle/cap) for SLBM, ICBM, Bomb, ALCM and cruise missile purposes? The US did this 20 years ago with conventional bombs and rid itself of legacy costs.

Gizmo-features are besides the point at this point. You really can't beat small, light, 5m accuracy, able to evade ABM systems and MIRV-capable. But money matters.

Didn't mean testing. NK use them as a shake down to get aid. Everyone else will never use them. Which is odd since no army in history has held back its strongest weapon. Mao was right when he called us paper tigers.

[Skroe]

I never really understood why considering that basically all of their enemies either share a border with them or countries that do haha.

I think it is an emergent property of the Jericho II program.

The Jericho II development program was a classic dual use program. The kind that if Iran did it today, the US would bomb them over. It is a solid-fueled missile, and to test it overtly, the Israelis developed the Shavit space launch vehicle, which is essentially a Jericho II with a third solid stage. That way they mastered (to a degree) the solid tech on legitimate grounds. And on top of that, they put one big warhead on top of it (it's not MIRVed unlike the 4 year old Jericho III which is). It's range is a function of it's development program and it's rather small payload. Perhaps if they did MIRV it, it's payload would be more firmly in the intermediate range.

Rehtoric aside, when discussing and examining nucelar weapons, money is the only thing that matters. Russia for example, we've talked about a lot. And they talk about NATO as a threat and everything. But looking at how it is spending it's money:

(1) Russia has been working on the Bulava / Borei combo for YEARS because it has seen how economically superior the Ohio + Trident combo has been for the US. Russia's blowing so much money supporting Deltas and Typhoons and their special-snowflake SLBMs. This tells us that for all it's bluster, Russia's biggest goal, because they are not stupid people at all, is cost effectiveness. Because cost of ownership is a thing.

(2) Most of Russia's new weapon development work has been INF Treaty breaking intermediate range missiles that analysts believe are aimed almost exclusively at China. Russia may wave them in NATO's direction, but it's China's growing IRBM, lack of being bound to the INF Treaty, and growing land power, as well as the strategic vulnerability of the RFE, that keeps it up at night.

Sure Russia has tweaked the US aimed ICBMs, mostly again for cost effectiveness or counter-ABM tech (which who knows if it even works or not). But in the end, Russia spends something like 18% of it's defense budget on nuclear weapons complex while the US spends about 5%-8% depending how you count.

Redundancy is budgetary murder. Personally I find this kind of a dark humor. We're discussing these civilization destroying super weapons, but the primary motivation behind behind new ones right now is to allow a bean counter to balance a budget. Making them better is almost besides the point compared to making them cheap to own. All of Russia's new missiles for example certainly are better than the 30 and 40 year old legacy platforms (as you'd expect), but no where near what the US had 20 years ago, never mind today. That's because ultimately, Russia just wants to save money, like the US does. The B61 Mod 12 being developed to replace the B83 just to save money by mass retiring the B83, is pretty indicative of that.

[Ulmita]

Please stop posting. It physically hurts me to read your hyperboles.

Admit you were mistaken in your "nothing will happen" theory =) and stop trying to change subject.
PS: A hyperbole is used to emphasize a point dear Gabriel

[Independent voter]

The Russian shills are pushing the horror of nuclear war because without nukes, Russia is a weak economy with a weak regional power with a weak military.

[Ulmita]

The Russian shills are pushing the horror of nuclear war because without nukes, Russia is a weak economy with a weak regional power with a weak military.

Russia's conventional army has no equal in the European continent.

[enragedgorilla]

The part of "who would win" or who has more...does not really matter to me in the end.
First strike is going to be the "winner" ..winning being subjective. (Stealth launches with no time to counter them or get your missiles in the air is the other factor).

I am a bit more "worried" about the irradiated "dust" and debris I would have contact with,inhale,ingest on a day to day basis AFTER the nukes stop flying.

[Skroe]

Russia's conventional army has no equal in the European continent.

Ha! Good one.

[Ulmita]

Ha! Good one.

I am waiting to read which EU country could 1v1 in a conventional manner the Russians.

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Quote me saying that nothing will happen Ulmita dear.

You were always saying nuclear winter is a myth.

[Deleted]

If somebody starts actually using them

You mean like the US using nukes against Japan?

[Ulmita]

You mean like the US using nukes against Japan?

The funny thing is that they are trying to gang up on Russia and when Russia says, ok come but you'll burn along, they are crying.

[Independent voter]

You mean like the US using nukes against Japan?

Russia, Britain and the US used nukes against Japan. All four parties had a nuke program, the British were actively helping and the Russians were actively trying to steal secrets. All 3 signed the Potsdam declaration.