Centrist Committee posted:

serious question what’s the shelf life of pre-clinton nukes? because it’s clear that even the nuke problem will eventually be solved by the only thing this wretched land can still produce: entropy

quote:

In 2021, DOE/NNSA:
◼ Delivered all scheduled limited life components for the B61, W76, W78, W80, B83, W87, and W88.
◼ Completed over 1,600 critical equipment calibrations on time in support of production activities.
◼ Completed seven tritium extractions at the Savannah River Site (SRS), more than doubling the
previous record, and sustained base capabilities for multi-system operations and maintenance
support to meet all limited life components exchange gas transfer system fills and gas transfer
system Surveillance DOE/NNSA deliverables to DoD.
...
◼ Completed the first production unit for the W88 Alt 370 in July 2021 and B61-12 LEP in November
2021, successfully producing the first refurbished weapons of each type and ready to produce the
quantities needed by the military. This work helps modernize America’s nuclear weapons
stockpile, sustain the Nation’s nuclear deterrent capabilities, and improve the safety, security,
and reliability of the Nation’s weapons. The W88 Alt 370 is carried on the Ohio-class ballistic
missile submarines and will modernize older W88 warheads. The B61-12 will consolidate, and
replace, three older B61 warheads variants and will be certified for delivery on strategic and dual
capable military aircraft. The W88 Alt 370 and B61-12 LEP programs will be completed in FY 2026.
◼ Completed initial joint LRSO/W80-4 testing and component Baseline Design Reviews in
preparation for transition to Phase 6.4, Production Engineering, in FY 2023.
◼ Completed its W87-1 Modification Program Weapon Design and Cost Report and prepared to
enter Phase 6.3, Development Engineering, in FY 2022.

Centrist Committee posted:

serious question what’s the shelf life of pre-clinton nukes? because it’s clear that even the nuke problem will eventually be solved by the only thing this wretched land can still produce: entropy

Frosted Flake posted:

people telling him it’s dumb acts as encouragement

Clever Moniker posted:

Why is he cosplaying as Leon Kennedy?

Trabisnikof posted:

NNSA does have programs to refurbish old nuclear weapons to extend their life: https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/stockpile-stewardship-and-management-plan-ssmp

of course no one in the public world knows if that program is entirely successful

Raskolnikov38 posted:

one of the reasons we invented supercomputers was to run endless simulations on our nuclear stockpile so that we can pull and reprocess warheads before they decay too much

Regarde Aduck posted:

it's a real shame nukes exist because there's no better time for the PLA to invade and fix Americans

fits my needs posted:

https://twitter.com/CNBCtech/status/1699771248480334291?s=20

Centrist Committee posted:

yah I remember obama at least put cash into nukes but I think this thread makes it clear that absolutely no aspect of the american economic or political system is immune to the decay of the material base so at some point past present or future even the nukes are going to rot, regardless of what the institutions report

it gives me hope to take the cynical view that this has already happened so that’s what I choose to believe

quote:

https://www.science.org/content/article/near-disaster-federal-nuclear-weapons-laboratory-takes-hidden-toll-america-s-arsenal

Technicians at the government's Los Alamos National Laboratory settled on what seemed like a surefire way to win praise from their bosses in August 2011: In a hi-tech testing and manufacturing building pivotal to sustaining America's nuclear arsenal, they gathered eight rods painstakingly crafted out of plutonium, and positioned them side-by-side on a table to photograph how nice they looked.

As luck had it that August day, a supervisor returned from her lunch break, noticed the dangerous configuration, and ordered a technician to move the rods apart. But in so doing, she violated safety rules calling for a swift evacuation of all personnel in "criticality" events, because bodies — and even hands — can reflect and slow the neutrons emitted by plutonium, increasing the likelihood of a nuclear chain reaction. A more senior lab official instead improperly decided that others in the room should keep working, according to a witness and an Energy Department report describing the incident.

Catastrophe was avoided and no announcement was made at the time about the near-miss — but officials internally described what happened as the most dangerous nuclear-related incident at that facility in years. It then set in motion a calamity of a different sort: Virtually all of the Los Alamos engineers tasked with keeping workers safe from criticality incidents decided to quit, having become frustrated by the sloppy work demonstrated by the 2011 event and what they considered the lab management's callousness about nuclear risks and its desire to put its own profits above safety

quote:

https://time.com/6212698/nuclear-missiles-icbm-triad-upgrade/

If a piece of equipment breaks inside Captain Kaz “Dexter” Moffett’s underground command center at the Alpha-01 Missile Alert Facility, it’s marked with a paper tag that reads either “warning” or “danger.” A few of those are hanging in this cramped capsule buried about 70 ft. below the high plains of eastern Wyoming. One is stuck to the shut-off valves that control water flow in the event of an emergency. There’s another one on a ventilation hatch. The entire command capsule itself is jury-rigged on top of steel stilts because the shock-absorber system, which was first installed in 1963 to survive a thermonuclear blast, is now inoperative. So there’s a tag for Air Force maintenance teams to fix that too.

Then there are malfunctions that aren’t marked. Moffett’s computer monitor—the one that enables him to keep watch on a fleet of 10 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—has a flashing glitch on the bottom of the screen. His classified phone line has such a weak connection that he can barely hear fellow Air Force officers who are commanding more than 100 other nuclear missiles spread across 9,600 sq. mi. “You can hear them pretty clearly if you stand on an angle, on one leg, and jump up and down,” Moffett says, smiling. “It’s all part of the job. We spend a lot of time saying to ourselves, ‘Hey, how are we going to make this work today?’”

Walking into Moffett’s capsule at Alpha-01 is like walking into the past. Banks of turquoise electronics racks, industrial cables, and analog controls have been down here since the U.S. military installed the equipment decades ago. Look closely at the machines and you’ll find names of manufacturers like Radio Corp. of America, defunct since 1987, and Hughes Aircraft Co., defunct since 1997. Some systems have been updated over the years, but these advances are unrecognizable to anyone who lived through the personal-computer revolution, let alone the internet age. The entire ICBM fleet runs on less computational power than what’s now found inside the smartphone in your pocket. When something breaks, the Air Force maintenance crews pull parts from warehouse shelves, pay a contractor to make them to specifications, or even occasionally scavenge them from military museums.
...
The A-05 site was built in October 1963, at the same time as nine other missile silos and Fileas’ and Moffett’s launch-control capsule. Just like that capsule, much of the equipment down here remains the same. Ventilation keeps the silo at 70°F, a respite from the summer heat outside, with controlled humidity to keep all the machinery operating properly.

Suddenly, everything in the silo goes dark. Standing underground next to one of the world’s most powerful weapons during an unexpected blackout is unnerving, but the Air Force maintenance team is unmoved. It’s the sort of thing they’ve come to expect working with this equipment. They wait for power to surge through a distribution panel that was manufactured decades before any of them were born. In the darkness, they debate whether commercial power or an on-site generator will kick in first. “The power will come back on, just give it a second,” Fiscella says. “A lot of this stuff is dated and old. It breaks.”
...
Back inside the silo, it takes about 90 seconds before the lights flicker on and machines blink back to life. “All right, back to work,” Fiscella tells the crew. “We’re going to be behind schedule.”

Centrist Committee posted:

serious question what’s the shelf life of pre-clinton nukes? because it’s clear that even the nuke problem will eventually be solved by the only thing this wretched land can still produce: entropy

Hatebag posted:

now to check on how the subs are doing

skooma512 posted:

I've been hearing rumors that staff at JPL are getting asked to work on nuclear missile poo poo and that Biden visited twice in the last year in secret.

Why they'd bother to ask civilians outside that field without clearances, idk. America is not short on people who are read into this stuff already and labs like Livermore and White Sands still exist.

skooma512 posted:

I've been hearing rumors that staff at JPL are getting asked to work on nuclear missile poo poo and that Biden visited twice in the last year in secret.

Why they'd bother to ask civilians outside that field without clearances, idk. America is not short on people who are read into this stuff already and labs like Livermore and White Sands still exist.

The Oldest Man posted:

Over-under on "disrupting nuclear warhead delivery" vs "Livermore and White Sands 'still exist' could mean so many different things"

nuclear warhead design in the anglosphere is now lostech

poisonpill posted:

maybe we should fund education more in the US…? no, it’s the children who are wrong

poisonpill posted:

maybe we should fund education more in the US…? no, it’s the children who are wrong

Delta-Wye posted:

Trabisnikof posted:

yeah there are lots of signs our national nuclear program isn't doing that great, like the debacle over forgetting how to make FOGBANK or the massive safety issues, like the time they almost caused a criticality incident just for a photo shoot:

always a good sign when everyone involved in preventing an accidental criticality incident quits.



but I'd be even more concerned about the launch systems themselves. like the ICBMs where they're in deferred maintenance hell waiting for 2029 and a new missile system:

another good sign when our nuclear deterrent has watch commanders who can't hear what is being said over the telephone, they're scavenging from museums for spare parts, and silos lose power randomly

Hatebag posted:

eh, most of the nukes are on subs anyway. plenty to kill the world a couple times

Hatebag posted:

now to check on how the subs are doing

im_sorry posted:

It's the little skully badge, isn't it...

skooma512 posted:

I've been hearing rumors that staff at JPL are getting asked to work on nuclear missile poo poo and that Biden visited twice in the last year in secret.

quote:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/the-mars-sample-return-mission-is-starting-to-give-nasa-sticker-shock/

According to two sources familiar with the meeting, the Program Manager for the mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Richard Cook, and the director of the mission at NASA Headquarters, Jeff Gramling, briefed agency leaders last week on costs. They had some sobering news: the price had doubled. The development cost for the mission was no longer $4.4 billion. Rather, the new estimate put it at $8 to $9 billion.

Moreover, this only represents the cost to build and test the different components of the mission. It does not include launch costs, operating costs over a five-year period, nor construction of a new sample-receiving facility to handle the rocks and soil from Mars. All told, the total cost of the Mars Sample Return mission is now about $10 billion.
...
Zurbuchen said there were "horrendous" technical mistakes made during the early planning phase at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The original concept involved sending everything on a single lander, including a small rover to "fetch" the samples from Perseverance. However, the depth of this analysis was insufficient and included large errors about the mass of the landing legs and other factors. For a time, the plan had to evolve to add a second lander, which increased the cost by more than $1 billion.

Additionally, planning for Mars Sample Return got swept up in the management problems at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, including staffing issues that led to the delay of the Psyche mission. An independent review found that the California-based field center, which leads many of the space agency's most prestigious science missions, had undertaken an "unprecedented workload" without possessing the resources needed to complete major projects.

Now it is undertaking its biggest mission ever in Mars Sample Return.

quote:

Why they'd bother to ask civilians outside that field without clearances, idk. America is not short on people who are read into this stuff already and labs like Livermore and White Sands still exist.

The Oldest Man posted:

e: the superior quality of recruits will enable the us to defeat russia easily

skooma512 posted:

I've been hearing rumors that staff at JPL are getting asked to work on nuclear missile poo poo and that Biden visited twice in the last year in secret.

Cerebral Bore posted:

breaking out the calipers to measure national warfighting capability

The Oldest Man posted:

e: the superior quality of recruits will enable the us to defeat russia easily

The Oldest Man posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDxm9i1XaKA
this video is loving cracked



the cold war never happened because the ussr was never a global power

e: lol theyre going on and on about BTGs in tyol 2023
e: the superior quality of recruits will enable the us to defeat russia easily

Danann posted:

Just realized that the M10 Booker Light Tank Combat Vehicle has the worse 105mm that can't fire the latest APFSDS that has a chance at defeating T-72s with ERA.

It's also only slightly lighter than a Patton (which can fire said APFSDS when it was in service) so where did all the weight go to. Is it supposed to only shoot at T-55s and naked T-72s because god forbid anyone put some ERA on their tank.