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Szarrukin posted:What are the odds that Russian nukes, like lot of things in Russia, exist only on paper and in reality they are either unusable or sold to parts? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 2, 2023 02:36
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ranbo das posted:The thing about nukes is if one country launches, everyone pretty much has to launch everything at their predetermined targets because you don't know until too late whether that nuke is heading for you or over you. I'm not taking any chances. The second there's a launch detection anywhere on the planet my deadhand will throw every nuke I've got at Pitcairn Island and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.
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Mar 2, 2023 03:14
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Outrail posted:I'm not taking any chances. The second there's a launch detection anywhere on the planet my deadhand will throw every nuke I've got at Pitcairn Island and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVK39HyjjdY
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Mar 2, 2023 03:23
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:and then there's the Israeli "Samson Option": if it looks like your country is about to fall, throw nukes at anything and everything within reach out of spite. Considering that also came from Hersh, I now can't help but wonder if it's even real.
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Mar 2, 2023 03:28
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Hannibal Rex posted:Considering that also came from Hersh, I now can't help but wonder if it's even real. The Samson Option as described by Hersh involved a massive nuclear counterstrike against a country winning a land invasion of Israel. The "just loving nuke everyone and take the whole world with us" version of the Samson Option was invented by various right-wing writers and, as far as I can tell, is complete and total fiction.
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Mar 2, 2023 04:16
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Szarrukin posted:What are the odds that Russian nukes, like lot of things in Russia, exist only on paper and in reality they are either unusable or sold to parts?
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Mar 2, 2023 04:58
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It's still loving ludicrous that israel just hid a whole nuclear weapons program (badly) and everyone knew it but we all just let it happen. Weren't they extremely close to actually nuking Egypt or Syria at one point, entirely as a show of force?
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Mar 2, 2023 05:00
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Mister Speaker posted:It's still loving ludicrous that israel just hid a whole nuclear weapons program (badly) and everyone knew it but we all just let it happen. Speaking of which, doesn't Saudi-Arabia own nuclear weapons too?
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Mar 2, 2023 10:17
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Everyone should get at least one nuke 
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Mar 2, 2023 10:29
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I'm running out of shelf space already! How small is the smallest nuke?
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Mar 2, 2023 10:30
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There were (are?) operational 155mm artillery shells, which is big but should fit on a shelf just fine. There were smaller developed nukes but I dunno if they ever made it out of testing.
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Mar 2, 2023 10:45
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My uncle works at the Illuminati and he says that there are at least 900 suitcase nukes spread across the globe, hidden by agents in strategic positions so that they can use them in a first strike scenario without anyone being able to do anything about it
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Mar 2, 2023 12:09
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ranbo das posted:Modern estimates put the number of nukes in the world just south of 13,000 so you theoretically could hit every city. You wouldn't, but you could. If we're talking existing nuclear doctrine (that's publicly known/speculated about) then a large number of those nukes will be counter-force and targeted at the enemy nuclear sites. E.g. a huge number of Russian nuclear warheads will be used to convert Montana and North Dakota to glass. 13,000 warheads doesn't mean that there's 13,000 that can be launched. I think there's < 500 ICBMs in US and similar in Russia, and supposedly this is verified as part of the various arms limitation treaties. A significant number of available weapons are air dropped/cruise launched, and that needs working aircraft and in most cases, refuelling aircraft. You couldn't use these to just wander around the globe blowing up cities. The submarine launched missiles remain, but I don't think they are enough to destroy every city. Public info says that to destroy a large city multiple warheads are needed, so that reduces the number of cities yet again - although I can't see New York City continuing in any functioning way if just one nuclear weapon was detonated anywhere in the area. Even if an enemy managed to drop only one or two weapons on the US East Coast and then stop, the humanitarian crises would probably collapse half the country. A high altitude EMP weapon would be enough to trigger societal collapse. But in a speculative Clancy scenario where everything is made up and the points don't matter, who knows what doctrine - if any - would be followed. Just randomly lob a couple of dozen at random targets and everything will go to poo poo anyway.
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Mar 2, 2023 12:28
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Do they make loitering munitions nukes? Like, you know you want to nuke something, you just haven't found quite the right spot? Each side gets one forever-flying nuke that has to be aerial refueled every day, otherwise it plummets to earth and detonates.
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Mar 2, 2023 13:53
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Here's a similar concept the US military tested back in the day. https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/project-pluto-the-craziest-nuclear-weapon-in-history/ It's not loitering in the sense that it flies around then drops its munitions, but more in the drop nuclear bombs and then spew radioactive death constantly as it flies around the Soviet Union for a decade or two.
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Mar 2, 2023 14:13
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Ionicpsycho posted:Here's a similar concept the US military tested back in the day. Other sources I've read say it was absolutely conceived to fly around waiting for WW3 to start, for the same reason we kept bombers in the air during the height of Cold War: so it couldn't get taken out by glassing an air base. On receiving a go signal, it would tear rear end toward pre-programmed targets and poop nuclear death.
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Mar 2, 2023 21:12
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So it now appears to be against the rules in the other D&D thread to post about future Ukrainian attacks, but I have to wonder how much Russian defence is around the locations not at the place they are attacking. We saw at Khakive that once you can get past the front line their defence is only as good as they can run away quicker than the Ukrainians can advance, so I have 2 theories: 1- An envelopment of both sides of the Russian attacks at Bhukment, allowing a Cannae level of destruction and collapse of the front all the way to the Russian frontier or 2- An attack across the Kherson river. It would involve multiple bridges but I doubt the Russians have the capability to target them. They can't get the Airstrikes on them and their artillery would be too inaccurate. And it's almost at to the point they don't have any missiles to do it vs Ukrainian air defence. And building up their armor on the western side of the river would allow a much better way to hide it beforehand. Once the river is down, the Russian defenses facing north are completely outflanked, and they can drive east. The boundary to the Crimea would be easier to hold than elsewhere and you would just roll up the defence all the way to Mariupol. without needing to worry about 2 flanks like you would if you attacked south. The Ukrainians are training now for a massed armored mechanized assault , the question is, where will in strike. Comstar fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Mar 2, 2023 |
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Mar 2, 2023 22:54
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YoursTruly posted:Do they make loitering munitions nukes? Like, you know you want to nuke something, you just haven't found quite the right spot? The USAF "unmanned shuttle" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 has had orbital missions of two and a half years, just cruising around low earth orbit. I reckon it wouldn't be hard to put some warheads in it.
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Mar 2, 2023 23:08
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YoursTruly posted:Do they make loitering munitions nukes? Like, you know you want to nuke something, you just haven't found quite the right spot? Putin introduced one a few years back https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik Nobody knows how operational it is or if it was the cause of the big nuclear accident a few years ago
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Mar 2, 2023 23:24
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Capt.Whorebags posted:The USAF "unmanned shuttle" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 has had orbital missions of two and a half years, just cruising around low earth orbit. slurm posted:Putin introduced one a few years back
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Mar 3, 2023 00:02
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Capt.Whorebags posted:The USAF "unmanned shuttle" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37 has had orbital missions of two and a half years, just cruising around low earth orbit. Ink on a page and all that, but I think that'd violate the Outer Space Treaty. On the other hand, there's fun Stanislaw Lem stories about what could happen when the arms race goes to space!
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Mar 3, 2023 01:11
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Skyl3lazer posted:there is no world in which russia launches nukes at the west and humanity exists by the next day Mhmhm, don't be so confident in western bravery: in fact, so far we've been very good at sending loads of military hardware to Ukraine, but not a single western nation have sent in their troops so.....who will be ready to sacrifice their sons and daughters for Kyev? I think no one. That's why in the scenario Russia will detonate nukes only inside Ukraine, I think no one in the west will do anything practical/concrete. Of course, our bold western leaders will flood all the tv cameras, public meetings, diplomacy summits, etc. to scream and shout about how much Russia is evil..... but that's it. (oh, obviously after having changed pants for all the poo poo caused by the nuclear nightmare)
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Mar 3, 2023 02:37
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https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1631390869487067136
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Mar 3, 2023 05:05
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Knightsoul posted:Mhmhm, don't be so confident in western bravery: in fact, so far we've been very good at sending loads of military hardware to Ukraine, but not a single western nation have sent in their troops so.....who will be ready to sacrifice their sons and daughters for Kyev? I think no one. Nobody with even the slightest belief in realpolitik is going to cower in the face of somebody firing off nukes aggressively, that just guarantees you are going to be bullied around forever by the aggressor at best, and quite likely they decide you're too chickenshit to stop them from nuking YOU. I consider it more likely than not Russia wouldn't catch return nuking from the West for hitting Ukraine with nukes or another WMD (though that chance isn't zero), but at that point I think Western thought would be to send their own troops in to end the situation before it somehow degrades even further. It's not bravery, it's the practicality of being doomed anyway if they let the precedent stand. I expect even if Putin's sociopathic brains have melted into sincerely believing NATO wants to invade, there are enough sane people in Russia still who would stop him from playing with literal fire here for exactly those reasons.
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Mar 3, 2023 05:35
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I thought the primary adversary was Satan? Or liberal studies majors with purple hair?
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Mar 3, 2023 06:34
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Outrail posted:I thought the primary adversary was Satan? Or liberal studies majors with purple hair? The primary adversary for the MIC is diverting the money to health care, homelessness, or god forbid education.
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Mar 3, 2023 09:19
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Outrail posted:I thought the primary adversary was Satan? Or liberal studies majors with purple hair? That's just the culture war kitten they torture to divert your attention while they go about their usual.
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Mar 3, 2023 12:13
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Collapsing Farts posted:Everyone should get at least one nuke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FgMTAj4f_o
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Mar 3, 2023 20:59
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MadDogMike posted:I consider it more likely than not Russia wouldn't catch return nuking from the West for hitting Ukraine with nukes or another WMD (though that chance isn't zero), but at that point I think Western thought would be to send their own troops in to end the situation before it somehow degrades even further. It's not bravery, it's the practicality of being doomed anyway if they let the precedent stand. I can't see the connection between "ukraine nuked" and "the west is doomed": there are no evidence , not a single one, where we can predict Russia will try to overrun western countries in europe. So even with a nuked Ukraine (the so requested by russians "ukrainian neutrality") the West could go on with its life. About the western troops on the ground, again: no western nation wants to die for ukraine, our rulers are only able to legislate useless sanctions.
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Mar 4, 2023 02:25
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I am currently in love with the Clancy plot where someone probably the Russians tries to launch nuclear weapons and discovers that they just don't work anymore. Decades of poor maintenance by a corrupted Russian military apparatus means the triggers or other key warhead components fail, and fissile material just kets kind of scattered over the battlefield, provoking an international crisis. https://www.wired.com/story/nuclear-weapons-testing/ quote:Russia certainly has enough missiles to get a nuclear weapon more or less to where it wants—even if it takes more than one attempt. But what about the warheads themselves? Modern thermonuclear devices are complex bits of machinery designed to initiate a specific explosive sequence, sometimes called a fission-fusion-fission reaction, which releases a massive amount of energy.
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Mar 4, 2023 20:13
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doingitwrong posted:I am currently in love with the Clancy plot where someone probably the Russians tries to launch nuclear weapons and discovers that they just don't work anymore. The idea that outsourcing manufacturing jobs and loving up logistics could lead to de-facto nuclear disarmament is wonderful. If that happens, I will finally have something positive to say about late-stage capitalism.
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Mar 4, 2023 20:30
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This is not far off from real nuclear doctrine, except that instead of Springfield, the NWB is Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado, which is where the US keeps its missile silos. Nuclear missiles in a silo are pretty useless, since they are very easy to find and destroy. The enemy already knows where they are and can target them at their leisure. The silos' mission—in a nuclear exchange—is to be destroyed. Their function is strategic: make arming up to destroy the US so expensive that resources are drained from the rest of your adversary's economy and military since the threat they pose demands that the adversary have enough weapons to destroy all of them. They make first strikes prohibitively expensive (is the idea) but any response to a nuclear attack will come from the other two legs of the triad (submarines and strategic bombers).
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Mar 4, 2023 20:47
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As I am wont to do, I'm gonna pose a question that is sort of showing my bare rear end in terms of mathematical ineptitude. (Also, I wasn't sure if this was the best thread for this, or the Cold War Thread in TFR, or the general Physics/Astronomy Thread, but since this seems most recently active with NukeChat, here it goes for now.) Nuclear bomb technology is morbidly fascinating (obviously), but one of the things I've always struggled to wrap my head around is the insanely small timescale of events that occur in detonating a nuke. It always seemed so bizarre, in a seat-of-the-pants way, that things can even happen so quickly and precisely that the device even works without disassembling itself. Frankly, fractions in general have never been anywhere near a strong suit of mine, so I have trouble when people say it takes X µs or something, for an event to occur. Oddly, things like radio transmission, and the complex analog waveforms we encode television signals in, are something I can more easily understand. So in an effort to wrap my head around it a little better, I'm wondering if anyone can help me by framing the timescale of events inside a nuclear device against something like, say, a 100Hz sinewave. If you're looking at a graph of it 1s long, where would you plot things like the time between the implosion trigger and supercritical mass, etc.? Would you have to 'zoom' finer than that to really get an accurate idea of things? Does that make any sense, or is it kind of a dumb way to frame it?
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Mar 7, 2023 00:12
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doingitwrong posted:This is not far off from real nuclear doctrine, except that instead of Springfield, the NWB is Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado, which is where the US keeps its missile silos.
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Mar 7, 2023 01:56
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Indeed, a big part of why the silos are there is so they can be built into mountains etc. which are hard to crack.
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Mar 7, 2023 03:06
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cat botherer posted:There's not much of an advantage (possibly a disadvantage most of the time) to have a warhead cruising around in LEO over a silo. In LEO, it's going nearly the same speed as an ICBM out of a silo, except that there's no guarantee it would be going in the right direction. LEO orbit takes about 90 minutes, and even then you'd need a decent amount of fuel to redirect to whatever target in a timely fashion unless it is underneath the orbital path. I can't see that being an improvement over an ICBM, or even better yet a shorter-range ballistic missile based close to the target. There's no advantage for a second-strike weapon, but LEO-deployed warheads are really scary as a first-strike weapon. The idea being that you hide them as normal military satellites until the strike day, on which they all travel over their targets at the same time, firing powerful solid rocket motors and deorbiting just a few minutes before the strike. This is why deploying nuclear weapons to orbit was banned.
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Mar 7, 2023 17:17
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Tuna-Fish posted:There's no advantage for a second-strike weapon, but LEO-deployed warheads are really scary as a first-strike weapon. The idea being that you hide them as normal military satellites until the strike day, on which they all travel over their targets at the same time, firing powerful solid rocket motors and deorbiting just a few minutes before the strike. Things in LEO are are already "very close" to the earth. Horizontal distance dominates, so it doesn't matter as much whether a ballistic warhead started from the ground or orbit. A ground-launched warhead travels at a similar speed to the satellite, but directly to the target. A satellite is already cruising at 7.5 km/sec in whatever orbit it was in before. That orbit may or may not pass over the target. Even if it does go over the target, there's no guarantee about its phase when the launch command is issued. If it had just passed over its target, it would have to complete another 90 minute orbit.
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Mar 7, 2023 17:30
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I know this is the "go balls to the wall crazy" thread, but seriously 
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Mar 7, 2023 17:34
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Rappaport posted:I know this is the "go balls to the wall crazy" thread, but seriously Latvia not taking any options off the table
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Mar 7, 2023 17:45
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shame on an IGA posted:Latvia not taking any options off the table You'll have to ask Cinci about that
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Mar 7, 2023 17:58
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