Russian Nuclear Triad: Status and Warheads

I think we are going back to those days. The US has sabotaged START and so the next step is to remove warhead limits. For now Russia
is keeping them at START levels but the US will likely soon start producing more and then the gloves will come off.

I am also in favour of nuclear testing. No amount of computer simulation can replace real lab testing and development. More powerful
hydrogen bombs are needed. Tsar Bomba yield devices but in a much smaller package.

The western governments seem to have the same problem as US police... they don't know how to deescalate situations so they always end up as car crashes with people going to jail who should not be going to jail and wasting time on matters that don't matter so there is no time to investigate matters that do matter.

Why would Russia not counter the fake "ABM" silos with space based nuclear weapons. Fact is, with the ABM silos and hypersonics the US can strike Moscow in minutes. Yes Russia can keep subs on patrol of the coast of Washington, but that is not as highly visible as the ABMs. Perhaps they should modify the payload vehicles into a satellite and just launch a few into orbit. Offer to deorbit them if the US will agree to mutual desecration. I don't think this would be very expensive to do. The problem with dealing with the USA is they feel they are under no threat due to distance and feel free to do many provocative things as they feel safe in their island across the sea.

The point about Poseidon and Thunderbird is that their unlimited range means they can be launched from anywhere at any time and still hit targets in the west at the time of their choosing.

Their new breeder reactors are a great idea for creating power, but they are also useful for creating highly enriched weapons grade uranium quickly too...

As they introduce more and more breeder reactors their ability to enrich Uranium to weapons grade levels will expand and improve.

The reasons for the minute warhead number are the treaties, why would they stick to such a disadvantageous number when they can start mass production of missiles and warheads to outright exterminate nato.

lancelot wrote:

We just don't know how many Sarmat will be deployed. And Russia suspended its participation in the New START Treaty after the US blocked Russian inspections to ensure that the US is meeting its treaty obligations. You can basically consider all the arms limitations treaties to be moribund at this point.

Suspended not cancelled. Last I read was they were sticking to the limitation numbers but withdraw from the reporting and verification procedures.

PhSt wrote:At the moment, NATzO has 31 members, with only 5k warheads, it means each NATzO member only gets to have 161.2 nukes, this is TOTALLY unacceptable as 161 nukes are not enough to exterminate entire populations, especially in larger NATzO member countries. 300k+ nukes would be a safe and adequate number for Russia's nuclear deterrent.

But that's where you're wrong. See the enormous fissile material stockpile to murder the world 10 times over and the capabilities to assemble more warheads was not lost with the dissolution of the USSR. They lie dormant, but if the Russian state chooses, they can easily bring back a nuclear arsenal to rival the USSR at its peak.

Hole wrote:
Could take 10 years. 

Not really no. The Kalibrs they are cranking out like sausages can easily be armed with nuclear warheads.

One thing I have wondered for a while now is if Russia has neutron bombs for targets on historical lands and areas that Russia does not wish to destroy or contaminate?

The numbers for strategic nuclear weapons are fixed by international treaty, the numbers for tactical nukes was not fixed and effectively made redundant with the INF treaty which limited weapons with a flight range of 500 to 5,000km, which meant tactical nukes could be delivered to 500km by missiles or rockets or further by aircraft, but more than 5,000km by missile or rocket and they were strategic weapons limited by strategic missile rules.

The elimination of the INF treaty means tactical nukes can be missile delivered which makes them vastly more potent because nuclear warheads are lighter than HE warheads for theatre missiles which improves missile performance.

The problem with making lots of ICBMs and SLBMs is that when a sensible guy gets into office in the US and they start horse trading, having tens of thousands of nukes is the first thing they are going to be giving up... which is very much a waste.

In comparison their doomsday weapons like thunderbird and poseidon will all be armed with nukes and hopefully they return nuclear weapons to their naval inventory of weapons to really boost their performance to deal with threats.

You say a Russian Frigate on its own is vulnerable to enemy drones... well try a 130mm shell fired in the direction the drones are coming from with a 2Kt nuke warhead, to be followed up by a Zircon missile directed at the capital of the country who sent the drones... with a 200Kt warhead.

But the problem then is that the world will look at that as the arrival of a new nut case country to the world stage... as crazy and as big a bully as the US was.

With the expansion of HATO to Russian borders the need for tactical nukes has massively increased and I would agree that they need to not only expand their tactical nuclear weapon arsenal, but to also increase their capacity to deliver it to targets out to extended ranges with missiles of all types.

The value of that is that you can fit nuke warheads when you need them, but equally you can fit conventional warheads and use them against conventional targets in conventional wars too... hang on to the warheads and just make new missiles for them when this conflict is sorted.

Going back to nuclear testing would be a nice shock to the arrogant west.... especially if they do the same and find out a lot of their weapons no longer work as advertised....

There are HE powered EMP weapons they are working on and I suspect there will be exotic uses for nuclear warheads they might be interested in testing too...

A missile to destroy all your technology in a flash would be interesting... many people in the west would not know what to do...

Nuclear winter is BS. It is not anything like a 10 km diameter meteor impact. For some strange reason the people pushing the nuclear winter
theory think that fires in cities will pump absurd amounts of aerosol into the atmosphere that will also stay there for years. They are full of shit.

1) No surface fire can load the stratosphere with aerosol. The vast majority of the aerosol particulate is removed in the boundary layer (less than
2 km of depth of the atmosphere adjacent to the surface). The rest is scavenged by clouds and precipitation (two distinct processes one involving
cloud seeding and the other involving interception by rain drops).

2) Nuclear bomb mushroom plumes inject very little material into the upper troposphere. The fires are all secondary and the mushroom cloud is not
a scoop that sends tens of millions of tons of fine particulate into the stratosphere. The material that is injected into the middle and upper troposphere
is scavenged out before it gets into the stratosphere in the tropics.

3) All the nuked cities are located in middle and high latitudes so any aerosol needs to be transported far and slowly to the tropics before it can enter
into the stratosphere through the "cold trap" at about 18 km spanning the latitudinal range of 15S to 15N. Forest fires that may result form nuke attacks
are not going to change the picture. They will not burn for years and their smoke will be removed in a matter of weeks from the troposphere. It will
not sit around for six months to reach the tropics and survive the tropical deep convection removal. The "dirty" tropospheric air that enters the stratosphere
is scoured clean.

4) The dinosaur killing event 65 million years ago involved a crust vapourization blast that directly injected material into the stratosphere even above 30 km
from the surface. In particular it injected a lot of SO2 which is something no nuke blast can do. The SO2 is what produced sulfate aerosol in the stratosphere
which reflected a substantial fraction of sunlight. Volcanoes such as Pinatubo produce similar effects (but smaller) and we saw a two year cold anomaly
after Pinatubo. We do not see such effects with low altitude volcanic eruptions where the plumes do not reach the stratosphere and in particular around
30 km. Even the lower stratosphere flushes out too fast to produce a robust sulfate layer.

5) Fine aerosol that can resist gravitational settling (at most a few hundred nanometers in diameter) is not primarily produced by blasts and fires. It is produced
by secondary formation such as sulfate from SO2 (via H2SO4).

If building more nukes and missiles can dampen demented NATzO ambitions, then Russia should go for it. The sick f*ck NATzO deciders need some fear to guide
their actions. Clearly they lack the mental capacity to apply rationality.

It seems you are eating something really spicy these days.

It will be interesting to see how the west deals with the crazies that have been in charge these last 30 years and have done so much to damage their privileged position created by centuries of colonialism and essentially state sanctioned piracy.

As they diminish I suspect they will become more insidious and are not going to go away quietly because obviously the rest of the world needs them to run things and keep them in poverty...

Nuclear winter is BS. It is not anything like a 10 km diameter meteor impact. For some strange reason the people pushing the nuclear winter
theory think that fires in cities will pump absurd amounts of aerosol into the atmosphere that will also stay there for years. They are full of shit.

Have to agree... even 10,000 nuclear weapons that touch the ground and whip up enormous amounts of soil and material and fling it up into the atmosphere wont put up a fraction of the material your average volcanic eruption puts up... and often the sky at dusk is a funny colour for a few months and the average temperature goes down a tiny smidgen.

I think someone came up with the idea as a worst case scenario and everyone assumed every nuclear explosion created a nuclear winter.

Modern nukes are fusion and create vastly less radiation than the WWII bombs which were fusion bombs.

To be killed by the radiation from a fusion bomb you would need to be well inside the fireball which is going to incinerate you anyway... so very few will die from radiation.

If building more nukes and missiles can dampen demented NATzO ambitions, then Russia should go for it. The sick f*ck NATzO deciders need some fear to guide
their actions. Clearly they lack the mental capacity to apply rationality.

The advent of breeder reactors means they can produce plenty of fission triggers for nukes and work with Poseidon could include work to pack more and more fusion material around the fission trigger to make as big a bomb as they can... in a torpedo powered by a nuclear reactor weight and volume should not be a problem... just make it longer...

Imagine a nuclear shaped charge that tries to blow a deep hole into the earths crust... wonder what that might do to a fault line...

Lots of experimenting they could do, and of course more exotic types of bombs like neutron bombs etc etc.

If not increasing the warhead and ICBM count, then at the very least no more cuts.   Let START expire since Uncle Swineshit thinks this gives him and advantage.  

Any attempt by NATzO to park weapons in orbit must be met with maximum response.   That means blowing them out of orbit as soon as they are launched.
Uncle Swineshit is not prepared for a nuke war in response to such moves.   That is why he is trying to pull cheats in order to win.   Russia needs to destroy
those cheats before they are pulled.  

Replying by symmetric deployment is not a good idea since it moves Uncle Swineshit's agenda along.   If Russia deploys weapons in orbit, then it is just more MAD
and cunning plans will be launched to try to sabotage such platforms.   The best option is not to have them there.   NATzO does not have any right to launch
such weapons platforms.   They should be considered the same as launching an ICBM.   The only difference is the delayed drop to the surface.   Russia cannot
let NATzO carry the day with BS logic and propaganda.   Slap back and hard.   Let them squeal with indignation and squirm like the maggots they are.