U.S. Considers Expanded Nuclear Arsenal, a Reversal of Decades of Cuts
U.S. Considers Expanded Nuclear Arsenal, a Reversal of Decades of Cuts
China’s expansion and Russia’s threats of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine and in space have changed a U.S. drive to reduce nuclear weapons.
Already have more nukes than every other country, this is literally pointless. After a certain point having more nukes just becomes a hat on a hat.
Oh there is a point. Hint: Who does the US Government pay to maintain/create it's nuclear arsenal?
Private contractors probably, it's all a big bonanza for a few rich people to get richer I'm sure. Just paying for more hats on hats.
But never underestimate how dog brained these people are, they probably actually believe this makes us more secure lol
The US Department of Energy…
America has a lot of warheads but its delivery systems are relatively behind Russian and Chinese systems. For instance, the current US land/silo based missiles are Minuteman 3s, which were first built in the 1970s. Even with upgrades, they are generally understood to be inferior to much more recent Russian Yars and Chinese Dong Feng missiles.
That said, increasing the number of warheads doesn't really help in terms of that deficiency so the between the lines conclusion is that the new American missile systems have hit such snags that the military is considering making up the deficiency with numbers of warheads.
Have you ever played TF2? Because a hat on a hat makes sense, from a certain point of view.
It’s probably just a dick waving thing that’s meant to stress the blyats and get them to spend money on useless shit.
This is bad for you. It's also bad for me. And everyone else.
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" Let's build more world ending bombs! That'll show 'em.
they are building, fewer, better bombs, to replace the old ones that qualify for AARP/social security.
I hate this country
Tell Russia to stop issuing nuclear threats, we just got another one from Putin in the last 24 hours. It's easy to dial back tensions when you aren't being threatened with annihilation on a daily and weekly basis.
Happy cakeday. And yeah deescalation requires both parties to open to de-arm not only one of them.
Honestly though the best case scenario of how this all ends doesn't really look great to me.
Either Russia loses the war, the government destabilizes, a power vacuum is formed which causes a power shift in a way likely to lead to more aggressive action in the future.
Or Russia wins the war, eyes other countries after it settles into Ukraine, NATO/US need to respond or else it sends the wrong message to other countries allied with them, and we head for WW3
Edit: There is also the idea of a stalemate and this just becomes a continuous war that doesn't really end, but honestly I can't see that being stable long term.
NATO expansion after the dissolution of the UDSSR (against what threat?) Is the first aggression.. Also, even though Medvedev like to bark a lot, Russia has a clear nuclear doctrine.
Are we in another cold war?
Spoiler, we never stopped the first one.
We are still in a cold war, only now it's more complicated because more countries have nukes...including North Korea which is kind of a wildcard.
Check out Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen. It's a well-researched and horrifying scenario where deterrence fails because N Korea launches on the US. it takes you step-by-step through the decision process our government would take in response. Its gripping and pretty damn terrifying and shows just how delicate the whole situation is.
If this topic is your bag, I'm guessing you've also read Jeffrey Lewis's book on the topic: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/books/
A great read, if very slightly outdated. Could still represent a possible future if Trump returns to power, or perhaps even if he doesn't. Either way, Arms Control Wonk podcast is an entertaining and informative listen for anyone remotely interested in this topic.
lmao tens of millions of people are starving in US right now, but the priority is to build more nukes 🤡
Let them eat fuel rods!
They have high energy content!
The Posadists have too much sway over US politics.
I fucking wish, let's do it already and stop this edging
there were not decades of cuts. Obama's "modernization" efforts were categorically expansion and escalation.
Well shit.
What the fuck is a GRAVITY BOMB???
What the fuck is a GRAVITY BOMB
Simply means it is a free-fall bomb. They are cheaper to make as they don't require an entire ICBM to deliver.
nah bro, it's a black hole bomb that destroys the solar system.
Just a bomb that is dropped from storage to fall in free-fall. Aka, a bomb with literally nothing else, the simplest possible bomb. An alternative name (which is better imo) is a "Dumb Bomb".
Gravity bomb just sounds so much more extraordinary than it actually is.
Shroedinger's Russian nuclear arsenal. When there's a story about risking escalation, libs tell me it's fine because Russia doesn't have the money to maintain its nukes, so it'd only be a "limited" nuclear exchange. When this story comes out, the libs tell me that Russia has a much larger and better maintained nuclear stockpile, so it's only necessary for the US to spend more on it to catch up. It's sort of the same way that Russia simultaneously is on the verge of defeat, yet also has the intention and capability to conquer all of Europe, like Hitler, if we don't stop him here.
The enemy is both strong and weak, and you never know which one it's gonna be.
The thing is countries can change. Russia was ill equipped to fight a war against a prepared equipped country. Supplies were missing because people sold off supplies they thought were never gong to be needed. Now they know they need that equipment and the countries economy is on a war footing.
Look at how much a difference being prepared made for Ukraine the recent invasion compared to the earlier invasion of Crimea.
I'm not talking about changes over time, talking about things I've seen recently on here regarding Russia's current status, in response to news stories and comments discussing the danger of escalation going nuclear.
China: has like 300 nuclear weapons, none of them stationed outside their country. Has no forward military bases from which to stage or launch attacks, has limited forward radar visibility of incoming attacks. Has a couple SSBM subs which likely operate entirely in the south China sea from which it can launch. Wants to expand to 1000 by 2030.
Russia: Has over 4000 warheads, most aging. Has no meaningful forward military bases outside their country for staging attacks on the west. Has no meaningful forward radar visibility of incoming attacks from beyond its borders. Has a few SSBM subs from which it can launch.
US: Has over 4000 warheads, many aging. Has many hidden, classified, constantly operating SSBM submarines which regularly intentionally cruise to the north Atlantic (near Russia), the south Pacific (near China), and a variety of other locations. Has ground-launched missiles, an air delivery system. Has world class sonar (included super-sensitive listening stations bolted to the bedrock of the east and west coasts) and aggressive drone campaigns to hunt and constantly track Chinese and Russian missile subs to allow them a first kill. Has forward warning radar systems positioned thousands of miles from its borders in northern Canada, in Europe, in the Pacific on island chains. In addition has a massive, the most massive spy satellite network in operation constantly watching other powers in incredible detail. Has a space force dedicated to among other things sabotaging Chinese and Russian space assets with kill switches or remote disable explosives which could be used in aggression to blind their enemy first. Of all major world powers will have the most warning and most time to react decisively in case of a full scale launch and attempted sneak first strike on them by either Russia or China. Stations nuclear weapons with allies in "sharing" agreements where the US has final say on their use and launch in countries from the UK to mainland Europe near Russia to Turkey, is considering such an agreement with South Korea right on China's border.
But tell me again how the US is backed into a corner in this situation and has no choice but to build more warheads and pour hundreds of billions that could feed, cloth, shelter, and provide healthcare to its people into new delivery systems which will fatten and enrich defense contractors to the tune of hundreds of billions of overage costs if not trillions for systems that may or may not even work thanks to contractor greed and sloppiness.
Someone REALLY needs to put America in its place. I’m sick of this ‘we rule the entire world, and there’s nothing you can do about it’ attitude we have here. It’s disgusting.
Also: Trump pulls out of our nuclear agreement with Russia, and this is how Biden’s government responds? Escalation? They seems to have similar ideals.
Biden is doing everything in his power to eliminate the argument that trump is worse/less responsible/more bellicose.
As a trans person, I still hope genocide joe wins for my own personal safety. but I'm also aware that safety provided by dems is tenuous at best. Especially if we decide to fry the planet over Taiwan and Crimea.
As a fellow trans person, I don't think Biden can guarantee my safety because I'm in a red state. He seems to be allowing red state anti-trans legislation without much pushback. At best he might not make the problem even worse, but he won't protect us.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The comments on Friday from Pranay Vaddi, a senior director of the National Security Council, were the most explicit public warning yet that the United States was prepared to shift from simply modernizing its arsenal to expanding it.
Mr. Vaddi, speaking at the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association, a group that advocates limits on nuclear weapons, confirmed what officials have been saying in private conversations and closed congressional testimony for more than a year.
Fifteen years ago, President Barack Obama outlined a vision of moving toward a world without nuclear weapons, and he took steps to reduce their role in American strategy and defenses.
While the nation’s nuclear complexes were improved and made safer, and old weapons were swapped out for more reliable or updated versions, the United States insisted it was only “modernizing” its arsenal, not expanding it.
“Absent a change in the trajectory of the adversary arsenal, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required, and we need to be fully prepared to execute if the president makes that decision,” he said.
The failure of Russia and China to engage in meaningful negotiations, Mr. Vaddi said, was “forcing the United States and our close allies and partners to prepare for a world where nuclear competition occurs without numerical constraints.”
The original article contains 969 words, the summary contains 223 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
........I'm sure its nothing /s
If anybody wants an excellent overview of why the US thinks this is needed (and how other countries are doing their nuclear re-armament efforts), I highly suggest this video from perun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBZceqiKHrI
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=xBZceqiKHrI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I'm dreaming of nuclear war 
