America's nuclear arsenal to cost $946B over next decade

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Ukraine was pretty much military factory of the USSR. Do you seriously believe they couldn’t decode and take control of the nukes?

Russia even threatened invasion if Ukraine started messing with those nukes.

Ukraine built those bombs/rockets. Replacing control electronics with ones under their control would have been much faster and cheaper than to build new ones from scratch.

Do you believe our species is capable of that in the collective sense? Isn’t “might makes right” basically the law for all animals? And if you agree with that, doesn’t it follow that to “rise morally above” that would require somehow transcending the limitations imposed by our biological reality?

> Ultimately we have failed as a species to rise morally above "might makes right"

We really need to get out of the economy of scarcity. Without that, war and aggression are unavoidable.

We havent failed. People who think that is going away have failed to realize how there is a genetic component to personality that means it is functionally never going away. Instead you recognize violence is the basis of all power and make policy to shape that violence into rational, personal freedom and free market supporting institutions. Its what the american project has basically been at its base (partially unconaciously)up until butt hurt marxists started ruining it with what they think reality should be rather than with ways to make the reality that is better.

So, every European country should acquire nuclear weapons and develop MIRVs that can overwhelm Trump’s Golden Shower so they can dissuade the US from invading.

You can only lose trust once.

Trump has talked about disarming the US.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/trump-china-russia-nuclear-bbc1c7...

There's 'x' number that is effective and practical. You have to have x1 number of submarines deployed at any time, x2 in ICBM silos, x3 on carriers, x4 on destroyers, x5 stationed at air bases. Of that pool, probably 50% have to be rotated off for maintenance, etc.

Whatever that number is, the 31,000+ we used to have was stupid. 3,500 in a historical context is a relief.

The real conundrum these days is that you can't test more. You want to be 100% certain it goes off when needed, but it's pretty hard to test that theory without... testing one.

If all that could be done with 1,500 I'm all in. Just a lot of 'practical' considerations that go into whatever 'x' number is.

There are probably economies of scale associated with maintaining nuclear weapons. Whether you have 1500 or 3500, you need a “large scale nukes” program. You’re not going to cut costs in half by cutting nukes in half.

You also have to consider that nukes have to be distributed around the world, so that you can target enemies throughout the world, so that enemies don’t know where to target their missile defense systems, and so that you still have adequate threat if sites are attacked.

This was true before missile defense systems started becoming a factor. If 1500 is an effective deterrent, you need 1500 multipled by the inverse of whatever percentage of those bombs your adversary can plausibly stop.

> 1500 nuclear bombs is an effective deterrent

Not if ABM programs such as Golden Shield (I’m inclined to call it Phantom Menace, because it’s a crappy sequel to Star Wars) succeed. If you launch all your 1500 warheads and only 15 reach their targets, you’ll need a lot more warheads.

It's complex, for sure. I look back to the JFK era and how those folks handled far larger nuclear arsenals -- and then created the space program as we know it today. Peaceful exploration of space during the Cold War, with much of the same technology as ICBMs.

We're a far cry from that at the moment. In my view, US democracy is being contested (to say it with understatement), and US and Allied security also -- both more than probably any time in the Cold War. Worse than this is the threat to the alliance system.

The difference is now, China is ramping up its nuclear arsenal and has the economic backing to make it happen. The Russians can't be ignored either as their systems are very advanced and quite numerous. So I think to get past our internal problems in the Western world, we need a time margin of maybe 20 years.

Seen in this light, $956B over 10 years is not extreme, assuming it will indeed produce many other economic effects and technological breakthroughs (not just more graft for the billionaires). It's just I'd rather also see a massive increase in NASA funding with clear programmatic goals (instead of 'worship SpaceX'), international cooperation, and tie it to restoration of funding at the civilian agencies. We're far from that being viable at this point, however.

That's exactly why Israel has the Samson Option. If you manage to destroy them, they will take you to hell with them.

Given the Palestinians attacked Israel completely unprovoked with no regard to the hell that would rain down on themselves in retaliation I am horrified by the thought of them armed with nukes.

We're undermining it ourselves with allowing crypto to be legal & traded in the manner it is.

I believe this budget includes supercomputer based simulations for reliability without testing. But even if it's not 100% reliable, it still works as a deterrent.

Why would the US start a nuclear war over reserve currency? You are an idiot.

Also, one reason they’re as expensive to maintain as they are is that we don’t test detonate them any more. We have to do a bunch of indirect testing with expensive equipment and supercomputers.

That’s probably a good thing; certainly the people complaining here about costs would not suggest we go back to doing so.

We could probably drive the cost down a bit by specializing in a delivery system (say, submarines) but I’m not a strategist and maybe those that are think it’s too risky. Certainly if we were to keep only one thing about the military it would be nuclear missiles.

We aren't expanding the weapons stockpile so there's not a of refinement needed, just enough for maintenance.

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