Nukes!

This is coolbert

From the Chicago Tribune today:

"NATION & WORLD"

"U.S. nuclear weapons need update, Gates says"

"WASHINGTON - - Unless the United States modernizes its inventory of nuclear weapons and develops a replacement warhead, the arsenal's long-term safety and reliability will deteriorate, Defense Secretary - - Robert Gates warned Tuesday."

"Gates also broke with the Bush administration by saying the United States 'probably should' ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and international agreement prohibiting new testing or nuclear weapons."

"Some experts think support could build in the Senate if the Pentagon establishes that it can build a new weapon without testing. Gates suggested Tuesday that a new replacement warhead could be developed this way."

"He said the current nuclear stockpile has been re-engineered to extend its life span, but such extensions cannot continue indefinitely. Without a modernization program, Gates said, the long term outlook for the arsenal it 'bleak'."

"No one has designed a new nuclear weapon in the United States since the 1980's and no one has built a new one since the early 1990's."

Some comments here:

* There is a shelf-life to all these nuclear weapons? The high-explosive shaped charges for an implosion style nuke and the fissionable material as well - - have a certain shelf-life and must be replaced or tested from time to time for reliability? Indeed, an entire nuclear munition of whatever type of style WILL NOT LAST FOREVER WITHOUT DETERIORATION!? Consequently, reliability is a major concern?

* And we are not talking here about developing NEW WARHEADS FOR NEW DELIVERY SYSTEMS?! Merely fitting older delivery systems with NEW WARHEADS?
* And there is here too a conundrum? Develop new warheads and guarantee reliability WITHOUT TESTING?! Can this be done? NO ONE has designed a new nuclear warhead since the 1980's? That would suggest to me that all the old-timers have by now retired, the new men NOT having the degree of experience to ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE RELIABILITY WITHOUT TESTING!!
* This "new" warhead. Able to be retro-fitted on a variety of delivery vehicles? Can be fitted to an ICBM, SLBM, GLCM, ALCM, "dumb" bomb dropped from a B-52? Many questions to be asked here!

* Keep in mind that you just do not need that many nuclear warheads any more. The U.S. currently has stockpiled about 8,000 total nuclear warheads, of which 2,000 are actually fitted on delivery systems, the remainder mothballed? Primarily, prodigious numbers of nukes are not needed - - due in large measure to the destructive power of newly developed conventional [non-nuclear] weapons. Such as - - the to be fielded next year - - the X-51 hypersonic delivery vehicle. The warhead of the X-51 will saturate a square mile area with thousands of tungsten rods, each rod having twelve times the energy of a fifty [.50] caliber machine-gun round!!!

* And from that Tribune article - - further: "$89 million to determine the cost of building a new warhead." Let us be perfectly clear here. It will cost a mere $89 million JUST TO STUDY THE COST OF BUILDING A NEW WARHEAD!! NOT the cost of the warheads themselves [that cost will be in the BILLIONS OF DOLLARS?] BUT only to study the whole matter. NO ONE said national defense was cheap, did they?

* And when Bob Gates says that the U.S.: "'probably should' ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty", this is of course CONTINGENT UPON THE WEAPONS DESIGNERS DEVELOPING A WAY OF GUARANTEEING RELIABILITY WITHOUT TESTING!! NOT otherwise!
* The entire question of testing in itself will raise a lot of hackles in some quarters. I recall very well from way back when in 1971 when the Amchitka Island Cannikin underground test took place. All sorts of unfounded and unwarranted dire predictions were made prior to the atomic detonation. World-wide catastrophe was prophesied, ruin occurring on a Biblical scale. NO LESS a personality than David Brinkley aloud questioned the need for such a test. "What have the people at Los Alamos been doing for the last thirty years that they cannot build an atomic bomb and NOT know it will work without testing!!"

[maybe what is needed is to approach the Israeli scientific community and sound them out on this matter. Perhaps their expertise is even greater than what could be expected from U.S. weapons designers?]

Personally, I would not certify any nuclear weapon unless it was tested first.

A lot of questions have to asked and answered before a weapons upgrade can occur? Appears so!

coolbert.