Iranian president pledges deeper ties with Moscow, state media says

GenXPolymath: "Russia has the most nuclear weapons on earth.
Unlike the USA that has not made a modern warhead in decades they have been manufacturing new and better warheads continuously since we walked away from the SALT treaties.
Our nuclear scientists are all retirees or dead from old age.
Russia has a younger new batch of scientists and technicians actively making new weapons."

I'd say all of that kind of talk is pure speculation, and the reality is more likely this:

While US operational nukes are well maintained & upgraded, and so entirely effective,
Russian nukes are subject to the same culture of corruption which destroys so much else of Russia's military and economy, and so are very likely highly degraded.

What it might take to restore Russia's nukes to full capability is anyone's guess, but it's not insignificant and may or may not be in progress today.

If, as you claim here, Russians are "actively making new weapons", meaning nukes, that implies its Old Soviet nukes have now degraded to the point they cannot be restored, which would mean that Russia's effective nukes today are far less than the many thousands they historically claimed.

GenXPolymath: "Russia can and probably will send some of those boffins to Iran so they skip over gen1 weapons and go directly to miniaturized thermonuclear warheads or they could just secretly let them have a couple to tear apart and reverse engineer that’s how much deeper."

So, first, I note your word "boffins", which is strictly British, not American English.
I also see that you are brand new to Free Republic, so welcome here, we love our British allies and friends, no matter how bad things got between us over 200 years ago... 😉

Now, as for how much aid and abetting Russians provide Iran, I can't even imagine.
Regardless, considering how loudly Russians claim Ukrainians are anti-Semitic NAZIS, it would be ironic beyond any measure if Russians were themselves providing Iran with weapons of mass destruction to exterminate Jews in Israel!

GenXPolymath: "The idiot neocons keep pushing Russia farther away from the West so their cash laundering welfare were makes them richer."

All that kind of talk is fact-free Russian propaganda nonsense, which serious people should not accept, much less repeat.

GenXPolymath: "Russia is never giving up on its new citizens in the majority Russian former parts of Ukraine."

Obviously, Vlad the Invader will not give up anything without a fight, any more than Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great or Stalin the Oppressor would have.

So the real issue is whether Ukrainians can put up enough of a fight to wrestle away some or all of its territories Russians seized beginning in 2014?
So far, the answer is, "not so much" but clearly Ukrainians themselves are not willing to cry: "dyadya Vladimir" ("Uncle" Vladimir).

GenXPolymath: "Neocons need to accept that fact move on and let the western part of the most corrupt nation on earth negotiate a peace before nukes start flying on their home turf."

First, "nukes flying" is a threat neither Russians nor anyone else should be making, period.
Second, from its beginnings, Russia was and remains amongst the world's most corrupt countries, as measured by it's Corruption Perceptions Index.
And, in its beginnings, Ukraine was just as corrupt as its "Mother Russia", but has worked hard to eliminate the fact and perceptions of corruption, to the point where Ukraine is today approaching levels of non-corruption acceptable in, for example, the European Union.
Third, on "neo-cons":
So, I "get" that anti-Americans love to throw around that word "neocons" as if it's like a Christian cross to Dracula and will force any conservative or Republican to back down from whatever they were defending.
But the fact is that a US "neocon" refers to someone very specific -- a former Democrat who rejected the Left's pacifism and anti-American counterculture and so became a conservative Republican over national security issues.
Now, as it turns out, the four most famous former Democrats who became Republicans were:
1. 1870s Pres. Ulysses Grant
2. 1950s Pres. Dwight Eisenhower
3. 1980s Pres. Ronald Reagan
4. 2010s Pres. Donald Trump
Other noted life-long conservative Republicans who also supported US international commitments included:
1. 1930s Isolationist "Mr. Republican" Ohio Sen. Robert Taft
2. 1960s "Mr. Conservative" Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater
3. 1990s Conservative Revolution leader Speaker Newt Gingrich
None of these Republicans were labeled "neo-cons" and yet all were notably strong in their defense of American interests at home and abroad.
So, conservative Republicans, even former Democrats, who support a strong national defense, and global responsibilities are not "neo-cons", they are just conservatives or moderates.
Of course, isolationists, pacifists, non-interventionists & anti-militarists can be anything politically -- from the most economically & socially conservative Republicans to the most leftist progressive counterculture Democrats.
So the fact of their pacifism or isolationism, etc., tells us nothing about their other political views.
Bottom line: Republican US Presidents Grant, Eisenhower, Reagan and Trump, plus Senators Taft, Goldwater & Speaker Gingrich, are/were not "neo-cons", they were/are conservatives or, if you prefer, moderate Republicans who all intended to Make America Great and Put Americans First.

Economist Democracy Index, shades of blue=democratic (right):

Corruption Perceptions Index, shades of green=less corrupt (left):

I happen to know something of this issue of nuclear warheads.

1) The global inventory is 12,000+, with 88% of those Russian/US and Russia’s advantage is about 10%.

2) The US has indeed not been making more warheads. There is no “well maintained”. There is no “superior quality”. The plutonium half-life is not at issue. The constant neutron bombardment of the surrounding metal that holds the warhead together IS the issue. That’s why the US choice to stop cycling new warheads is so very dangerous. There is no Well Maintained vs this imaginary Russian inferiority at such activity. You can’t maintain materials that get eroded by neutrons over decades.

3) This is not imagination. Google Warhead Longevity. You’ll find the debate, with a disquieting presence of “everything is okay” from publications like Popular Science vs “everything is not okay” from rather more sophisticated pubs.

4) The Russians HAVE been replacing. There is little to no doubt about this. The US has not.

5) Spend some time reading about the Hanford Site. $Billions are spent on that budget and it makes no new warheads or plutonium pits. That’s the price tag to clean up decades of nuclear waste.

6) For God’s sake, stop with the default presumption that Russian technology is inferior. The US went 10 years post Shuttle begging for rides to the ISS and the only way aboard was Soyuz. Here is another tidbit:

The entire world’s array of physicists knew nuclear weapons were possible — in the 1930s. The papers of the early 1900s were completely clear. Germany had heavy water experiments ongoing where they had Deuterium as the H in H2O. They knew about adding neutrons and what it meant.

The Russians had a nuclear weapon development program as early as 1943, but they had the issue of German invasion that forced change of office locales and ate calendar.

There was no American exceptionalism in the world of atomics. All the world’s physicists understood it all.

The Soviets exploded a device in 1949. There was a leap by just about everyone imaginable to declare they only managed it because they stole tech via espionage.

The truth is, had there been no espionage they would have had it sooner. Their commissars arrived at the labs with the stolen tech data and told the labs to build this device. The labs said hell no, we are almost done our own design. We’ll be ready in 1947 or 1948. The commissars said NO, comrade, you will use this design we are giving you or we will get someone who will. We do not want to risk delays using your unproven design.

So they had to slow down and redesign to duplicate Trinity. It was far inferior to the design they had planned, but that’s politics and funding. Tsar Bomba in Oct of 1961 was far beyond US capabilities of the day. And of course Sputnik was first.

It’s very dangerous to walk around presuming US superiority.

Owen: "1) The global inventory is 12,000+, with 88% of those Russian/US and Russia’s advantage is about 10%."

Roughly 1/3 of those are deployed and so presumably in working order, though that is not known for sure without routine scheduled servicing.

Owen: "2) The US has indeed not been making more warheads.
There is no “well maintained”.
There is no “superior quality”.
The plutonium half-life is not at issue.
The constant neutron bombardment of the surrounding metal that holds the warhead together IS the issue. "

Little Boy and Fat Man:

I highly doubt if you know all the routine scheduled maintenance required to keep nukes fully functional.
Some of it can be delayed or skipped with only minor reductions in yield, but other less frequent services cannot be skipped without serious degradations.
So, given what we've learned about corruption in Russia's military, how likely is it that they've delayed or skipped needed service, repairs and upgrades?

US maintenance of deployed warheads I'm confident is up-to-date, but of non-deployed warheads, who knows?

Owen: "3) This is not imagination.
Google Warhead Longevity.
You’ll find the debate, with a disquieting presence of “everything is okay” from publications like Popular Science vs “everything is not okay” from rather more sophisticated pubs."

I am certain that every country with nukes has manuals which spell out in detail how often they are to be serviced and what sorts of service are required.
So, there's no debate about what's needed, the only issue is whether the work has been done as specified.

Owen: "4) The Russians HAVE been replacing.
There is little to no doubt about this.
The US has not."

So they say. I'm only pointing out that, given the gross levels of corruption in Russia's military, how certain can anyone be of the work being actually performed?

Owen: "6) For God’s sake, stop with the default presumption that Russian technology is inferior.
The US went 10 years post Shuttle begging for rides to the ISS and the only way aboard was Soyuz. "

Christie M1931 T-3:

There's no doubt that Russians are quite good technologically at some things, but not at everything, because they simply cannot afford to devote all the resources necessary to be good at everything.
One result is, they feel forced to buy or steal technology from other countries.
Another option for them is to substitute lower grade home-made knockoffs instead better Western tech.

Owen: "It’s very dangerous to walk around presuming US superiority."

Of course, comrade, I fully understand that you are very proud of your motherland and so wish to give her and the Old Soviets as much credit as humanly possible for their remarkable achievements.
And why not, since every nation wants to be proud of itself, even if that means taking a slightly skewed view of historical events, right?

On A-bombs, my understanding is that the Old Soviets were fully informed from the beginning of British and American atomic weapons development -- by Soviets' vast spy networks -- and so could readily copy-build their own industries along with the Western Allies.

And, we could list other similar examples, such as the T-34 originating in the US Cristie T-3, and the MIG 15 using a Klimov VK-1 jet engine, reverse engineered from purchased British Rolls Royce Nenes.
But today all of that is ancient history, water under the bridge, and what matters now is: how good is Russia's science and technology in 2024?

The answer seems to be: they are very good at some things and pretty pathetic at others, because, as I said, they simply don't have the resources to do everything well -- and the more they are cut off from Western tech, the more difficult it will be to keep up with the best -- aid from CCP China notwithstanding.

Owen: "Look, I don’t do white hats and black hats. I do numbers"

Sure, I "get" that you may well be suffering some form of moral dysphoria, where you've lost contact with natural distinctions between right and wrong.
It happens, sadly, far too often these days, especially amongst our leftists, socialists, nihilistic communists, and such.

And as with gender dysphoria, moral dysphoria can lead a person to seek therapies and even moral-affirming surgeries, that can transition you from whatever nihilism bollixed your life into something more meaningful and purposeful.
Sadly, those affirmations don't always work and can leave a person stranded betwixt and between anything recognizable as consistent moral principles.

So, in case you are still confused -- Americans wear "white hats" while the New Axis of Evil Dictators (Russia, China, Iran, NoKo & others) wear "black hats".

Owen: "No, it’s not 1/3 “deployed”.
It’s 9400 in stockpiles ready for use.
That’s 2/3, and the remaining 1/3 await dismantling and retirement.
Stockpiled and ready for use means not already loaded on a nuclear capable jet, but could be in however long req’d.
Something like an hour or so."

Here are the numbers I'm reading.
"Deployed" is 1/4 to 1/3 of the total.
Those we can assume are in top condition.
"Reserve" & inactive numbers could be in pretty much any condition, since they don't have to be ready at a moment's notice and may never again be deployed.

Here's another look at those same numbers:

Owen: "This indicates acknowledgement of the need for replacement and the political obstacles to it.
This is not a matter of opinion.
It is delusion.
It is very dangerous for the US inventory to be doubtful, and replacement is the answer to this."

Sorry, but to me you sound confused.
So, I'm only guessing that you want to tell me: the US should always maintain our nuclear arsenals in tip-top ready-to-go condition, with technological upgrades and replacements as needed.
If that's your point, then of course we agree 100%.

This may be more helpful to you:

https://www.twz.com/nuclear/current-american-nuclear-warhead-inventory-numbers-revealed

The overall point is the word “deployed” is not particularly relevant when one of the 3 legs of Triad are manned bombers that fly around day to day without nukes aboard. They need an hour to load from stockpile, and they will likely get it.

The war would be prosecuted like so: Tier 1 targets (targeted by the Russians) will be designated for submarines. Yes, attempts are made to shadow boomer subs, and one will hear much about how well that is done, but there are at least 12 of these with each carrying 16 missiles and the missiles are MIRVed, meaning they can each deploy multiple warheads to different targets.

There is essentially no defense. There are a claimed 44 interceptor missiles in existence and testing, in a rather simple scenario environment, claimed at best 50% effectiveness. So in an optimistic perspective, you can hit 22 warheads. Of the initial sub launched 12X16 = 192 X (call it 4 MIRVs each) 4 = 768.

These subs do launch drills multiple times per month for training. No attack sub will know this particular drill is the real McCoy until the missiles are on their way.

Will some fail enroute? Yes. As would be so for anyone. Want to imagine the country that built Soyuz will fail 50% of warheads, okay, go ahead. 768/2 = 384, and some of those doomed to failure anyway may be targetted by interceptors, wasting that interceptor.

Bottom line. These things will pack a 1-2 megaton yield and there will be hundreds pointed at the highest priority targets. Pentagon? Yes. Cities? No. Cities do not threaten an initial nuclear strike on Russia. The targets will be the land-based ICBMs in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota. Some command and control. But there are so very many warheads they could go to Tier 2 like subs with missiles in port, ready alert B-2s.

That’s what Russians aim their subs at. And that is only the subs. The bigger punch is later.

Russian landbased missiles are generally not in silos, as US missiles are. They are mobile, which is a major targeting issue. Our own boomer subs will be hitting equivalent Russian targets, but they chose mobile rather than underground/hardened so our subs don’t know where to aim for those. They will be after command and control in Moscow and St Petersburg’s naval facilities.

In the 80s they moved city grocery supermarkets underground. We never did that. They have a civil defense advantage.

Point being, they have much more surface area to hit. It is not a situation where one dares even remotely to tolerate doubtful inventory. The Los Alamos people are demanding more warheads be made because of doubt — and the dismantling of Hanford.

Owen: "The overall point is the word “deployed” is not particularly relevant when one of the 3 legs of Triad are manned bombers that fly around day to day without nukes aboard.
They need an hour to load from stockpile, and they will likely get it."

Just a few points to add here:

I doubt if any of those numbers are accurate and doubt if the true numbers are known by more than a small handful of US strategic planners.
The definitions of words like "active", "reserve", "inactive", "retired", etc., can change over time, as well as the conditions of various warheads within each category.
Iirc, after 1980s negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev, it was announced with great fanfare that "the Cold War is over!", based on agreements to remove computerized targeting information from each country's strategic warheads.
How was this done?
Essentially, by flipping a switch from "on" to "off".
How could the targets be restored to those warheads?
By flipping the switch back from "off" to "on".
How long will that take?
Not as long as it takes to tell the story.
Of course, a nuclear war is unthinkable -- as Reagan first said in 1984: "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought".
However, when Russians are throwing around flagrant, repeated threats of nuclear war, then the entire world needs to review in our minds all the logic associated with MAD -- Mutual Assured Destruction -- whether the technology still works or needs upgrading, and what are the various levels of response short of all-out Armageddon?

Washington Metro subway:

Owen: "In the 80s they [Old Soviets] moved city grocery supermarkets underground.
We never did that.
They have a civil defense advantage."

Sure, and I think many countries also built large underground facilities for their government elites in case of nuclear war.
The US does not have such extensive facilities, but we do have:

Thousands of miles of subway, railroad and highway tunnels underneath and connecting every major city.
Large public underground facilities, including shopping malls, in many major cities.
A relatively dispersed population -- there are more Americans living in smaller towns and rural areas than in all of Russia.
A governmental system built on the strength of local and state governments, which will not collapse if, God forbid, we lose Federal government in Washington.
Anti-ballistic missile systems -- Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" defenses -- which are currently deemed less than 100% effective, and which Pres. Trump has promised major upgrades for.

Finally, it's well worth remembering that just this past Saturday, Russians conducted yet another test of their largest ICBM, the Satan II at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The results included a catastrophic explosion, visible from space, the fourth unsuccessful test of the Satan II (the others were in 2017 & 2018).

One wag said the explosion resulted from someone stealing the part designed to prevent it.
Bottom line: all their insane threats notwithstanding, there is no way that Russians want nuclear war because it would effectively result in Russian national "suicide by cop".

Russia's Satan II, aka Putin's Big D*ck, suffers from E.D. -- premature Explosive Disfunction:

I realized later I was not clear about bombers needing to have warheads put aboard and it takes an hour or so, and they will probably get it. —— Will probably get it refers to targetting. If you’re in St Petersburg, the Russian naval central offices, you point your boomers at the targets that might immediately hit Russia. That won’t be bombers. That is ICBMs, maybe some command and control like the Pentagon and Bremerton/Groton, and not places like Wright Patt logistics or home ports with no ships currently docked.

Meaning, you aim at things that might hit you, Russia, in the next 48 hrs. Bombers aren’t going anywhere, even stealth, until there is some confidence Russian air defense has been destroyed, and thus bombers won’t be SLBM targetted. They get hit later, not first, and thus there is time to load bombs on them.

ICBM targeting and “loading targets into them” just means align/calibrate the onboard inertial nav systems (the gyros and linear accelerometers) and give them a latitude/longitude to hit. That’s a less than 1 hour activity, but it’s not less than 2 minutes. Nobody is dumb about this stuff. If a missile is offline per treaty requirements, it got cut up into pieces, not merely erased target.

SALT and START were two different things, and there are solid in-orbit recon assets for verification on both sides.

Perhaps the biggest Russian advantage in all of this is their somewhat brilliant choice to place ICBMs on mobile launchers. You have to point missiles at latitude/longitude and if they move them, you lose not only accuracy, but a completely wasted warhead that is not hitting nothingness.

US anti missile interceptors number about 44, and their somewhat optimistic effectiveness estimate is 50%. I read the test criteria that generated that number. It required all countermeasures be off and zero maneuvering past boost phase. So just put that stuff aside. There is no defense against high speed ballistics, never has been and are not now. And that was all pre hypersonic.

Note the ABM treaty allowed both sides to have interceptors to defend 2 sites. A later protocol reduced this to 1 site, because neither side built a 2nd site. The Russians put theirs around Moscow. The US, around the North Dakota launch complex. The whole idea of ABM was to reduce defenses — because if defenses were kept small then there would be no ongoing incentive to build more and more strategic ICBMs or SLBMs. Regardless, the US withdrew from the treaty in 2002. There is no ABM agreement as of now, largely because there is no point. It doesn’t work.

Owen: "I realized later I was not clear about bombers needing to have warheads put aboard and it takes an hour or so, and they will probably get it. —— Will probably get it refers to targetting.
If you’re in St Petersburg, the Russian naval central offices, you point your boomers at the targets that might immediately hit Russia.
That won’t be bombers.
That is ICBMs, maybe some command and control like the Pentagon and Bremerton/Groton, and not places like Wright Patt logistics or home ports with no ships currently docked."

I don't see the value in any such speculation because: there are thousands of different potential scenarios, all of which have been planned and war-gamed over many decades, using our best minds with the latest advanced AI -- and whatever other technology is available -- to model possible responses and outcomes.
And I'm certain that the only potential outcome which could be considered a victory is one where we never fight such a war.

Owen: "ICBM targeting and “loading targets into them” just means align/calibrate the onboard inertial nav systems (the gyros and linear accelerometers) and give them a latitude/longitude to hit.
That’s a less than 1 hour activity, but it’s not less than 2 minutes."

"Less than 1 hour" means such moves could be accomplished at any time in the lead-up period of rising tensions, before nuclear war began.
It's an inconsequential amount of time and only needs an authentic command to "get ready".

Owen: "If a missile is offline per treaty requirements, it got cut up into pieces, not merely erased target."

I think all those categories -- deployed, reserve, inactive, retired, etc. -- are ill-defined publicly and so impossible for us to say how long it would take each weapon to be made ready, should that ever become necessary.

1970s Carter's US MX mobile missile system,
became Reagan's Peacekeepers:

Owen: "Perhaps the biggest Russian advantage in all of this is their somewhat brilliant choice to place ICBMs on mobile launchers.
You have to point missiles at latitude/longitude and if they move them, you lose not only accuracy, but a completely wasted warhead that is not hitting nothingness."

We had that conversation in the 1970s, back when Jimmy Carter was president.
The MX ICBM, eventually was called the LGM-118 Peacekeeper, and Carter believed we'd need to put them on mobile launchers in many-miles-long underground covered highways so they'd be protected and able to pop-up to fire anywhere along their route.
Ultimately, it was not considered practical and Pres. Reagan put those Peacekeepers in normal silos instead, thus relying on our triad of boomers, bombers and buried silos to do the job of deterring Soviet aggression.

Owen: "US anti missile interceptors number about 44, and their somewhat optimistic effectiveness estimate is 50%."

Your 50% estimate could be reasonable, however, those 44 interceptors are only the GMDs at Greely and Vandenburg -- 3,400 mile range.
In addition, there are at least thousands, if not tens of thousands of anti-missiles in:

MIM-104 Patriots -- 100 mile range
THAADs -- 120 mile range
Aegis SM-6s -- 300 mile range
Aegis SM-3s -- 1,300 mile range

To these, we could add in some of Pres. Reagan's "Star Wars" SDI ideas, since some of those are still being worked on.

Owen: "There is no defense against high-speed ballistics, never has been and are not now.
And that was all pre hypersonic."

Well... first of all, "hypersonic" is not at all new, since all ICBMs are hypersonic in their mid and terminal phases.
What's new is claimed maneuverability, especially in their terminal phase.
But how maneuverable are they really, and how effective are their guidance systems?
To be determined.

Owen: "There is no ABM agreement as of now, largely because there is no point.
It doesn’t work."

Last word.

Saturday, Russia's Satan II missile exploded on its launch pad at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
The best missile defense is: premature explosion -- Satan never gets off the ground.

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