[BroJoeK]

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):

[Owen]

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.