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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.

And, of course, I left out the critical point.

Sub launches are maybe 50 miles off a coast. Enroute time to Pentagon . . . 10 mins. 20 minutes to the ICBM fields in NoDak and Montana/Wyoming. That’s it. That’s all you get.

That’s how much time to eliminate the possibility of radar malfunction, get the relevant guy out of the bathroom and get orders distributed for retaliation.

It’s asking quite a lot of any bureaucracy.

And . . . those numbers for time enroute? Those were pre-hypersonics. It’s shorter now.