Is there a difference between the poison levels of weapons grade Plutonium and Uranium?
I think I tend to agree with you that support parts for such a device will be available "off the shelf." Probably they will be mechanical rather than gee whiz electronic stuff for two reasons: First the era in which these devices were created was not a "golden age of technology" for the USSR. Also, they have always had the soul of simplicity, when it comes to war. Look at the AK-47.
I'm not sure I agree with Godzilla's assessment that the former commie and current capitalists who sold these devices or their locations to AQ will be worried about having the weapons turned on their own kind. First rule of capitalism is look out for #1. Money talks and B$ walks. Next they won't have sold them a weapon that could be easily cached on Russian soil. The risk of detection in moving a device from U.S. soil to anywhere in the former USSR is simply too great. I don't think that anybody looks too far ahead with the idea that an ally might turn into an adversary. Otherwise, our side would never have provided the Mujahadeen with Stingers to take down the dreaded HIND-D helicopter that was a deadly killer to the Muj fighters in the 1980's.
This isn't the forum to discuss the variances of warhead types. Suffice it to say that these are not the multistage fusion or fusion enhanced weapons that he's describing. These are believed to have a variable yield with a maximum of 1kt, similar to our SADM. Tritium is irrelevent. These are pure fission type weaps.
This is SIMPLE STUFF. Remember that they were reported MISSING by General Lebed. They may have been sold on the black market or by disenfranchised GRU or KGB.
Re- weapons.
Eom was posting about coming in through Mexico some time ago.
Recently he/it posted about nuke parts coming in from Mexico and Canada.
Thought- what were those British soldiers looking for in that cave in Mexico? Could they have been trying to find nukes stashed by AQ?