We have given up 25 megatons and ten megatons for .5 megaton pieces of crap. The Chinese are laughing at US.
I don’t think that’s a true truth except strictly from a pure megatonnage aspect. That’s like saying a 500 hp ported and blueprinted and blown Chevy engine sitting since 1957 in that crate over there will beats this freshly-tuned Porsche roadster.
The engine isn’t even in a thing with four wheels on it, we suspect it’s in fine shape but don’t really know if it will even turn over; it might be seized. We strongly suspect we would we be able to easily and rapidly get any part we’d need to install it into a waiting car frame... but you never know, some weird something might not be readily available. We really don’t even know if the engine hoist we have around the shop can lift that old B-53.
In short, we’ve scrapped an old POS which probably hasn’t been meaningfully tested in 40 years (!) and while we haven’t acquired in recent times anything new, anything in our arsenal is massively more deliverable, and deliverable to a with much more accurate targeting (thus not needed to be that powerful), reliable, and it would not surprise me if the electronic firing circuitry we have currently in use would never work with that old thing.
There might be some “sentimental” value (if you can get sentimental over an H-bomb) but nothing in terms of practical reality has been lost.