Posted on 02/03/2018 4:11:27 AM PST by beaversmom
The Trump administration released a report on the state of America's nuclear weaponry on Friday. The assessment, known as a Nuclear Posture Review, mainly concerns U.S. nukes and missiles.
But buried in the plan is a mention of a mysterious Russian weapon called "Status-6." On paper, at least, Status-6 appears to be a kind of doomsday device. The report refers to it as "a new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered, undersea autonomous torpedo."
"The radius of total or near-total destruction is the size of a pretty large metropolitan area, actually," says Edward Geist, a Russia specialist at the Rand Corp. who has spent time looking at the weapon. "It's difficult to imagine in normal terms."
Status-6 made its first public appearance in 2015, while Russian President Vladimir Putin was visiting with his generals in the city of Sochi.
Russia state television reported on the visit. The camera shows Putin seated at a long table. Then it cuts to a shot over one of the general's shoulders. He is looking at what appears to be a drawing of a new nuclear weapon called the Oceanic Multipurpose System Status-6.
Status-6 looks like a giant torpedo about a third the length of a big Russian submarine. According to the slide, it is nuclear-powered, meaning it can roam for months and possibly even years beneath the ocean without surfacing. Its payload is a nuclear warhead "many tens of megatons in yield," Geist says.
That is thousands of times more powerful than the bombs dropped at the end of World War II and more powerful than anything currently in the U.S. and Russian arsenals.
Status-6 would launch from beneath a Russian submarine. It would shoot at a depth too deep to be intercepted and travel for thousands of miles. Upon reaching its target along the U.S. coastline, it would detonate, swallowing up whatever city happened to be nearby.
"The only possible U.S. targets are large port cities," says Mark Schneider, a senior analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy, wrote in an e-mail. "The detonation of Status-6 in any of them would essentially wipe out their population into the far suburbs."
"The detonation would cause a very large amount of radioactive fallout," adds Pavel Podvig, an arms control expert who runs a blog called Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. Podvig believes the weapon could potentially bathe the entire Northeast Corridor in radioactive soot.
Status-6 would probably be used as a "third-strike" weapon of last resort. If Russia fell under attack from the U.S. and couldn't retaliate with its missiles, it might trigger Status-6: a doomsday machine. Or at least a doomsday-ish machine.
Then again, the whole thing might be a fake.
"The drawing of this drone looks more like an enlarged drawing of a smaller torpedo," says Podvig. In other words, it looks as if the Russians may have just taken some torpedo clip art, blown it up to terrifying size and then broadcast it on state television.
Why?
"It's a way to get our attention," says Geist.
Geist says that the "leak" of Status-6 was deliberate. Russia worries that U.S. missile defenses might be able to shoot down its missiles in a nuclear war. By showing a plan for Status-6, Russia is warning the U.S. that if it continues to build such defensive systems, then Russia will find another way to strike, with a missile that can't be intercepted.
"My read of the whole Status-6 slide leak is that the Russians were trying to send us a message," Geist says.
Podvig agrees that the leak of Status-6 is probably just a warning shot. But the fact that it appeared in the Pentagon's newest report on nuclear weapons shows that some war planners are taking the idea seriously.
There may be some politics involved in that decision as well, says Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. The Trump administration is pushing hard for upgrades to America's nuclear arsenal. In his State of the Union address, the president called for making the arsenal "so strong and so powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression by any other nation or anyone else."
Citing Status-6 helps to build the case that upgrades to American nukes are needed, Kristensen says.
For all the rhetoric around Status-6, Podvig and Geist both believe that the program isn't completely made-up. Geist says a long-range underwater drone without a nuclear warhead would be a useful weapon.
"You could use it for tapping our underwater communications cables," he says. "Or simpler, in a war, is just going out and like finding them and cutting them."
Status-6 could also carry conventional munitions, like cruise missiles, and launch them after hiding for months beneath the water.
Podvig has seen photos that he says indicate the Russians are working on some hardware for big underwater drones.
"My best guess is that there is there is a project to design an underwater vehicle with a purpose, unknown at this point," he says. "There is something there."
Turgison:
“Doctor, you mentioned the ration of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?”
Strangelove:
“Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race”
42 paragraphs down...
‘Then again, the whole thing might be a fake.
“The drawing of this drone looks more like an enlarged drawing of a smaller torpedo,” says Podvig. In other words, it looks as if the Russians may have just taken some torpedo clip art, blown it up to terrifying size and then broadcast it on state television.’
Run by a Mr. Fusion machine? Didn’t know that existed.
Put me in the skeptical column.
We cannot afford a Mine Shaft Gap!!
a kind of doomsday device...
A wedding ring?
Lol. Baddie.
The Orgasmatron...
“The whole idea of a doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret.....Why didn’t you tell the world!”
Quite some time ago, I believe the US announced that it now had satellites capable of spotting submarines deep under the water. Not just by detecting their wake, but allowing us to constantly track their locations at depth.
Which basically makes submarines obsolete.
Look up the “Tsar” device. The Soviets built the thing for a yield of 100 megatons, then got nervous and scaled the yield back by half.
The Tsar test results showed that, yeah, it could take out an entire coastal city out to the far suburbs. Yeah, that big.
Implicit in the article is the assumption that the torpedo will actually work as designed
I doubt it
Took me back many years to the NCO Academy and a discussion on why we were so loath to put women in combat....I posited it was built-in survival for the Human race - kill a lot of men and save the women and you could repopulate - kill a lot of women and the job of propagation became drawn out and tenuous. It was long enough ago I didn’t get booed by the females or any wussy men.
Exactly - the project is entirely feasible, and much of it involves decades-old technology. Frankly, any piss ant, entry-level nuclear power (i.e., North Korea, etc.) could do something similar (on a much smaller scale), with a fission device and a small cargo ship...
Wow! I was worried! I thought it might be the Q BOMB from THE MOUSE THAT ROARED.
I have always felt the same about women in combat. Noting perverse, just that is the way it really is.
If a primitive tribe fights a bear, and half the men are killed off, the tribe will suffer but can be backup to full strength in a few years.
Kill off half the women and it will be decades or longer to replenish those lost. Otherwise the tribe will have to raid other tribes for females.
Rookie members of the Nuclear Club could build a deadly low-yield device but it takes a ton of knowledge in metallurgy, electronics, miniaturization, etc., to build a (physically) small yet reliable device. Nukes are NOT easy to detonate because there is an awful that can go wrong.
The 'physically small' aspect is critical for delivery via missile, but almost irrelevant when you're looking at delivery via ship/submarine. Place a primitive nuclear device in the bottom of a ship's cargo hold, bury it in something that will absorb any telltale radiation (and perhaps enhance lethal fallout), and you have a workable first-strike weapon, just waiting for "slow boat" delivery to the target. The ship's crew wouldn't even have to know it's there. I imagine the US has been quietly watching for such threats for decades...
That's my biggest problem with the Walking Dead. 98% of the population dead, zombies all around, and yet the women don't stay behind the walls, they wander around getting killed and captured just as much as the men.
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