Posted on 01/07/2007 7:07:44 AM PST by infocats
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 — The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades. It will propose combining elements of competing designs from two weapons laboratories in an approach that some experts argue is untested and risky.
Skip to next paragraph The new weapon would not add to but replace the nation’s existing arsenal of aging warheads, with a new generation meant to be sturdier, more reliable, safer from accidental detonation and more secure from theft by terrorists.
The announcement, to be made by the interagency Nuclear Weapons Council, avoids making a choice between the two designs for a new weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which at first would be mounted on submarine-launched missiles.
The effort, if approved by President Bush and financed by Congress, would require a huge refurbishment of the nation’s complex for nuclear design and manufacturing, with the overall bill estimated at more than $100 billion...................
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Point well taken.
I fear that, as a species, we need to see one used in anger every couple of generations.
I fear that as a species, we will preside over our own extinction largely due to our ill advised decion making.
I would agree that we should spend our defense dollars wisely. Rummy was trying to do just that and he was shown the door. However, I firmly believe that if you pull back a few layers of the onion you will see that most if not all of those forces in the world that wish ill tidings on the United States will turn out to be supported by and or funded by mother Russia in one way or another. Russia is not our friend.
Keep our nukes fresh and ready. Fully fund and build the missle defense system and a 600 ship Navy and let Russia choke on it.(again) Successful negotiations come from a point of strength, not weakness.
The real issue as I see it is ignorance. There are way too many congresscritters who are ingorant of the threats that face us, as are the sheeple who elected them. We are "whistling past the graveyard" in regard to the threats that face our nation in so many ways it is unbelievable.
While I can't help but like Rumsfeld for many reasons, I think his arrogance and pig headedness were his downfall which led to his penny wise and pound foolish policies in Iraq. If you recall, Rumsfeld maintained until almost the day that he left office, that if his field commanders needed additional troops or equipment, they had but to ask...yet when General Shinseki did just that, he was summarily put out to pasture.
Yes, there is an active global socialist movement that is out to destroy America, both from without and within by a not so hidden fifth column.
Whether our demise is being orchestrated by gutting the middle class by exporting manufacturing jobs, dumbing down the school system vis a vis the liberal seditionist professors, diluting our culture by our open border policy, destroying our morality by pop culture, employing our own constitution by interpreting it as a suicide pact, or spending us into bankruptcy, it amounts to pretty much the same thing.
If it is necessary to have some nuclear capability [ as I believe it is ], we should do it using proven technologies instead of taking a 100 billion dollar gamble on an unproven one...and last but certainly not least, be ready, willing, and able to use the technology as a last resort.
They don't act as a deterrent unless the enemy believes that you are going to use them. I don't think the Russians [Soviets], Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians, and Paks have the slightest doubt that we will use them. Your logic is flawed. AQ represents a different kind of threat, i.e., a non-state actor. We have weapons we can use against them. There are different threats, hence you have a range of weapons to deal with them.
Although I am an electrical engineer with no particular expertise in nuclear weapons technology, that doesn't imply that I have to check my common sense at the door.
It doesn't sound like you have any kind of sense. If you read the article, "The new weapon would not add to but replace the nation’s existing arsenal of aging warheads, with a new generation meant to be sturdier, more reliable, safer from accidental detonation and more secure from theft by terrorists."
"Both administration officials and military officers like Gen. James E. Cartwright, head of the Strategic Command, which controls the nation’s nuclear arsenal, argue that because the United States provides a nuclear umbrella for so many allies, it is critical that its stockpile be as reliable as possible.
“We will not ‘un-invent’ nuclear weapons, and we will not walk away from the world,” General Cartwright said in a recent interview. “Right now, it is not the nation’s position that zero is the answer to the size of our inventory.”
“So, if you are going to have these weapons, they should be safe, they should be able to be secured, and they should be reliable if used,” General Cartwright said in the interview, conducted before the Department of Energy’s decision was announced.
We need a nuclear arsenal and we can't allow the present one to deteriorate without replacing it. How difficult is that to understand?
And if you had read the article, you might have noticed that the proposal was for an unproven technology, a 100 billion gamble that I'm not willing to take!
So which opponent doubts that the US will never use it? We have never agreed to a no first use doctrine and we have been the only country ever to use nuclear weapons.
Good thing for us, we're seeing record economic growth and relatively low deficits. So, yeah, we can afford this. And no, we cannot afford not to.
The answer to your question will become much more clear when a 1960s era nuclear weapon accidentally detonates in a silo because of our refusal to update the weapons.
But let's just wait and see-- why rush the issue?
Whew! Good thing you're not in charge then, I guess. :-)
LOL. You don' have the technical expertise to make such a judgment, thankfully. The status quo is not an option. Eventually, you must replace the existing arsenal. I am not willing to take the gamble of having no functioning nuclear arsenal. We have spent much more than $100 billion in Iraq. Nuclear weapons are part of our strategic defense. Let the experts argue out the best way to achieve that, but no one is saying that we should maintain the status quo forever.
"The two teams competing to design the weapon, one at Los Alamos in New Mexico, the other at the Livermore National Laboratory in California, approached the problem with very different philosophies, nuclear officials and experts said. Livermore drew on a single, robust design that, before the testing moratorium, was detonated in the 1980s under a desolate patch of Nevada desert. The weapon, however, never entered the nation’s nuclear stockpile.
"Los Alamos team drew on aspects of many weapons from the stockpile and pulled them together in a novel design that has never undergone testing."
The winner of the competition was to have been announced in November. federal officials said they had a hard time choosing between the two designs, calling both excellent.
I never said don't update! I said update with proven technology.
I think Iran believes that allah will keep them safe, and that NK's chia pet believes he is safe, both because he's been told he's sooooooo wonderful for soooooo long that he actually believes it, and that his proximity to China and Japan (as well as his ability to shell Seoul into a gravel pit) protect him.
None of the above players is immune from thinking they can find a cat's paw to do the deed, and suffer the consequences, while they hide behind the uncertainty of the ultimate source and diplomacy.
That is not true. Well, it may appear so to you, but those who are charged with the responsibility have a degree of maturity in judgement.
And we can't test fire just yet because of treaty obligations.
We either need to repudiate the ban, or respond in kind when another signatory test fires one.
BS. This is what you said in post#1:
What the hell is the point of developing these fancy nuclear weapons when obviously, we don't have the will to use them...So my question then becomes, in a time of economic extremis with record defecits, why throw good money down a rathole with our health care, public schools, social security system, borders, outsourcing, and public morality in dysfunctional chaos?
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