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The Military Power United States

The US Is Installing New Power- and Accuracy-Increasing Sensors on Its Nuclear Weapons 147

new nukes "A sophisticated electronic sensor buried in hardened metal shells at the tip of a growing number of America's ballistic missiles reflects a significant achievement in weapons engineering that experts say could help pave the way for reductions in the size of the country's nuclear arsenal," reports the Washington Post, "but also might create new security perils." The wires, sensors, batteries and computing gear now being installed on hundreds of the most powerful U.S. warheads give them an enhanced ability to detonate with what the military considers exquisite timing over some of the world's most challenging targets, substantially increasing the probability that in the event of a major conflict, those targets would be destroyed in a radioactive rain of fire, heat and unearthly explosive pressures.

The new components — which determine and set the best height for a nuclear blast — are now being paired with other engineering enhancements that collectively increase what military planners refer to as the individual nuclear warheads' "hard-target kill capability." This gives them an improved ability to destroy Russian and Chinese nuclear-tipped missiles and command posts in hardened silos or mountain sanctuaries, or to obliterate military command and storage bunkers in North Korea, also considered a potential U.S. nuclear target.

The increased destructiveness of the warheads means that in some cases fewer weapons could be needed to ensure that all the objectives in the nation's nuclear targeting plans are fully met, opening a path to future shrinkage of the overall arsenal, current and former U.S. officials said in a number of interviews, in which some spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive technology.

Production of the first of many high-yield nuclear warheads containing the gear, developed over the past decade at a cost of billions of dollars, was completed in July for installation on missiles aboard Navy submarines, the National Nuclear Security Administration announced.

The Post notes that the U.S. has now installed the technology on hundreds of submarine-based warheads, doubling their destructive power (according to estimates by a Georgetown professor).

The acting administrator of America's National Nuclear Security Administration called it "the culmination of over a decade of work."
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The US Is Installing New Power- and Accuracy-Increasing Sensors on Its Nuclear Weapons

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  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday October 30, 2021 @01:46PM (#61942499)

    They're finally switching from Apple Maps to Google Maps. :-)

    • Yeah, they made the switch after they found dozens of cruise missiles loitering around a cul-de-sac at the end of a one-way street per hour!

    • I wish Palestine and Iran got some nukes of their own. Just to even the odds.
      • Yeah, that is a great idea. Let's give Nukes to AQ and ISIS as well.

        and who exactly will the Palestinians nuke? Israelis? So you want to fire it straight up in air and drop it on themselves in a warped coyote/road runner type way?
  • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Saturday October 30, 2021 @01:48PM (#61942501)
    With a 1980s era one. Progress!
  • No one who knows the working details of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal will tell them to a reporter.

    This is unspecified unspecific chest thumping.

    The intended audience may be the PLA's strategic planners and the intended message is likely no more than, "stay out of Taiwan."

    For anyone wondering what Trump's "my button is bigger than yours" tweet would look like out of a Democrat administration...you have your example.

    • Totally propaganda. Nukes are obsolete. Precision weapons are more useful. The only use for nukes (real or imagined) is to scare simpletons.
      • And get Taiwan back from China. ;-)

        • That's never going to happen, dude.
          We may be able to maintain their de facto independence for the forseeable future, but we're never going to be able to present anything more than a strategic deterrent, and certainly not a force capable of preventing the rapid toppling of Taipei.

          Even if the CPC were to fall, you know the first thing they're going to do is make sure their old enemies waving the flag with the KMT flag embedded in it aren't around to pick up their pieces or hasten the fall. And we'll be out
    • Nuclear saber rattling with a nuclear power (A real one, not Rocket Man)?
      I don't buy it.

      China is well aware of our nuclear capabilities. The yield of our weaponry isn't even relevant, and neither is theirs.
      Neither of us have a viable first-strike capability, and both of us have second-strike capacity more than adequate to wipe out the civilization of the other.

      In the case of any exchange, both of our countries are fucking wrecked, and both of us will be topped by our neighbors in short order in the na
  • by ikhider ( 2837593 ) on Saturday October 30, 2021 @02:21PM (#61942567)
    When it comes to education, saving the environment, infrastructure improvement, everyone is all, "Where do we get the money?!?" but another widget for our death machines, we have a bottomless well of cash for that. Shows where we are as a species, still in the dark ages. We may never crawl out of that.
    • We literally spend on education, saving the environment, and infrastructure improvement. Your post is invalid.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ikhider ( 2837593 )
        Compare the level of spending. You will see the death machines get a disproportionate amount of cash. Look up 'black budget'. Congress literally handed (and hands out) blank cheques. Could you imagine what the budget for the Iraq/Afghan war would have done for us if the money was funneled into getting us off fossil fuels and into green energy? We could tell the Arabs, "keep your damn oil!" The budget for one jet series could pay off post secondary education for E V E R Y O N E.
      • He's right about this one. Defense/security budget in the US is around 17% of the total. Pretty big, but it's not like we short-change the other categories.
        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by ikhider ( 2837593 )
          I'd dig a little deeper into that one. 'Defense' has secret budgets. Things we 'think' go to wholesome directions, but in reality do not. The cold war started this because we did not want the USSR to know what we were spending money on, thereby letting 'the other side' know what we were building. The infrastructure is still in place.
        • I'm more than happy to talk about whether we spend enough on climate change or education, and too much on military, but at least get the basic facts straight, that's all I'm saying.

        • Closer to half. It isn't appropriate to include expenditures from the FICA-financed trust funds. They're self-funded and separate from the general budget.
          • by ksw_92 ( 5249207 )

            Y'all forget about what each state spends on social programs (education is one) from their own budgets, funded from state-administered taxes. It's easy to take down the Feds on all that evil defense spending when you ignore what each state does on its own. It does add up...what with California being the 5th-largest economy in the world all on its own and having Prop 89 mandate education funding in the state.

            We may spend more than the next 20+ countries combined (most of whom are allies) on the DoD but when

    • These new enhancements in a sense are created to never be used. Having this capability and announcing it is telling all adversaries that if they fuck around, they will find out.

      If the US really wanted to use these new enhancements, why would we tell our enemies about them? We'd want to keep them secret so that enemies don't know that their hardened targets were actually still vulnerable. Clearly deterrence is the goal.

      Nuclear deterrence is kind of a screwy way to run the world, but it's hard to argue aga

      • The point is that our societies are too willing to pour (vast amounts of) money into destruction than things that actually benefit us as a whole. More is allotted to our demise than things we really need. It is not reported how many close calls we have had with these weapons, not just the exchange of them, but storing and maintaining them. Were you aware that there are nukes that are missing and not accounted for? That there are nukes accidentally fallen off planes and buried in the mud and the military doe
        • The point is that our societies are too willing to pour (vast amounts of) money into destruction than things that actually benefit us as a whole.

          I think this appears the case on the surface, but if you dig a little you'll find that it doesn't hold up.

          For the last several hundred years (at minimum!) war has been a business. Corporations need money. They need all the money. And they'll create entire new markets to make money in if nothing stops them from doing so.

          The corporate influence on government goes back a very, very long way. Look at the East India Tea Company - they had armies and navies and ruled countries in the 1800s. Dig into the civil war

    • Increased spending on education above a rather low minimum per student(with the vast majority of districts not already hitting that minimum being rural districts) is not correlated with better outcomes.

      • It depends where you go. There is regional discrimination where some schools are funded better than others. If we are talking middle to upper income areas, you might be correct. But if we are talking lower income areas, which there are A LOT of (and growing!!!), then there needs to be a better funding in education. Not all public schools are the same, and they should be. Add to that, these areas need meal programs (children are not get nourished at home), after school activities/centers and so on. Teachers
        • No, I'm talking low income areas. The DC public school system has some of the highest per student spending in the nation and its outcomes are complete shit. Course recently, with the leftist focus on equity in the school system and canceling of AP classes combined with the last 30 years of virtually eradicating the ability of the system to flunk out students or hold them back a grade they have decided to strap on a jetpack and race to the bottom as fast as they can get there.

    • but another widget for our death machines, we have a bottomless well of cash for that.

      This is how USA economics work: keynesianism through military spending

      • You mean 'not working'. Socialism for the rich. Everyone else gets a form of indentured slavery. That "keynesianism" is poured in the wrong direction. Funds need to be used to HELP humanity, not end it and every other living thing on this planet.
        • I agree with you that created wealth is not fairly shared. But that can happen with any method used to push economy.

          Well, perhaps helicopter money would benefit the poor more efficiently than military spending, though.

          • More than that, the money is not even used correctly. You are not thinking dark enough. Take Hurricane Katrina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] or even the covid virus. Both instances clearly illustrate the complete lack of military preparedness in these natural disasters. In the former, lack of timely distribution of aid, emergency response and recovery. Communication was down. The disaster played out like something from medieval times. Take the latter, covid brought the country to its knees. It demonstra
            • I remember after Katrina, when hungry people abandoned by the government where taking food from closed supermarkets. Journalists were calling them robbers. What a shame.
    • We need to maintain our nuclear weapons or they will cease to serve their intended purpose. You can say whatever you like about their intended purpose but we have them, there is a reason to have them, and if they are to work then we need to put money into keeping them functional. I suspect that the increased power and accuracy is merely a side effect of maintaining the function of these weapons. At some point the fuses would need replacing and in replacing them with newer technology means they get more a

      • If you gave two passes of gas for even military purposes, you know we can update the nuclear arsenal at a fraction of the allotted budget. If the military even mattered one iota, then you would see *some* budget allotted to military preparedness of our country and it is not (despite our obscene budget). Covid and how it brought our country to its knees is a clear example. You want a good military? Make sure your troops have good nutrition and medical care, this includes future troops. Make sure your troops
    • ...another widget for our death machines, we have a bottomless well of cash for that.

      The military-industrial complex: no expense spared in defence of freedom.

  • by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Saturday October 30, 2021 @02:55PM (#61942705) Journal

    The process of complete destruction is well under way.

    • by ikhider ( 2837593 ) on Saturday October 30, 2021 @03:16PM (#61942771)
      You have no idea how many times we were close, as a species, to doing just that. Far more times than is reported. Probably by orders of magnitude. Children playing with fire in a petrol station.
      • by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Saturday October 30, 2021 @06:34PM (#61943269) Journal

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        This is personal for me. I was working at a likely target the day Stanislav Petrov broke standing orders and headed off a nuclear war.

        • With the amount of warheads they were sporting, I'd argue that anything that was a "likely" target was a guaranteed target.
          After every strategic target was hit, they'd have had enough left over to wipe out the avocado orchards in the Central Valley just for shits and giggles.
      • Re:Just wait awhile. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by apoc.famine ( 621563 ) <apoc...famine@@@gmail...com> on Sunday October 31, 2021 @10:06AM (#61944569) Journal

        What the fuck are you talking about?

        There is almost zero chance humans could go extinct. We can eat more shit than most animal species can. We have higher order thinking to adapt to environmental changes in a way no other species has. We can survive in the arctic and the deserts at elevation and in fetid swamps. We can build a ship out of wood and using the stars alone for navigation sail thousands of miles across the ocean.

        Humans are incredibly adaptable, in a way almost nothing else is. We'd have to turn the air toxic or some shit to kill off humans. If we can live until we're 20-30 before dying of cancer from all the radiation, humans will survive as a species.

        Sure, it's going to be a miserable, shitty existance compared to our current comfort, but that's been humanity's path for hundreds of thousands of years. We've been through glacial cycles, plagues, pestilence, desertification, all sorts of shit. FFS, we've been doing BRAIN SURGERY for thousands of years. In Peru they've got thousand year old skulls with lots of holes drilled in them to relieve brain swelling! There's evidence they were more successful than we were in more modern times, up into the early 1900s.

        Humans are brilliant and adaptable. You need to literally make all of the air or water everywhere on EARTH poisonious to us to have a shot at wiping us out as a species. We can subsist on insect larva, mushrooms, and tubers if we need to. We can live on the edge of the arctic if most of the earth is too hot, or we can live in a narrow strip of the tropics if most of the earth is too cold. If plants are poisonous we can remove the poison and eat the rest. Primative societies have been doing that for at least tens of thousands of years.

        You almost literally need to wipe out the cockroaches before humans will go, because if need be, we'll eat those to survive.

    • Looking forward to fighting my first super mutant.

  • Telling others they can not create/develop new nuclear weapons, but still creating/developing themselves, how much more of a hypocrite can you be? Not that I like North Korea or Iran having nukes, I give them just as much right to develop them until the US stops creating/developing them too.
    • Eh.

      I get where this sentiment comes from, but na, man. Just na.

      The U.S. is by far a benevolent force in this world, but nuclear weapons aren't toys, and it is the responsibility of every single country that has them to make sure proliferation stops with them.

      The NNPT exists because everyone fucking agrees with this sentiment.
      I'm very anti-war, but I'd vote instantly to conventionally wipe NK off the fucking map if they threatened the US with missile launch.

      Iran I'm less worried about. I don't belie
      • Fuck.
        Not by far a benevolent force- far from a benevolent force
      • The U.S. is by far a benevolent force in this world
        Tell that any country in South America.
        Or the Phillipines, or as it matters: North Korea.
        Or even Japan: and the rioters will probably hang you.

        Perhaps you want to read some history ...

        I'm very anti-war, but I'd vote instantly to conventionally wipe NK off the fucking map if they threatened the US with missile launch.
        NK only exists because of fucking American idiots. If you had not _insisted_ at the end of WWII it is a part of Japan, and rightfully occupied

    • by schwit1 ( 797399 )

      Iranian leadership has stated repeatedly that they want to wipe Israel off the map. Nukes would make that possible.

      • Well, the funny thing is, Isreal does have nuclear weapons even though they are not allowed to have them, but the US does not have any sanctions on them, hell they even hold their hand above their heads.

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