DO RUSSIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS EVEN WORK?
Great question. Difficult but possible to answer. And it’s probably a worse answer than you’re expecting. 😉 That said no one wants to use these weapons because it’s a guarantee of suicide.
STRATEGIC OPPOSITES IN GENERAL
(a) as in many things, US arsenal is designed for policing the world not destroying it. US strategic policy pursues the destruction of the command and control chain, minimizing harm to civilians and soliders alike.
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Russian arsenal is, as we have seen in Ukraine and Grozny designed to destroy everything and kill everyone. Its strategic policy is to expand and conquer and rule regardless of cost in human life.
STRATEGIC OPPOSITES IN NUCLEAR WEAPONS
(b) The US arsenal then consists of a large number of small precise weapons. The US did not invest in upgrading its technology – just maintaining it. And the only modern weapons we have are the air force’s nuclear cruise missiles. So by modern terms our weaponry is ‘weak’.
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The Russian arsenal consists of a similar number of much larger weapons. One of which can turn an area the size of texas into the surface of the moon. Another of which dwarfs that, and is designed to take out coastal cities from underwater turning the entire greater metropolitan area and all its feeder cities and downs into the surface of the moon.
MAINTENANCE REQUIRED
(c) These weapons require constant maintenance. In the case of the warhead itself, they are subject to constant radiation, and certain components that guarantee the explosion (lenses) and provide the enrichment necessary for critical mass (tritium), the electronics, the batteries, and the fissionable material itself must be replaced regularly, certainly every decade or so.
I’m not certain at this point in time, but I understand that the US tends to just replace and rebuild these warheads on a set schedule.
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It’s difficult to imagine that Russian nuclear forces are much better maintained than their conventional forces. But they keep nuclear submarines in the water, so we would have to pragmatically assume that at least those weapons and some small number of the new absurdly large megatonnage weapons are functional.
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China and Russia are radically upgrading their nuclear arsenals.
America has just begun doing so. But as usual, because Americans don’t plan all that well, and are self-destructively optimistic, we are late to the party.
SUMMARY
We have under-invested in the military and over-invested in policing the world, and we don’t appear to be in a very good position. In particular, we don’t have a solid strategic industry supply chain, and we don’t have enough production capacity for the advanced weaponry we rely on. We don’t have a standing supply of ammunition shells missiles for a two front war. And we have too small a manpower force for the four coming conflicts we know of:
(a) Russia
(b) China
(c) Iran
(d) Mexico (cartels, govt)
CONCLUSION
So IMO Russia would only need to use three modern weapons off the east and west coasts, and we would never see them launch, because they’re underwater. Take out the broader DC, NY and LA areas and our government, financial system, and pacific trade system are gone.
So it doesn’t matter if those thousands of unmaintained weapons don’t work when they only need three new ones that do.
It would mean the end of Russia, because RU consists of basically two cities. The rest cannot function without them. China would then re-capture Siberia for its energy, and Russia would break up into separate countries battling for survival. With RU and USA out of the cycle then CN really has no worries and doesn’t even need to take Taiwan.
Cheers
-Curt Doolittle
Reply addressees: @georgefox1968