The true owners

[hedgehog]

Here is a pic of the true owners of WMD. It's in German, but then numbers are pretty easy to understand.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,grossbild-324127-285502,00.html

[Falco]

That's kinda known information thanks to the anti-war activists.

[BlackRain]

It is almost impossible to conceive of technological and political developments that would enable the United States to meet its defense needs in 2020 without nuclear weapons.

There are several reasons for this. First, nuclear weapons continue to play a vital role in deterring other countries from launching significant military strikes against America, our allies, or our vital interests. The real threat of not just military defeat but national annihilation is a potent deterrent now and should be expected to remain so for at least the next few decades.

Second, it does not appear possible with current or projected technology to assure ourselves that there are no—and never will be any— nuclear weapons in the hands of potential adversaries. Given the unique destructive power of nuclear weapons, an asymmetry of this kind should be unacceptable to American military planners.

Third, the development of antiballistic missile defense is encouraging, but the assumption that a leak-proof shield can be fielded by 2020 is debatable.

Fourth, some targets will not be able to be held at risk by any type of conventional weapon because of their extreme hardness.

Fifth, the ability of an adversary to deliver a nuclear weapon by aircraft, cruise missile, naval vessel, or by clandestine insertion into this country are additional concerns beyond the long-range ballistic missile threat. Lacking the ability to deter such threats and to respond in kind would open up the country to blackmail.

[BlackRain]

We estimate that from 1945 to 1990, the United States produced at several sites approximately 70,000 nuclear weapons of approximately 70 types for more than 120 weapon systems. Annual production rates rose dramatically throughout the 1950s. In 1959 and 1960, there were 7,088 and 7,178 new builds, respectively, or about 28 warheads each workday. By 1967 the stockpile reached a historic high with approximately 32,000 warheads of 30 different types, from sub-kiloton landmines (atomic demolition munitions) to multi-megaton strategic bombs. The historic high for megatonnage was reached in 1960 with nearly 20,500 megatons (that's 20 billion tons, or 40 trillion pounds, of TNT)—the equivalent of about 1,400,000 Hiroshimas. Today the total is about one-tenth the 1960 level, or about 2,000 megatons, or 140,000 Hiroshimas.

The United States has dismantled approximately 60,000 warheads. For four decades, there was a steady rhythm to the size of the stockpile; old warheads were retired, their plutonium and uranium components recycled, and new warheads were fabricated and fielded. This ended in 1989, when the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado, where the pits were made, was shut down for safety and environmental reasons. Since then, no new warheads have been produced.

When the Cold War ended, there were approximately 21,500 nuclear warheads in the U.S. stockpile. More than 11,000 nuclear warheads were disassembled and disposed of during the 1990s, leaving about 10,400 in the current stockpile. Only a few hundred more are slated for dismantlement. Work at Pantex also includes modifying certain warheads and randomly removing small numbers of different types from the stockpile for testing and evaluation. Some are converted into "joint test assemblies"—the nuclear material ("physics package") is removed and an instrumentation package substituted. The instruments record and transmit data when the Pentagon tests the warhead on an actual delivery system.

We estimate that it takes one to two weeks to dismantle an average warhead. Disassembly is essentially a reversal of the assembly process. The chemical high explosive is separated from the nuclear components and burned at Pantex. The separation is done in one of 13 assembly cells known as "Gravel Gerties," specially reinforced rooms able to withstand an explosion equivalent to 250 kilograms of TNT. From 1981 to 1986, the amount of high explosives burned annually averaged about 227,000 pounds.

Subassemblies and components are further broken down in assembly bays for salvage or disposal. A wide variety of non-nuclear components are returned to the facilities where they were originally manufactured. Among the items returned to the Kansas City Plant (operated for the Energy Department by Honeywell) are radars, contact fuses, arming and firing sets, permissive action links, safing components, thermal batteries, capacitors, and crystal resonators. Neutron generators once made at the Pinellas Plant in Clearwater, Florida, are now the responsibility of Sandia National Laboratories. The explosive actuators and other pyrotechnic components that were fabricated at the Mound Plant near Dayton, Ohio, are now also returned to Kansas City.

Thermonuclear secondaries (canned subassemblies) contain uranium and lithium-6 deuteride (the fusion material of a hydrogen bomb) and are returned to the Y-12 Plant at Oak Ridge for storage or processing. Tritium, a hydrogen isotope with a half-life of 12.3 years used for boosting the yield of the primary, is shipped to Savannah River Site in South Carolina. For the past 15 years, that tritium has been recycled into active warheads. From the mid-1950s until 1988, Savannah River reactors were used to produce tritium. In October 2003, the civilian Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant, located 50 miles south of Knoxville, Tennessee, began producing tritium for nuclear weapons.

[Argyll]

Does ANY Nation need that many Nukes?

[cut]

"WTF, mate?" fvcking kangeroos

[SOG]

Does ANY Nation need that many Nukes?

only in a pissing contest, not in reality, even if you manage to shoot down large numbers. then theres BIO war on top of that. sheesh. bye bye earth.

black rain, a few questions for you, i have no clue if youll know, just more than my simple knowledge would help!

1. about no new warheads being produced, do they not have a shelf life and thus are then transfered to a "new" shells or do you have to make entirely new nuclear material also when a shelf life is up? i know some parts need replacement but what about the "matter" itself?

2. i read in a article that "one" of the biggest computers in the US a few years back is chiming away in san francisco on nuclear calculations?

all i could find on net
"""The military needs supercomputers to build ever more precise models of nuclear explosions as well as detailed three-dimensional models of the aging of bomb components, especially the plastic explosive wrapped around the spherical surface of a weapon. The Energy Department believes that such modeling will help maintain the nation s weapon stockpile without resorting to actual testing of the bombs, which would violate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty."""

if there testing nuclear explosions does this mean they will be building new nukes in the future and if so where and what plant will need to be built? is there some other purpose for testing explosions? role playing scenarios perhaps in the event of or ways to prevent?

sorry if im bugging on this, just usually i dont remember topics that interest me until there mentioned then i chime in.

[usa320]

How many WMD a nation has isnt the issue at hand. The issue at hand is in fact how many nations are willing to use them. Iran, Iraq, North Korea to name a few.

The only instance i can see the US, Russia, China or Europe using nuclear weapons is if they were attacked with them first.

[martinexsquaddie]

unfortunatly there are a few wonks in the USA
talking about mininukes for bunker busting etc.
IMHO they need a good slap
NUKES should be big and scary they are the ulitmate weapon thats why people are afraid of them.
its a line in the sand sort of thing

[Roger Rabbit]

You only need enough Nukes to ensure you can destroy the world once :|

Think how much money could be spent on the Armed Forces or other stuff like Eduction, health services etc etc if people cut down on their nukes. I don't mean to sound like a hippy but i think that 185 nukes is 185 too many and the costs must be huge.