US/Nuclear weapons

US/Nuclear weapons  (Nuclear weapons)
Interest of	Team B
The US had (has?) far more nuclear weapons than any other nation state and made clear a while back, that it is very willing to use them.

The US has 5,600 nuclear weapons in a 2022 estimate.

History

In 1945, the US became the only state that used nuclear weapons against a civilian population.

Cold War

The USSR continually lagged behind the USA in production of nuclear weapons, although this was not publicly admitted.

Team B

Full article: Team B

The US MICC organised Team B, which carried out a misinformation campaign to promote ideas such as the "missile gap" to try to promote weapons spending.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is obligated to try to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. The US spends tens of billions of dollars annually on nuclear weapons.

US nuclear force modernization

Hit pattern before.

Hit pattern with the new fuze.

The nuclear forces modernization program, also life-extension program, is understood to be an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, not to enhance military capabilities.

Super-fuze

Since 2009 this program has implemented new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal (in particular the US SSBN Force, ie the nuclear armed submarine forces). The so called "super-fuze" can adjust in flight (adjustable height-of-burst) to let the bomb detonate near, or over hardened targets in a distance that would still produce enough pressure to destroy them. Before only fuses with a fixed height were used, resulting in misses when the bomb over- or undershoots. Since the new technology is flexible and can adjust shortly before reaching the target, in connection with a change in aiming, the resulting trajectory of the missile makes it possible to reliably detonate the bomb in proximity to the target and so build up enough pressure to destroy it. Analysts based in America calculate that it enhances the capacity of the existing US ballistic missile force by a factor of roughly three.

Hans M. Kristensen and his co-authors for the The Bulletin explain:

“Before the invention of this new fuzing mechanism, even the most accurate ballistic missile warheads might not detonate close enough to targets hardened against nuclear attack to destroy them. But the new super-fuze is designed to destroy fixed targets by detonating above and around a target in a much more effective way. Warheads that would otherwise overfly a target and land too far away will now, because of the new fuzing system, detonate above the target.”
Hans M. Kristensen

Which means that when three missiles were calculated to destroy one target (missile silo) before, now one will in most cases do. Leaving room to direct two, or at least one, onto other targets. They further elaborate that:

“it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike”
Hans M. Kristensen

and Kristensen writing at FAS adds:

“[...] the SSBN force, rather than simply being a stable retaliatory capability, with the new super-fuze increasingly will be seen as a front-line, first-strike weapon that is likely to further fuel trigger-happy, worst-case planning in other nuclear-armed states.”
Hans M. Kristensen

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:US Nuclear Weapons Unaccountable	webpage	23 September 2011	Wayne Madsen
File:US Nuclear weapons in Europe.pdf	policy	15 March 2005	Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

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