Ask Ukraine how much it cost them to get rid of theirs.
KingOfCoders 20 minutes ago [-]
And trusting Russia and the US that they would protect Ukraine's sovereignty and "refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine".
api 6 minutes ago [-]
I am deeply saddened to say that I agree. Keep the nukes.
Creating a world that results in that conclusion may go down as one of the greatest policy failures in history, and if we do in the end have an atomic war I think that's where the responsibility lay.
Ultimately we have failed as a species to rise morally above "might makes right" and I think we are going to pay for that.
ta20240528 37 minutes ago [-]
No mention of the moral obligation to the other 100+ compliant nations in the non-proliferation treaty to disarm?
threeseed 17 minutes ago [-]
No one is talking about disarming the US.
But everyone including the US acknowledges that they don’t need the ridiculous number of nuclear weapons any longer. Especially given that as Trump said Europe is responsible for itself now.
hdivider 37 minutes ago [-]
Sadly, we need it.
And yet we should build and struggle toward the conditions which would allow a massive reduction of the nucelar arsenal.
This would require a level of strategy and clear-mindedness as well as strengthening the US Alliance system so we can push against the autocracy superpowers in a united front, by nonviolent means.
Instead we get high school age kids with flash drives stealing the most sensitive federal government data and potentially injecting unknown code.
So the best bet is this $946B will flow down to other innovations and market translation through the small business set-aside laws. One can always hope.
karlgkk 31 minutes ago [-]
We don’t need it. We have about 3500 warheads and another 1500 awaiting dismantlement
I’m not going to say that a country doesn’t need nuclear weapons in the modern era. As disappointing as that is.
But I really do not see why we need 3500
Surely, 1500 nuclear bombs is an effective deterrent
exabrial 21 minutes ago [-]
There's 'x' number that is effective and practical. You have to have x1 number of submarines deployed at any time, x2 in ICBM silos, x3 on carriers, x4 on destroyers, x5 stationed at air bases. Of that pool, probably 50% have to be rotated off for maintenance, etc.
Whatever that number is, the 31,000+ we used to have was stupid. 3,500 in a historical context is a relief.
The real conundrum these days is that you can't test more. You want to be 100% certain it goes off when needed, but it's pretty hard to test that theory without... testing one.
If all that could be done with 1,500 I'm all in. Just a lot of 'practical' considerations that go into whatever 'x' number is.
dreamcompiler 13 minutes ago [-]
> The real conundrum these days is that you can't test more.
This is why the DOE has the most powerful supercomputers in the world. They have to simulate nuclear explosions because they can't test them.
jebarker 2 minutes ago [-]
I wonder to what extent simulation can reliably test the mechanical and detonation aspects? I always imagined simulation assumed you have an explosion and you want to see the effect.
jonfw 8 minutes ago [-]
There are probably economies of scale associated with maintaining nuclear weapons. Whether you have 1500 or 3500, you need a “large scale nukes” program. You’re not going to cut costs in half by cutting nukes in half.
You also have to consider that nukes have to be distributed around the world, so that you can target enemies throughout the world, so that enemies don’t know where to target their missile defense systems, and so that you still have adequate threat if sites are attacked.
samirelanduk 11 minutes ago [-]
This was true before missile defense systems started becoming a factor. If 1500 is an effective deterrent, you need 1500 multipled by the inverse of whatever percentage of those bombs your adversary can plausibly stop.
dsq 7 minutes ago [-]
I can just see, shaking with horror, the image of missiles and anti missiles smashing into each other, raining immense radiation into the oceans poisining everything. And thats the best case, where the earheads are intercepted successfully.
hdivider 12 minutes ago [-]
It's complex, for sure. I look back to the JFK era and how those folks handled far larger nuclear arsenals -- and then created the space program as we know it today. Peaceful exploration of space during the Cold War, with much of the same technology as ICBMs.
We're a far cry from that at the moment. In my view, US democracy is being contested (to say it with understatement), and US and Allied security also -- both more than probably any time in the Cold War. Worse than this is the threat to the alliance system.
The difference is now, China is ramping up its nuclear arsenal and has the economic backing to make it happen. The Russians can't be ignored either as their systems are very advanced and quite numerous. So I think to get past our internal problems in the Western world, we need a time margin of maybe 20 years.
Seen in this light, $956B over 10 years is not extreme, assuming it will indeed produce many other economic effects and technological breakthroughs (not just more graft for the billionaires). It's just I'd rather also see a massive increase in NASA funding with clear programmatic goals (instead of 'worship SpaceX'), international cooperation, and tie it to restoration of funding at the civilian agencies. We're far from that being viable at this point, however.
Yeul 27 minutes ago [-]
Imagine if you will a situation in which the Palestinians or Ukrainians had a few nukes.
At the very least every country including my own should have a way to drag the enemy down to the hell should all else fail.
mvdtnz 13 minutes ago [-]
Given the Palestinians attacked Israel completely unprovoked with no regard to the hell that would rain down on themselves in retaliation I am horrified by the thought of them armed with nukes.
pfdietz 49 minutes ago [-]
That's actually pretty cheap.
topspin 30 minutes ago [-]
$94.6B/y, as compared to the $824B 2024 DOD budget. 11.4% of DOD to sustain the most important weapon system in existence.
I wouldn't use the word "cheap," but it doesn't look all that unreasonable, given what we're dealing with here.
twoodfin 1 minutes ago [-]
Also, one reason they’re as expensive to maintain as they are is that we don’t test detonate them any more. We have to do a bunch of indirect testing with expensive equipment and supercomputers.
That’s probably a good thing; certainly the people complaining here about costs would not suggest we go back to doing so.
Coffeewine 2 minutes ago [-]
We could probably drive the cost down a bit by specializing in a delivery system (say, submarines) but I’m not a strategist and maybe those that are think it’s too risky. Certainly if we were to keep only one thing about the military it would be nuclear missiles.
genjo 42 minutes ago [-]
I thought the same. So we are still not gonna see any of the good stuff, ey?
deadbabe 41 minutes ago [-]
That’s alarmingly cheap when spread over a decade. Feels like it doesn’t cost much to become a United States level nuclear superpower.
parrit 37 minutes ago [-]
Sounds like mostly maintenance, warheads etc. though rather than refinement of new materials?
tonetheman 12 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
ziofill 52 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
geodel 45 minutes ago [-]
Might be busy in cutting amount of eggs consumed government offices.
euroderf 31 minutes ago [-]
The doge website informs me that chocolate rations are UP
hdivider 41 minutes ago [-]
Of course all the SpaceX and Tesla contracts are 100% efficient. Nothing to see there, move on to science, health, education.
50 minutes ago [-]
Rendered at 13:48:28 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Creating a world that results in that conclusion may go down as one of the greatest policy failures in history, and if we do in the end have an atomic war I think that's where the responsibility lay.
Ultimately we have failed as a species to rise morally above "might makes right" and I think we are going to pay for that.
But everyone including the US acknowledges that they don’t need the ridiculous number of nuclear weapons any longer. Especially given that as Trump said Europe is responsible for itself now.
And yet we should build and struggle toward the conditions which would allow a massive reduction of the nucelar arsenal.
This would require a level of strategy and clear-mindedness as well as strengthening the US Alliance system so we can push against the autocracy superpowers in a united front, by nonviolent means.
Instead we get high school age kids with flash drives stealing the most sensitive federal government data and potentially injecting unknown code.
So the best bet is this $946B will flow down to other innovations and market translation through the small business set-aside laws. One can always hope.
I’m not going to say that a country doesn’t need nuclear weapons in the modern era. As disappointing as that is.
But I really do not see why we need 3500
Surely, 1500 nuclear bombs is an effective deterrent
Whatever that number is, the 31,000+ we used to have was stupid. 3,500 in a historical context is a relief.
The real conundrum these days is that you can't test more. You want to be 100% certain it goes off when needed, but it's pretty hard to test that theory without... testing one.
If all that could be done with 1,500 I'm all in. Just a lot of 'practical' considerations that go into whatever 'x' number is.
This is why the DOE has the most powerful supercomputers in the world. They have to simulate nuclear explosions because they can't test them.
You also have to consider that nukes have to be distributed around the world, so that you can target enemies throughout the world, so that enemies don’t know where to target their missile defense systems, and so that you still have adequate threat if sites are attacked.
We're a far cry from that at the moment. In my view, US democracy is being contested (to say it with understatement), and US and Allied security also -- both more than probably any time in the Cold War. Worse than this is the threat to the alliance system.
The difference is now, China is ramping up its nuclear arsenal and has the economic backing to make it happen. The Russians can't be ignored either as their systems are very advanced and quite numerous. So I think to get past our internal problems in the Western world, we need a time margin of maybe 20 years.
Seen in this light, $956B over 10 years is not extreme, assuming it will indeed produce many other economic effects and technological breakthroughs (not just more graft for the billionaires). It's just I'd rather also see a massive increase in NASA funding with clear programmatic goals (instead of 'worship SpaceX'), international cooperation, and tie it to restoration of funding at the civilian agencies. We're far from that being viable at this point, however.
At the very least every country including my own should have a way to drag the enemy down to the hell should all else fail.
I wouldn't use the word "cheap," but it doesn't look all that unreasonable, given what we're dealing with here.
That’s probably a good thing; certainly the people complaining here about costs would not suggest we go back to doing so.