Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability

[Jumbo]

http://thebulletin.org/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-undermining-strategic-stability-burst-height-compensating-super10578

 

do you think they've told don?

 

much much more inc. many more graphs and tech at link 

 

The burst-height compensating super-fuze

 

Quote

 

The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing—boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three—and 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.

Because of improvements in the killing power of US submarine-launched ballistic missiles, those submarines now patrol with more than three times the number of warheads needed to destroy the entire fleet of Russian land-based missiles in their silos. US submarine-based missiles can carry multiple warheads, so hundreds of others, now in storage, could be added to the submarine-based missile force, making it all the more lethal.

The revolutionary increase in the lethality of submarine-borne US nuclear forces comes from a “super-fuze” device that since 2009 has been incorporated into the Navy’s W76-1/Mk4A warhead as part of a decade-long life-extension program. We estimate that all warheads deployed on US ballistic missile submarines now have this fuzing capability. Because the innovations in the super-fuze appear, to the non-technical eye, to be minor, policymakers outside of the US government (and probably inside the government as well) have completely missed its revolutionary impact on military capabilities and its important implications for global security.

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.

Russian planners will almost surely see the advance in fuzing capability as empowering an increasingly feasible US preemptive nuclear strike capability—a capability that would require Russia to undertake countermeasures that would further increase the already dangerously high readiness of Russian nuclear forces. Tense nuclear postures based on worst-case planning assumptions already pose the possibility of a nuclear response to false warning of attack. The new kill capability created by super-fuzing increases the tension and the risk that US or Russian nuclear forces will be used in response to early warning of an attack—even when an attack has not occurred.

The increased capability of the US submarine force will likely be seen as even more threatening because Russia does not have a functioning space-based infrared early warning system but relies primarily on ground-based early warning radars to detect a US missile attack. Since these radars cannot see over the horizon, Russia has less than half as much early-warning time as the United States. (The United States has about 30 minutes, Russia 15 minutes or less.)

The inability of Russia to globally monitor missile launches from space means that Russian military and political leaders would have no “situational awareness” to help them assess whether an early-warning radar indication of a surprise attack is real or the result of a technical error.

The combination of this lack of Russian situational awareness, dangerously short warning times, high-readiness alert postures, and the increasing US strike capacity has created a deeply destabilizing and dangerous strategic nuclear situation.

When viewed in the alarming context of deteriorating political relations between Russia and the West, and the threats and counter-threats that are now becoming the norm for both sides in this evolving standoff, it may well be that the danger of an accident leading to nuclear war is as high now as it was in periods of peak crisis during the Cold War.

 

 

[Larry]

10 minutes ago, Jumbo said:

do you think they've told don?

 

 

1)  In words he understands?  (I'm only about 90% sure that I do.)  

 

2)  If I'm understanding it, I rather hope that they haven't told him.  Just me, but I suspect that telling him that we have the ability to blow up Russia's entire land-based nuclear arsenal in the silos might not be received by the President as bad news.  

 

 

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But let's say that this news is valid.  That we now have the ability (using sub-launched weapons alone, I'll point out) to destroy Russia's entire nuclear arsenal, in the silos.  

 

And let's say we agree that this is bad.  (Because it forces Russia to go to a policy of "launch as soon as the red light lights up".  Thus greatly increasing the possibility that they might attack us by mistake.)  

 

How do you fix it?  Intentionally reduce our capabilities?  (And, would Russia believe it, if we did?)  

 

 

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Recall reading a Scientific American article, decades ago, during the debate about building the MX missile system.  It went into this whole thing about CEP, overpressure waves, and several other factors.  

 

And basically one of the conclusions is that we would much rather be in a position, when WOPR says that Russia has attacked us, to hunker down in our silos, confident that even if the attack is real, 10% or so of our capability will still survive, anyway.  (And that, therefore, Russia will not attack, because even 10% of our capability is more than they're willing to take, in retaliation.)  

 

We'd prefer to have a policy of "Let's wait, and make sure it's real."  As opposed to a policy of "We have to launch now, before anything hits, or else we lose it all."  

 

It could at least be argued that we'd prefer for Russia to have the same policy.