I may be misremembering this, but the desire to move missiles around may be downstream of the START and New START arms limitation treaties.
These give the US and Russian governments what are supposed to be adequate inspection regimes to count the number of active missiles, but of course make no requirement on the signatories to make it easy to locate all the missiles at any given moment.
So there’s a strong strategic incentive to shuffle them around between treaty-mandated inspections.
START and New START have both expired. New START effectively ended in 2023 after Russia stopped complying due to US materiel support for Ukraine. It formally expired earlier this year.
Regardless, the treaties are strategically irrelevant since China is a non-signatory and it has refused to sign on to a joint arms control agreement.
Sure, but the legal techniques of subterfuge developed under those treaties were designed to be effective against satellite and other intelligence in combination with treaty inspections. That those inspections have at least temporarily stopped is no reason to stop playing three-card monte with the missiles. These are big missiles, on which decades of information was collected by Russia, treaty-directed and otherwise.
> adequate inspection regimes to count the number of active missiles
It should be noted that a missle designed with a removable component requiring 30 seconds of install time does not count as an active missle when not assembled.
Feels weird to talk about the "can neither confirm nor deny" stuff when the website for the Warren AFB and 90th Wing so plainly say that they have and operate ICBMs.
That, plus young security forces airmen and missile officers that just don’t want to accidentally say something they’re not supposed to. CYA is the most common source of over classification.
I wonder how many useable nuclear weapons do the super powers have. I mean I get the whole story about readiness yada yada, but what are the chances that they have really ready to go all the heads they report?
Anyone with manufacturing/military experience knows that the maintenance of anything over the span of decades is a shitshow.
I wouldn’t be surprised if only a small fraction of what they report is immediately useable.
To a large extent, nuclear weapons rely on being a convincing bluff. As long as there is enough ambigiuity about whether they work or not, they will serve as a deterrent. See Israel, which doesn't even admit it has any bombs and Russia, whose weapons are probably in a far worse state of repair.
Once you get to the point where the missiles are actually being used, you have already lost.
Was driving down I-5 the night before Thanksgiving some time in the late 90s and found myself in a traffic jam (there was a truck on fire 100 miles ahead, Thanksgiving eve on I5 is always a nightmare) stuck next to one of these, after a while people were getting out of their cars to stretch their legs, take a piss etc - the pseudo soldiers accompanying the truck were getting very very antsy by all these people wandering around the nuke
In my state if your wide load is big enough you need a police escort. That means you drive 70-80mph because that's what the police do. Of course, the highest speed limit in this state is not that high.
> These fuel haulers think they got a bomb in their back, while this guy had a nuclear warhead,
Transporting a nuclear warhead is probably safer. I'm sure there are tons of safeguards to prevent an accidental detonation, and with a military escort people are more likely to be drive carefully around you.
Do they transport warheads fully assembled, or with cores and high explosives separate? If the latter, would they send explosives in the same shipment as cores? If disassembled components are being shipped via ground, with cores separate from explosives, the worst that could happen would be a small conventional explosion with no risk of radioactive contamination.
I think the fuel elements of the missiles (or fueled cases) would be much more dangerous than the warheads. Warheads are designed with extreme precautions so they don’t go off when they are not supposed to, but Minutemen missiles are solid rockets and solid fuel is usually quite temperamental.
Ideally, yes. In practice there have been a number of nuclear devices which can arm accidentally, though (at least as far as anyone has so far admitted) they were generally early ones.
Also, of course, even assuming that it’s ‘safe’, spreading one over the landscape is extremely undesirable.
(Also if it was an actual missile as described, you _definitely_ do not want one of those solid fuel motors going up.)
I may be misremembering this, but the desire to move missiles around may be downstream of the START and New START arms limitation treaties.
These give the US and Russian governments what are supposed to be adequate inspection regimes to count the number of active missiles, but of course make no requirement on the signatories to make it easy to locate all the missiles at any given moment.
So there’s a strong strategic incentive to shuffle them around between treaty-mandated inspections.
START and New START have both expired. New START effectively ended in 2023 after Russia stopped complying due to US materiel support for Ukraine. It formally expired earlier this year.
Regardless, the treaties are strategically irrelevant since China is a non-signatory and it has refused to sign on to a joint arms control agreement.
Sure, but the legal techniques of subterfuge developed under those treaties were designed to be effective against satellite and other intelligence in combination with treaty inspections. That those inspections have at least temporarily stopped is no reason to stop playing three-card monte with the missiles. These are big missiles, on which decades of information was collected by Russia, treaty-directed and otherwise.
Isn't China's nuclear arsenal a tiny fraction of that of Russia and the US?
Why is its non-involvement relevant, but the non-involvement of Israel, Pakistan, India isn't?
how would we know? The US built 10,000s nuclear weapons on the assumption the USSR had the same back in the 70s and 80s, but they were wrong
Presumably because the CIA isn't spending its entire budget on hookers and blow, and is doing its job... Of making its job to know.
> China is a non-signatory and it has refused to sign on to a joint arms control agreement
China has expressed interest in atms control if it includes a reduction in the arms race around Taiwan as well.
A new start? Hmm, how to fit that on a license plate… ANUSTART?
Well, it can also tokenizes as
ANUS TART
Maybe that was your point.
It is a good idea to screen urls for alternative parses and tokenizations. For example
http://therapistfinder.com
For my day job I had written such a tokenizer, so I do this almost automatically.
> adequate inspection regimes to count the number of active missiles
It should be noted that a missle designed with a removable component requiring 30 seconds of install time does not count as an active missle when not assembled.
There are 400 missiles in 400 silos and 50 kept in a warm status. I think the "moving around" is servicing them, replacing the tritium and so on.
Feels weird to talk about the "can neither confirm nor deny" stuff when the website for the Warren AFB and 90th Wing so plainly say that they have and operate ICBMs.
https://www.warren.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/
https://www.warren.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Artic...
Maybe it's something like some of the missiles have no warhead on them, and you don't know which ones.
That, plus young security forces airmen and missile officers that just don’t want to accidentally say something they’re not supposed to. CYA is the most common source of over classification.
Speaking of Warren, worth mentioning this site⁽¹⁾ by an ex-missileer at F.E. Warren.
https://missileer.watch/
I wonder how many useable nuclear weapons do the super powers have. I mean I get the whole story about readiness yada yada, but what are the chances that they have really ready to go all the heads they report?
Anyone with manufacturing/military experience knows that the maintenance of anything over the span of decades is a shitshow.
I wouldn’t be surprised if only a small fraction of what they report is immediately useable.
To a large extent, nuclear weapons rely on being a convincing bluff. As long as there is enough ambigiuity about whether they work or not, they will serve as a deterrent. See Israel, which doesn't even admit it has any bombs and Russia, whose weapons are probably in a far worse state of repair.
Once you get to the point where the missiles are actually being used, you have already lost.
Was driving down I-5 the night before Thanksgiving some time in the late 90s and found myself in a traffic jam (there was a truck on fire 100 miles ahead, Thanksgiving eve on I5 is always a nightmare) stuck next to one of these, after a while people were getting out of their cars to stretch their legs, take a piss etc - the pseudo soldiers accompanying the truck were getting very very antsy by all these people wandering around the nuke
Video here from Malmstrom AFB where they show off the vehicles in more detail, including the inside of the transporter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5t1h4HSFWg.
And for the other section mentioned from the DOE Office of Secure Transportation:
"The Safeguards Transport program is so secretive that only three photographs of the unknown number of vehicles have been publicly released."
... here's quite a few hundred more (moving) photographs of them! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8yLYLSzoIw
I wonder how ready those bearcat turrets actually are to be manned. I guess they might have a whole squad with them because training is training?
They drive significantly under the speed limit; of course everyone passes them.
Yeah, you definitely shouldn't follow behind them for a long distances.
Strangely in the UK, the vehicles carrying nuclear weapons are escorted by the nuclear police and they absolutely 'bomb' it past everyone.
Until someone sits in front of them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srytx_01MW8
In my state if your wide load is big enough you need a police escort. That means you drive 70-80mph because that's what the police do. Of course, the highest speed limit in this state is not that high.
> These fuel haulers think they got a bomb in their back, while this guy had a nuclear warhead,
Transporting a nuclear warhead is probably safer. I'm sure there are tons of safeguards to prevent an accidental detonation, and with a military escort people are more likely to be drive carefully around you.
Do they transport warheads fully assembled, or with cores and high explosives separate? If the latter, would they send explosives in the same shipment as cores? If disassembled components are being shipped via ground, with cores separate from explosives, the worst that could happen would be a small conventional explosion with no risk of radioactive contamination.
I think the fuel elements of the missiles (or fueled cases) would be much more dangerous than the warheads. Warheads are designed with extreme precautions so they don’t go off when they are not supposed to, but Minutemen missiles are solid rockets and solid fuel is usually quite temperamental.
Ideally, yes. In practice there have been a number of nuclear devices which can arm accidentally, though (at least as far as anyone has so far admitted) they were generally early ones.
Also, of course, even assuming that it’s ‘safe’, spreading one over the landscape is extremely undesirable.
(Also if it was an actual missile as described, you _definitely_ do not want one of those solid fuel motors going up.)
If you follow too closely, you can rear-end one.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/6macxc/casually_reare...
https://www.dailymail.com/video/news/video-1226415/US-nuclea...
I was intrigued by the comment about the escort ramming local police off the road! Is there footage anywhere of this?
That has to be considered as a threat model scenario - cars pretending to be cops stopping it to pretend to check something.
This is the nerd equivalent of OMG I saw Britney Spears at Costco.
They could sell bumper stickers. "This car passed a Nuklear ICBM"
That'll get 'em outta the left lane