[anon721656321]

So much for nuclear non-proliferation...

One of the best benefits of the current no live nuclear testing treaties / environment, was that the United States was one of a few countries that had done extensive live tests early on.

The United States is able to sit on its arsenal and data, and with extensive research and simulation validate to a high degree of accuracy that "hey our bombs still work".

Most countries do not have the data/technical expertise/resources to be able to validate with just simulation. But since no-one else is doing live tests, they do not do live tests either.

How much do you want to bet that a subset of the Russian nuclear weapons simply do not work, and that they will only figure this out when they need to 'test' in response to American tests.

My bet is that it is non-0.

[general1465]

> How much do you want to bet that a subset of the Russian nuclear weapons simply do not work, and that they will only figure this out when they need to 'test' in response to American tests

My bet is that most of them are in disrepair. Russia spends around 8 Billion USD on nuclear weapons. France spends around 6 Billion USD on nuclear weapons. Difference is that France has something like 200 warheads, while Russia has something like 5500 warheads.

https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_spending_get_the_facts

Furthermore the fact that using of nuclear weapons has extremely low probability of happening is giving a massive space for corruption. Why maintain what you are not going to use? They managed to siphon money from maintenance of armored equipment, why not ICBMs?

We can get to the staggering reality like Russians have less than 100 working nukes and they themselves may not even know which one are those from those 5500

[mamonster]

>My bet is that most of them are in disrepair. Russia spends around 8 Billion USD on nuclear weapons. France spends around 6 Billion USD on nuclear weapons. Difference is that France has something like 200 warheads, while Russia has something like 5500 warheads.

US spend: 57 billion USD; US GDP: 29,000 billion. US spend on nukes as % of GDP: 0.19%

Russia spend: 8 billion USD; Russia GDP: 2173 billion. Russia spend on nukes as % of GDP: 0.36%

France spend: 6 billion USD; France GDP: 3174 billion. French spend on nukes as % of GDP: 0.18%.

[general1465]

French, Russian and US economies has a little bit different sizes.

[mamonster]

That's why I put as % of GDP. Russian nukes cost rubles, not USD. The numbers suggest pretty conclusively that the Russian arsenal of 5500 is maintained about as well as the US arsenal of like 5300.

Your "staggering reality" of 100 working missiles is completely delusional.

[anon721656321]

I think there is a degree of trade off in this, yes a nuclear scientist/engineer/technician in Russia or China is cheaper than in the USA. But also, the people with those kind of skills (or those technically competent enough to do a good job, are going to be expensive no matter what.)

At some level when people have enough technical skill to do these jobs well, they also have enough technical skill to leave the country and go elsewhere and do something else for better quality of life.

Like GDP per capita in china is much lower than the USA, I bet that their nuclear program engineers are getting paid at least ~80k range, which while less than the equivalent engineer in the USA is paid, is not the same level as what a direct PPP comparison would give.

[kelipso]

There are a lot of software engineers in UK who made $50k or less who could have presumably moved to the US a make a lot more but never did. Lots of government employees making much less than they could. Patriotism, wanting to live in their own country, wanting to work on interesting things, etc.

[general1465]

Again, Russia has much smaller economy than USA. What are you searching for is PPP And no amount of PPP will help you to have 5500 warheads on 8 Billion budget vs 200 warheads on 6 Billion budget.

With your logic Kongo should be able to afford 5500 nuclear warheads just by spending 0.4% pf GDP. That's not possible is it?

[Paradigma11]

So you are saying that Tuvalu could maintain a nuclear arsenal for around 260 000 USD.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Shouldn't you compare US with EU?

[gambiting]

Or, they do have a 100 working ICBMs and they do actually know which ones are those. The rest of the warheads in storage are not really maintained. Russians are corrupt as hell, but they are not actually incompetent when they need to have something working.

[poszlem]

Nuclear non-proliferation only really works when no one feels the need for nuclear weapons in the first place. As soon as countries start feeling threatened or distrust each other, the whole idea falls apart. It’s easy to agree on disarmament when everyone feels safe, but when fear enters the picture, every nation starts looking for its own button to press.

Sadly, the world learned this lesson the hard way from Ukraine’s example: a country that gave up its nuclear arsenal for security guarantees, only to be invaded by the very power that signed them.

[koakuma-chan]

Didn't Russia test a nuclear missile a few days ago?

[MattPalmer1086]

That was a nuclear engine for a cruise missile, not a nuclear warhead.

[lloeki]

Technically correct.

Now, earnest question: what happens to the nuclear engine fuel at end of flight? While it certainly won't become critical it's likely the only part it stops being is "engine fuel".

(Of course the question above is irrelevant the moment the missile is fitted with a nuclear warhead)

[MattPalmer1086]

Of course this nuclear cruise missile is horribly dangerous with or without a nuclear warhead.

However, testing it says nothing about whether the nuclear warheads still work, which is the nuclear testing in question.

[general1465]

Nuclear missile is effectively a flying scramjet nuclear reactor heating air passing through it via radioactive decay, not a nuke.

[WinstonSmith84]

Yup. The last test from Russia was in 1990. China was in 1996. China was much less advanced than now compared to the US (proportionally) and Russia/USSR was into a crisis and didn't even exist as a country (Russia) back then. The US is just doing another gift to Russia and China.

[lonelyasacloud]

> My bet is that it is non-0.

For the Russians it would be a mistake to rely on the unreliability or inferiority of their weapons - they historically are very adept at addressing those with sheer numbers.

[secondcoming]

'non-proliferation' is about preventing currently non-nuclear countries from obtaining/developing nuclear weapons, it's not about nuclear tests.

[xg15]

That's not wrong, but what would countries that already own nuclear weapons keep from simply producing new ones?