Re: hidden russian nukes


"William Black" <abuse@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dd9o5t$4qk$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> <dbohara@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1123548748.306580.160010@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> There has been a lot of discussion over Russian nukes hidden in the US
>> but almost no evidence of such. I maintain that the Russians would not
>> have done such a thing because they know that if any such weapons were
>> found that it would be an act of war. Any Russian spies who were
>> supposed to guard such weapons would be at risk of defecting and
>> revealing the secret so the Russians would probably not risk it.
>> However, if such weapons had been found, what would the US have done?
>> Calling it an act of war is one thing, responding appropriately is
>> another.
>> Would the Soviets risk having their miniaturization of nukes to be
>> inspected by the US? Essentially putting a nuke in the US is
>> equivalent to putting it out of their control and possible delivering
>> it to US authorities. My gut feeling is that the Soviets would see to
>> much risk in putting hidden nukes in the US when they had reliable
>> delivery systems that they could control.
>> Anybody else have thoughts on this?
>>
> The only real reason to do such a thing would be to save money on all
> those
> expensive a complicated strategic delivery systems, but they didn't do
> that...
>
> There are also practical difficulties:
>
> Small nukes have a reasonably short shelf life.

Why would that be? Most of the small (i.e., ADM-type, like the W-54 derived
SADM) nukes were unboosted pure fission weapons. Other than the necessary
batteries to power the firing circuits, what would there be that has such a
short shelf life? A pollonium disk? Methinks you are confusing these with
larger boosted and fusion devices, which have a shelf-life for their tritium
supplies...

>
> To make something like this work you'd need some system in place to rotate
> the weapons through a plant fitted for rearming them at regular intervals.
>
> Too complicated, too vulnerable and way too easy to make a mistake that
> would destroy the world.

While I find Lebed's claims vis a vis a plethora of "suitcase nukes" sitting
around in various parts of the world untrustworthy for many reasons, the
ones you have listed above don't quite fit the bill.

Brooks

>
> --
> William Black


.

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