So we're at the point where it's necessary to clarify missiles aren't nuclear? Great
looks at doomsday clock
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
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Well yes we do, ICBMs are generally associated with nukes because their sheer cost normally makes them impractical for standard explosive payloads.
If it even is an ICBM. Ukraine says it's an ICBM, and they're 90% confident about that. The US thinks it's an IRBM, which given the range involved, would make more sense. If it's an ICBM, then Russia did it just out of spite.
From wikipedia:
In principle there is very little difference between a low-performance ICBM and a high-performance IRBM, because decreasing payload mass can increase the range over the ICBM threshold.
Sounds like different militaries just classifying things differently
Was it non nuclear or do none of their nukes work?
While i appreciate the whish that Russian nukes don't work, it would be exceptional for none of their 10.000 or so to work. Even if only 1 in 1.000 work, that is still enough to annihilate some 10-20 million people or so.
Back at the beginning of the arms race, the US believed Russian propaganda that they had significantly more nukes than the US was capable of producing.
By the time the US had around 4000 nukes, later intelligence revealed Russia had 4. The US decided to maintain the policy of the arms race as it was very beneficial to the defense industry and research.
The cost to develop and maintain a working thermonuclear weapon is enormous, let alone fission bombs. Russia never had the resources to maintain an arsenal the West isn't capable of intercepting. You may recall the "Iron Dome" missile defence system that was removed from Europe.
The rocket platforms are expensive enough. The nuclear material requires time, maintenance, and a fuck load of power to produce.
I get the fear. China can do it, they have all the resources and knowledge to. Same with India.
Facts of nukes help: Tritium has a halflife of 12.3 years. Meaning after 12.3 years, the amount of tritium in a nuke is half. the 500lbs of tritium in the 60s is now 35lbs today. Obviously I dont know how much is needed to make a nuke, but it's not easy to concentrate tritium well. The most effective way is replacing control rods in nuclear reactors with lithium rods. But that's not the real issue. That's relatively minor.
The problem is weapons grade uranium or plutonium. You need to enrich those to very high % of U-235 to get a big enough blast to trigger the fusion reaction. To do that, enormous, power intensive centrifuge facilities are required. And it takes a long time to produce enough for a fission bomb.
Given that Putin operates on wealth, and the shit state of the Russian military? They didn't maintain any operational nukes after the Soviet Union fell.
They definitely report the spending levels to maintain a mixed arsenal, and tbh looking at Russian modernization decisions, they’re focusing on the ‘better’ delivery methods like sea and air launch.
Russian leadership’s apparent conviction that the US ballistic missile defense system constitutes a real future risk to the credibility of Russia’s retaliatory capability. The poor performance and loss of a significant portion of Russian conventional forces in the war against Ukraine and the depletion of its weapon stockpiles will likely deepen Russia’s reliance on nuclear weapons for its national defense.
They got drained hard in Ukraine and showed the world that Russia was a paper tiger - only good for a thunder run leadership decapitation or beating back irregular and militant forces. Nukes are their prestige weapon, and the hand wringing over escalation has only served to validate their faith.
Tritium has a halflife of 12.3 years.
A nitpick: that's why you use lithium-6 deuteride. It gets converted to tritium by radiation at a moment's notice. Lithium 6 is a stable isotope.
Ok, so I hadn't known about that. I am surprised I didn't know about that. It does look like producing it is a minor problem - ~5% of natural lithium is in this form. You can apparently make it in nuclear reactors as well. But you're right, once you produce it, you have it.
However, to further my point, isotope separation isn't exactly easy, and other than the use for nuclear fusion, lithium-6 dueteride doesn't have value, outside selling for nuclear weapons.
Knowing about how Putin sold and nationalized private business and government entities in the 90s and early 2000s, I wouldn't be surprised if he sold the Soviet stockpile for an enormous amount to otherwise sanctioned countries.
The reason I came to this conclusion was when they withdrew from the Test Ban treaty, and have yet to actually succeed in a nuclear weapon test. I think they are attempting to rebuild their arsenal, and it's not going well.
No-one has to do real life nuke tests anymore
Russia is the largest country and has access to all the natural ressources necessary. Also Russia has a large civil nuclear industry. Not only their power plants, but also production of Rods for nuclear reactors. A lot of the European nuclear plants run on rods produced in Russia.
Also the nukes are Russias main deterrent and western intelligence, in particular the US aren't stupid. Maintaining a sufficient arsenal must have been Russias main strategic objective since 1990.
If Russia didn't have enough working nukes for MAD, the western response would look very different.
Again i get the whish to think like this, but it is naive to believe Russia would have zero working nukes.
It was a joke.
How insane would that be? A nuke that fails to go off and they were like: just kidddding.
A fizzle yield would still destroy a few city blocks and spread radiation around. It turns an expensive, proper nuclear bomb into a large dirty bomb.
Why though? A warning to the west?
Cause last time I checked, Russia and Ukraine are on the same continent, making this a huge waste.
Cause last time I checked, Russia and Ukraine are on the same continen
The RS-26 only has around 6000km range and was developed for striking Europe.
Probably a warning in response to letting Ukraine use western missiles deep into russian territory.
“deep into russian territory” is quite an exaggeration. Biden only okayed it for the Kursk and neighbouring regions.
The U.S. official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the decision, said the U.S. is allowing Ukraine to use the weapons to target in and around Kursk — the same region where some 10,000 North Korean troops were recently deployed, according to the U.S. and its allies.
Thank you for the clarification. It was the lingo used by western media these past days.
🤓 Russia is in two continents
Funnily enough, it is not according to Russia. The definition of "continent" is almost completely arbritrary anyway, and exactly where you draw the line between Europe and Asia - or if you draw it at all - is probably the fuzziest bit of all. Russia and many other countries just consider Eurasia to be one continent
I'll accept Afro-eurasia before I do Eurasia 😤
Personally I think that Asia is too big a category to be useful as it is and we should be drawing extra lines. Let the Himalayas, Urals, Altais, and Tian Shans count as continental borders too. Also the Sahara. All of those have been obstacles to human movement as much as oceans have
that still doesn't explain using an icbm against a nation you share a border with. there's some message russia is sending. it's either "don't forget, we have icbms and they're operational" or it's "we are running low on standard missiles and have to fight weird"
FWIW, the US currently thinks it's an IRBM, not an ICBM, basically for that reason. Why use an ICBM here? But Russia might have done it just because they can.
Don't let the name fool you, ICBMs not only have a much larger range but they also (generally) have higher payloads and they're designed around 'user servicable' and swappable warheads.
They're sending a message and it isn't "we could hit you even if you were thousands of kilometers away", it's "we could bolt a nuke to this bad boy"
I mean... The general point still stands. It's not that western nations seriously doubt that Russia has these weapons. We know Russia has ICBMs, we know they have nukes, we know they're willing to attack Ukraine with conventional weapons.
What Western nations doubt is that Russia would actually attack them or use nukes, because it'd trigger a united response they'd lose against, and they know that and want to avoid it.
It's not about capabilities, but willingness.
What Western nations doubt is that Russia would actually attack them or use nukes
Russia launched everything but the nuke. That should be the takeaway.
Yes, everyone knows they have nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, all that fun shit, everyone knows they have ICBMs.
They've implied verbally that there could be scenarios in which they'd feel justified with using a nuclear weapon, but they literally just launched everything but the nuke. It's a pretty major escalation.
I'm also not here to speculate as to whether it's a hollow threat, I'm just pointing out that launching an ICBM is a really big deal
Yeah, but a central tenet of nuclear deterrence is that you don't constantly posture your own position with nuclear armaments. If you keep saying if you cross this red line we'll go nuclear, and then don't ...... It makes future threats pretty laughable.
International nuclear relations have already been gamed out. It's always a last case scenario, because everyone has a sense of self preservation, especially the narcissistic types that like to be in charge of countries.
No one wants to live in a nuclear wasteland, so no one is going to create a nuclear wasteland unless they feel that they themselves are in immediate existential danger, and even then it would be an action made in spite.
This is part of the point I was trying to make
Yeah but no one lives in the part on the other continent.
The report is true. The landings were recorded on CCTV.
https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1859535662539526551
It was even expected. A few days ago, Ukrainian intelligence informed the public that a non-standard missile attack was likely coming. They had seen launch preparations in Astrakhan and speculated that a liquid-fuel ICBM would be launched with multiple hypersonic glide vehicles.
Apparently, multiple shots of something considerably more dumb - what seems like six ICBMs with dummy warheads (alternatively a single missile with six warheads, each with six penetration aids) - rained down on Dnipro. It seems that air defense didn't even fire, no chance of intercepting and what's the point.
I guess this must be Putin's language for "don't poke our command centers" (Ukrainians recently attacked the command center of Russia's army group north). I guess Ukrainians can decipher what he means and won't torch the Kremlin, but will keep poking command centers.
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It’s sad that to avoid twitter, owned by a far right billionaire, the alternative is the telegraph, owned by rupert murdoch, a far right billionaire.
I look forward to the link to your PeerTube instance.
I don’t have to own a peertube instance to be allowed to say it’s sad that video sharing is monopolised by billionaires.
(If I misunderstood your reply, I’m sorry, I’m just used to getting snarky comments here on lemmy)
Sorry, I meant it in a "be the change you wish to see in the world" sort of way, not a "you aren't entitled to complain" sort of way.
no worries. I wish I could, but I’m on disability benefits and below poverty line so I can’t exactly afford to host anything expensive.