US, Russia Reach Nuclear Arsenal Agreement 413
Peace Corps Library writes "The United States and Russia, seeking to move forward on one of the most significant arms control treaties since the end of the cold war, announced that they had reached a preliminary agreement on cutting each country's stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons, effectively setting the stage for a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), a cold war-era pact that expires in December. Under the framework, negotiators are to be instructed to craft a treaty that would cut strategic warheads for each side to between 1,500 and 1,675, down from the limit of 2,200 slated to take effect in 2012 under the Treaty of Moscow (PDF) signed by President George W. Bush. The limit on delivery vehicles would be cut to between 500 and 1,100 from the 1,600 currently allowed under Start. Perhaps more important than the specific limits would be a revised and extended verification system that otherwise would expire with Start in December. The United States currently has 1,198 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-based missiles and bombers, which together are capable of delivering 5,576 warheads, according to its most recent Start report in January, while Russia reported that it has 816 delivery vehicles capable of delivering 3,909 warheads. 'We have a mutual interest in protecting both of our populations from the kinds of danger that weapons proliferation is presenting today,' said President Obama."
Russia and the US have already done this before... (Score:5, Informative)
Basically the United States gave Russia a billion or so and tactical/technical/administrative support every year to reduce their weapons stock pile.
So even when Bush and Putin had their panties bunched up, great work was being done cooperatively by both sides. [nytimes.com] The program considered pretty successful by government standards.
I know, I know, the idea of good news from government is a scary one!
Keeping Count (Score:5, Informative)
START requires only that the weapons be deactivated, not destroyed. The US currently has over 4,000 "deactivated" nuclear weapons. Believe someone who used to shove them up a Buff's (B-52) belly, they can be reactivated in short order.
Also, START is 'Strategic' Arms Reduction Treaty. It says nothing about tacticals, either battlefield or ship based weapons, or EMP devices.
iguana is tasty (Score:1, Informative)
you insensitive clod
Re:Really?!? (Score:2, Informative)
Sort of. That figure does include MIRVs, but those are also trying to be reduce/removed as well. Launch vehicles means missiles, but missile is not the only method by which to deliver a nuclear device. Remember in the 1950s when we have B-50s with nukes on board flying in the air for hours, periodically being refueled? Aside from being a show of force, it was a nuclear arsenal that couldn't be touched by a Soviet nuclear strike. Anyway, we still have aircraft delivered nuclear warheads, and the plane that can deliver a warhead doesn't count against the launch vehicles limit.
Re:Robert Strange McNamara 1916 - 2009 (Score:2, Informative)
It's too bad he didn't get to see this agreement between old enemies.
Srlsy? It's not like this is the first [wikipedia.org] such [wikipedia.org] agreement [wikipedia.org].
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:3, Informative)
Any nuclear strike on a decent sized city would, at a minimum, cause deaths in the range of a few hundred thousand, likely topping a million in the larger cities(particularly once you take things like the resultant fires into account). Furthermore, unlike a hurricane, nuclear strikes would presumably be deliberately aimed for maximally important targets, not just ones that happen to be on the wrong bit of coast at the wrong time. Major population and industrial centers would be essentially certain to make the list.
It would be survivable(for some people), certainly; but it'd also be pretty damn grim.
The inevitable tiring from the indefensible (Score:3, Informative)
DAVID LANGE, Oxford Union debate, 1985 [publicaddress.net]
Re:Really?!? (Score:3, Informative)
Under START I & II, aircraft did count as launch vehicles. Verifiable destruction to include slicing the wings off B-52's, and leaving the carcass outside long enough to be photographed by a Russian satellite. Also, onsite inspections at various air bases and missile launch facilities on both sides.
Re:Would any country ever give up ALL their nukes? (Score:1, Informative)
During the 1970s and 1980s, South Africa pursued research into weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Six nuclear weapons were assembled[1]. With the anticipated changeover to a majority-elected government in the 1990s, the South African government dismantled all of its nuclear weapons, the only nation in the world to date which voluntarily gave up nuclear arms it had developed itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
Re:Anyone know (Score:3, Informative)
I'm blown away that this entirely inaccurate screed got modded informative.
Said President's term wasn't up until January and as much as he wanted to extend his term limit he wasn't likely to succeed. It also wasn't likely that had he succeeded in extending his term limit he would have been reelected anyhow since his approval ratings were at an all time low.
I also need to point out that an ally of Chavez he wasn't an American ally by any stretch of the imagination.
Proper democracies work by voting lame duck leaders out at the end of the term so what happened was a military coup. Obama speaking out against a military coup was, in fact, arguing in favor of the rule of law not against it.
Re:Anyone know (Score:4, Informative)
Let's get some facts straight here...
The Honduran President's term was not up. It's not up until January. He was trying to organize a vote on a constitutional referendum to allow him to run for a second term, which would likely have failed anyway. Yes, he was doing something illegal. But so was Nixon, and I don't remember the army ousting him.
To single out President Obama for his condemning of the coup is pretty disingenuous, considering pretty much every country in the region, and the UN, said the same thing.
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:3, Informative)
Assuming more robustly built structures in a modern city, I would still suspect that a 10 megaton bomb, releasing 50 times more energy would be much more destructive than 200-300 meters.
No, not really. Even at the most optimistic level, you need to take a cube root to go go between radius and volume... cube root of 50 is about 3.7. So, at the most optimistic, 50 times more volume of destruction equals about 3 something larger radius. Round down for improved building codes and improved technology. Round down for realistic blast effects (shading from bigger buildings, lots of the extra "power" just makes the fireball go upwards even faster).
Secondly, radiative damage would be devastating, as that becomes an increasing factor with bomb strength.
Nope, nada, zactly precisely totally the opposite effect. Check out the old book "effects of nuclear weapons" or the wikipedia entry. There used to be a palm pilot calculator that used the equations more than a decade ago on a little slide rule...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions [wikipedia.org]
In summary, for the little bombs, its a mighty close tossup as to killed by blast, burns, or radiation, although radiation has a slight lead, so most folks will probably die of radiation exposure if a small bomb hits. But for big bombs, most folks die from the burns which are real bad if you were outside in visual range (slashdotters need not worry about that) or for that matter in a burnable building (Moms basement counts, unless all masonry and steel roof shingles and metal window blinds), if you're close enough to be seriously fried in the fire then the blast will probably get you anyway, finally radiation is so short ranged it won't kill you unless you were so close you were in the utterly "ground to dust" range (like, bank guard chilling in an empty, closed bank vault or similar during the blast).
Or rephrased, for a small bomb its three virtual identical circles of destruction like earth vs its oceans and atmosphere kind of diagram, but for big bombs its a (relatively) tiny little radiation circle, surrounded by a big ole blast circle several times larger, surrounded by a modestly larger thermal circle, like saturn and some of its rings scale of diagram.
Re:Fallout (Score:3, Informative)
The DOD table followed a fact sheet published by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in April 2004, which stated: "Among the nuclear-weapon states, China...possesses the smallest nuclear arsenal." Since Britain has declared that it has less than 200 operationally available warheads, and the United States, Russia, and France have more, the Chinese statement could be interpreted to mean that Chinaâ(TM)s nuclear arsenal is smaller than Britainâ(TM)s.
Link [fas.org]
Re:Fallout (Score:1, Informative)
Happy [globalsecurity.org] now [fas.org] dickshit?
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:3, Informative)
There are very few 1MT-plus nukes left in anyone's arsenal. Accurate aiming and the need to shrink the physical size of the weapons to provide MIRV capability in sub-based missiles and smaller silo-based launchers meant a move away from the older higher-yield devices. Typical maximum yield from the latest generation of weapons is about 500-600kT. The WE177 freefall bomb deployed by the RAF had a dial on the side that allowed the yield to be adjusted from about 200 to 500kTonnes.
Radius of effectiveness at the target depends on how high up the bomb is triggered. Attacking hard targets such as docks, freeways and railheads (all built low to the ground of concrete and stone with few structral voids) requires a lower detonation point compared to destroying clusters of freestanding buildings. Going after buried structures such as command bunkers requires ground-burst or even earth-penetrator weapon designs.
It is believed the Chinese have some megatonne-range weapons to compensate for their delivery systems probable error on target but the Big 4 (US, Russia, UK, France) all have accurate warhead deployment systems that have negated the need for high-yield weapons.
Re:Welcome Back Carter... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Afro-American Racism Against Whites and Asians (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't governments job to "pull them out of their bad position" its their own individual job.
No, but it is the government's job to stop the majority from actively keeping them in a bad position. Jim Crowe was only a few years ago.
but this is 2009 not 1950
Try the late 60s, which weren't so long ago. Many people who still hold a lot of sway were either part of the problem or are directly descended from those people. I'm white and I hear what other whites aren't afraid to say about blacks when there aren't any blacks around. To imply that racism is dead among whites is very disingenuous.
Asians make more on average than whites, shouldn't whites get special treatment now?
No. Asians tend to make more in the US because they tend to come here as well-educated people who bear well-educated children. This is not an injustice, just a statistical anomaly, and a direct result of our immigration policy. Visit Asia sometime if you think that Asians can't be poor and ignorant. Blacks come from a history of being ACTIVELY held down, and it's going to be a while before this nation recovers from that. Having blacks in powerful positions helps their cause, and they know that and vote accordingly.
Re:Fallout (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Down to 95% of the world's arsenals! (Score:3, Informative)
They don't think about the need to defend against American nukes because they know that the US refrains from using nukes except when attacked by nukes.
The US has a clear nuclear first-strike policy. Nuclear weapons (specifically bunker-busters) were definitely considered for both Afghanistan and Iraq, but they were (fortunately, IMHO) ultimately not used.
Re:Getting rid of obsolete weapons (Score:2, Informative)
I will grant that the idea of a full-scale nuclear assault is an obsolete idea, and nuclear missiles are obsolete in the sense that they will never be used as part of any realistic military objective, and maintaining massive quantities at a moment's notice is a wasteful relic of a reality over two decades past.
Re:Comes up a little short (Score:2, Informative)
A modern ICBM is very hard to track; it only burns fuel for about 5 minutes, then continues to ascend for 20 minutes, reaching a height of over 1000 kilometers. A MIRVed missile will then break apart into (up to) eight separate warheads, as well as releasing chaff, reflective balloons, and decoy warheads. These warheads then fall to Earth at 4 km/s in less than two minutes, in a variable pattern (something like this [wikimedia.org]). That is a little under 30 minutes to see the launch, determine the ballistic course, and launch enough missiles from hundreds of miles away to attempt to intercept hundreds of real warheads amongst the greater amount of decoys and penetration aids. Oh, and some warheads can be set to detonate in the atmosphere to create an EMP effect, throwing off radar and other tracking systems. Radar and ABM sites will also be among the first targets. We have a hard enough time shooting down slow-moving single targets (the military has effective tactical anti-missile technology such as the Patriot and AEGIS, but there are orders of magnitude of difference between tactical missiles and ICBMs), but the very idea of a strategic nuclear defense is laughable. We've spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a system that we hope can take out a rogue missile or two.