Let me surprise many of you by saying I am not knee-jerk opposing the president's idea of reducing our nuclear force.
( Get up off the floor)
Seriously, How many nukes do we need?
I am not sure that a simple 1:1 ratio is the correct answer, but I don't know.
Do we need to have nuclear equity with our potential adversaries, or just enough nukes to eliminate all life on earth 50 times over?
I would hope this was a military decision, or at least the military had some part in determining the number.
I hear some of my right wing friends crying about this unilateral reduction as "surrender, but is the US safer by having 10,000 warheads than we are with 300?
Again, this is not my area of expertise.
How many nukes do we need to act as a credible deterrent force?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Depends how good your delivery systems and the potential adversary's anti-missile systems are. Alternative is to develop the capability to smuggle nuclear weapons into an enemy country via underhanded means, and detonate them remotely, but unless this is publicly stated (probably in violation of all sorts of treaties), it doesn't really provide a deterrent.

The real answer is one, with the one weapon being a doomsday machine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmCKJi3CKGE

There are all sorts of ways of answering . . . not all warheads are alike based on size and deployment method. Survival of the launch and delivery platform . . yada yada . .

The US has about 5.500 strategic warheads (ready to go), with others stockpiled.

Friend points out that we occupy more countries than any other country. We spend twice what the entire rest of the world does on military but get upset when another country wants to get its first nuke.

We have more people incarcerated measured per capita and in absolute numbers but think we're the land of the free.

Japan has a nuclear power plant go down & decides to develop other less dangerous power sources. We decide that we can handle the risk even though all of our waste storage is considered temporary. TN will have 3 nuclear power plants within 50 miles of Chattanooga. If the ash spill had been nukes, we'd be gone.

No wonder people hate us.

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85SD 240K & stopped counting painted, putting bac together. 84SD 180,000. sold to a neighbor and member here but I forget his handle. The 84 is much improved from when I had it. 85TD beginning to repair to DD status. Lots of stuff to do.

^^^

Right on on the first two points, but as far as nuclear power plants, I'd LOVE to see us dismantle 75% of our nuclear weapons and burn the plutonium in power plants as MOx. Far better than relying on mountaintop removal coal, fracking, or blood-oil from the Middle East. The reactor designs that failed dramatically tended to be 50-year-old designs (all were built in the 70s, designed in the 60s - Chernobyl was actually more or less based on a 1940s US weapons-production design).

Blessed are the cheesemakers

Life of Brian - Blessed are the cheesemakers - YouTube

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'07 Yukon 2500
'13 Subaru Outback 3.6R
'13 Orbea Carpe 9-speed

Currently Benzless
Formerly: 300TD, S600, E55, 560SEL

---= The forest breathes, listen.
-Native American elder

So they talking tactical or strategic?

Boomer with 24/ 6 mirvs you'd only need 3-4 subs.

Couple good fast attack subs and we be out the nuclear game.

Why bother with subs? Build a hundred road-mobile fractional orbit bombardment systems.

You mean a ballistic missile Winebago

Because you can hide subs very well. So well our own 688's and Virginia class have a hell of a time find them!! Also the most survivable of the nuclear platforms.

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86 300SDL. 250,xxx on #14 Head. One eye always on temp gauge.. Cruising towards 300K

Another friend is a solar guy. Put panels on every south (anything) facing roof & upload to the grid. Gas is cheap because the spillover costs of fracking aren't figured into the price. Similarly, the cost of nuclear catastrophe aren't factored into the price. Ask Louisiana what they think about safety of oil.

I had a springer spaniel puppy when I lived in the country. Af first he crapped all over the house. Pretty soon he learned to go out in the pasture away from his food bowl. You know, don't s **** where you eat. We still haven't learned what a dog knows.

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85SD 240K & stopped counting painted, putting bac together. 84SD 180,000. sold to a neighbor and member here but I forget his handle. The 84 is much improved from when I had it. 85TD beginning to repair to DD status. Lots of stuff to do.

I'd keep the subs and maybe a couple hundred other land based.

Nukes generally are not a good idea. I'm not too worried about our stockpile, but I am worried about other countries. I'm quite frankly shocked a Russian warhead hasn't been sold and detonated in the last 20 years.

I wouldn't want to cut our stockpile down for nothing though, everyone needs to cut theirs down more as well.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Maybe -- then again, it's easier (and more legal) to trail a nuclear sub in int'l waters than a transporter-erector-launcher which may be parked at any number of bases, with some of the launchers being decoys. Possibly stored inside to evade easy satellite detection.

I think the larger question might relate to how fast you can kill the enemy.

After all, sure, we can kill virtually all human life on earth, but a large percentage of those people will die in the months, maybe years, following the blasts. Radiation sickness, pestilence, disease, starvation...those will be gruesome compared to those living in/near blast centers.

Of course, the disarmament doesn't really change anything. We will retire older weapons whose efficacy (and in some cases reliability) aren't so hot, and such weapons have been functionally replaced anyway by much nastier and potent nukes.

I agree with Hat but reduced numbers. Keep the subs and may be 100 land based nuke. Even if they could track a sub which I have seen nothing to indicate that they can they would need to find all of them. One sub can take out every major city in Russia or China. It can turn Iran in to a sheet of glass.

We have way to many nukes. The maintenance coat alone is reason enough to get rid of most of them. The people who where whining about the unilateral draw down were ignorant of the facts as far as I am concerned. We could draw down 50% and it would not make us any less safe due to the fact that we could still wipe out all life on the planet several times over.

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Sent from an agnostic abacus

2014 C250 21,XXX my new DD ** 2013 GLK 350 18,000 Wife's new DD**

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- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
- When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.