midlifesuezcrisis.bsky.social
Materials science & nukes. Student of deterrence & what comes after. Does not love the bright sword for its sharpness, only that which it defends.
Shameless patriot & liberal, last of the China hawks.
All opinions solely my own.
1,732 posts
1,874 followers
286 following
Getting Started
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really it's just hard to decide whether the gold medal for Dubya's positive contributions goes to PEPFAR or OIF
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lol he blocked me
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I would think they have their own more complicated internal definitions of reliability, but yeah you'd be absolutely insane to say "well we think they mostly don't work so let's run that risk".
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Russian nukes no worky trutherism is easily in my top 3 least favorite, confidently held beliefs of fake-smart social media types. It's a bright flare for finding people who have no clue what the fuck they're talking about
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reality has a woke bias it seems
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I'm not saying y'all couldn't afford it if you tried but let's be reasonable about costs.
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3 billion pounds doesn't even come close to covering the cost expectations for the Astraea warhead program and that's with substantial US overlap... I'm not intimately familiar with UK budgeting, not sure if that's meant as a £20B lifetime cost or just program costs, but in any event.
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the replies to this are absolutely glorious fuel for my block list
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Yeah, I agree that we are probably permanently damaging nonproliferation. I couldn't blame EU or SEA allies for hedging bets in a big way. I just think that a notional sane 2029 president would want to stay the current course on nuclear force design.
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Either Fat Lee Adama or Kat's sacrifice.
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My impression was that they're not claiming to want cape of blunting a large CF attack, but rather something aimed at riding out a (notional) PRC CV attack. This ofc is kind of at odds with the PRC buildout, seems like chasing a target that will be out of date by the time anything is ready...
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I guess we're doing tinfoil hats for real now
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Ditto.
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www.airandspaceforces.com/hegseth-revi...
x.com/DanLamothe/s...
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The reporting is a little fucky. It appears to be 8% "reallocation" based on the Biden OSD's last FYDP, not progressive 8% topline cuts.
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>listening to the communists about literally anything
It is really great how on this site when you read something stupid there are almost always the same 5 markers in their bio
(twitter has this also, just usually for the right wing)
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this is the best revisionist history I've read since victor davis hanson got btfo'd by that Dutch guy
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CISA does a lot of things on top of this and what I've heard from cybersecurity people is that this likely has to do with some particular tech industry brainworms about CISA being "bloated" and getting in the way of company level cybersec
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If I recall correctly there has been reporting about Iranian attempts... The vague impression I got while I was still in academia is that the devil is *really* in the details and it's harder to get right than you'd think.
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Ooh, gonna punt on these two sorry.
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... T bottle replacement frequency, and you could make inferences about weapon reliability from that.
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Ah, yeah this is an avenue I don't think about as much (vertical proliferation). I think you'd run into headaches where the major powers don't want controls or oversight on their defense tritium, because the amount of T you go thru in a year might imply things about exact arsenal size and/or...
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Sorry, that's just a fantasy. The ROC can delay the PLA but I don't think there's any world where the PLA bogs down forever. Taiwan is the same size as Maryland, it's tiny compared to Afghanistan or Ukraine or Vietnam. The island is also highly vulnerable to blockades.
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Yeah, this is a "fun" one. Fusion reactor walls are going to be crazy hot from activation and maybe that creates intrinsic safeguards, but I don't know if anyone is thinking seriously here yet.
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I would think it's also easier to hide T diversion. It's usually clear as day when someone is breeding WGPu in a LWR; conversely there's a bit T just hiding in SNF if you really wanted to go for it, and I think you could hide TPBARs in fuel assemblies in a way that would defy easy IAEA inspection.
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Hmm, if anyone else asked me this question I'd turn to your diss...I think the clearest answer is that you don't strictly need tritium to make a bomb. Fissiles are the weak link. I also think it's easier to hide the amount of T production needed to be weapon-useful.
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It's all bombs, all the way down.
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(This ofc has huge costs and would be ill advised unless global material safeguards just die entirely). People have hypothesized about novel/poorly safeguarded fissiles as well. Maybe you build funny neutron beams to breed fissiles. Longer term, fusion reactors create risks here too theoretically.
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To get deep into the technical aspects of getting material -- again, there are a lot of ways to skin the cat, centrifuges are just one part of the puzzle. You can try to hide diversions from reactors (this is hard and the IAEA will slap you), or you can go all out and build reactors just to make Pu.
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(I actually have something coming out soon on @sodrock.bsky.social's substack soon on this issue and Taiwan.) So if you're Japan and you suddenly find yourself abandoned to face China, you have to consider how fast you can get a big deterrent - not just your access to U/Pu etc.
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There's a paradox in proliferation, that the countries w/the most dire security threats seem the most likely to get nukes, except those threats also often make the act of pursuing a bomb very risky. And if you're threatened by a great power, you need to get a LOT of bomb to have confidence.
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It is generally assumed that getting material is the biggest bottleneck -- people have started talking about novel pathways like laser enrichment but most nonpro/counterpro is still about controlling material -- but I think there's a more fundamental Q and that is "how much bomb you need, how fast."
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Oh the 2027 timeline (originally the "Davidson Window" after the former INDOPACOM cocom who popularized it) is basically a fantasy. It's a motivated misread of some official PRC statements. To the best of my understanding, the PLA is not likely to consider itself "ready" until after 2030.
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If it *ever* happens we've all failed. Honestly I have no clue. The PLA are probably not ready yet, but if this administration knuckles under and abandons Taiwan preemptively (IMO unlikely despite a couple scary reports out of State) then it happens basically as soon as Beijing realizes.
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(The benefit for us goes back to leverage + some restoration of trust + the continued intangible benefit of fewer nth-country nuclear weapons, which I maintain is SUPER desirable for us long term)
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Further, unless FR/UK embark on a rapid buildup, the US arsenal will still be the only one able to really counterbalance Russia and/or China. The nuclear-latency genie may not go back in the bottle but we and our allies will still reap mutual benefit from us taking most of the burden.
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I actually don't think there's much cause to deviate course over the next 4 years. I'd be shocked if any allies broke out by 2029 (maybe Ukraine has an ace in the hole, I don't know but it seems fanciful), and while the trust may be eroded in a big way, extended deterrence is still valuable.
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German scientists, military officers and minor politicians on May 8 1945
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Yeah -- this is still likely to be deeply stupid and wasteful, and the rush of it all speaks poorly of leadership.
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also possible!!
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dawg to torture the parable a bit I don't think any of these people are making it thru the eye of the needle