The UN Charter has a bunch of stuff in it about how the UN’s purpose is to help nations resolve disagreements without warfare.
It’s good stuff, really: [un]
Article 1
The Purposes of the United Nations are:
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To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
There’s more, but the first item pretty much nails it. Someone put a lot of thought into writing this stuff. More thought than it takes to write a 144-character “tweet”, for what it’s worth.
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
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All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
That means that even the President of the United States is not supposed to go around loudly threatening to attack other nations. North and South Korea are both member states. The US, naturally, has a controlling veto on the security council, which means that it can do or say whatever it wants, with impunity. But that still does not mean that every time the US president (or the North Korean regime) throws around threats of nuclear war, they are not violating the fundamental principles of international relations. If we were talking about a person who has arranged things to that they can threaten others with impunity, we’d call them a “bully.”
North Korea announced in 2003 that it was leaving the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) [un] so technically, they are not violating the treaty while they are developing nuclear weapons. The same cannot be said for the US, which continues to develop new nuclear weapons, and continues to proliferate them to its client states under the fig-leaf of NATO nuclear-compatible deployment. Depending on how you want to look at it, the North Koreans are playing more by the rules than the US. Not that it matters, really. The nuclear powers’ attitude is that the rest of the world are the Melians, “The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.”
[fas]
Article VI
Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.
The US has chosen to interpret that part as “… when we get around to it” and has pointed at the great number of warheads the US and USSR demilitarized during the SALT/START process. What nobody mentions is that those warheads weren’t very good, anyway, were getting old and unreliable, and it was desirable to re-manufacture the plutonium in them into better, newer, warheads. I appreciate the wry humor of whoever put “good faith” in Article VI – it’s as if they foresaw what was coming.
While the US screeches about North Korea (which, technically, is exercising its sovereignty) and Iran (ditto) planning to develop nuclear weapons, the US continues to brazenly design and deploy the B61-12 warhead. It has stationed a few F-35s in England, capable of maybe – assuming they are working right – stealthily delivering B61-12s on a Baltic course into Russia, or wherever else. This is not merely an ‘upgrade’ or ‘replacement’ of an existing capability, the B61-12 is designed as a general-purpose weapon but also as a ground-penetrating “bunker buster” [fas] – as B61s are developed, they will be staged in Belgium, England, Germany, and the Netherlands. Probably also Diego Garcia and Kurdistan, which will be an independent state by that time. This is not “proliferation” somehow.
The B61 is also a lot more accurate; it now has a JDAM-style inertial navigation fin so it can fall right to its target. This is a serious threat because it means that the F-35 will be able to do longer-range “fling bombing” in which an aircraft takes advantage of stealth to make a high speed attack run, pull up its nose, and release a bomb which then homes independently on its target. The US has also researched and is deploying a new, improved, ballistic missile fusing system that makes them more accurate and better at delivering more precisely controlled damage. These are “upgrades” to “existing weapons systems” although it really entails manufacturing an entirely new weapon, then breaking apart the old one. This, in spite of the US’ repeated pledges that it will not undertake to produce new nuclear weapons. The military/industrial complex is in the driver’s seat, but presidents come and go.
These guys are like kids, I swear: “it’s not a new bomb as long as it starts with B61”
A week ago the US and South Korea [cbs] said that they will be deploying more F-35s and more B-1 lancers to Japan and South Korea; these are all nuclear-capable stealth strike aircraft. One can immediately understand why the North Koreans have been in a hurry to fit an H-bomb to a ballistic missile, so that they can try to deter what appears to be a first strike being prepared against them. I’m not fond of the “North Koreans are crazy” meme but if the North Koreans aren’t scared shitless by what’s being arrayed against them, they may actually be insane. By the way, the assumption is that the US has proliferated nuclear weapons to Guam (Japan supposedly refuses to allow nuclear weapons to be stationed there, though one wonders) and South Korea.
It’s really hard for me to interpret the US’ actions as anything other than nuclear blackmail. The situation in North Korea bears a great resemblance to the way the Pakistanis had to bankrupt themselves to develop nuclear weapons in order to get out from under the threat of India’s nuclear blackmail. When you’re overshadowed by a nuclear superpower that is building weapons systems that look like they were made specifically to kill you, it’s really hard to take all their talk about non-proliferation seriously. After all, it’s pretty clear the US never took all of its talk about non-proliferation seriously, either. The US needs to understand that whenever some American politician shoots their mouth off about “regime change” they are breaking international law and contributing to the collapse of the international order. Not that the US takes all their talk about the international order seriously, either.
Some good analysis of the US’ F-35 test deployment and how it’s intended as a nuclear first-strike threat against Russia. [voltairenet] I agree with the author’s take on what’s going on.
Nukewatch has some details on the B61-12; it’s a really horrifying device. [nukewatch]
I use the word “proliferation” deliberately, though the NPT, naturally, does not use the term in the same way. The NPT carefully refers to “transfer” and “control” – so the US can fig-leaf its forward deployment of nuclear weapons around the world as retention of control.
F-35s stealthily delivering nuclear bombs into Russia: such a funny idea – stealthy aircraft and a great big wagon-train of KC-130 refuelling tankers. Remember, the F-35’s got a strike range of a bit farther than Tiger Woods can hit a golf ball. Nobody’ll see a thing! There’s no way this is serious; it’s just an attempt to demonstrate ‘capability’ to justify buying more F-35s.
KC-135 or KC-10 surely? The 130 tanker variant must be too slow?
Sunday Afternoon@#1:
KC-135 or KC-10 surely? The 130 tanker variant must be too slow?
Yeah, that was a brain-o.
Imagine a bunch of propeller planes bucket brigading fuel for stealth aircraft! ‘Cuz there’s nothing that screams “stealth strike inbound!” like a great big gaggle of huge tankers lined up, pointing at you.
Perhaps it doesn’t count if the radioactive material is recycled from older weapons. As long as it’s the same Pu*, it’s the same bomb. (Or at least a reasonable percentage, say 0.005%)
Sounds more like a game of chicken with Kim refusing to blink, because he’d lose very hard if he did. At this stage he doesn’t have much, if any, incentive to give up. It certainly sounds like he’s already far along anyway. Big nukes, check. Small nukes, quite possibly check. Delivery systems, check depending on where you live. Reliability might not be that great (yet) but who wants to bet on the missile failing when they’re under threat of being nuked?
It gets worse because Trump probably doesn’t know how to blink. He’s used to having other people doing it for him while he goes on to brag he never did…
…even the President of the United States is not supposed to go around loudly threatening to attack other nations. North and South Korea are both member states.
As is Venezuela.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/trump-threatens-military-action-venezuela-170812023726478.html
But there were the comforting words from the US national security adviser:
The US doesn’t anticipate intervening militarily in the Venezuela crisis “in the near future,” national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster said Friday, two weeks after President Donald Trump said he hadn’t ruled out such an option.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/25/politics/hr-mcmaster-venezuela-white-house-briefing/index.html
komarov@#3:
Perhaps it doesn’t count if the radioactive material is recycled from older weapons. As long as it’s the same Pu*, it’s the same bomb.
Obama made some pretty sounds about denuclearizing and making the world safer for humanity. Of course he was just a lying American politician like all the others. I can’t tell if the US is cheating on the limited test ban treaty or not – probably not – but clearly we’re cheating on the spirit of every disarmament and non-proliferation treaty that’s out there. “Oh, look at our
newold bunker-buster variable-yield nuke with improved fusing! We just developed thatyesterdayin the 80s”At this stage he doesn’t have much, if any, incentive to give up
Other than the cost, he doesn’t. The US ought to accept that we’ve got a new power to add to the list, and since they aren’t particularly friendly, they need to be treated with just like the USSR in the MAD days: accept it, talk to them, put processes in place, and stop threatening them with pre-emptive attacks then demand they stop threatening us likewise. The US attitude toward North Korea needs to change from “we dominate you” to “this is bad for business.” We can get along without all this penis-waving.
jrkrideau@#4:
As is Venezuela
Yep. It’s weird that nobody has called for sanctions against the US. It’s past time.
@ 6 Marcus
It’s weird that nobody has called for sanctions against the US.
Most countries’ politicians are not suicidally insane.
Just about every US politician of any flavour, hell almost every US citizen no matter how downtrodden and oppressed, believes that the USA is “the shining city on the hill” and the only truly free and democratic country in the world. It can do no wrong.
The USA would go truly crazy if seriously censured. And it still is the elephant in the room.
It is a bit like “Who will bell the cat”?
This kinda puts a new light on Denmark’s decision to go with F-35s for the new “defense upgrades”. There were some rumblings about dirty dealings in how that decision was made. At the time, I thought it was just standard, “we don’t have the spine to reject what the US wants”, but now I wonder.
During the cold war, Denmark supposedly refused to house nuclear weapons. There was strong public sentiment against nuclear power and the politicians didn’t dare go through with it. However, later reports have revealed that ear-marked weapons were in fact waiting across the border in Germany, ready to be shipped in and deployed at a phone call’s notice. I wonder if something similar is going on now.
Actually, I’m getting a little curious now. Are there any tell-tale modifications or equipment that would be necessary for an F-35 to carry a nuclear weapon? Any special training for the pilots? Any upgrades needed for the base they’re stationed at? Anything that might indicate that someone was making sure that the planes could be used in that fashion, if necessary? Or are they just standard issue, one-size-fits-all?
LykeX@#9:
Are there any tell-tale modifications or equipment that would be necessary for an F-35 to carry a nuclear weapon? Any special training for the pilots? Any upgrades needed for the base they’re stationed at? Anything that might indicate that someone was making sure that the planes could be used in that fashion, if necessary? Or are they just standard issue, one-size-fits-all?
The B61 presumably has a specialized software load-out for the F-35’s onboard computer – the computer’s got to know a few things about the bomb it’s dropping – weight, minimal altitude, maximum velocity, etc., and it’s got to interface with the bomb’s onboard arming system. From the evolution chart above, it appears that the B61 has a Permissive Action Link (PAL) and there needs to be some way to get the bomb its arming codes via the aircraft’s computer. The B61 appears to have a couple parameters that are interesting: it appears to be able to told not to try to detonate until it’s gone underground a ways, as well as to air-burst. It is also supposedly variable-yield. So, either the bomb gets a bunch of fiddling done to it before the plane takes off, or the pilot’s responsible for a bunch of fiddling while they’re on the way to deliver it. (insert scene from Doctor Strangelove) Most modern aircraft have large and complex software packages that drive each type of ordnance and how it interfaces with the onboard systems – as you can imagine those are expensive, prone to delay, etc. They’ve got to be a tricky piece of real-time programming, indeed! But, since they’re dropping weight-matched B61 dummies from F-15s at Tonopah, they must have that piece of software developed already for (at least) the F-15 to successfully hit the desert.
Apparently they are calling for the F-35’s software and compatibility checks to be complete sometime around 2020.
There are standard bomb-rails and lots of mounting options for various things, and the F-35 has 2 bomb bays which can be outfitted with a variety of stuff – air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground, bombs, nuclear bombs, etc. Obviously, everything has to fit in a bomb bay, the doors have to be able to open and close, the plane’s got to be able to handle the weight. A B61 with its dirt-penetrating nose weighs about 900lb compared to the 300lb an old W80 H-bomb weighs. Oh, wait, I can’t call them “old” because, you know, the US isn’t building “new” bombs. Anyhow, it changes a bunch of flight parameters and fuel usage but it oughtn’t affect stealth (other than that the plane will be burning more fuel and will need to refuel more often).
Mostly, I think the pilots will need training in how to use the new menu options in the “nuke app”
This picture (I have no idea if it’s accurate or just an artist’s conception) illustrates some of the kind of interface stuff the pilots will need to deal with. I suppose it’s possible that the “nuke app” will have a CRM-114 style discriminator, but I hope the interface isn’t that cheesy.
PS – naughty them, referring to it as a “new” bomb. It’s an old bomb. Really. (nods) Yup!
The “spin stabilization rocket” thing is interesting. The old nuclear artillery shells used to have a generator that collected the energy to fire all the bridge-wire detonators, which used the torque from firing the round out of the gun. It saves having to have a bunch of batteries in the bomb; very clever. It’s also a good safety: the only way to get it to go off is to fire it from a cannon. I wonder if that’s what they’re doing here.
Also, the illustration of the physics package sure looks a lot like the North Korean H-bomb KJI was photographed patting. The actual disassembly of a B61 doesn’t look like that. It looks like this:
The physics package is the cylindrical can with the slightly rounded nose and the black thing at the back. The black thing is the controller for the bomb.
Sandia brags a bit about tests of concrete penetration. It’s not a new bomb, remember? The W80 was not a bunker buster at all, and the B61 is capable of that, but it’s not a new bomb.
jrkrideau@#7:
It is a bit like “Who will bell the cat”?
Not the Melians, that’s for sure.
I’m not sure I follow you there. If someone who shouldn’t gets their hands on a nuclear device they’ve already accomplished a major feat (one hopes). Then perhaps they also get past the security codes somehow. At that stage surely it can’t be that much of an obstacle to somehow provide the necessary power, be it through ‘use as intended’ or some jerry-rigged setup.
At any rate, using the rocket motor sounds a bit like overengineering to me. I assume the bomb is spun up and stays that way once it’s on course to make sure it doesn’t deviate. That would make the rocket a one-shot device with a fixed thrust direction that can do nothing but impart spin.
Why not use the tail fins for this? It would be cheaper, reduce complexity of the system and might even improve reliability. If the fins failed the rocket motor wouldn’t be able to compensate for that. If the motor failed, the fins probably could still help. However, the failure might have caused additional problems making recovery impossible. (For example your bomb may have lost a guiadance system AND is now on fire and structurally weakened.)
The only reason I can think of is that maybe the fins can’t impart enough spin. But that being the case I’d sooner redesign the fins or try something else, ideally something passive and / or uncomplicated. For example maybe the fuselage could be shaped so the bomb starts to spin naturally as it goes. I recall Soyuz and other space capsules being shaped so that aerodynamics would force them into a preferred orientation, so this shouldn’t be too impossible. Adding rockets to fix problems in a very “Kerbal” solution, Kerbals being very keen on spectacular explosions and concerned with “cost” or “safety”.
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The control panel in the picture looks charmingly like something you could build with LabView. I’m sure National Instruments would be very proud if they could add nuclear weapon control systems to the list of customer-designed applications. Maybe they could even include parts of it in their tutorial collection. “Creating a simple VI to control nuclear weapons. For this example you will need the Nuclear Launch Code Validation sub-VI which is part of the National Instruments MAD module”
komarov@#12:
If someone who shouldn’t gets their hands on a nuclear device they’ve already accomplished a major feat (one hopes). Then perhaps they also get past the security codes somehow. At that stage surely it can’t be that much of an obstacle to somehow provide the necessary power, be it through ‘use as intended’ or some jerry-rigged setup.
There are a couple things, and (for good reasons that ought to be obvious) there’s a great big cone of silence around some of them. Also, there’s a lot of engineering that’s really past the edge of normal – someone with the physics and engineering background can figure a lot of it out, but if you make a mistake, the bomb doesn’t fission, you just wind up with a lot of plutonium thrown in your face by high explosive. Per Reed and Rhodes, the PAL works by sequencing the detonation of the hexanitro explosive lenses with nanosecond accuracy, and it appears that the launch code for an individual device is used to decode some of that information – the implosion wave-front of the explosive lenses has to be perfect, with nanosecond accuracy, because the inner faces are all slightly different. It’s a really clever thing. That’s the principle anyway, I have never been able to determine if that’s really how it works or not (I have not tried very hard!) Apparently the design of the PAL was a consequence of the difficulty of producing a perfect implosion, which is largely a matter of having high energy switches that are capable of switching reliably, at nanosecond speeds. Doc Edgerton, the inventor of strobe photography, was one of the early innovators in nanosecond electrical switches for the early H-bombs. FWIW most conventional relays are accurate to several microseconds, so the switching timing in a nuclear weapon needs to be about 1000 times more precise. Then, when you get into that kind of precision, conventional detonators won’t cut it – you can’t just jam a blasting cap into a 1/1000 of a millimeter-accurate machined hole in some hexanitro lens – blasting caps aren’t nanosecond accurate, either. So you use what’s called a “bridge wire detonator” – you pump about 5 megawatts of current for 90 nanoseconds through a small piece of silver wire, which bursts into plasma and the shockwave of that is enough to set off the hexanitro. By the way, that was probably also Edgerton’s idea (?) – his early flash photos were produced by pumping huge capacitor banks through a piece of copper which would explode very quickly and brightly to get the kind of 1/1000000 sec flash you need to freeze a bullet in motion. Anyhow: to hotwire a nuke that has a PAL you need the sequencing data out of the PAL and you need to be able to provide 16 x ~5 megawatts of instantaneous current with nanosecond sequencing.
I could be wrong about a lot of that; some of what I think I know could be head-fakes thrown by folks like Reed, who are very sneaky characters for reasons that ought to be obvious. It also appears that the Mossad will kill you if you appear to be trying to learn too much about these details, so I am quite happy to be ignorant.
Two places with lots of crunchy nuggets about this kind of edge-engineering:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Library/Pasley1.html
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/500/19/192008/pdf
It appears that part of the cleverness of a PAL is that the variances on the faces of the explosive lenses are inside the physics package, and are very very small. One does not simply pull a physics package apart and measure the variances in the lenses, and calculate one’s own detonation sequencing. All that stuff is done by computers using very carefully controlled software and processes.
That would make the rocket a one-shot device with a fixed thrust direction that can do nothing but impart spin.
Why not use the tail fins for this? It would be cheaper, reduce complexity of the system and might even improve reliability.
I assume the rocket motor is more predictable. It’s probably also another safety mechanism – the rocket has to burn completely before the weapon is armed by the charging system. So you can’t just drop it, you have to launch it with the correct interface from the aircraft’s onboard weapons control system.
ideally something passive and / or uncomplicated
People who build H-bombs are not concerned with passive or uncomplicated – everything about them is already complicated; what’s a bit more? Pff!
The control panel in the picture looks charmingly like something you could build with LabView.
I think the weapons control systems on an F-35 run WordPress, so it’s probably just a cascading style sheet.
(I’m kidding. I hope.)
That was some nifty background reading, thanks.
However, the issue of a power supply for your freshly stolen nuke (plus code*) only becomes simpler. You may not even need to improvise your own power source. Instead just send your crack team of henchmen and mercenaries to rob EG&G, the people who make the triggers, and steal all the transformers and periphery gear you need. Just be sure to check their catalogue beforehand and jot down all the part numbers you’ll be stealing.
*These days you probably just have to send a tweet to Trump, goading him to prove how presidential he is by sending a few codes. He has the best nuclear codes! He’ll show everyone!
I choose to remain sceptical about the rocket collar. I’d guess it to be a solid rocket. Not even H-bomb designers would want a ‘proper’ liquid fuel rocket with pumps and everything. Solid rockets are cheap and can be stored safely which hopefully is a design requirements for these kinds of armaments. Solid rockets are either waiting to be set off or – after a brief and exciting interlude – are spent.
If the rockets were supposed to be a safety features then they seem a little vulnerable. Someone already in possession of a bomb could probably find a way to trigger the rockets (or otherwise deplete them) to make the bomb happy. Worse, if spin really is required to drive generators or for whatever other reason, then the rockets are providing the means right along with the weapon. This is unlike the shells you mentioned, where I guess you really do need the artillery that goes with those shells.
P.S.: Stealing the software from a plane shouldn’t be too difficult. Next time the US has an airshow or some other ‘look at my big guns’ event you can probably walk up to an F-35 and hack it with your smartphone. Being a modern appliance, every F-35 shall be Internet-of-Things-enabled. You just have to convince it that you’re the pilot’s coffee-maker and want to know when he’ll be home. Better yet, tell it that it has been ‘reassigned’ to your secret airstrip and should fly there next time it’s been fuelled and armed.
I can see why you’d put a lot of effort into the warhead itself. But the bomb around it is really just a wrapper that is supposed to get the warhead to where it’s going. While one of those can still get complicated, that’s really the sort of thing where you ought to pick the “classic” fit-for-purpose solutions, even if they’re a bit dull.
“Everything worked perfectly! Except that one bit we didn’t really need but had already spent a lot of money on because it was so damned cool. In our defence, it really was rocket science.”
Actually, this reminded me of the ‘silly’ failures of US torpedoes during WW2. [wiki] In fact I’d only heard about those in some aside mention and the full story turns out to be even more embarrassing. Imagine that with nukes…
komarov@#14:
Edward Beach had some cool bits about mk14s in Run Silent, Run Deep, if my memory serves me still (a favorite when I was 14…)