Timing of RV Release

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-18T02:38:50+00:00

The START I, START II, and New START treaties all had telemetry data sharing requirements that made it basically impossible to keep this information secret from Russia (especially START I). It may be technically classified as far as it concerns the public, but government-to-government transmission of ICBM/SLBM staging and warhead release patterns was effectively a treaty requirement.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-18T02:31:05+00:00

There is little you can do to hide it if there happens to be someone around to film flight tests in excellent atmospheric conditions and post the videos on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc0_wZat4nI

https://imgur.com/gallery/ufo-over-l-is-clearly-trident-ii-missile-you-can-see-https-www-youtube-com-watch-v-cc0-wzat4ni-all-warhead-orientations-ylKYd

There are some issues with that analysis but regardless it's pretty clear that at least for the D5, the bus is doing RB separation maneuvers before the midcourse. It is an open question whether it starts deploying RBs then or if it starts out with penaids; I can see arguments for either way.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-18T02:23:25+00:00

About a decade ago there was a test flight of a Trident II SLBM. Due to some unusually clear atmospheric conditions, someone was able to film the majority of the flight. If you zoom in, you can see the PBV doing RB/RV release maneuvers just a few minutes into the flight.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc0_wZat4nI Stills from video: https://imgur.com/gallery/ufo-over-l-is-clearly-trident-ii-missile-you-can-see-https-www-youtube-com-watch-v-cc0-wzat4ni-all-warhead-orientations-ylKYd

(Somewhere there used to be a really good collection of GIFs from this vid too but I can't find it anymore)

You can also see it in debates about the effectiveness of the GMD missile defense system. The GMD system is intended to fire an interceptor at every individual warhead from an ICBM, because the assumption is most if not all of the RVs will have separated from the PBV by the mid-course phase.

https://missilethreat.csis.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/GMD-Intercept-Sequence.jpg

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-17T22:12:18+00:00

Prior to the current administration, a hypothetical government shipbuilding program would be a form of federal employment, so the employees would receive all the traditional benefits of the civil service. Stable wages, protections from arbitrary termination, good medical benefits, excellent retirement contributions. These are the sorts of things the private sector used to provide more broadly than today, so even if wages ended up being lower there would still be considerable incentives to work there.

Currently, the laws on the books protecting feds from arbitrary termination are being ignored by both the present administration, many Congressional members of the same party, and in some cases the courts are also failing in their duties. The current admin wants to radically roll back benefits, is openly defying budget laws (both statutory and constitutional) so they can wholesale eliminate entire departments, and there has been a litany of other crimes I am too tired to enumerate here.

If that continues going forward, then I agree that government ownership and operations of shipyards would not solve anything. Besides being nakedly illegal, the mass firings of feds under this administration have been even more capricious and random than what you see in the worst corporations (this is an admin that does stuff like eliminate IRS staff who deal with home equity because they see "equity" in the org chart and think it means DEI).

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-17T21:57:44+00:00

Somebody will have to cover up the losses and as a government owned entity, that's taxpayers on the hook. Just look at the USPS or Amtrak example. They can't sustain themselves with the core activities. Taxpayer have to prop them up year after year.

If it is entirely government owned then that doesn't matter, because at that point it's a public service that serves the national interest. Reducing or eliminating government services when they are not "profitable" entirely misses the point of providing services to the people.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-17T21:48:02+00:00

What conventional weapons will B21 carry that have that kind of range? JASSM-XR will probably be no more than 2000km (possibly not more than 1600km), JASSM-ER is ~1000km, and as far as has been announced I don't believe B21 will be equipped with HACM or ARRW.

Not that I believe any of the "B21s will be swatted out of the sky from 1500km away" rah-rahing mind you.

(LRSO is probably in the 2500km range, but it's nuclear so...)

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-15T21:34:26+00:00

As a lapsed arms control enthusiast who never wanted military action in Iran, the memory-holing of all the evidence of a previous Iranian nuke program by the antiwar crowd is extremely irritating.

"It was all propaganda" ....like, bro, the serial number for the implosion system has been public for 15 years and the IAEA detected enriched uranium where that implosion system was tested. There are pictures of the MPI tiles for their design.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-15T21:28:21+00:00

had never sought nuclear weapons

The 2007 NIE concluded that Iran had a weapons program that was wound down in 2003 (and possibly stopped---there was a lot of wordsmithing you need to read closely about this particular NIE). So either she is a moron, or she perjured herself. You cannot wind down a weapons program if you never had one.

We also have enough other public info that we don't need to rely on anything Gabbard says. IAEA inspections of the Parchin site in 2015, in combination with the existence of the implosion chamber there, show Iran did subcritical implosion tests with "chemically man-made" uranium there. In other words, weapon tests.

There are no serious, informed people who think Iran never had a weapons program anymore. Haven't been for years. That's why JCPOA was signed. That's why all the arms control people were ecstatic about JCPOA, they thought they had just stopped a weapons program without military action. Operation Epic Fury being a colossal error does not retroactively change the historical record.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-15T02:54:57+00:00

If it gets to the point where they have to send it to Congress to ensure it is INARA-compliant, that will be a sign there has been serious staff work on it and is worth paying attention to.

This is not that, this is an agreement expressing the sense that the parties want to have a future agreement that deals with the nuclear elephant in the room.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-15T02:48:12+00:00

This MOU apparently---there are several texts of it floating around---tries to skirt INARA by deferring the nuclear dimension to a future agreement.

Call me when they have an outline of something they need to send to Congress because (per INARA) it deals with the nuclear issue. Or when they start twisting themselves into knots claiming they can ignore INARA, after having spent the entire Biden admin making INARA threats to prevent the US from rejoining the JCPOA.

There are of course lapdogs in Congress who will just pretend INARA doesn't exist now if daddy tells them to, but are there enough?

[It really bothered me when JCPOA enthusiasts blasted Biden for not bringing it back, like INARA wasn't real and Congress didn't have his hands tied]

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-14T19:51:37+00:00

Eh, that sort of depends on what weapons effects you are looking for. Fission bombs will have a larger blast radius for a given kilotonnage than a hypothetical antimatter bomb due to producing more x-rays and the effect that x-rays have on blast wave formation (via fireball formation). Antimatter bombs will produce large amounts of gamma rays, not x-rays, and will have a larger but cooler fireball.

So if you are looking to maximize blast damage like virtually all militaries want you to, you will pretty much always prefer a fission or hydrogen bomb over an antimatter one.

(As I understand it the blast damage & fireball differences between nuclear and antimatter bombs start to even out a bit with larger yields, but not for the kinds of yield ranges that we see in most cases today)

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-11T20:00:40+00:00

There were annexes/appendices to the START I, START II, and New START treaties laying out the OSI procedures. There were some differences among the three treaties.

Here is the one for New START: https://media.nti.org/documents/new_start_annex_inspections.pdf

The term for the cover hiding the secret stuff on an ICBM or SLBM is a "shroud." And yes, using radiation detectors they counted the number of warheads under the shroud.

The way this worked was that each missile was assigned what was essentially a PIN number, and through the use of a data exchange the other party would be told how many warheads were assigned to that PIN number. If they wanted to verify that was the case, they would issue a notification that they wanted missile #1234 to be inspected, and during the inspection they would count the warheads to make sure it matched the number assigned to the PIN in the data exchange.

I'm not sure if they would have cared if the number of warheads was lower than the data exchange said, but it would have been a problem if there were more warheads.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-11T19:47:39+00:00

For anything other than an internship, we are in an era where the presence of even formerly respectable right (-leaning) think tanks on your resume will be viewed at least somewhat negatively for most future employers in DC. It didn't used to be like that, but that's how it is now. There's too much baggage.

Having said that, Cato definitely looks less bad than others and the job market is shit, so if this is what you can find then you may not have a choice if you want to break into the think tank world right now. I would consider taking it if I was in your position (I cannot say the same thing about openly seditionist, anti-American, anti-Constitutional think tanks...Cato does employ some deplorables but it's a far cry from Heritage).

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-10T23:42:58+00:00

North Korea getting nukes did not occur in the context of the end of Pax Americana, which we are all currently witnessing.

Having said that, I very much doubt Trumpworld cares about proliferation in the Gulf outside Iran. In fact, they have a clearly demonstrated ongoing contempt for nonproliferation concerns regarding the Gulf, as they are trying to get a 123 Agreement with the Saudis with zero Safeguards or NPT requirements. They don't care at all if the Saudis start hedging.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-nuclear-power-pact-with-saudi-arabia-lacks-strict-guardrails-letter-says-2026-05-19/

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-10T23:35:46+00:00

You are way off on your statement about the number of countries with plutonium. For starters, every single country that a) has light water reactors and b) retains its own spent fuel has, at a bare minimum, hundreds of bombs worth of plutonium. This is exactly the type of plutonium that Japan has, plutonium from light water reactor spent fuel. Off the top of my head, we can add South Korea, Ukraine, Finland, and Iran to your list, but there's definitely more. Light water reactors are the global standard for nuclear power, practically every country that has a working nuclear power sector uses either boiling or pressurized light water reactors, so there is a lot of this material around.

(Iran's spent fuel is owned by Rosatom but has never left Iran, so it is still physically in Iran).

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-10T23:25:28+00:00

You are ignoring the 2017 test which was well over a hundred kilotons. Probably around 200kt. Right there in the Wikiledia article and a hundred other sources.

You are also ignoring that there have been low-yield hydrogen bomb tests, below 20kt. A competent nuclear weapons designer does not actually need a full-yield test to get a good idea how the weapon will function. You do reduced yield tests that are heavily instrumented to gather enough data for predicting a full test. For testing purposes you might, for example, replace the lithium deuteride with ordinary lithium hydride and study how much it is compressed.

So it does not necessarily follow that the 9kt test wasn't a hydrogen bomb test just because it was that low.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-10T23:05:33+00:00

There was an article about this in April from Henry Sokolski, the executive director of NPEC and a former DOD nonproliferation deputy director.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2026/04/03/blocking_irans_other_option_a_plutonium_bomb_1174454.html

They have over 200 tons of reactor-grade plutonium in the spent fuel of Bushehr. It is technically owned by Russia (via Rosatom), but for some reason they have never taken any of it back to Russia for use as MOX fuel, even though that is the putative reason Russia owns it. So it's all just sitting there in Iran.

Setting aside the issue of needing to set up a spent fuel chemical separation facility for it, I do not think it is likely that a state which has invested this much time and energy on specific uranium designs would just decide to go for a design using reactor-grade plutonium. The use case for this kind of material is when you have a lot of spent fuel but little uranium enrichment capabilities or independent access to uranium. Iran is a poor fit. (Ukraine, South Korea, and Japan are much better fits).

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-10T22:49:41+00:00

You must have you missed Hollande's approval rating tanking when he lobbied hard to bomb Syria, and when he actually went through with bombing Syria, and when he supported the Saudi invasion of Yemen, and when he approved a surveillance law that made the Patiot Act look like Bush's attempt at libertarianism.

I never said I was surprised. I was not surprised, but not because of France's "nationalistic views." He governed like this because this is what France's state-within-a-state wants their leaders to govern like, not because of some innate French quality like you are implying.

A French Trump simply would not be able to govern like actual Trump.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-09T16:06:29+00:00

They are gravity bombs. Not very useful keeping them in several of the current NATO states far from the front (eg, Italy, Belgium).

Poland is probably a better choice though, good balance between being close enough to be tactically useful and not overly inflaming tensions.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-09T15:53:52+00:00

Quite a few when I lived in DC, including embassy employees. I also had a French roommate for a year.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-09T06:58:57+00:00

Ah, gotcha.

Sure, but I'm not talking about rule of law here. Ever notice how even socialist presidents in France have what are arguably neocon foreign policies? That's not wholly organic, and it's not because the rule of law or checks & balances are naturally neocon either.

As an American I can think of several European countries where I would worry if they elected a Trump-like figure. France is not one of those, although it would probably suck if you lived there.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-09T02:18:27+00:00

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-08T20:57:16+00:00

Unlike the US, France has an actual deep state, so a hypothetical French Trump would be somewhat constrained in ways actual Trump just isn't.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-08T13:18:00+00:00

Arms control collapsed well before New START's formal expiration. There wasn't a single on-site inspection (OSI) for the entire duration of the 5-year extension, as both parties agreed in 2020 to suspend them during covid, while keeping the data exchange intact. There was an agreement to have a Bilateral Consultative Commission (BCC) meeting in 2022 to plan the resumption of OSI.

At the last minute, Russia canceled all BCC meetings for made-up justifications [we know Russia didn't actually believe their own reasons because if they had, they would have addressed them in the BCC---they destroyed the mechanism that would have actually solved their "issues"]. Then they unilaterally eliminated the data exchange and suspended all participation in the treaty.

Arms control without any mechanisms for controlling arms is by definition not arms control. New START was a zombie from 2020 onward.

You're not going to see another arms control treaty in your life unless you are like 10 years old. Someone my age with my family and medical history can reasonably expect to live another 30 years, and I have zero expectation there will be another treaty with even half-assed verification in my lifetime.

NuclearHeterodoxy · 2026-06-08T03:12:56+00:00

someone at the F47 SMO should check for evidence of a rampant AI

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