The Latest Nuclear Boondoggle?

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this year updated its cost of U.S. nuclear forces to $756 billion for the 2023-2032 period. That estimate is a shocking 19% above CBO’s 2021 estimate for the 2021-2030 period.

By Connor Murray, https://armscontrolcenter.org/the-latest-nuclear-boondoggle/ 17 Nov 23
The Pentagon recently announced plans to develop a new variant of the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, the B61-13. This proposed bomb would, as the name suggests, be the 13th variant of the B61 and “provide the President with additional options against certain harder and large-area military targets.”

The weapon would be delivered by strategic bombers, like the planned B-21, and have an explosive yield similar to the existing B61-7, including the guided tail kit recently debuted on the B61-12.

The B61-12, which is expensive and was a major priority for Pentagon officials over the past 13 years, seems to suddenly have taken a backseat along with the argument that the B61-12 was to cover all relevant missions with decreased collateral damage. B61-12s were designated mostly for Europe to support NATO’s nuclear sharing mission.

The need for the B61-13, as articulated, is nebulous at best. The weapon would have a significantly higher maximum yield than the B61-12 given its use of the B61-7’s warhead. The use of the tail kit may improve its earth penetration capabilities and will certainly increase its accuracy. Nothing in the Pentagon’s announcement makes it clear where the value added might be, at least not to any degree that might justify the likely multi-billion-dollar price tag that will accompany this new bomb.

Over the last two decades, U.S. planners have moved away from high-yield nuclear weapons, given improvements in accuracy and development of effective conventional alternatives. The last megaton-plus-yield weapon in the U.S. arsenal, the B83-1, was proposed for retirement in President Joe Biden’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) due to “increasing limitations on its capabilities and rising maintenance costs.” Importantly, the next sentence referred to the development of an “enduring capability for improved defeat of [hard and deeply buried] targets.”This final sentence was likely the hint at possible development of the B61-13. While retiring the B83-1 is certainly a worthy goal, replacing it with a brand-new weapon is not a worthwhile endeavor. Though the new weapon uses an existing warhead, it likely still would put additional stress on an already strained nuclear enterprise that regularly sees cost overruns.

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this year updated its cost of U.S. nuclear forces to $756 billion for the 2023-2032 period. That estimate is a shocking 19% above CBO’s 2021 estimate for the 2021-2030 period. CBO updates these projections every two years. Inflation is taken into account in their estimates. However, the dramatic increase indicates struggles with existing programs, cost overruns and policy decisions that have been made since the 2021 estimate was published. Those include increased costs to the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile and other modernization initiatives. Further straining resources via the B61-13 spells possible disaster, delays and extreme cost.

A larger question remains unasked. The NPR states clearly that America’s nuclear weapons are for “defense and deterrence.” Despite the Pentagon’s consideration that destroying a large, hard target is defensive, the question remains how an additional capability to do so adds to “defense and deterrence” when other existing capabilities might already fill that need.

Rather than seeking to add to the mission set, the administration should work with congressional and nongovernmental experts to adapt current capabilities to fill defense and deterrence needs without expanding offensive capabilities. The United States should be looking for ways to increase efficiency in nuclear spending, not add yet another weapon at high cost with limited, if any, usefulness.

November 18, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Who Would Take the Brunt of an Attack on U.S. Nuclear Missile Silos?

These fallout maps (on original) show the toll of a potential nuclear attack on missile silos in the U.S. heartland

Scientific American BY SÉBASTIEN PHILIPPE 1 Dec 2023, [on original – excellent maps , charts, and illustrations]

This article is part of “The New Nuclear Age,” a special report on a $1.5-trillion effort to remake the American nuclear arsenal.

Last March the U.S. Air Force released a two-volume, 3,000-plus-page report detailing the environmental impact of its plans to replace all 400 “Minuteman” land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with new “Sentinel” missiles by the mid-2030s. The program is part of a $1.5-trillion effort to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal and its command-and-control infrastructure. The report, required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, covers the “potential effects on the human and natural environments from deployment of the Sentinel system” and from, among other things, the refurbishing of existing missile silos and the construction of new utility corridors and communications towers. But it doesn’t mention the most significant risks to surrounding communities—namely, what happens if these missiles, which are intended to serve as targets for enemy nuclear weapons, are ever attacked.

The original purpose of the land-based missile system was to deter an enemy nuclear attack by threatening prompt and devastating retaliation, but a key argument for the continued existence—and now the replenishment—of the land-based missiles is to provide a large number of fixed targets meant to exhaust the enemy’s resources. 

Since 1962, when the first ICBMs were installed in the U.S. heartland, competition from other legs of the nuclear triad has forced the rationale for land-based weapons to evolve. By the 1970s, when the U.S. Navy deployed long-range submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the air force had placed 1,000 Minutemen in silos across seven states. As missile-guidance systems improved, it soon became clear that the land-based weapons were vulnerable to attack because of their fixed locations, whereas the stealthy sea-based weapons were much better protected.

The air force used the vulnerability of the land-based missiles to argue for their necessity. In 1978 General Lew Allen, Jr., then air force chief of staff, proposed that the silos offered “a great sponge” of targets in the U.S. to “absorb” incoming Soviet nuclear weapons. Destroying the missile fields would require such a massive attack that adversaries couldn’t manage it or even contemplate it. Absent the land-based missiles, the argument goes, an adversary would have far more resources available to seek out and attack other U.S. military and infrastructure targets or even cities.

Even if an adversary is rational enough to not initiate a full-scale attack, the land-based missiles greatly increase the risk of accidental nuclear war. To preclude the possibility of enemy weapons destroying the missiles in their silos, the air force maintains the fleet on high alert, ready to launch on an order from the president—within minutes of enemy missile launches being detected. This “launch on warning” posture makes land-based missiles the most destabilizing leg of the U.S. nuclear triad (which also comprises the missiles based on aerial bombers and submarines). During the cold war there were several false alarms about enemy attacks. If a similar error precipitates the launching of the ICBMs, the adversary will almost certainly retaliate by launching its own nuclear arsenal at military, industrial and demographic targets in the U.S.

Attacking a missile silo requires detonating one or two nuclear warheads, with explosive yields equivalent to 100,000 tons of TNT, close to the buried target. The resulting nuclear explosions will generate gargantuan fireballs that will vaporize everything in their surroundings and produce destructive shock waves capable of wrecking the missiles in their launch tubes. Because the warheads will detonate close to the ground, the nuclear fireballs will suck in soil and other debris and mix it with radioactive bomb effluents as they rise in the air. About 10 minutes after detonation, the mixture of debris and fission products will form miles-high radioactive mushroom clouds, which will then be dispersed by high-altitude winds, leading to fallout on downwind areas.

Studies of the projected fallout from a nuclear attack on the missile fields, published in Scientific American in 1976 and 1988, showed that radioactive particles could travel hundreds of miles downwind. A 1990 guide from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on risks and hazards from natural and nuclear calamities confirmed these assessments, adding that no locality in the U.S. was free of the risk of receiving deadly levels of radiation. Today FEMA’s publications about the effects of nuclear explosions focus on single nuclear detonations; the agency no longer publishes countrywide assessments of risks from nuclear attacks.

All these past studies relied on relatively simple fallout models and average seasonal winds. Current computational capability, along with higher resolutions in archived weather data, allows scientists to map the radiological risk from a preemptive nuclear attack on the missile silos in unprecedented detail. The results of my simulations, presented here for the first time, paint a harrowing picture of the potential consequences of living with these weapons for the foreseeable future.

According to my models, a concerted nuclear attack on the existing U.S. silo fields—in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana and North Dakota—would annihilate all life in the surrounding regions and contaminate fertile agricultural land for years.

Minnesota, Iowa and Kansas would also probably face high levels of radioactive fallout. Acute radiation exposure alone would cause several million fatalities across the U.S.—if people get advance warning and can shelter in place for at least four days. Without appropriate shelter, that number could be twice as high. Because of great variability in wind directions, the entire population of the contiguous U.S. and the most populated areas of Canada, as well as the northern states of Mexico, would be at risk of lethal fallout—more than 300 million people in total. The inhabitants of the U.S. Midwest and of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario in Canada could receive outdoor whole-body doses of radiation several times higher than the minimum known to result in certain death.

Even if there is no nuclear war, people in communities near the missile fields will continue to face serious risks that are also not discussed in the environmental impact statement. One is the accidental release of radioactive materials, such as plutonium, in the warheads by a mechanical shock, fire or explosion. A second is the accidental detonation of a warhead leading to a nuclear explosion. The history of the U.S. nuclear missile program provides several examples of silos or missiles catching fire and of missiles exploding in their launch tubes. One time, in 1964, a warhead fell from the top of its missile to the bottom of its 80-foot-deep silo. Nuclear weapon accidents are not always discussed publicly. The air force hasn’t disclosed, for example, the nature of a 2014 “mishap” that occurred while personnel were troubleshooting a Minuteman. The episode caused $1.8 million in damages to the missile, which had to be removed from its silo.

The air force needs to be far more transparent about the true risks of its land-based nuclear missile fleet so the U.S. public can make informed decisions about living with this danger for another half a century.

HOW FALLOUT AND FATALITIES SHIFT WITH THE WINDS

A concerted nuclear attack on the missile silos in the U.S. heartland would generate radioactive dust that travels with prevailing winds……………………………………………………………………………………  Depending on wind directions, a nuclear attack on the missile silos could kill several million people.

[excellent maps and charts]

………………………………………………  the average outdoor radiation dose across North America after four days of exposure. Communities living closest to the silos could receive several times more than 8 Gy, which scientists regard as lethal. Most inhabitants of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota would get average doses greater than 1 Gy, causing fatalities from acute radiation syndrome, especially among children. The U.S. population would receive average doses greater than 0.001 Gy per year, which is the current annual limit for exposure to the public.

Fatality Count: For a simulated attack on any day of 2021, the scientists computed the resulting fatalities……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

WHICH LOCATIONS ARE THE RISKIEST?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Communities living closest to the silos could receive several times more than 8 Gy, which scientists regard as lethal. Most inhabitants of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota would get average doses greater than 1 Gy, causing fatalities from acute radiation syndrome, especially among children. The U.S. population would receive average doses greater than 0.001 Gy per year, which is the current annual limit for exposure to the public. 

THE WORST-CASE SCENARIOS

Sifting through simulations for each day of 2021, the Princeton researchers computed the worst possible outcome at each location from a concerted nuclear attack on the missile silos. This map [on original]shows all the worst-case scenarios across North America. Not all locations would experience the worst outcome from the same attack; which areas would be impacted depends on wind patterns on the day of the attack. …………………………………………………………….  Depending on wind directions, a nuclear attack on the missile silos could kill several million people……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/who-would-take-the-brunt-of-an-attack-on-u-s-nuclear-missile-silos/

November 17, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The U.S.’s Plans to Modernize Nuclear Weapons Are Dangerous and Unnecessary

The U.S. should back away from updating its obsolescent nuclear weapons, in particular silo-launched missiles that needlessly risk catastrophe

BY THE EDITORS,  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-u-s-s-plans-to-modernize-nuclear-weapons-are-dangerous-and-unnecessary/ DECEMBER 1, 2023

This article is part of “The New Nuclear Age,” a special report on a $1.5-trillion effort to remake the American nuclear arsenal.

The U.S. is planning to modernize its unwanted, unneeded and unsafe nuclear triad of land-, sea- and air-based weapons. Perfectly poised to refight the cold war, these overhauled bombs will waste $1.5 trillion and threaten life on Earth for the century to come. We should rethink this miserable folly rather than once again squandering our wealth while driving a new arms race.

As detailed in this issue of Scientific American, this plan to burn money while imperiling the world has been widely criticized in nuclear policy circles. “Russia and the United States have already been through one nuclear arms race. We spent trillions of dollars and took incredible risks in a misguided quest for security,” former U.S. defense secretary William J. Perry wrote in 2016 as the plans first materialized. “There is only one way to win an arms race: refuse to run.”

Although the Biden administration canceled proposed Trump-era sea-launched missiles, the U.S. nuclear arsenal still bristles with some 3,700 weapons, around 1,700 of them deployed for military use and the rest in storage overseen by the Department of Energy. This quantity is more than enough to threaten the destruction of humanity and Earth’s biosphere—and it is only a fraction of the world’s total, leaving out Russia’s similarly large stockpile and smaller ones in China and other nations. Lowering the numbers and thus the risks of these weapons is a responsibility the U.S. and the Soviet Union first recognized at the end of the 1960s, and this goal should drive military and political decision-making now.

Instead the U.S. is sleepwalking into an ill-considered and little-discussed resurrection of its three-pronged cold war nuclear forces. Meanwhile China is expanding its own arsenal (to one-fourth the size of the U.S.’s). New submarines, missiles and planes, all designed to fit into a military strategy first conceived before the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, will by 2050 leave the dead hand of the past steering us into another century of pointless risks. In this future, a mistake or misjudgment could exterminate humanity, as nearly happened repeatedly throughout the cold war. We are simply fortunate, nothing more, to have survived the hundreds of false alarms that rang over those decades.

At the center of the government’s proposal is a $100-billion bid to fill 450 nuclear silos in five inland states with hundreds of new nuclear missiles set to launch on hair triggers. Built before submarine-launched missiles became large, accurate and untraceable, these relics are now justified as a “nuclear sponge” to absorb a Russian attack on the U.S. Why plant a $100-billion nuclear “kick me” sign on the country’s breadbasket?

We cannot store the nuclear waste we have now, never mind the additional waste that will result from building these missiles. The so-called nuclear sponging mapped in this month’s issue [see “Sacrifice Zones”] would kill up to several million from radiation exposure, with hundreds of millions in North America being at risk of exposure to lethal fallout. Even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan would kill tens of millions worldwide and cause global famine—but how can the U.S. argue for other nations to disarm while burnishing its own nuclear sword in such a heedless fashion?

We aimed this Damoclean sword at ourselves during the cold war when we produced 70,000 of the plutonium “pits” that trigger thermonuclear warhead explosions. Weapons tests of these blasts have left every part of Earth’s surface contaminated with plutonium, with hotspots such as the Rocky Flats in Colorado and the Hanford sites in Washington State still requiring tens of billions of dollars for cleanup. Faltering efforts to restart pit production for the nuclear-modernization effort have cost $18 billion to $24 billion, much of it wasted, and, by the admission of weapons officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, they don’t even seem to be immediately necessary.

Why are we risking so much when the lessons of the 20th century are so clear? In the words of the 1991 START Treaty that capped the cold war, “nuclear war would have devastating consequences for all humanity … it cannot be won and must never be fought.” Disregarding Russia’s inability to turn its nuclear arsenal to military advantage while being bombarded by Ukrainian drones, our political class has fumbled away hard-won wisdom about the deadly futility of the arms race. We are recapitulating the dangers the world turned away from decades ago.

Who today benefits from disinterring the arms race? Only defense-industry shareholders and military contractors near silos in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska. This, in a nation where we have just doubled child poverty out of a refusal to help lower-income families. Surely it would be cheaper, safer and smarter to build factories or universities or research labs in these places, construct low-cost housing next to new engineering or biomedical campuses there, and watch them boom, in a good way, for the next century at a fraction of the silo-overhaul price tag. The 900 nuclear missiles onboard U.S. submarines will meanwhile deter the feared nuclear first strike the obsolescent land missiles were meant to discourage at the dawn of the cold war.

“A worrisome new arms race is brewing,” United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said in September. “This is madness. We must reverse course.” We agree. The only real way to use nuclear weapons is never. They should exist only in numbers large enough to deter their use by others, which they already abundantly do, with not one warhead more.

November 16, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | 2 Comments