Sunday Herald wrote:How the US forgot how to make Trident missiles
Inquiry cites loss of files and key staff as reason for $69m repair delayBy Rob Edwards, Environment Editor
PLANS TO refurbish Trident nuclear weapons had to be put on hold because US scientists forgot how to manufacture a component of the warhead, a US congressional investigation has revealed.
The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) "lost knowledge" of how to make a mysterious but very hazardous material codenamed Fogbank. As a result, the warhead refurbishment programme was put back by at least a year, and racked up an extra $69 million.
According to some critics, the delay could cause major problems for the UK Trident programme, which is very closely tied to the US programme and uses much of the same technology. The US and the UK are trying to refurbish the ageing W76 warheads that tip Trident missiles in order to prolong their life, and ensure they are safe and reliable. This apparently requires that the Fogbank in the warheads is replaced.
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Neither the NNSA nor the UK Ministry of Defence would say anything about the nature or function of Fogbank. But it is thought by some weapons experts to be a foam used between the fission and fusion stages of a thermonuclear bomb. US officials have said that manufacturing the material requires a solvent cleaning agent which is "extremely flammable" and "explosive". The process also involves dealing with "toxic materials" hazardous to workers.
Over the last year the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which reports to the US Congress, has been investigating the W76 refurbishment programme. An unclassified version of its final report was released last week. The GAO report concluded: "NNSA did not effectively manage one of the highest risks of the programme - the manufacture of a key material known as Fogbank - resulting in $69m in cost over-runs and a schedule delay of at least one year that presented significant logistical challenges for the navy."
For the first time, the report described the difficulties faced by the NNSA in trying to make Fogbank. A new production facility was needed at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, because an old one had been demolished in the 1990s.
But vital information on how Fogbank was actually made had somehow been mislaid. "NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s, and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency," the report said.
The GAO report also accused the NNSA of having an inconsistent approach to costing the W76 refurbishment programme. The total cost was put at $2.1 billion in 2004, $6.2bn in 2005 and $2.7bn in 2006.
To John Ainslie, the co-ordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, it was "astonishing" that the Fogbank blueprints had been lost. "This is like James Bond destroying his instructions as soon as he has read them," he said. "Perhaps the plans for making Fogbank were so secret that no copies were kept. The British warhead is similar to the American version, and so the problems with Fogbank may delay Aldermaston's plans for renewing or replacing Trident."
The NNSA's principal deputy administrator, William Ostendorff, said that the agency "generally agrees" with the findings of the GAO report. He stressed that NNSA was strengthening its management procedures. He added: "As with many processes that implement increased rigour, there is a need for identification of increased funding in order to increase the fidelity in project risk assessment."
UK sources suggested, though, that the US and UK designs were not identical. All the details of exactly how nuclear weapons are put together are classified as top secret in both countries.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence told the Sunday Herald: "It is MoD policy not to comment on nuclear warhead design. To do so would, or would be likely to, prejudice national security."
Lost technology? Now we're fucked. It's all boltguns and cathedrals from here on out.
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this here yellow plane makes for a sick ride
While I thought this was amusing, couldn't they just track down the people who had worked with the agency that left or retired and consult with them?
If most of them have retired or left, chances are good that they either have other obligations that would prevent them from coming back, or they don't want to come back. At that point, what's the US going to do? Kidnap them and force them to work at gunpoint?
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
General Zod wrote:If most of them have retired or left, chances are good that they either have other obligations that would prevent them from coming back, or they don't want to come back. At that point, what's the US going to do? Kidnap them and force them to work at gunpoint?
Depends on how much work they'd need to do to get the stuff made again. It's one thing to agree to help when there's actually relatively little to do, but if they want to get you into a lab for six months then there's a much greater likelihood of a recruitment problem.
The article did mention some sort of foam as a possibility, but unlike the Saturn V plans this is secretive enough that no sane government would comment either way, so it's certainly perfect material for a myth.
open_sketchbook wrote:Lost technology? Now we're fucked. It's all boltguns and cathedrals from here on out.
Seriously though, the parody with 40k is so amusing. How do people just "lose" knowledge in these days? I can see that they had only a few records on the actual thing, but science being what it is it's still hard to swallow.
And I assume nobody here can elaborate on what Fogbank is used for in the Trident assembly?
The article's title is a bit misleading, because this material is related to the warheads themselves, not the Trident missile. As I understand it, this "fogbank" chemical was in some way used in the warhead's interstage, whose purpose in a thermonuclear device is to transfer the energy released from the initiation of the fission primary to the fusion secondary at precisely the right time and modulation to ensure the secondary initiates properly. However, how the interstage actually works (or even what it looks like) doesn't seem to be publicly available information.
I'm wildly guessing here, but it's entirely possible this possible this material is no longer used in the interstages of more modern warheads, though it would be necessary to refurbish the W76 (the warhead in question here, which the British warheads are also believed to be based on), which was originally designed in the '70s and has been out of production since the '80s.
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open_sketchbook wrote:Lost technology? Now we're fucked. It's all boltguns and cathedrals from here on out.
Seriously though, the parody with 40k is so amusing. How do people just "lose" knowledge in these days? I can see that they had only a few records on the actual thing, but science being what it is it's still hard to swallow.
It's not that hard; in fact, it's just a recreation of how knowledge used to be lost in the past. Lots of ancient cultures lost knowledge because the few people who knew how died. When only a few people or records have the knowledge of how to make something, accidents can easily lead to the loss of that knowledge. When something is known by many people or written down many places, it would take something on a massive scale to destroy the knowledge. Holding something tightly as a secret artificially re-creates the situation faced by ancient cultures, where the knowledge was held in so few places that accidents could easily destroy it.
Teleros wrote:
General Zod wrote:If most of them have retired or left, chances are good that they either have other obligations that would prevent them from coming back, or they don't want to come back. At that point, what's the US going to do? Kidnap them and force them to work at gunpoint?
Depends on how much work they'd need to do to get the stuff made again. It's one thing to agree to help when there's actually relatively little to do, but if they want to get you into a lab for six months then there's a much greater likelihood of a recruitment problem.
There's also the question of how useful what they can recall from memory is going to be. Especially given problems like this :
US officials have said that manufacturing the material requires a solvent cleaning agent which is "extremely flammable" and "explosive". The process also involves dealing with "toxic materials" hazardous to workers.
That to me says that this isn't the sort of stuff you want to try to remake just using some one's vague memory.
* BOOM ! *
"Oh yeah, now I remember. Mix, THEN heat !"
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Thanks for that Deuce, it was more of an explanation that I was hoping for.
Dare anyone suggest that maybe this could be a good opportunity for an inventory reduction? Or can the U.S not let the Chinese and the Sovs Russians gain an edge?
tim31 wrote:Dare anyone suggest that maybe this could be a good opportunity for an inventory reduction? Or can the U.S not let the Chinese and the Sovs Russians gain an edge?
SLBMs are considered the most survivable deterrent force, plus the USN isn't going to want to leave the USAF with the only US nuclear weapons, plus this is the only type of device the UK still uses, so I think it will be going ahead regardless of the extra costs.
Sorry, I didn't mean get rid of the trident all together, I just meant not necessarily refurb all of them. That said, I wouldn't have the same idea of strategic forces dispostion and readiness that you guys would, so I'm probably talking out of my arse regarding deterrent reduction.
Despite the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initative, I doubt the US will consider a new warhead design sufficiently reliable until after at least one test initiation.
Sorta would suck balls if an xxBM delivered uninitiated devices to $enemy - nice little nuggets of device-grade fissile, plus semi-intact warheads that can be reverse engineered or otherwise learned from, and the results possibly lobbed back at you.
Of course, if someone (eg Stuart) with more knowledge would care to chime in, beaut - the above is just an amateur's waffle.
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fnord wrote:Despite the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initative, I doubt the US will consider a new warhead design sufficiently reliable until after at least one test initiation.
Sorta would suck balls if an xxBM delivered uninitiated devices to $enemy - nice little nuggets of device-grade fissile, plus semi-intact warheads that can be reverse engineered or otherwise learned from, and the results possibly lobbed back at you.
Of course, if someone (eg Stuart) with more knowledge would care to chime in, beaut - the above is just an amateur's waffle.
Unless I'm mistaken the part of the fusion bomb that makes it a fusion bomb is set off by a good old atomic bomb, and making this material incorrectly wouldn't really affect that. So I somehow doubt it would deliver the material as anything more useful than constituent atoms.
tim31 wrote:I assume nobody here can elaborate on what Fogbank is used for in the Trident assembly?
You assume correctly
What has happened is that this particular art was restricted to a relatively small number of people and due to the time since we last designed a nuclear device, those people who knew how it was done have moved on (or passed) and the records they left got mislaid. So, instead of being able to take the plans and built "it" we have to experiment around with the design, try out some of the variables and then test it. Note that the time involved (six months) and the money required (US$69 million) are both chickenfeed.
What this shows (again) is the danger of letting military production get wound down. The Canadians had the same problem when they started to build the halifax class frigates, so much of tehd esign art had been forgotten and had to be rebuilt that the final costs were much increased. The Brits have the same problem with the Astute class SSNs and the QE2 class carriers. The real solution to this specific problem is to build lots more nuclear devices to keep the production line running.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
fnord wrote:Despite the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initative, I doubt the US will consider a new warhead design sufficiently reliable until after at least one test initiation. Sorta would suck balls if an xxBM delivered uninitiated devices to $enemy - nice little nuggets of device-grade fissile, plus semi-intact warheads that can be reverse engineered or otherwise learned from, and the results possibly lobbed back at you. Of course, if someone (eg Stuart) with more knowledge would care to chime in, beaut - the above is just an amateur's waffle.
Not waffle, a pretty accurate summation of the situation. In fact, this has already happened. In 1958, there was a nuclear test moratorium that coincided with the development of the Sergeant battlefield support missile. As a result, Sergeant was deployed with a nuclear warhead (the W52) that hadn't been tested. When testing resumed it was found that the W52 was a complete dud. It needed to be completely redesigned (something that pretty much didn't happen, the W52 was replaced with either biologicals or high explosive). Sergeant was hastily withdrawn as a result.
This all proves we need more nukes and much more testing!!!!
Actually, I seriously believe there should be one above-ground nuclear test every few years at which the attendance of every world leader is compulsory. Nobody appreciates nukes until you've felt the ground rolling under your feet and seen that cloud forming.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
Should sell seats to interested civilians as well. I'd pay for that experience.
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The only question is, where would we put said testing site? Rotate it through a number of old test sites? The Trinity Site, for historical destructioning? Make it into the Nuclear Olympics, with major cities spending millions to prepare only for the survivors to crawl out of the rubble a week after the event, covered in burns and festering sores while lamenting their hubris as a three headed mutant tyrannosaur brought back by radiation devours their wife?
We'd need an area with minimal fallout spread risks, to be serious. Somewhere with low winds even at high altitudes and nothing of value nearby, including water supplies (not a serious concern, but still.) Maybe the Sahara? You'd also get amazing fields of fused glass out of the deal.
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Stuart wrote:
Actually, I seriously believe there should be one above-ground nuclear test every few years at which the attendance of every world leader is compulsory. Nobody appreciates nukes until you've felt the ground rolling under your feet and seen that cloud forming.
Can it also be connected to a resurrected Orion project in some way?
As for losing the designs, isn't it standard procedure to make at least several copies? (though only circulate one in the laboratories. The rest should be locked away in some vault in the Rockies).
Turns out that a five way cross over between It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Ali G Show, Fargo, Idiocracy and Veep is a lot less funny when you're actually living in it.
