Al-Qaida has obtained tactical nuclear explosives???

[Joe]

Different times, and WWII was radically different from any war we're likely to fight in the future.

[Sarevok]

Different times, and WWII was radically different from any war we're likely to fight in the future.

Except WW3.

[Xon]

LOL MY country is enlightened enough to have no nuclear deterrent at all!

Australia has the benefit of being an American ally and thus under the aegis of our nuclear deterrant. I doubt that Australia choose to forgo nuclear weapons merely out of "enlightenment."

The reason we dont have them is its too expensive, and the govermnet has only reasently increased military spending my any substantual amounts.

Never mind we are one of the largest exports of uranium in the world .

Also we are allies with America, so they can foot the bill to have nukes

[Xon]

Never mind we are one of the largest exports of uranium in the world .

Actually that should be, we have some of the largest deposites of low-cost extractable uranium. And if we ever bothered to mine it all, we could easily export double butt loads of it.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Interesting; why the six-year shelf life? Are we talking about tritium decay? If so, wouldn't the fission stage still work, even if the fusion stage doesn't?

Yes, it is a function of tritium decay. I'm not sure if the fission stage would still work or not; Soviet nukes were designed to be replaced, not recharged, like our's are (their entire defence industry operated on a replacement culture, as opposed to a refurbishment one, for lack of a better way of putting it; for example their units in Eastern Europe had massive reserves of equipment that were intended to be brought up to replace combat losses to the same division as they occured, etc). So there may be other factors implied in that limitation, but the principle one is the tritium.

The Russians today may have as few as a couple hundred operational nuclear devices, in fact, due to it.

[Sea Skimmer]

Interesting; why the six-year shelf life? Are we talking about tritium decay? If so, wouldn't the fission stage still work, even if the fusion stage doesn't?

The issue is a buildup of impurities in the uranium and tritium decay, so neither stage can be expected to work, or rather the probability of a fissile will be so high its not worth trying. Stuart Slade posted a formula for it a while back, I'll see if I can locate it.

My understanding is that all recent nukes are designed such that they require all of the fissionable material be undecayed. This is especially important on tactical nukes, as the less waste you have the smaller and lighter the device.

That is the case, the designs don't have much waste energy so everything needs to be perfect. Buti t was far worse with early nuclear weapons, in the 1950's most bomb designs had lives of only days or weeks once assembled. Because of that everything had to be stored dissembled, and for a time SAC's reaction time for an all out nuclear attack was four weeks and that of the Soviet Union six. Though because SAC was flying standing patrols it did keep a limited stock of weapons assembled.

[phongn]

Are nuclear weapons generally stored assembled and ready to go, or do they require some kind of loading procedure? Are the same warheads kept on the missles, or are they traded out occassionally?

They are typically stored assembled in the 'declared' nuclear powers. Israel might keep their warheads unmated to their delivery systems, but that can change real quick.

If they 'go off', I imagine there'd be a maintenance schedule or something

There is almost certainly a maintenance schedule.

[Sea Skimmer]

Are nuclear weapons generally stored assembled and ready to go, or do they require some kind of loading procedure? Are the same warheads kept on the missles, or are they traded out occassionally?

If they 'go off', I imagine there'd be a maintenance schedule or something

Most nuclear weapons are kept dissembled to increase their lives; the assembly times can be anywhere from hours to weeks depending on the design. Ballistic missile warheads (which are only a small percentage of anyone's total stockpile) are kept loaded and ready to go, but are rotated through maintenance facilities periodically and replaced with newly refurbished warheads. Gravity bombs and cruise missile warheads for alert bombers are maintained in a similar way, with some kept ready to go while others are maintained.

[Sea Skimmer]

Oh certainly, but as McNamara stressed in The Fog of War the firebombings were a conscious decision to engage in the mass slaughter of civilians. They new exactly what they were getting into and decided it was worth it to end the war. I'm not going to argue for or against that decision, but it shows the US is certainly capable of deciding to exterminate civilians on a massive scale in order to win a war.

McNamara is also one of the stupidest people to ever serve in the US government and waged a campaign of slander against Curtis E. LeMay. He is an absolutely horrible source of information for just about anything, but WW2 Firebombing in particular. The Japanese aviation industry was decentralized in small shops across Japanese urban areas, as where other industries. That is why the USAAF always intended to burn out the cities, contrary to the bullshit thrown around that such attacks where only launched when precision bombing failed.