Russian Nuclear Triad: Status and Warheads

Yeah no need for those. Russians are solving these issues with their novel delivery methods. Autonomous torpedoes and hypersonics both with nuclear warheads. Hypersonics with nuke warheads would be used as decapitators and the poseidon would be used as deterrence to defend against decapitation strikes.

The Russians need to wipe out european nato in order to ensure that they will not pose a threat to Russia's recovery, hence cobalt bombs become practical.

The west itself is struggling to find ways of putting up barriers to trade and relations with Russia... Russia just has to let them keep doing that... borders will be closed and likely embassies will be closed too.

Eventually most trade will cease, forcing Russia to look to the rest of the world for trade and relations which will be good for Russia and the rest of the world.

The west hates Russia and wants Russians to be brutally murdered or killed by bio weapons so Russia is not losing in this break in relations... its defence needs in the west become very simple... they don't need lots of soldiers but well trained soldiers will be important, they will have lots of tactical nukes.

Put them on drones and they are no longer weapons and being theatre weapons they wont count under and START like agreement with the US.

Nuking europe sounds like a solution but the response will damage Russia in ways the west could never manage with economics and politics alone, so it is a defence for Russia but not something they would do if they got a choice.

Of course the US is dumb enough to give them no choice like they have in the Ukraine.

The west has been economically attacking countries around the world for centuries... will be nice to see them deal with some of the economic pain they are happy to inflict on countries they don't like.

Estimation of the number of nuclear charges in the world as of February 2022

https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/status/1533246474301198336/photo/1

The-thing-next-door wrote:The Russians need to wipe out european nato in order to ensure that they will not pose a threat to Russia's recovery, hence cobalt bombs become practical.

Why would you bomb the unfriendly neighbours with a weapon blowing huge amounts of Cobalt-60 in the atmosphere which even after more than 50 years lead to a 10 MSv/hr dose and taking in account that the dominating winds are from west to east?

As if you are not death enough from a million degrees Celsius, the enormous over-pressure, the normal direct radiation and the 1000's of tons radioactive soil blow up in the air in case of a normal fission or fusion ground explosion.

Sincerely,
Lesley

BTW IIRC the tank in your avatar was especially designed to survive nearby nuclear blasts...

Yes, it makes more sense to do taht sort of stuff well away from your own country... places like the US coastline in the Atlantic or Pacific with long range underwater drones or nuclear powered long range cruise missiles.

Adding cobolt to a bomb basically adds a material that will absorb enormous amounts of radiation and then release it over an extended period in dangerous concentrations.

Going the other way with neutron bombs that emit enormous levels of radiation and less kinetic energy so they knock down fewer buildings but irradiate people to much greater distances including those who might have found light cover already.

I suspect new START will not be replaced at all and the US will think they can bankrupt Russia by mass producing lots of new nukes... they can blame it all on Putin for this hostile act of forcing them in to all these sanctions that will lead to breaking a lot of international organisations... but of course what it might really do is break western control of said international organisations and systems... for example SWIFT... they clearly have too much control because banning Russia from that made little sense economically for the majority... but the US has control and they used (abused) their power.

The act of using that power however weakened SWIFT and created a situation where alternatives to SWIFT were not only desirable but actually necessary... the fact that they had been threatening it for years meant alternatives had been set up and put in place so it wasn't the game changer the west was expecting... all it achieved was to force countries that want to buy from Russia or don't want but have no choice like Germany and gas, to explore joining the new Russian bypass for the sanctions imposed by the west.

The net result is that they look silly, and they have weakened the tool they use as a weapon... a use for which it was not intended except in western back rooms perhaps.

Russia has an opportunity to create better alternatives and to get potential business partners to join with the promise these new systems wont be used to bully or control... just to transfer money like they were supposed to... I can see that appealing to a lot of countries who are tired of US bullying... even countries counted as being in the west get bullied.

BTW I don't want to see the US and the west destroyed, but it can't go on the way it is currently going.... they need to grow up and actually find some real ethics and morals and actually apply them to their own actions and policies instead of just keeping them in a drawer and pulling them out to judge other countries who never signed up for such rules in the first place.

GarryB wrote:Going the other way with neutron bombs that emit enormous levels of radiation and less kinetic energy so they knock down fewer buildings but irradiate people to much greater distances including those who might have found light cover already.

Neutron bombs are the military equivalent of IMF austerity programs.

They kill the people but leave the buildings standing.

11E wrote:

Why would you bomb the unfriendly neighbours with a weapon blowing huge amounts of Cobalt-60 in the atmosphere which even after more than 50 years lead to a 10 MSv/hr dose and taking in account that the dominating winds are from west to east?

As if you are not death enough from a million degrees Celsius, the enormous over-pressure, the normal direct radiation and the 1000's of tons radioactive soil blow up in the air in case of a normal fission or fusion ground explosion.

Sincerely,
Lesley

If a little cobalt 60 blowing in is a problem then they can use a few thousand conventional nuclear weapons on eastern europe and cobalts on everything else. The bottom line is as long as nato exists it will be hostile.

Killing everyone that is part of HATO is not practical because the immediate response will be their attempt to kill everyone in Russia... now if you are Skynet that might sound like a great idea with no bad sides, but for Russia and Russians it would make things rather worse than they are right now... which are actually good.

In the past the west was rich and Russia was struggling with the basics and imported most of the stuff they needed which was obviously a problem.

But the west is actually smoke and mirrors rich where they add loans to the income side of the ledger when they should be a reduction in terms of assets... you can't borrow money based on money you have in the bank that is already loaned money...

Russia does not need to destroy the west... the west is not Russias problem... with the stupidity of the west sanctions and other bullshit coming from the west and those that suck up to them the west is initiating a break a severing of ties from Russia with the only remaining trade or links being things the west can't do without... so when Russia gets to decide on its retaliation for all this bullshit from the west it is going to be plainly obvious what ties the west knows will hurt them the most and Russia not much or none at all, so those links will be easy to cut... even before alternatives have been found and put in place.

Russia does need to cut cultural and political ties with the west to prevent infiltration and subversion... something the west does everywhere... but in a hissy fit the west will likely do that for them with banning everything to do with Russia and Russians anyway.

The west are doing all the separation that Russia needs to protect Russia from the evil of the west.

Even if Russia keeps selling gas and oil to the west.... that is fine... a seriously damaged west would be terribly dangerous to everyone... let the people in the west work out what the problems are and sort them out for themselves.

It is not Russias place to be the world police.

GarryB wrote:Killing everyone that is part of HATO is not practical because the immediate response will be their attempt to kill everyone in Russia... now if you are Skynet that might sound like a great idea with no bad sides, but for Russia and Russians it would make things rather worse than they are right now... which are actually good.

With Russia's rapidly improving defence systems and the west's decline, I doubt that they could do much in retaliation.

Russia and the United States exchanged data on the number of strategic offensive weapons under START

In September, Russia and the United States exchanged notifications on the number of strategic offensive weapons under the New START. It turned out that part of the American weapons was not indicated in the notification.

“41 B-52H heavy bombers, which were declared converted by the American side, and nuclear warheads counted behind them. 56 launchers of Trident-II SLBMs, which are declared by the American side to be converted. Four silo launchers of ICBMs intended for training, renamed by it into "training mines"," the Russian Foreign Ministry's Telegram channel said in a statement .

The Russian department noted that they could not confirm that the States had indeed rendered these weapons unusable.

Earlier, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov commented on the situation around the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty with the United States. He expressed hope that the dialogue on the specifics of the START treaty would be maintained. ■

https://tvzvezda-ru.translate.goog/news/202210141742-a6IUT.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB&_x_tr_pto=nui

With Russia's rapidly improving defence systems and the west's decline, I doubt that they could do much in retaliation.

Breaking away from the west is not something for Russia to commit suicide over... the wests awful condition and the amount of real reform... political and economic and cultural reform... the west needs just to not crash sometime soon is enormous and they might think suicide might be easier and simpler.

Russia doesn't need to damage the west... the west is doing that just fine on its own.

Russia just needs to concentrate on its own problems and issues and work with the rest of the world to make both Russia and the rest of the world better places to live for everyone.

Building and developing and growing... not destroying.

Non-strategic weapons storage and deployment procedures in Russia

Russia has a wide range of nuclear-capable non-strategic delivery systems. This note focuses on air-delivered weapons and on ground-launched road-mobile missiles (whether ballistic or cruise missiles). The key principles of operations, however, remain the same across all nuclear delivery systems. They also appear to apply to weapons assigned to nominally strategic heavy bombers - Tu-95MS and Tu-160.

The description of nuclear weapon storage and deployment procedures is based primarily on the "Lock Them Up: Zero-Deployed Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons in Europe" report (see an update in this post), the semi-official history of the 12th Main Directorate, Рожденные атомной эрой, and OKSNAR - Fully Assembled State - Soviet Nuclear Weapons in Hungary 1961-1991.

Russia has repeatedly stated that in peacetime all its non-strategic nuclear weapons are "concentrated at centralized storage bases." There are two kinds of facilities that fit that definition---twelve large national-level storage sites and about 35 base-level storage facilities (see the map here). Base-level facilities could contain weapons that are assigned to delivery systems at the base they are collocated with or at other bases in the region. For example, a storage facility known as Kolosovka can store nuclear weapons for all nuclear-capable delivery systems in the Kaliningrad region. Each base-level facility has a "parent" national-level storage site that stores nuclear weapons assigned to the respective base or region. The "parent" national-level storage facility can be separate from the base-level facility by a considerable distance. The Kolosovka site is located more than 1000 km away from its "parent," Vologda-20. In many cases, however, the distance between the sites is smaller.

All weapons that are not mated to their delivery systems are handled by the troops of the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (12 GUMO).

If nuclear weapons are stored at the base-level facility, the standard weapon deployment procedure appears to include several steps that depend on the specific delivery system and the weapon type. In Russia's practice, weapons are stored separately from their delivery vehicles.

The image above shows the arrangements at the Soltsy air base, a base of Tu-22M3 bombers (Image source: Google Earth). The rectangular security perimeter surrounding the nuclear weapon storage facility is seen in the upper left corner of the image. A storage facility on the right side of the image, which is used to store non-nuclear armaments, does not have a similar security perimeter around it.

If the weapons in question are warheads of ballistic or cruise missiles, each of them is stored in a specialized container, only to be mated with the missile as part of the deployment procedure. Gravity bombs are stored in their containers assembled.

Once the units receive an order to bring nuclear delivery systems to a higher state of readiness, the 12 GUMO units must take the weapons, still in containers, out of storage and load them on specialized trucks. When this procedure is completed, the trucks deliver the containers to a designated point, where weapons are removed from containers so they can be mated with their delivery systems.

In the case of air-delivered weapons, such as bombs or ALCMs, this point is normally a designated area of an airbase where the 12 GUMO troops carry out the final assembly of a weapon, if necessary, and prepare it for loading on the delivery aircraft. Fully assembled weapons at the airbase remain in the custody of the 12 GUMO troops until the very moment they are loaded on an aircraft that is ready to take off, at which point the custody is transferred to the aircraft crew.

Warheads of land-based ballistic and cruise missiles could probably be delivered to the missile base. However, the standard procedure appears to involve transporting the warheads to a designated rendezvous point away from the base where they would be mated with missiles and then loaded on launchers. The 12 GUMO troops apparently have the necessary equipment to conduct these operations in the field.

It appears that the 12 GUMO troops can keep nuclear weapons outside of the storage facility for some time, probably days and maybe even weeks. However, at some point the weapons must be returned to the base-level facility that provides conditions for long-term storage.

https://russianforces.org/blog/2022/10/non-strategic_weapons_storage_.shtml

Russian NOTAM´s for the next days.

With Russia's rapidly improving defence systems and the west's decline, I doubt that they could do much in retaliation.

You could say the same about the Ukraine and Russia but occasionally they have a sneak attack or commit a war crime in territory they just recaptured...

Propably part of the coming exercises of the Strategic Forces.

A very good article in the Drive on the warheads and payload bus of the R-36M2 with information that they don't know why the Russians have released. These are the first 2 paragraphs. No link to the original TV broadcasts is provided. As usual ignore the comments section.


Russian state media outlets have offered unprecedented looks at the payload bus for the R-36M2 intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, where the weapon's nuclear warheads are housed. Also known as the SS-18 Mod 5 Satan in the West, this missile has a so-called multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle, or MIRV, configuration and has one of the heaviest payloads of any ICBM ever developed and fielded.

Dmitry Kornev, a Russian military expert who runs the blog Military Russia, recently posted stills showing the R-36M2 payload bus on Twitter that were captured from video clips broadcast on the state-run television stations Russia-24 and TV Zvezda. The latter of these is the official television station of the Russian Ministry of Defense. Kornev indicated that the footage has been shown after the first full-scale launch of the RS-28 Sarmat ICBM in April 2022. The RS-28 is expected to eventually replace the R-36M2 in Russian service.




https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-releases-incredibly-detailed-views-of-its-massive-satan-missile

Been hearing talk lately about the need for Russia to conduct a nuclear explosion test which has not been done for decades. Here is another article to that effect and noticed in the Armed Forces news that Putin awarded the head of the 12th Military Department Lab (nuclear weapons research) today.


MOSCOW, February 8. /TASS/. The Novaya Zemlya nuclear testing ground is ready to resume nuclear tests, if need be and given the corresponding political will, Vyacheslav Solovyov, scientific head of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, told TASS on Wednesday.

"It is ready," he said, replying to the corresponding question.

As Solovyov explained, "a special program is in effect to maintain the testing site’s readiness."

The Novaya Zemlya nuclear test site is maintained by the Russian Defense Ministry’s 12th Main Department. From September 21, 1955 to October 24, 1990, 130 tests were carried out at the nuclear test site, including 88 atmospheric, three underwater and 39 underground tests.

https://tass.com/defense/1573143

Apart from any technical requirement it would be a good way to get the liberal anti nuke westerners to wake up to the fact that things are serious and not talking to Russia is a bad thing for the west.

A bit more anti war sentiment in the west would be a good thing... Especially if it is a 500MT test for Poseidon.

No computer model can reproduce reality to arbitrary tolerance levels.   They run fluid dynamics equations for these virtual
bombs and use some model of the nuclear chemistry and heat release.   The bomb itself needs another model where the material
properties of the components are described with pseudo-empirical relations.    Any simulation of physical systems rests on
key elements that are parameterizations.   So there is always fundamental uncertainty.  

If Russia wants to develop new nuclear bombs it will require real world testing.  There is no "end of history" in science and
engineering.

The last really useful tests were needed to make some observations that computers back then couldn't simulate.

Any computer model is only as good as the information and model it uses... it will perfectly model the facts and reality of the model, but does that model reflect the real world or is it just a model?

Over the years new technology and materials might effect how these things actually work.

One US test in the Marshal Islands they tested a bomb that was massively more powerful than they expected and calculated and a lot of people that were not moved out of harms way because they thought would be safe got a good dose of radiation and the only time they had seen what they thought was snow... it was ash.

New tests with real weapons would be useful to update the models and compare the results with computer models to see if the models do in fact match reality.

Only way to tell is to do real tests and then computer model the tests and look at both sets of results.

A good opportunity to test old stocks to make sure they still work and also some new designs that were all theoretically based using computer models to see if they perform as expected.