How would it help build better weapons? I thought the existing thermonuclear bombs do the job perfectly fine. Sure, the military might want to make them a bit smaller or a bit cheaper, but is it really such a big deal as to warrant a major announcement?
"Nuclear stockpile research" is only making weapons "better" in the sense that they are reliable despite not having been tested in decades. There's probably a component of "unemployed nuclear weapons designers is a bad thing" also.
The fusion for power experiments are using the same laser equipment but different targets and sensors.
I guess they also don't want to blow up random civilians by accident again.
When castle bravo was tested, we didn't knew that lithium7 fusion was possible and that it would generate energy. The bomb had a lot of lithium7 because it was cheaper than lithium6. Castle Bravo then proceeded to explode with way more power than intended, it vaporized the measurement instruments, ruined the test site, damaged civilian property and caused a horrible amount of fallout that screwed a enormous amount of people from more than one country.
Even during war, I suppose you want your explosions to behave in the way you expect... so you need to figure out all the physics related to them.
Given the limitations on nuclear research for weapons purposes any information that can be gleaned from these experiments that is 'dual use' is more than welcome with the parties that are currently stymied by various arms control agreements. This is also why you will see a lot of supercomputer capacity near such research, it allows simulation of experiments with high fidelity rather than the experiments themselves. These are all exploitation of loopholes. The biggest value is probably in being able to confirm that the various computer models accurately predict the experimental outcomes. This when confirmed at scale will allow for the computer models to be used for different applications (ie: weapons research) with a higher level of confidence.
Presumably these computer models are mostly useful for creating new designs (since the old designs were proven by real tests). Would such new designs be convincing enough to the adversary to fulfill its role as a strategic deterrence?
When (in XX years?) almost all US nukes are only simulated on computers and not actually tested, the Russians may start wondering if the US aresnal actually works, no? That would be a horrible outcome, since it means the Russians would be taking somewhat greater risks in their decision-making. Wouldn't far outweigh any opertaional or financial benefits the newer designs offer?
I suppose one could argue that if the loss of confidence in strategic weapons matched the actual loss in reliability, it might be a "no op" (although even this is arguable). But if the Russians think the US simulations suck, while the US is actually building really good simulations, the loss of confidence would be greater than the actual loss in reliability. In the extreme case, the nukes work great, but everyone thinks they are scrap metal.
Of course, the same happens in reverse: if the Russians are upgrading their weapons to untested designs, the US may start underestimating the risk.
> the Russians may start wondering if the US aresnal actually works, no?
If anything the last year or so has probably made the reverse happening and the US and its adversaries likely both have very high confidence in that the US arsenal actually works.
Or the US finds that after x many years bombs degrade in unexpected ways, and that while we were able to figure this out and fix it. Then we speculate that the Russians probably haven't fixed theirs in the same way and their bombs aren't good anymore. Which means the risk of a nuclear war just jumps up, since MAD is compromised.
To learn about their degradation modes and how to maintain them (since full-scale nuclear tests are now verboten, and subcritical experiments only deal with fission part of the entire assembly -- we now also need some experimental setup to test the fusion part: radiation pressure, X-ray reflection, ablation modes etc. NIF is this setup).
Also, there is a constant need to improve fusion/fission rate in the total energy output, and perhaps eventually design pure fusion weapons, though this is still probably out of reach.
The USA no longer has the technical capability to manufacture the necessary parts to maintain the current stockpile. The whole strategic arms reduction treaty regime is basically a fig leaf to cover for the fact that we have to cannibalize some legacy weapons to maintain the rest. If nothing changes the USA probably won't have an effective arsenal within a century. Given the likely state of the USA by that time, that's probably for the best.
> > USA probably won't have an effective arsenal within a century.
> If other countries joined, it would be a great outcome.
Why the optimism? Without MAD, it's nearly certain that we'd have a world war at some point in time. Sooner or later, it will surely happen. If you think it won't happen, or won't cost millions of lives, or won't employ re-developed nukes eventually, please tell me why you think so. (No sarcasm.)
I don’t think MAD is all that effective. At this moment in time we’re seeing:
* Several concurrent arms races in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe
* A high intensity conflict in Ukraine
* China threatening a land invasion into Taiwan
MAD might be preventing a country like Poland from jumping into the Ukraine conflict, but more likely it’s because of its involvement in NATO.
I think collective security organisations are a far more potent force for peace than nuclear weapons. If countries abided by their security agreements in WW2, then we’d have nipped the entire thing in the bud.
> I don’t think MAD is all that effective. At this moment in time we’re seeing:
> * Several concurrent arms races in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe
> * A high intensity conflict in Ukraine
> * China threatening a land invasion into Taiwan
I mean... Only one of those is an actual fight. And there MAD doesn't apply because the defender doesn't have the Assured Destruction capability needed.
> Several concurrent arms races in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe
Which is to say, possible future proxy wars between the great powers where MAD will supposedly restrict conflict intensity. See below.
> A high intensity conflict in Ukraine
What's going on in Ukraine is a bog standard cold war style proxy war. The NATO plan is basically to turn it into another Afghanistan for the Russians. It's the exact thing that MAD is meant to keep from spilling over into a world war between the principals.
> China threatening a land invasion into Taiwan
This is more interesting. US conventional forces almost certainly have no hope of beating China that close to home. Therefore, any effective US response would require nuking China and China is presumably deterring that with their nukes. There is an argument to be made here that a non-nuclear Chinese military would be in Taiwan's best interests. However, I see no scenario where either a nuclear or non-nuclear China and a non-nuclear USA is in Taiwan's best interests. So while the MAD case isn't the best case for Taiwan here, it's also not the worst.
There are a lot more armed conflicts throughout the world that are proxies or partial proxies between the various powers in the world (US, Russia, and more). See Yemen, Syria, and many more throughout Africa. World powers tend to get on one side or another as they see their interests align and oftentimes this prolongs the conflict rather than bring it to any resolution.
I'm not really optimistic about this option, just a bit of wishful thinking about peace upon the world and such. OTOH, even with MAD we still have wars and probably much more than 100K people on average get killed in wars every year. Even with MAD, NATO is pushing conflict with Russia well beyond a proxy war at this point. MAD doesn't work if the world goes mad...
> 1. How does this research help address this problem?
I see it the other way around, this problem makes me doubt that this research will ever actually lead anywhere, supposing it's even as good a result as it first appears.
> 2. What are the sources for your opinion?
It's a fact. And my source is dead tree media. I don't recall all the details, but there are some very finicky parts that go into a state of the art warhead and we have lost the capability to manufacture them. Is this really so surprising? We can't even build new F-22s anymore!
The most famous key component that was speculated or leaked, was that we lost the makeup and reason for the Styrofoam that holds the primary and surrounds the secondary.
This research successfully initiated fusion, using a capsule of hydrogen made of some material, surrounded by something, with an outer layer. This outer layer is turned into X-Rays by the laser, which then ablate the hydrogen capsule's casing casing the inwards pressure. You could speculate, that they just found the makeup for something that would replace the Styrofoam, or we just improved upon it.
