America's new Sentinel nukes mushroom 81% in cost. Pentagon says it's all good The price tag for the Pentagon's next-generation nuclear-tipped Sentinel ICBMs has ballooned by 81 percent in less than four years, triggering a Congressionally-mandated justify-or-die review. The US Dept of Defense carried out that legally required probe into the cost of the program, and on Monday released the results – with …
"Do we actually know if Chinese nukes really work ?"
In other words which country do we know that their nukes work at all ? Those who do regular and successful tests:
- USA: yes
- Russia: no and I doubt they still have one completely functional after decades of corruption selling all parts on the dark net. Look at their lorries back in 2022 ...
- China: same as Russia, except for the latest ones
- UK: erm, sorry folks, but no, 2 tests failed recently
- France: yes
The recent UK test that 'failed' actually didn't.
The test was of the launch system of the submarine (following overhaul / refurbishment), which operated successfully, and thus the test was passed.
The missile failed to then ignite its main engine.
Since, as has already been noted, the same missile is used by the US and the UK, if this was a fundamental problem with the missile, one would expect a lot of vexed faces in the MoD and the US DoD.
Instead, the response appears to have been 'Meh! Not a problem...'
The informed(?) public discussion seems to be that the missile used was an old missile and had been fitted with additional instrumentation to support the test, and one or other of these factors led to the missile malfunctioning.
Not being privy to the secrets of the MoD/DoD, I've no idea if that's true, but when you want to test whether your submarine can eject a missile shaped object with a missile's weight, out of a launch tube and into the air, using a time-expired missile (that has the desired shape and weight) to do so seems an efficient way of doing it.
"using a time-expired missile (that has the desired shape and weight) to do so seems an efficient way of doing it."
It also seems a very, very risky way of doing it. Whilst a dumb weight might be projected (eg) to the side and thus have zero chance of falling back onto the boat, an unreliable missile might misfire and could then fall back onto the boat. I suspect that an unarmed ICBM dropping twenty to a hundred feet back onto the vessel would be pretty calamitous both for those involved, and for the strategic deterrent.
A few years ago they replaced all the arming fuses with modern ones on the live warheads. The new "Super Fuse" gives the warheads much better kill rates against hardened silos.
For what has been said it sounds like the UK dummy warheads still used the old arming fuses. The submarine programed the missile computer to expect a new super fuse. So when the missile exited the water and turned on it detected an error with the arming fuse and self destructed as faulty arming mechanisms on nukes can lead to bad things.
> The submarine programed the missile computer to expect a new super fuse. So when the missile exited the water and turned on it detected an error with the arming fuse and self destructed
Is that the excuse they are going with? I thought Grant Shapps just pressed the wrong button
And of course, Ukraine gave up its nukes in return from sovereign guarantees from Russia, the US and UK.
The guarantees in question (Budapest Memorandum) were that those three countries promised not to invade or attack the three giving up their nuclear weapons (Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan) - not that anyone promised to protect them.
"I wonder for how long America has known Russia/USSR was basically a paper tiger ?... I guess contracts for $140B need a real enemy"
$140bn of nuke deterrents is foresight for China. There's plenty more pork left in the rest of the $800bn US military budget (by the way, the $800+bn 'defense' allocation is annual. The $140bn sentinel costs, while not clearly stated, seem to be a total project cost, not annual)
Ever since the cold war ended, the US has needed other wars, preferably of the hot type, to sell military hardware. The bulk of that $800bn would not be needed if even a small fraction were dedicated to diplomacy and foreign debt relief, but 'arms dealer' is a tried and trusted way of getting rich, and peace isn't as profitable. Of course having US boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't such a hit, politically. Sending US weapons castoffs to their 'brave allies' while the US military stocks up on the latest hardware is an amazing trick to pull, especially when pretty much 100% of the $$$ 'aid' being 'sent' to Ukraine is actually going to US military contractors, while Ukraine gets mostly older hardware. Same BS as the strings attached foreign aid which compels the vassal state to spend the 'aid' cash on selected friendly corporations in the donor country - just a PR-friendly way of funnelling cash to said friendly corporations.
No wonder the US are so strongly against a resolution to the war (of course publicly they say they want it over, only acceptable conditions being ones that will never exist IRL)
Part of this is due to the fact that we waited too long, and a lot of the institutional knowledge has been lost. The cost of getting that back has been huge.
Institutional knowledge is one of the reasons why we continue to make things we seemingly don’t need. It’s not like you can stop that and just start it back up and pick up where you left off.
This is a perennial problem with any manufacturing or construction activity that is subject to feast or famine bankrolling - be that building navy ships, aircraft, missiles, airfields, defence comms. And equally true in civil infrastructure, such as power generation, airports, railways, civil engineering in general.
What the military (and civil infrastructure) need is long term funding programmes that ensure that manufacturing capability is preserved by avoiding cliff edge spending; that would also help reduce the cost increases which invariably occur when you accelerate any programme and create your own supply chain shortages.
Yes I know the warheads themselves may require periodic "maintenance", and parts that are subject to aging like batteries, rubber seals, and so forth may need to be replaced. But honestly, if they were hitting close enough to the target 50 years ago they're good enough for today. If a new generation is slightly more accurate or can blow up the world more times per 100 missiles, does that really matter? If we ever have to use more than a handful the world as we know it is over regardless.
I imagine the Pentagon sold this to congress based on "China is designing modern nukes, we can't let them be ahead". Its the "missile gap" crap from the Cold War all over again. Frankly I don't think it matters if China, or Russia, or even North Korea or Iran have more advanced nukes than we do. So long as ours still reach the target, and produce a nuclear firewall 9 times out of 10 that's all we need for them to function as a deterrent.
Probably because everything in the rockets and ground command systems is ageing and contains obsolete parts. You get to a point when you might as well replace it as restart many, many obsolete part production lines to get new spares to continue support.
Other old weapons like the B52 bombers have had several major and very expensive refits of avionics over this time-scale.
"Other old weapons like the B52 bombers have had several major and very expensive refits of avionics over this time-scale."
And for the most part, USAF have to keep updating the B52 because programs for newer better weapons platforms are either cancelled or severely cut back "because they cost too much". The latest B52 modernisation programme was expected to cost $48.6bn (but is already over budget) and will extend the operational life to 2060. Since the last B52 was delivered in 1962..........
Basically, the various overspends on the B1, B2, the inevitable overspend on the B21, they should all just stomach the costs (which are usually the fixed, not the variable element of the programme) and construct the fleet that was originally planned, because the long term cost of keeping even older stuff working is greater.
In material terms yes: Brand new engines, new structural members, new engines, new avionics....but not in design concept terms. Just look at a B52 - as aerodynamic and manoeuvrable as a brick, slow, heavy, so large it requires unique maintenance facilities. Replacing every single part doesn't materially improve the physical capabilities enough. Every design compromise that made sense in 1952 (when the aircraft made its first flight) lives on, pickled in aspic. The B52 was designed by hand, built by hand, and in a shipwreck hurry - basically three years from final design concept to a finished airframe
It makes zero sense to plan to operate out to 2060 with ninety year old airframes and a hundred year and eight year old design. I'll let US readers ponder on how their military came to be in this sad situation.
The B-52 is already old enough that it's been flown by three generations of the same family. More than one family too.
In the next 10-15 years we'll probably see the first 4th generation B-52 crew flying, possibly in the same airframe their great-grandfather flew.
New missiles today have a significant amount of anti-anti-missile capabilities. The ability to take down an old generation ICBM in flight is no longer as difficult a problem as it previously was. Iron Dome, Patriot and the other systems being used in Ukraine at the moment are more than capable of taking down standard old generation missiles (and if Ukraine had more of them, then the entire playbook of Russia would be destroyed).
The more modern ICBM's carry countermeasures to make them much more difficult to a) target and b) actually take down. Hence upgrading to newer designs does actually make sense. There's no point starting World War 3/the Apocalypse/Armageddon if you cant guarantee that your warheads are actually going to make it through the enemies defences in the first place...
"According to LaPlante, the Sentinel program can't be canned because it's essential to national defense"
Based on the idea that they will be used in the event of a nuclear strike, at which point MAD plays out and there is no nation to defend.
So... Having them only makes things more unstable for zero actual reward for any of it. If they are used in any capacity by anyone, then we are all doomed world wide. So they play exactly zero into national defence.
At this point, the US getting rid of its nukes makes the world an awful lot less stable. Unless you believe that Xi Xinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are forces for global stability.
The current global order - let's call it the post WWII international settlement minus the collapse of the Soviet empire - has been reasonably successful. At least in terms of avoiding major global powers fighting wars with each other. Also in terms of economic growth too. Particularly the era of globalisation kicked off in the 90s - which has lifted more people (in both absolute and percentage terms) out of poverty than at any time in human history.
It's an interesting (unanswerable) question as to whether the Cold War would have gone hot, without the threat of nuclear annihilation. But a Cold War with just the Soviets having nukes would have been a very different affair indeed - and the Soviet empire would have ended up a lot bigger - and probably lasted a lot longer.
So far, US security guarantees in Asia and Europe have limited the numbers of countries that have got nuclear weapons. Wish away the US nuclear arsenal and the world doesn't magically become a cuddly, happy, wonderful safe place. I'd be prepared to bet that things would become a lot less stable, and there'd be a lot more countries building their own nuclear weapons - and global stability would almost certainly take a turn for the worse because of it.
So we live with the eternal gun to the head of the US assuring everyone it will absolutely end the entire planet if anyone ever uses them... Seems like a night happy cuddly stability.
Currently in the hands of a mentally unstable president and soon to be under a felo, who said they could commit murder in Times Square and get away with it. Very stable.
Zibob,
We do live with an eternal gun to the head. That's what nukes are. But before that, we also lived with an eternal gun to the head - which in that case was an actual gun. Of course, in the olden days - before the invention of the aeroplane - most civilians were broadly OK - so long as an army didn't turn up on their doorstep. Or the war didn't go on so long that famine hit the whole place. The Thirty Years War is estimated to have killed one third of the population of Germany (mostly through disease and starvation - but also an awful lot of violence). Once there were planes of course, then we could add bombing cities to the list of possibilities.
I'm not sure nukes create stability. But then I'm not sure there's ever been much stability to speak of. I strongly suspect their existence made the Cold War a lot less bloody than it would otherwise have been. Though predicting Stalin's actions after WWII is impossible.
In a more multi-polar world the risk calculation changes and also the number of countries with access to nuclear weapons keeps on growing. I don't think we have stability. If nukes make the world more dangerous, it doesn't become safer just because one power doesn't have them.
I don't see the world being more stable if the US say cuts its defence spending to normal levels, becomes isolationist and/or abandons its nukes. There's an awful lot of smug anti-Americanism in Europe, from people that would be horrified by a world not running on the current international system. But who also aren't willing to resource their own militaries, intelligence services and diplomats to replace the US. So the alternative to the US at the moment is China's vision of global governance. Which would be far worse for everyone, including the people of China.
You are allowed to do both you know.
And it should be pointed out that the US has consistently spend more on defence since the Cold War ended than its NATO partners in Europe - and yet its economy has also grown faster than ours. Particularly being faster to come out of recessions - and that compounds up over the years to better standards of living for everyone.
"Guns or Butter" as a certain propaganda-peddler once said
Some comparisons (2021 number are the nearest I have to hand):
Size of US defence budget: $801bn
Size of US healthcare market: $808bn
And that is before we get to all that butter left-pondians are so fond of consuming which puts them in need of such prodigious medical spending...
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