Honestly I doubt that Russia has maintained their arsenal. Nuclear warheads must be maintained because the fissile cores wear out due to the natural halflife of uranium. So after X number of years (super-dooper state secret stuff, but it’s like every 10 years based on napkin math I did in my undergrad) the cores must be replaced.
All that said - I think Russia’s nuclear program is likely not in a functional state. The rockets work. They’ll do a publicized underground test every few years to show off capability. But something like nine in ten of their warheads will not reach criticality and misfire today if actually used. That’s still not a fun scenario, tens of millions would die. But it’s not nuclear apocalypse level that they use for defense posturing.
IIRC (forgive me I haven’t looked at this in ages) the USSR (lets face it, Russia is using their old shit, just like they’re using in Ukraine) had tritium based weapons. The half-life of tritium is just over 12 years. The USSR fell apart in 1991, so to make math easy lets use 1990 as the year their arsenal all got a nice refresh. 35 years have passed since 1990. That means they are on their 3rd full refresh of nuclear fissile material since the fall of the USSR. The budget for Russias nuclear force is a fraction of the US’s budget. There’s no fucking way they’ve refreshed 5500 warheads 3 times since the Cold War.
For everyone else on here, it’s not JUST the bombs they have to maintain either. Those missiles need changed out, fuel needs swapped in and out, components in those missiles go bad because of the radiation, the facilities themselves that house said missiles need maintenance, the subs need maintenance, etc etc etc.
Russia doesn’t have 5500 nukes. What the actual number is, I have no fucking idea. But it’s nowhere near that number. I’m sure people in intelligence services know.
The rockets sorta work, iirc there’s like a 20% published failure rate and that’s backed up with the fun videos of icbms purging their tanks while doing backflips falling to earth.
People keep bringing this up, and it’s likely true that most of them dont work anymore, but there is a no way in hell they haven’t kept up maintenance on a few.
One tenth of their deployed ones would be 170, and even 17 would be enough to start a nuclear war.
The takeaway should be that they likely don’t have the resources to back up their posturing, and are unlikely to try starting a nuclear war because of it (in theory).
Terrorist sizing those warheads don’t have to back anything up, their job is done as soon as the bomb goes off.
Honestly I doubt that Russia has maintained their arsenal. Nuclear warheads must be maintained because the fissile cores wear out due to the natural halflife of uranium. So after X number of years (super-dooper state secret stuff, but it’s like every 10 years based on napkin math I did in my undergrad) the cores must be replaced.
All that said - I think Russia’s nuclear program is likely not in a functional state. The rockets work. They’ll do a publicized underground test every few years to show off capability. But something like nine in ten of their warheads will not reach criticality and misfire today if actually used. That’s still not a fun scenario, tens of millions would die. But it’s not nuclear apocalypse level that they use for defense posturing.
This, this this.
IIRC (forgive me I haven’t looked at this in ages) the USSR (lets face it, Russia is using their old shit, just like they’re using in Ukraine) had tritium based weapons. The half-life of tritium is just over 12 years. The USSR fell apart in 1991, so to make math easy lets use 1990 as the year their arsenal all got a nice refresh. 35 years have passed since 1990. That means they are on their 3rd full refresh of nuclear fissile material since the fall of the USSR. The budget for Russias nuclear force is a fraction of the US’s budget. There’s no fucking way they’ve refreshed 5500 warheads 3 times since the Cold War.
For everyone else on here, it’s not JUST the bombs they have to maintain either. Those missiles need changed out, fuel needs swapped in and out, components in those missiles go bad because of the radiation, the facilities themselves that house said missiles need maintenance, the subs need maintenance, etc etc etc.
Russia doesn’t have 5500 nukes. What the actual number is, I have no fucking idea. But it’s nowhere near that number. I’m sure people in intelligence services know.
The rockets sorta work, iirc there’s like a 20% published failure rate and that’s backed up with the fun videos of icbms purging their tanks while doing backflips falling to earth.
People keep bringing this up, and it’s likely true that most of them dont work anymore, but there is a no way in hell they haven’t kept up maintenance on a few.
One tenth of their deployed ones would be 170, and even 17 would be enough to start a nuclear war.
The takeaway should be that they likely don’t have the resources to back up their posturing, and are unlikely to try starting a nuclear war because of it (in theory).
Terrorist sizing those warheads don’t have to back anything up, their job is done as soon as the bomb goes off.
90% chance the one they get is a dud, which is comforting.
But even if they fire a dud, the receiving part will see an incoming ICBM and won’t wait to check whether it’s a dud out not.