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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (977615)	11/1/2016 11:00:41 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1585927

I'll take the expert's opinion. The Chinese and the French know what's enough. The only reason we and the Russians have so many is Cold War history - we're building down form having 80.000 between us.

To: RMF who wrote (977615)	11/1/2016 11:24:17 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 1585927

Be careful when listening to someone as ignorant as bentway. Obomber approved a $1 trillion upgrade in US nukes.... ======== As U.S. Modernizes Nuclear Weapons, ‘Smaller’ Leaves Some Uneasy By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGERJAN. 11, 2016 A jet fighter drops a mock B61 model 12 bomb that zeroes in on the target zone, as part of a $10 billion United States government program that seeks to build a smart atom bomb of great precision. By SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES on Publish Date January 11, 2016. . As North Korea dug tunnels at its nuclear test site last fall, watched by American spy satellites, the Obama administration was preparing a test of its own in the Nevada desert. A fighter jet took off with a mock version of the nation’s first precision-guided atom bomb. Adapted from an older weapon, it was designed with problems like North Korea in mind: Its computer brain and four maneuverable fins let it zero in on deeply buried targets like testing tunnels and weapon sites. And its yield, the bomb’s explosive force, can be dialed up or down depending on the target, to minimize collateral damage. In short, while the North Koreans have been thinking big — claiming to have built a hydrogen bomb, a boast that experts dismiss as wildly exaggerated — the Energy Department and the Pentagon have been readying a line of weapons that head in the opposite direction. The build-it-smaller approach has set off a philosophical clash among those in Washington who think about the unthinkable. 1950s U.S. Nuclear Target List Offers Chilling Insight DEC. 22, 2015 U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms SEPT. 21, 2014 Mr. Obama has long advocated a “nuclear-free world.” His lieutenants argue that modernizing existing weapons can produce a smaller and more reliable arsenal while making their use less likely because of the threat they can pose. The changes, they say, are improvements rather than wholesale redesigns, fulfilling the president’s pledge to make no new nuclear arms. But critics, including a number of former Obama administration officials, look at the same set of facts and see a very different future. The explosive innards of the revitalized weapons may not be entirely new, they argue, but the smaller yields and better targeting can make the arms more tempting to use — even to use first, rather than in retaliation. Gen. James E. Cartwright, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was among Mr. Obama’s most influential nuclear strategists, said he backed the upgrades because precise targeting allowed the United States to hold fewer weapons. But “what going smaller does,” he acknowledged, “is to make the weapon more thinkable.” As Mr. Obama enters his final year in office, the debate has deep implications for military strategy, federal spending and his legacy. The B61 Model 12, the bomb flight-tested last year in Nevada, is the first of five new warhead types planned as part of an atomic revitalization estimated to cost up to $1 trillion over three decades. As a family, the weapons and their delivery systems move toward the small, the stealthy and the precise.