I'm curious what LLNL/LANL employees think about these two questions:
Under Trump what is the probability of full underground nuclear testing resuming in Nevada?
Also what's the potential of the Trump administration and republican controlled Congress authorizing work on new warhead designs?
20 comments:
However one feels politically I would not bet against Trump not for a second.
He took down,
the Bush dynasty
the Clinton dynasty
the Obama legacy
DNC bosses D W Schultz and "Dirty" Donna Brazil (Wikileaks)
RNC Washington insiders
the entire Liberal Media (MSM)
the "Establishments"
Romney
the entire #never trump movement
not to mention CNN, MSNBC, Megan Kelley, etc.
Of course the crooked DNC took down Bernie for him, a HUUUGEEE mistake.
Oh I forgot,
TPP
NAFTA
Iran deal
NATO not paying up
Apple maybe to make I-Phones in US
possible Ford Nashville to Mexico sqaushed
talks with Carrier Air Conditioning to stay in US
So. We are going to have a tax cut. We are going to rebuild all the infrastructure. We are going to increase the defence budget. We will design new warheads, and that only makes sense if we restore production. We need to replace all delivery systems. We have to rebuild the nonproduction part of the complex. The test site needs to be back online and the test teams brought up to speed. We are going to the Moon and Mars. And we need to reduce the deficit. This is going to be fun to watch. Trump has said though that he has no trouble with debt and China has been willing to buy it.
I researched our debt one time and as bad as it is China and Japan only have ~$1Tr each with the Fed and some other US entity having the majority of debt, I think ~$16T.
In other words I think we just printed the money?
I think, no one can say. He does not seem to be a war hawk, but he also does not seem to care much what other countries think about his actions, and he seems to enjoy stirring the controversy pot. If anyone might end a quarter century of stockpile stewardship and resume nuclear testing, he might, perhaps justified by saving money. But he would need Congress on board, and that is not guaranteed, since many parts of many states are sucking the SS teat, and maintaining SS AND resuming testing at the same time would cost a lot of money. Nuclear design, that seems easier to imagine.
Zero. And zero.
Slight chance of new weapons design. Zero chance that underground testing resumes.
No one cares about the weapons complex. They just pay lip service to keeping some minimal infrastructure.
Hard to determine where he stands on nuclear weapons.
If NK is crazy bellicose with a new serious accurate threat and China does not agree to let us clean the swamp, we will invite Japan to jointly develop a new warhead using Japanese SNM. It will be tested UG in Nevada. Then the west has an almost exact counterbalance to NK adventures, China then faces a historic hated nuclear foe that has a big brother. Japan csn easily match China numbers with much higher effectiveness.
A nuclear Taiwan is also an option.
It is much worse. Trump has said "why can't we use nuclear weapons?" Whether or not we design a new weapon or do tests really doesn't matter when you have someone so crazy and uninformed that they might actually use these things. Don't you people care about the world outside of the Labs?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, it used to be a politician allied with an enemy of the US wouldn't have a chance of getting elected dog catcher but things are so messed up one was elected to the Presidency.
Our whole policy of nuclear deterrence, that has mostly kept the peace for 70 years, is rooted in external adversaries believing we REALLY WOULD use nuclear weapons if we had to. Trump should be commended for keeping some of those external adversaries on their toes, even if it annoys some of our internal adversaries.
November 28, 2016 at 10:26 PM
Well said. November 28, 2016 at 8:23 PM misses the whole point of deterrence.
Wait, wasn't it Hilliar who sucked up to Russia? Remember the "reset" button? You know, when Hilliar presented the Russians a big red button with what she thought was "reset" written in Russian to signify a new era of US cooperation/appeasment.
Only it didn't say reset, it actually said (slight paraphrase) "We are a bunch of stooges".
I guess the Drumphies are happy to make excuses for anything their juvenile god says but what he said implied use against terrorist threats such as ISIS. For you Drumphies there are many reasons you can't use nuclear weapons against threats like ISIS: you would kill many innocent people without any hope of changing your enemy's war footing; terrorist enemies would love nothing more than letting the nuclear genie out of the bottle so they can go to other countries like NK or R and demand nuclear weapons; you would produce many many recruits for terrorist organizations and create new terrorist organizations. Get real you clowns, the leader of the free world needs to actually think about what he says.
the leader of the free world needs to actually think about what he says.
December 1, 2016 at 10:23 AM
As opposed to Obama's ideological, reflexive, thoughtless, liberal garbage?
If you want to defeat an enemy like ISIS, you need to be willing to kill many innocent people. Once upon a time, we were willing to do this, as millions of corpses in Germany and Japan can attest, and the results speak for themselves. Now, the liberal left turns its nose up at the idea, and prefers to ignore the enemy and refrain even from calling them the enemy. If nuclear weapons are militarily effective against ISIS (not clear, and I doubt anyone here is qualified to say), then they need to remain on the table. We need leaders who want to WIN, not roll over and permit the death of America by a thousand cuts.
Everyone is fond of talking about "terrorists," but very few of the talkers are terrified, or else they'd be doing something about it. When the majority of the country becomes terrified, terrorists will be dealt with quickly. Not before then.
Yeah, December 2, 2016 at 7:08 AM, you got that right. Killing lots of innocent people worked really well in Vietnam.
Vietnam was the first war the US engaged in where it was nearly impossible to tell enemy combatants from civilians, and so we wound up doing much more civilian damage than necessary. Someone said we always plan to fight the last war. We've gotten better since then, but not enough. Civilians who live where people are fighting wars need to realize that support for those fighters, or even failure to oppose them, means their death. Choose to live in such a place, or don't. The US may well be such a place in the not so distant future.
Many people don't have a choice.
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