Ukraine

very useful vid thanks for posting

Anders is a good guy, a bit dry but very concise and measured, clearly Pro-Ukraine but doesn’t let that get in the way of a balanced analysis,  I miss the occasional snark from Perun the Aussie powerpoint warlock though.

He put a lot of meat on the bones of what I was trying to say on here last week, Russia has done an excellent job of managing its economy but they are running out of levers to pull and reserves to plunder. Gravity will reassert itself at some point.

As with most economic crises, it will take far longer to happen than it should and when it does eventually happen it will happen shockingly quickly.

I’ve just finished the Zelensky Story on BBC. Three-parter from pre-president to 2024, worth watching IMHO, available on i-player

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001zps2/the-zelensky-story

As with most economic crises, it will take far longer to happen than it should and when it does eventually happen it will happen shockingly quickly

A the meddling economy whack o meter
Imagine the economy is a house brick attached to a length of elastic. Pull the elastic, nothing happens. Pull the elastic abit more , nothing happens. Give it a proper tug , and you get a brick in the face.

Been looking at the satellite images of the ammo dumps that the Ukrainian army destroyed recently.
The craters are huge so there must have been hundreds of tons of munitions there.
But how would the Ukrainian army know that they didn’t have any nuclear weapons stored there?
It’s not like the Russians are going to advertise where they store them.
I know that they would not be in a state of readiness, so unlikely to create a fusion explosion, but the release of radioactive materials must be possible looking at the concrete storage bunkers that have been flattened

But how would the Ukrainian army know that they didn’t have any nuclear weapons stored there?

Why would anyone store nuclear weapons amongst a pile of high explosives? I’m not even sure the russians could do anything that daft.

Good point, but never underestimate the power of stupidity.

It’s not like the Russians are going to advertise where they store them.

one thing that came up earlier in the war that suprised me was it turns out that land based nuke locations are mostly not all that secret, and that its a good thing for people to know where a lot of them are. You have to move them around sometimes for training / maintenace. You dont want moving them for routine reasons to be mistaken for gearing up for a first strike. Easier for people to get jumpy if a pile of previously unknown nuclear weapons are suddenly popping up on satellite on the move to a possible launch location.

There’s still plenty of secret ones, but they are mostly in the submarines

Why would anyone store nuclear weapons amongst a pile of high explosives? I’m not even sure the russians could do anything that daft.

You would think, however…

I’ve mentioned this before on here, but in a another life I was an “ammunition technician”. With responsibility for inspection, repair, proof, storage and disposal of the full inventory of “Land Service” (army) ammunition and explosives from air rifle pellets to guided missiles, as well as EOD.

I brushed paths with nukes a couple of times. Once in Germany in the mid 80s at a depot where we stored the main missile assemblies for Lance guided missiles. These were liquid fueled tactical nukes. The warheads were stored at an American depot a few km away, which also stored 8″ nuclear artillery shells. It was right next to a very large store of conventional explosives.

Later, in the late 90s I ran the army’s explosive storage on Cyprus. One of the the storehouses in the depot had previously been used to store RAF free fall nuclear bombs. There still were lead lined mini silos in the floor. By the time I got there, the RAF had lost its nuclear capability so we just used it to store conventional explosives. But even when it was in use, it was surrounded by other buildings which did store conventional high explosive.

The thing is, in UK service the storage of ammunition and explosives is extremely tightly regulated.  An explosion in a storage building is extremely unlikely, unless due to enemy action. But even then, it wouldn’t cause explosions in adjacent buildings as seen in the Russian depots. This is because of a complicated system of hazard divisions, storage compatibility groups, quantity distances and traverses surrounding the buildings. Each building is given a licence to store a carefully calculated type and quantity of ammunition.

This takes experienced personal to manage it and regular inspections for compliance. It often (usually) means an explosive storage facility is well below it’s physical capacity even if it is at its licenced limit. In less regulated countries, especially in time of war the temptation is to stuff these buildings to physical capacity and not worry about breaking compatibility mixing rules, licensed explosive etc. In that case propagation from one building to another becomes much more likely, and is I suspect what happened in Toropets and the others.

But how would the Ukrainian army know that they didn’t have any nuclear weapons stored there?

I don’t know whether Ukraine “knows”, but these are major depots for the supply of the frontline with Ukraine. Russia seems to be careless with the dispersal and storage of aircraft and munitions, but I doubt that extends to nuclear weapons.

The nuclear genie is one best kept within a small number of nations because it gives you power; power that Russia is capitalising on with its sabre-rattling. One danger with this war is that non-nuclear nations see that the west isn’t taking a hardline with a nuclear nation and that increases the desire to join the nuclear club.

Russia won’t want to relinquish the power dynamic by allowing non-nuclear nations to access nuclear weapons from a huge, relatively insecure depot with thousands of movements. Those weapons will be in smaller, more secure depots well away from “bunker-busting” bombs that could end the strategic ace card.

The Toropets site was renovated in 2018 and any movement of nuclear material to either facilitate the works or to restock should have been apparent.

Cross with BUTR, who knows about this stuff, my post is pure speculation 🙂

fascinating post blokeuptheroad!

Putin is trying to leverage Russia’s nuclear deterrent again: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yjej0rvw0o

I’ve mentioned this before on here, but in a another life I was an “ammunition technician”.

I was at AWE Foulness in a previous life and one thing that was taken very seriously was the storage and movement of explosives. There really is no comparison between how we would store them and how the russians are storing them now as you point out. However I don’t think even the Russians would choose to create these very large piles of explosives next to their permanent stores of nuclear weapons. Much more likely they’ll stick them in a random field surrounded by villages!

While we’re on the subject of munitions…

On Thursday, U.S. officials said, the White House intends to notify Congress it will move forward with the announcement of a $5.6 billion drawdown from U.S. weapons stocks. The contents of that package are still in flux, the officials said. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-prepares-8-billion-arms-aid-packages-zelenskiy-visit-sources-say-2024-09-25/

This is a huge drawdown if correct and is before the possibility of Congress stopping government funding before Christmas. President Biden is asking for a full funding bill to be passed before everyone leaves for elections and/or Christmas

The timing coincides with President Zelensky’s “Victory Plan” to get Russia to the negotiating table that he’s presenting to President Biden this week

And a final munitions post…

Republicans are seething that President Zelensky visited a munitions factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania

Penn is one of the swing states, so the visit from a state leader who wants tonnes of their output is a good thing for jobs and maybe Dem votes??

Donald Trump OTOH wants to stop US supply, which isn’t as positive for Penn https://www.reuters.com/world/top-us-republican-wants-ukrainian-ambassador-fired-over-zelenskiy-factory-visit-2024-09-25/

the visit from a state leader who wants tonnes of their output is a good thing for jobs and maybe Dem votes??

One of the things that isn’t often mentioned in the discussions about Western Military aid (possibly as it could easily be seen as a bit ‘merchants of death’)  is that every shipment to Ukraine secures or generates a whole load of Western jobs.

The Military Industrial complex isn’t exactly known for it’s love of progressive politics but I bet Lockheed, Raytheon and  co. have everything crossed for a Harris victory and continued support for Ukraine and as a group they are not without influence.

I should add that I have no knowledge of where or how the Russians store their Nukes*. The above anecdote was to illustrate that NATO has in the past stored nuclear weapons in close proximity to conventional high explosives, but that this is not as unsafe as it might at first seem. I also wanted to highlight that the mass explosion of multiple buildings simultaneously in a large conventional ammunition depot, as has happened in Russia is extremely unlikely in UK or other NATO countries.

*I’m sure everyone imagines well protected deep silos in remote parts of the country. This may well be the case for strategic nuclear weapons, fitted on ICBMs. I would speculate however that it is not necessarily the case that “tactical” or theatre nuclear weapons would be stored the same way. These lower yield, less sophisticated weapons have a much lower use threshold in Russian doctrine. Some are fitted to ballistic missiles, but some are (or were) fired from tubed artillery. I can imagine a scenario where some of these are stored in a conventional ammunition depot. That is pure speculation I should add.

The other thing about nukes is that you won’t get a nuclear explosion even if a conventional bomb went off right next to them or they were in the middle of a fire. The conventional explosives that are used to trigger the nuclear chain reaction need to be detonated with multiple detonators that are extremely precisely timed so that the nuclear core is compressed into a perfect sphere. If the conventional explosives are detonated by accident, all they will do is scatter the core all over the place, which is not good, but you’re not going to get a multi-kiloton nuclear blast.

That goes along the lines of my thinking.
Huge storage depot , miles from the front lines potentially holding very small battlefield nuclear weapons that have probably been sat in the same shed for decades.
Meanwhile things move on and we need somewhere to store a boatload of rockets and shells that are arriving from Korea.
New general in charge this week decress ” take them to xyz , they will be fine there it’s miles from everywhere”
Probably doesn’t know that there’s nuclear weapons, and those who do might be too scared to say , think it will be fine

Edit.
Yep , that I do know. That’s why I said radiation leak , not fusion . From memory they’re fused with beryllium acceleraters as a trigger system. And it’s actually quite hard to get a nuclear weapon to go bang in a big way.

If there’d been any nuclear release  of any kind, the Russians would be screaming war crimes at the UN .

Huge storage depot , miles from the front lines potentially holding very small battlefield nuclear weapons that have probably been sat in the same shed for decades

AFAIK, nuclear weapons are much more closely monitored and secured than conventional. I know Russia is a shambles, but even there I don’t think it’s likely that they’d just chuck some nukes in a shed and forget about them.

From my (limited) understanding of nuclear weapons, they can’t just be left for decades.  They use materials like Tritium for boosting.  Since this has a half-life of just 12 years it needs to be replaced regularly.  Similarly, the plutonium and uranium used will slowly transmute over years in storage and will require refurbishment at the end of the weapon’s shelf life.  Even in Russia, they must have an ongoing program of maintenance, or the weapons won’t work so I think it’s unlikely there are decades-old tactical weapons lurking in arms dumps as suggested above.

It’s Russia though so…..

From my (limited) understanding of nuclear weapons, they can’t just be left for decades.  They use materials like Tritium for boosting.  Since this has a half-life of just 12 years it needs to be replaced regularly.

Yes, I read somewhere that the U.S. spends $1 million dollars per warhead per year to keep them constantly refurbished. I’m sure that’s a bit extravagant and you could probably cut that massively if you didn’t insist on them being kept absolutely pristine, but you obviously can’t just stick them on a shelf for 25 years and expect them all to work as designed.

I think beryllium and tritium are all about fusion bombs. Is it possible they have fission bombs?

All Nuclear weapons have a fission component.  This means they all have uranium 235 or plutonium 239, both have a long half life.  The use of tritium means they can use less fission material for a given yield so making a smaller, lighter, cheaper weapon or more weapons for a given amount of plutonium.  For this reason, I was under the impression that almost all modern weapons have some degree of ‘boosting’ and that in turn means they need regular maintenance in order to actually function as intended.

Beryllium is used as a neutron reflector and so is useful in both fission and fusion weapons.

I’m not a nuclear engineer though so……

I think beryllium and tritium are all about fusion bombs. Is it possible they have fission bombs?

AIUI, tritium is used to boost fission bombs. The tritium is injected into the middle of the fission core and then undergoes fusion when the core goes supercritical. The fusion reaction produces a massive burst of neutrons. Those neutrons then boost the fission reaction. However, the fusion part of it is very small, it primarily just boosts the fission reaction rather than being a major contributor to the total yield.

All fusion bombs use a fission bomb to ignite the fusion fuel. These are different from a boosted fission weapon because the primary source of the yield is fusion fuel, which is external to the fission core. The fission core is there primarily to provide an X-ray flux to ignite the fusion reaction. Beryllium is used as a reflector to guide the X-ray flux from the fission core to the fusion fuel.

Is it possible they have fission bombs?

Tactical nuclear weapons are fission aren’t they?

One of the things that isn’t often mentioned in the discussions about Western Military aid (possibly as it could easily be seen as a bit ‘merchants of death’)  is that every shipment to Ukraine secures or generates a whole load of Western jobs.

Quite. I remember a friend describing the US defense department as ‘Keynesianism by the back door’. And it’s true! For a country apparently so dedicated to a low-intervention free market, they do plough an awful lot of state funds into certain sectors. US defense supports about 2 million people IIRC….

Is it possible they have fission bombs?

The first nuclear weapons were fission bombs and were originally known as atom (A) bombs, so yes

Tactical nuclear weapons are fission aren’t they?

Tactical and strategic just refer to the types of targets they are used against. Modern fusion bombs have variable yield so they could be used as tactical or strategic weapons as necessary. Fusion bombs have a fission core that can be varied in yield by changing how much tritium is injected to boost the weapon and by changing how the explosive lens is fired, so the efficiency of the fission core is degraded. The fusion secondary part can be disabled, so the same bomb can be set to give a very low yield as a purely fission bomb for battlefield use or high yield fusion bomb for destroying cities.

That cleared that up then …

they do plough an awful lot of state funds into certain sectors. US defense supports about 2 million people IIRC….]

Even more indirectly. Even leaving aside Darpa (which is a rather big thing to ignore) the defence industry kickstarted silicon valley in the cold war with the need for integrated chips which then spawned multiple other industries.

Thats leaving aside its use as a social system with the veterans healthcare and also GI bill if you want a degree and are willing to serve a few years rather than have a student loan.

Going back to supplying Ukraine its not true every shipment secures/generates Western jobs. Especially early on quite a few of the things which go bang were nearing end of life so would have had to be safely disposed off in the next year or so.  By donating them we actually save the costs of disposal.

quite a few of the things which go bang were nearing end of life

And now they’ve gone to Ukraine they will need to be replaced, which means orders, which means jobs.

And now they’ve gone to Ukraine they will need to be replaced, which means orders, which means jobs.

Which seems to be a fact which skips by many of the MAGA crowd…

With regards to long term storage and maintenance of nuclear weapons, it is very unlikely that storing them long term without keeping them maintained will mean that they are still viable. However, no knows this for certain. It is possible, albeit unlikely, that they may cause problems if left long enough. The only way to find out for sure would be to, say, leave one in the middle of field and see what happens.

Luckily no one would ever just leave them laying about unattended for decades….

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/us-military-missing-six-nuclear-weapons-180032

Still, at least the Russians know where all of theirs are.

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-09/press-releases/russian-officials-deny-claims-missing-nuclear-weapons

And now they’ve gone to Ukraine they will need to be replaced, which means orders, which means jobs.

The natural expiry/replacement cycle would happen anyway.

The bigger employment event is the acceleration in production, which wakes up slumbering production lines and knocks on to more production workers, machinery and service engineers, buildings and builders, the hospitality sector, and all of their suppliers, etc.

Donald Trump has now realised that he’s messed up. He’s made space to meet President Zelenskiy in his busy diary…

945am at Trump Tower, it’ll be interesting to see if he keeps Zelenskiy waiting https://www.reuters.com/world/us/donald-trump-meet-zelenskiy-after-criticizing-ukrainian-leader-2024-09-27/

President Biden announced the full $7.9bn drawdown ^^

I also have authorized $5.5 billion in Presidential Drawdown Authority to ensure this authority does not expire, so that my Administration can fully utilize the funding appropriated by Congress to support the drawdown of U.S. equipment for Ukraine and then replenish U.S. stockpiles.
The Department of Defense is announcing $2.4 billion in security assistance through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative…(cont) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/09/26/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-u-s-support-for-ukraine/

$5.5bn in Presidential Drawdown Authority is from current stock.

Donald Trump has now realised that he’s messed up. He’s made space to meet President Zelenskiy in his busy diary…

How does Zelensky play this one? If the orange idiot is Pres next time, Zelensky will have to work with him.