United States develops revolutionary nuclear sensors for warheads

[ad_1]

The Department of Defense has publicly described the components as a routine technical improvement to the W88 series of warheads that does not provide any substantial new military capability.

Air Force budget documents provided to Congress describe it as a “replacement in form, fit and functionally equivalent” for existing nuclear warhead rockets. But those familiar with highly sensitive nuclear planning told the Washington Post that it would make warheads much more damaging than previous weapons.

“It’s amazing technology,” said mechanical engineer Paul Hommert, who once ran the government-owned Sandia National Laboratories. He said that while existing U.S. weapons are very accurate, the sensors created by the lab are even better at calculating the best time to trigger an explosion in order to produce the highest pressures on targets.

The United States’ nuclear arsenal has shrunk by about a third as a result of arms deals made over the past two decades.

The administrations involved in the development have sought to describe it as a simple modernization of a single component which they believe does not violate a 2010 pledge by President Barack Obama to forgo the development of new nuclear weapons or their modification to support new military missions.

Arms reduction agreements between the United States and Russia have generally measured the relative military might of the two nations by the number of nuclear weapons they hold, not by their degree of destruction.

But Navy Admiral Charles Richard, who commands the US Strategic Command that manages the nuclear arsenal, told the House Armed Services Committee in April that “the size of a country’s arms stockpile is a problem. a rough measure of its overall strategic capacity. It is necessary to take into account the capacity, scope and accuracy of the associated delivery systems.

Some experts fear that the leaders of nuclear countries hostile to Washington may be more inclined to strike first in any future conflict, knowing the new destructive force of the American arsenal.

“If China or Russia believe in a conflict or crisis that we are going to attack or destroy their nuclear forces and command posts, it prompts them to use nuclear weapons first, or threaten their use,” said physicist James Acton, who co-directs the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Post.

[ad_2]