You seem to have forgotten the Peacekeeper missile fielded in the 80's. 1985-2005, these missiles had twelve Mark 21 reentry vehicles, each armed with a 300-kiloton W87 warheads. They were BEASTS!
Peacekeeper had the capabilities that the Ruzzkies *claim* Sarmat has today, but it had them back in the 1980s. This is what we should use to replace the Minuteman III, in an updated form of course. We don’t have to keep 12 warheads on them while the last nuclear treaty is still in place (or actually, not in place, but not yet really being violated either). But we should have the capability to put more than 3 MIRVs on each ICBM if the treaty system breaks down entirely, or if China won’t get on board with it. We make up for this with the ability to carry so many MIRVs on the Trident II-D5, but we’ll have fewer of those when the Ohio class is replaced by the Columbia class (with only 16 missiles each). Unilateral nuclear disarmament is stupid. If anything, we should be building more of them right now.
A surreal feeling is that my previous job required me many times to drive from Bismarck North Dakota to Minot North Dakota. That highway would take me right through the midst of the ICBM fields. They would be anywhere from several hundred yards to several miles away from the highway in various directions. I thought wow not a good place to be if world war 3 breaks out
Fun fact! The Minutemen use super detailed gravity anomaly maps to guide them to their targets. Minutemen are controlled at FE Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. I went to college about 45 minutes down the highway from there. One year when the school was cleaning out old maps from the library and giving them away, I found a gravity anomaly map, a full book of the northern hemisphere actually. So I have a copy of the map that is used to aim these missiles!
We should be building an updated version of the Peacekeeper ICBM, which had all the *claimed* capabilities of the Sarmat 40 years ago. We don’t have to put 12 MIRVs on them while the treaty is sort of still in effect, but if the treaty system breaks down, it would be nice to have that option without having to build 4x as many Sentinel missiles, just because someone thought 3 MIRVs would be enough.
Actually I'd rather have 4x the missiles, since modern interceptor tech seems to be focused on boost phase and mid-course interception. Only a matter of time until the chinese commies have an SM-3 midcourse interceptor equivalent. Less MIRV eggs per basket means less of the total alpha strike throw will be intercepted.
We should be building a secure future based on peace and integrity, as opposed to throwing nuclear heated rocks at each other _exactly_ as Neanderthals would do. Because a world based on fear of other humans is all you know, it is all you can conceive of and all you can force onto the next generation.
The US Army just chose General Dynamics and Rheinmetall as finalists for the 4000 Bradley replacement IFVs. Could you do a Firepower series video about this program, the two finalists and the other three that dropped out. Or more generally the current state of IFVs (Bradley, CV90, Puma, Lynx) and their most likely future. Maybe even including anti air IFVs like some CV90 variants and SkyRanger.
General Dynamics caused a bunch of british soldiers to get health issues with their AJAX IFV because of design flaws. I'm surprised the US didn't pick up on that
Task & Purpose has a few videos on the IFV replacement program I think. I still find it kinda sad that they didn't go with a CV90-based platform. That would've been so cool.
@@uku4171 the CV90 is one of the best current generation IFVs, but it's just that. Currently good. Not future good or future proof. It's among the best right now because they have stuffed every tech we have now in it, but they won't be able to do much more. The Lynx is a new clean sheet design that can be made much more modular and ready to accept new technologies and upgrades over time.
sandboxx i just want to say, your the most reliable news for military stuff in general for me on youtube, alot of the other ones are usually ridiculous or lack luster clickbait fests that have the same voice ALL the time, you are the only one i recognize that actually puts effort into it, and for that i commend you.
In actuality, the most potent nuclear deterrent United States capability is embodied in its sea leg. Each of the 14 Ohio Class submarines carry 24 UGM-133A Trident II, or Trident D5 missiles. Each missile on average carries only four Mk-4A RV 100 kt W76-1warheads due to the warhead limitations placed by the START treaty. Development is in work on a new Mk-7 RV and W93 warhead. The Ohio themselves are being replaced by the Columbia-class boats. The first is expected to enter service in 2031. At the present, the sea leg element of the nuclear deterrent is considered invulnerable to a preemptive attack and the most creditable leg of the Triad.
The Ohio class actually has 4 of their missile tubes filled with concrete cylinders to comply with treaty limits (which may fall apart in the near future). And unfortunately, the Columbia class will only have 16 missile tubes each in order to make room for a revolutionary propulsion system while still being able to fit in the sub yards. We should be coming up with a nuclear cruise missile that can be launched from torpedo and/or vertical launch tubes on all our subs. Can’t convert the Tomahawk back to nuclear because then any Tomahawk attack could be seen as a potential nuclear attack. But maybe a sea-launched version of the new Air Force nuclear cruise missile could be developed.
@@bluemarlin8138 The D5 missiles can be equipped with more RVs as can the LGM-30 Minuteman III. The limiting factor is the New START delivery RV limitations. Considering China, who is not abiding by New START limitations and Russia has suspended its participation in the treaty, these delivery vehicle restraints may be ending in the foreseeable future. Increasing RVs on existing missiles and reactivating the deactivated Ohio silos would be a short term answer to China's dash for supremacy.
Regarding D5s, they also can carry W88 300kt warheads but it is unknown how often they do. W-76-0 is in the process of being "upgraded" to the W-76-1 with GPS guidance and only a 5-7kt warhead. Because our present civilian leadership apparently believes GPS will still function in a nuclear effects environment (it won't). SSBNs are great, but generally, only one or two of our twelve SSBNs is st sea at a time, equipped with about 60-70 warheads total. Until our government leaders (rulers?) are willing to fund more than minimal deterrence, this situation will persist. For deterrence to work, the US must possess a sufficiently credible threat to impose totally unacceptable cost to the use of nuclear weapons or any WMDs to even the most irrational leader. Without the mass that comes from ICBMs, that credibility is lacking in the present deployed force, as SSBNs go to sea so rarely over the past several years.
@@greggrace967I encourage you to look at the numbers of our spending on other things as well as the sorts of weapons we sent to Ukraine (mostly stuff we would have had to pay to dispose of). These two things are not why our budget is fucked.
To put this into perspective, little boys actual yield has been debated forever. The estimates range from 6-21 KTs. The current official estimate is about 13. Fat man was estimated at 23. The W-80 warhead at low yield is actually around half of Hiroshima. And either of those weapons would be considered tactical weapons now. Damn.
First new ICBM since the 70s? Did we forget about the LGM-118 Peacekeeper (MX)? We deployed them starting in 84 or 85, until we threw them away and destroyed the last one in 2005.
"Threw away" is incorrect. They were decommissioned and the missiles converted into satellite launch vehicles. The warheads were redeployed on to Minuteman III. I believe that both MX and Minuteman used the same silos (MX was designed to re-use them, but was outlived by the system it was intended to replace).
The new ICBM isn’t the first in 5 decades. The peacemaker came after the minuteman 3 but was taken out of service with a nuclear treaty we had with Russia. It was a better missile than minuteman 3
I agree and fully support updating/replacing our strategic nuclear deterrent however at the same time we also need to protect our electrical grid from EMP attack and CME events from the Sun. Failure to do so could result with some estimates of up to 90% of the population in the USA being ended by starvation within one year of an EMP event. The Lexington Institute article from July 2020 by Paul Steidler determined that the projected cost at that time to protect the electrical grid in the USA at approximately $50 billion. That is one percent of the estimated total cost that would be needed to replace the entire grid, which would be about $5 Trillion dollars! In my opinion let's do both protecting our power grid and updating our deterrent while we still can for less than a Trillion dollars.
I am a former B-52 Aircraft Commander from the early 1970’s. I had nuclear targets in the Moscow area. It’s good to hear that B-52’s will have 1500 mile standoff capability to deliver an attack and hopefully survive. We wouldn’t have.
When I was U.S. Air Force I knew we had many more nukes than anyone thought we did. We also have more places where they are at than anyone knows. And, our enemies and even folks in the States think our bombs and aircraft are based on 1970's technology. That just isn't true. We are well stocked, with state-of-the-art technology.
You and me both. There doesn't seem to be a suicidal leader of a nuclear nation at the moment, so it is hopefully not likely their use will put into action due to mutually assured destruction.
Deterrence is based on an overwhelming power, you have to continually build on that power. Proud our country continues show they understand that. Now if we could just show some accountability for every dollar outside of the military for our taxes that’s the next step.
You're joking right? US military spending is out of control for what we actually get from it. China spends way less than we do, yet is able to progress and manufacture at a far higher rate than we do. I'm all for a powerful military, but our spending is so insanely inefficient it makes any other governmental inefficiencies seem quaint, outside of maybe all the money we spend to have a half-rate health insurance system where people still have to pay loads out of pocket.
@@SandboxxApp Please pronounce correctly the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal (X-47M2 Кинжал). The letter Ж,ж (translit. zh) is pronounced like the s in 'pleasure' or 'fusion'. Say Kin-shal, not Kin-zal The a is longer like in 'calm'.
Alex, the answers to your opening questions are YES and YES. Yes, new Cold War. Yes, Business as Usual. During the Cuban Missile Crisis my father was in the Air Force and my family was in base housing in West Germany. We spent about two weeks in the basement fallout shelters wearing our dog tags so that our charred and crushed bodies could be identified. I was all of five at the time. Business as usual...
@@alancranford3398 Worse in the sense that nukes will likely never be used, but the cold war between China and the U.S. is favoring China since the U.S. relies on them for more than what China relies on the U.S. for. Not to mention the advantage they have if a conflict in the Pacific were to occur.
@@HTV-2_Hypersonic_Glide_Vehicle Thanks for the clarification. Economic warfare can be devastating. The problem with kleptocracies is that they eventually run out of other people's money.
@@HTV-2_Hypersonic_Glide_Vehicle i don't think that it'll favor the prc, tbh - their demography won't allow them to sustain the ability to push such a conflict past the mid-2030s. not to mention us manufacturing leaving the prc and key military systems necessary for modern strike abilities only being available from us-based or -aligned companies leave the relationship more in the us's favor than in the prc's. the prc would have to start being successfully belligerent to succeed in such a cold war, and it would have to act fast. meanwhile the us just kinda has to keep doing what it's currently doing to come out ahead. having to act to gain the advantage typically isn't what the favored side has to do.
A video about the AAS / FARA (armed scout helicopter) program would be cool. Sikorsky has the S-97 Raider compete with the Bell+Textron 360 Invictus. The Raider has troop capacity while the Invictus does not, but that gives the Invictus better stealth properties, just like the Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche had. Not sure why Sikorsky abandoned that design, as they first came up with it. Just to push a common scout and transport design when they already lost the Blackhawk transport replacement to the Bell V280 Valor?
I was also curious about the Comanche myself, it definitely looked the part and from the bin laden raid, it looks like they used those (even though it's been said it was a UH-60 variant) and if so, it appears the stealthy helicopter worked back then. I'm wondering if they're still looking at making the V-247 which is supposed to be an unmanned ISR helicopter. I seriously hope they get the Sikorsky Defiant X as well, it is definitely stealthy.
The Comanche got defunded by Congress as it wasn't needed for the war on terror. We didn't have a near peer threat so we kinda just went with the whole terror must be unalived routine and quit working on super duper high end stuff. We needed A.C. 130s not stealth hills that can bust tanks from 18 miles somewhat unimpede
Greetings from Colorado, brother! First, thank you, Alex. You and the Dark family of podcasts are among the very last holdouts for grammatically correct, spoken colloquial, non-talking heads text spoken by humans instead of congenial (think STUPID writ large) AI computer generated voices. Can you think of a better synonym for 'computer-voices' than 'dumb-bombs?' Since the beginning of covid, the removal of time limits on podcasts and the advent of TickTock (Gak), there's been an accelerating attrition in the number of highly successful and profitable videographers. They're being overtaken by those willing to do the hard, expensive and time consuming WORK (also writ large) of fact checking, editing and quality guest acquisition. Yours continues to improve in the number and topical range of your shows. For which I am grateful. You're doing well, grasshopper. Thank you!
A new cold war? The cold war never ended. It just got quiet for a while. Updating technology is just a consequence of all those old systems getting old.
Major issues with the Sentinel from what I’ve heard . Delayed and over budget as always . Not to mention all the necessary new infrastructure required . Alex can you talk about this ?
@6:40 I've seen this animation of this hypersonic glide vehicle so many times that I have it memorized. It shows up in every video on every channel that talks about hypersonic glide vehicles.
When it comes to content creators, this is one of two channels regarding this type of subject matter that I watch religiously. The information for me is sometimes scary yet also been there done that because I’m a Gen Xer and have already lived through this scenario. As real as it is, there’s really nothing that we can do if doomsday does come around so I don’t sweat it. There’s way too many things to concern ourselves with other than worrying about who’s going to strike first. Anyhow it’s great information and thanks for video.
"GenX" was a thing 20 years ago and now it is exactly as has been happening for millenia, get it millennial? Just another generation, one that happens to have a numerical rhyme with the number of toes a human has. Congratulations however for capturing the scenario of "doomsday," within the midst of none of the rest of us experiencing it, probably something only a true millennial could do, but that said, why did you comment at all, except maybe to talk about yourself? Oh oh, to thank Alex Hollings for making the video, cool.
a wonderful note too, that shocked me but didn't hit headlines too hard, was the patriot missle system in ukraine stopping a kinzhal missle, meaning our standard AA system can stop the "unstopple" hypersonic nuclear deliever vehicle. so these new- focused anti-nuke missles must be fantastic.
Hypersonic missiles are only hypersonic in high atmospheric flight, as they dive into the lower atmosphere the thicker air slows them down, otherwise the friction would burn them up.
The khinzal is not a modern hypersonic weapon. It's a ballistic missile launched from the air instead of the ground. Any ballistic missile is hypersonic in the end phase. Modern hypersonic missiles require maneuvering, which would make them near impossible to shoot down.
You have to read between the lines of Russian half truths. The unstoppable Kinzhal hypersonic missile is hypersonic because it's ballistic and it's unstoppable by Russian air defenses which they claim is the best.
America needs more nuclear missiles and warheads like it had in the 80s. USA needs these as Russia and China are building huge amounts of new nuclear weapons. The USA needs a new MX missle carrying upto 12 warheads and at least a stockpile of 10000 nuclear warheads. The US military needs also to increase the number of nuke submarines, its planning to build only 16😢. This needs to increase at least to 20-24 new submarines.
Trident nuclear missiles has 8 nuclear war heads with each nuclear war head has a yield of 470 kilotons. 1 Ohio class submarines carries 24 or more of this ballistic missiles around the coastal of their enemies.
The Air Force is definitely trying to do a life extension on the MinuteMan 3. I've seen job ads for the life extension out to 2040. I can't believe they kept these and retired the MX PeaceKeeper instead.
@@richardthomas598BS they should have deactivated the aging Minute Man and keep The new more modern cold launched MX missle to make Treaty requirments.But Bush being a new world disorder moron compromised America deterrence keeping the antique and failing Minute man missles. The last two Minute Man test launches have failed badly👎
MIRVs are destabilizing, as they put so many "eggs" in one "basket." If you have a vulnerable land-based component and are limited by treaty to a certain number of warheads, better to provide the adversary with more targets. 400 de-MIRVed Minuteman accomplishes this much more effectively than 50 LGM-118 Peacekeepers.
Requiring all ICBMs to be solid fueled was probably the only truly good thing that McNamara did. SRMs have a long shelf life and from what I read there was a program ending in 2009 that replaced the solid boosters with new ones on MM-III.
@@richardthomas598 Like....? MX was expensive and delayed and smaller than intended warhead footprint, but had everything needed. It was hobbled by inanse basing scheme, which amounted to 80% of total programme cost, had it gone to full deployment.
12:55 Maybe, Devil Dog. Maybe, indeed. But... ...because there's Always a But... We've all had the experience of using electronic devices that were "Made In China"...lol 😆
I disagree about Russia’s nuclear capabilities. Everything, and I mean everything, that Russia has boasted about as being the best of its kind and has no counterpart, have all been overhyped and utter disappointments. The Bulava has had numbers failures; the Kinzhal is merely a ballistic missile whose trajectory can be calculated to intercept; the Zircon has never been shown in flight; and its bomber fleet is ancient. China’s nuclear capabilities are much more credible; how I don’t see China threatening to use nukes like Russia has, and China hasn’t attacked another country for around 40 years, and that was against its neighbor Vietnam. Russia’s not that stupid to test the United States. Unlikes Russia’s own nukes, the Russians know that US weapons work.
@@Iamabot4708 True, but the US has a very large supply, and they’re more likely to work. I’m just saying that I doubt Putin has that much confidence in his own nuclear forces.
Should shift to an all megaton yield nuclear weapon force. Conventional weapons in volume can adequately strike precision targets with sufficient effects and have no nuclear threshold issues. Modernized B83 based cores can be used inside high supersonic to hypersonic short to medium range air to air missiles and replace all B61 series devices and all legacy B83 devices. A weapon similar to thus was proposed but unfunded, with focus on low yield weapons instead. This is a mistake. Focusing on high yield weapons allows mitigation of reducing total numbers of warheads in stockpiles by keeping strategic deterrence the central and only mission. Numbers in inventory could then drop to 2000 or less without watering down deterrence with a so called lower threshold low yield weapon option that according to studies is highly likely to immediately escalate into a full scale nuclear war. Avoid this by turning back the clock and providing large scale advanced conventional weapons options and platforms to deliver them rapidly in volume. This is a more useful and more cost efficient strategy. W87 and W88 series warheads should also be updated and upgraded to megaton yields. Then reduce the number of warheads per missile and fill with more penetration aids instead. This disperses treaty limited warheads among more missiles and platforms to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability to a surprise attack on warhead dense platforms. Spread them out and increase defense measures protecting each platform. This prevents the risk of another costly unrestricted production volume arms race by having more than sufficient strategic assets that are better protected and have greater individual yield.
7:40 I don't see a nuclear torpedo as much of a threat. In fact it's a waste. I know it doesn't seem like it because it's so abundant, but water is very dense and dissipates a LOT of energy. A speeding bullet under water loses momentum within meters. Radio waves have a hard time penetrating the surface to the point communication with submarines is extremely difficult even with military tech. Nuclear detonations are not directional. You can aim the torpedo, but once it detonates, it's energy is released in a 360 area and most of it will be absorbed and dissipated by the water. There is a reason nukes are detonated mid-air for maximum effectiveness.
That is a good idea, the United States does that too. -NASAMS -SM-3 Block IIA -Ground Based Interceptor -THAAD -Patriot PAC-3 -Arrow 3 These are all defensive weapons the U.S. has in service, made, or helped make for allied countries such as Norway (NASAMS), Japan (SM-3 Block IIA), and Israel (Arrow 3).
The B61-12/13 are likely nuclear JDAM. With GPS/IMU guided flight paths to a similar flyout range of 12-15nm, right on the detection threshold of threats like S-350 and Pantsir, an average munition speed of 600 knots equates to (12 .16nm/sec) 75 seconds flyout. millionths ) Never mind much larger, hypervelocity, systems like the S-400/500/550 (which can detect VLO at 40nm and track at 20nm), as a direct threat to mission as predrop delivery platform, the ballistic munition itself becomes targetable over such a prolonged flight time. And single vehicle systems like the 96K6 are both cheap enough (20-25 million) to be scatterable, all across likely ingress routes and have the dual channel, 38km, RFCG missile plus optronic 3-5km guns, to kill the bomb, with several engagements, even accounting for an airburst. If you want to have direct delivery, you still need to have the speed to collapse the engagement window and the variable flight path/decoy penaids to come in _fast_, below the radar maskline as clutter boundary, while generating multiple divergent decoy tracks. Like AGM-131 SRAM-2/SRAM-T could. The notion of lone wolfing an 800 million dollar heavy bomber or 110 million fighter thru some kind of a hide and seek, lone intruder, laydown attack, with a nuclear wardet as the desired endgame, is brutally stupid. Because the other side likely knows you're coming for mazcat blood, and will prepare a particularly aggressive, overlapping, defense. So you fire multiple missiles, each with multiple penaids, and hide the genuine special munition in a cloud of similar .63nm/sec clones so that the live weapon is engaged, if at all, with only a 5-7 second residual Ukrainian kill chain completion window and the delivery platform never enters the terminal defensive MEZ at all. If we ever go hammer and tongs with The Big Boys, everything will likely be resolved in a MAD SIOP level, 'like rain' exchange of MIRV and MARVs. But for the rather more likely Pak-Indi, DPRK, Ukrainian or Iranian terrorism event conditioned retaliatory strike, the need to be decisive, with limited mission assets and controlled fallout inhibitors to multiple munitions overlaps, all point towards a more tactically profile flexible, single platform and powered munition redundant, set of options. No rollback prep, fast-tasked. Because it may well happen as an escalation of an ongoing conventional war with other warfighters either already fully committed elsewhere, or newly destroyed.
Yup updating missiles from the 1970s should be a priority. After that long the nukes would need a complete replacement. Plutonium forms microbubbles of helium over time that would make the core very brittle causing spallation rather than a good implosion.
When Obama was nominated for the 2009 Nobel peace prize after fewer than 10 days in office, one of the main reasons cited was Obama's promotion of nuclear nonproliferation. Obama went on to initiate a $1 trillion facelift of the US nuclear triad
Obama knew perfectly well he hadn’t done anything to deserve the award. You could tell by the speech he gave. Everyone and their mother knew the only reason he got it was because he wasn’t George Bush. The whole thing was a farce of a political statement, but he tried to act with some dignity without actually calling out the Nobel committee even though they deserved it.
@@blue_ish4499 He might have bombed Yemen specifically more than Bush, but are you really going to just pretend Bush didn't start the war on Afghanistan *and* Iraq? :/
1:19: 🌐 The United States has developed three new nuclear weapons, including an air-launched cruise missile, a powerful bomb, and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), leading to concerns about a new cold war. 5:26: 💣 The video discusses Russia's increasing nuclear rhetoric and the development of new nuclear weapons, including the K47 M2 Kinsel and the avanguard Hypersonic Glide vehicle. 10:05: 💣 China's nuclear stockpile is rapidly growing and surpassing earlier projections, with advancements in scale and complexity. 15:26: 💥 Northrop Grumman acquired Boeing's engine supplier, ending competition and securing a contract for missile development. 20:21: 🔥 The US is developing new nuclear weapons, including the W93 missile and the B61-12 gravity bomb. Recapped using Tammy AI
Great presentation. Though I can’t help but wonder if something “new” (as in from conceptually forward) should be done instead… The more I think about these so called upgrades, the more I can only see them in the light of yesteryears Cold War. Also: This whole not making any more fissile material while russia has been doing precisely this nonstop since 1991… 🤦♂️
The older weapons will still deter a nuclear war, but they are at an end of service. For reliability, they must be replaced or completely updated with solid rocket motors and propulsion systems.
Russian leadership and key strategic C2 facilities are buried 2-3 kilometers deep, under mountains in the Urals. Ground shock coupling at these depths is not feasible. In the late Cold War 2-3 sequential strikes, spread an hour or so apart, by W/B53 9 MT weapons, were required to take these out. Thats a major reason the Titan IIs hung around so long. China has similar extremely deep key sites.
I think there is something to be said for just having at least one massive 1-10 MT weapon to deploy. Russia scares a lot of people when talking about a 50-100 MT weapon, and I think there is some inherent value in having that.
But it's only propaganda value, not military value. It's more effective and more economical to drop six 300kt nukes in a big hexagon around a megacity, than to destroy it with a single huge nuke. That's why everyone stopped building big nukes once their ICBMs got accurate enough. Well, everyone except Russia, who mostly just pretend to build them for the propaganda value. A declassified Air Force presentation to Congress said six 300 kt nukes totalling 1.8 MT do as much damage to soft targets like cities as a single 20 MT nuke, and for a small fraction of the cost.
What you don't realize is that just ONE of our poseidon ICBMs can carry 14 W68 warheads.... That's a combined destruction that exceeds a single warhead of same megaton.
Russia only tested the 50-100Mt weapon, they don't have one in actual service. They never built more than the first one. The thing was the size of a shipping container and had to be carried into field by a cargo plane. It's not useable as an actual weapon as the plane would never make it to its target.
@@C0LL0SSUS Poseidon was retired long ago,and although there were 14 pads for warheads, that would be with rather limited range. More likely, it carried 10 or fewer, and made up the rest in penetration aids/countermeasures. Trident D5 can carry up to 12 W88 (475KT) warheads, or up to 14 W76 (100kt) or W76-1 (5kt), but again, the missiles would probably not carry that many, both for range and strategic purposes. In fact, it's likely that there are 2-4 Tridents on each boat with 1 W76-1, for flexible targeting and to reduce the likelihood of escalation if it is used to get a single critical hardened target. I think some may underestimate the likelihood of escalation in that circumstance, but that's how current thinking goes.
But here’s the thing. Ruzzia doesn’t actually have that. They just say that specifically to scare people. The only 50 megaton weapon ever built was far too large to fit on any ICBM, unless you’re planning on using a Saturn V.
The UGM-133A Trident II, or Trident D5 is a submarine-launched ballistic missile, is constantly being tested/upgraded and is capable of launching the following warheads 1-12 Mk-5 RV/W88 (475 kt) or 1-14 Mk-4 RV/W76-0 (100 kt) or 1-14 Mk-4A RV/W-76-1 (90 kt)[3] Single or multiple W76-2 (5-7 kt)[4][5] that is a lot of MIRV's en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-133_Trident_II
Good point. Russia is also throwing out all of the treaties (although the US threw out a couple too). And the Russians are also actively deploying doomsday weapons that the US rejected during the cold war. The Russians are going to extreme lengths to prove they are dangerous. And at some point it really could prove a disaster. Anyone who thinks that the Russians are friends with the west/US is not watching what is actually going .@@jeromebarry1741
I lived through the latter half of the Cold War and remember distinctly that the RUMORED yields of Soviet ICBM warheads were in the 20 megaton range. The USSR was a closed society and the worst fears of Americans were entertained easily. The accuracy/yield debate was ever present even during the height of the Cold War amongst politicians and military strategists which occasionally erupted in public.
Well enjoy this time, because it's worse. China's soft power can have a choke hold on shipping products to the U.S., while the U.S.S.R. did not have anything close to power like that.
@@MrHappy4870 Yes, but Japan had better and fewer weapons than the U.S. which at the time had way bigger industrial power and might in ship building and aircraft and submarines... now the U.S. is behind China to put it simply. We are Japan, and China is the U.S. of WWII, not in the sense of causing conflict, but in terms of industrial power and capabilities.
I know we are way ahead of our competition in technology we always have been, you don't even know what we have out there you couldn't imagine. But man that cruise missile look like it was flying pretty slow...lol.. love the show keep up the great work
Going supersonic generates enough heat to make you an obvious target to modern sensors. The sonic boom generated also shows up on some types of doppler radar. That's why our stealth stuff is all subsonic. It's not just about hiding from radar. They have to hide from every sensor an enemy might have active. and every major military has IR sensors these days. You can make a missile hard to kill by stealth or by going very fast, but never both. At least, not with today's tech.
With a stealthy subsonic cruise missle you can destroy targets before the adversary can detect them. A hypersonic missle will be detected long before it hits its target, allowing for a response. Remember that the earliest of icbms were way faster than merely hypersonic (aprox mach 23). The only advantage that these modern hypersonic missles have is maneuverability, not stealth. And a cruise missle is also more maneuverable than a hypersonic missle due to it being slower. This means it is able to better evade radar and sam sites that might have a chance of detecting it. It can also fly at much lower altitudes to avoid detection.
It would be interesting to talk about whether France and the UK would retaliate with nukes if Russia or China nukes some USA foreign bases or mainland. Also does a China attack mean article 5 can be invoked?
I vote for keeping the 1 megaton bad boys in service. they create fear much more than the smaller yield for sure. and in this deterrence game, it's all about fear.
The new nuclear- tipped AGM-181 cruise missile that will be carried by the B-21, will be stealthy just as the current conventionally tipped JASSM cruise missile is.
Could you do a video about upcoming (or returning) vehicle types? Laser trucks/tanks seem to be coming soon, the anti air cannon is back from the grave (Gepard is back, SkyRanger will come soon), drone carrier trucks or tanks will add to howitzers, artillery and mortar launchers, drone command center tanks seem plausible as well, EW/jamming trucks will probably become a lot more common, and is the future of the MBT to become a nible sub 50 ton racing tank while IFVs get up to 50 tons as well?
You seem to have forgotten the Peacekeeper missile fielded in the 80's. 1985-2005, these missiles had twelve Mark 21 reentry vehicles, each armed with a 300-kiloton W87 warheads. They were BEASTS!
They were extremely accurate as well.
Peacekeeper had the capabilities that the Ruzzkies *claim* Sarmat has today, but it had them back in the 1980s. This is what we should use to replace the Minuteman III, in an updated form of course. We don’t have to keep 12 warheads on them while the last nuclear treaty is still in place (or actually, not in place, but not yet really being violated either). But we should have the capability to put more than 3 MIRVs on each ICBM if the treaty system breaks down entirely, or if China won’t get on board with it. We make up for this with the ability to carry so many MIRVs on the Trident II-D5, but we’ll have fewer of those when the Ohio class is replaced by the Columbia class (with only 16 missiles each). Unilateral nuclear disarmament is stupid. If anything, we should be building more of them right now.
China stole its nuclear info from the US.
The Peacekeeper was developed in the 70s. He didn’t forget.
@@ronjon7942 First flight was 1983
Bracketing a target with 2 nukes of 100kt is generally more effective than hitting target with 1 200kt bomb.
Sounds plausible. Source?
A surreal feeling is that my previous job required me many times to drive from Bismarck North Dakota to Minot North Dakota. That highway would take me right through the midst of the ICBM fields. They would be anywhere from several hundred yards to several miles away from the highway in various directions. I thought wow not a good place to be if world war 3 breaks out
Used to live in Minot, only in retrospect did I think the very same thing lol
Fun fact! The Minutemen use super detailed gravity anomaly maps to guide them to their targets. Minutemen are controlled at FE Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. I went to college about 45 minutes down the highway from there. One year when the school was cleaning out old maps from the library and giving them away, I found a gravity anomaly map, a full book of the northern hemisphere actually. So I have a copy of the map that is used to aim these missiles!
Cool story bruh.
Hope some men in suits don't come knocking down your doors😂
There are Minuteman IIIs based at Minot AFB, ND, Maelstrom AFB, MT, and FE Warren
@aregeebee201 100% Wrongo!!!
@@johnsmith1953x Why-o ?
We should be building an updated version of the Peacekeeper ICBM, which had all the *claimed* capabilities of the Sarmat 40 years ago. We don’t have to put 12 MIRVs on them while the treaty is sort of still in effect, but if the treaty system breaks down, it would be nice to have that option without having to build 4x as many Sentinel missiles, just because someone thought 3 MIRVs would be enough.
Meh. We have FBM
Actually I'd rather have 4x the missiles, since modern interceptor tech seems to be focused on boost phase and mid-course interception. Only a matter of time until the chinese commies have an SM-3 midcourse interceptor equivalent. Less MIRV eggs per basket means less of the total alpha strike throw will be intercepted.
We should be building a secure future based on peace and integrity, as opposed to throwing nuclear heated rocks at each other _exactly_ as Neanderthals would do. Because a world based on fear of other humans is all you know, it is all you can conceive of and all you can force onto the next generation.
@@jakelilevjen9766??
@@johndc2998 Sorry, Trident II
You can see the inspiration for the B-21 "Raider" when you see a diving Peregrine Falcon in profile.
The US Army just chose General Dynamics and Rheinmetall as finalists for the 4000 Bradley replacement IFVs.
Could you do a Firepower series video about this program, the two finalists and the other three that dropped out. Or more generally the current state of IFVs (Bradley, CV90, Puma, Lynx) and their most likely future. Maybe even including anti air IFVs like some CV90 variants and SkyRanger.
General Dynamics caused a bunch of british soldiers to get health issues with their AJAX IFV because of design flaws. I'm surprised the US didn't pick up on that
Task & Purpose has a few videos on the IFV replacement program I think. I still find it kinda sad that they didn't go with a CV90-based platform. That would've been so cool.
“Hey can you make a video about all this stuff I already know about?” 😂
China stole its nuclear info from the US.
@@uku4171 the CV90 is one of the best current generation IFVs, but it's just that. Currently good. Not future good or future proof. It's among the best right now because they have stuffed every tech we have now in it, but they won't be able to do much more.
The Lynx is a new clean sheet design that can be made much more modular and ready to accept new technologies and upgrades over time.
sandboxx i just want to say, your the most reliable news for military stuff in general for me on youtube, alot of the other ones are usually ridiculous or lack luster clickbait fests that have the same voice ALL the time, you are the only one i recognize that actually puts effort into it, and for that i commend you.
In actuality, the most potent nuclear deterrent United States capability is embodied in its sea leg. Each of the 14 Ohio Class submarines carry 24 UGM-133A Trident II, or Trident D5 missiles. Each missile on average carries only four Mk-4A RV 100 kt W76-1warheads due to the warhead limitations placed by the START treaty. Development is in work on a new Mk-7 RV and W93 warhead. The Ohio themselves are being replaced by the Columbia-class boats. The first is expected to enter service in 2031. At the present, the sea leg element of the nuclear deterrent is considered invulnerable to a preemptive attack and the most creditable leg of the Triad.
The Ohio class actually has 4 of their missile tubes filled with concrete cylinders to comply with treaty limits (which may fall apart in the near future). And unfortunately, the Columbia class will only have 16 missile tubes each in order to make room for a revolutionary propulsion system while still being able to fit in the sub yards. We should be coming up with a nuclear cruise missile that can be launched from torpedo and/or vertical launch tubes on all our subs. Can’t convert the Tomahawk back to nuclear because then any Tomahawk attack could be seen as a potential nuclear attack. But maybe a sea-launched version of the new Air Force nuclear cruise missile could be developed.
China stole its nuclear info from the US.
@@bluemarlin8138 The D5 missiles can be equipped with more RVs as can the LGM-30 Minuteman III. The limiting factor is the New START delivery RV limitations. Considering China, who is not abiding by New START limitations and Russia has suspended its participation in the treaty, these delivery vehicle restraints may be ending in the foreseeable future. Increasing RVs on existing missiles and reactivating the deactivated Ohio silos would be a short term answer to China's dash for supremacy.
Regarding D5s, they also can carry W88 300kt warheads but it is unknown how often they do.
W-76-0 is in the process of being "upgraded" to the W-76-1 with GPS guidance and only a 5-7kt warhead. Because our present civilian leadership apparently believes GPS will still function in a nuclear effects environment (it won't).
SSBNs are great, but generally, only one or two of our twelve SSBNs is st sea at a time, equipped with about 60-70 warheads total. Until our government leaders (rulers?) are willing to fund more than minimal deterrence, this situation will persist.
For deterrence to work, the US must possess a sufficiently credible threat to impose totally unacceptable cost to the use of nuclear weapons or any WMDs to even the most irrational leader. Without the mass that comes from ICBMs, that credibility is lacking in the present deployed force, as SSBNs go to sea so rarely over the past several years.
You realise if a country has nothing to lose these dont matter right?😂😂😂 the usa has no defense against nukes atm
Good news. We can't afford to fall behind.
Who is ahead when M.A.D. occurs?
We can't afford ANYTHING!!! Where have you been? We have gone broke hosting the invaders and supporting foreign LOSING wars.....
@@greggrace967calm down Karen 😅
@@greggrace967I encourage you to look at the numbers of our spending on other things as well as the sorts of weapons we sent to Ukraine (mostly stuff we would have had to pay to dispose of). These two things are not why our budget is fucked.
@@greggrace967 generally speaking, most people think we print money as needed. Good plan, right? lol
Love your videos Alex! Your channel is the reason I waited up all night for the b21 reveal :)
Keep up the good work in 2024 and beyond 🤟
Alex, I always come away after watching your videos, especially this one, knowing more about important things. Thank you!
A superb commentary.
AH’s passion?
Unrivalled.
As passionate as the other AH we all know from 80 yrs ago
@@jrdsm I'm a big fan of *Alex Hollings* myself but I still think *Alfred Hitchcock* was more passionate in his early Hollywood career.
TND (Total Nuclear Destruction)
totally agree. His energy makes the info easy to take in.
I appreciate you, and your channel! Thanks for keeping me informed.
You’re channel is so amazing. Literally the best channel on UA-cam for this type of info!
You do such a great job with your content and your reporting. Keep up the good work Alex!
Just a note correction, NG does infact build the 1st & 2nd stage motors for Sentinel. Aerojet does the the 3rd stage.
Thank God. The more deterrents now, the better. I live down in New Zealand, and regional stability is more important now than ever before.
Kim walking out of that hanger was hilarious!😂 He looked like a mix of a break dancer and a member of the MOB!!!😂😂
To put this into perspective, little boys actual yield has been debated forever. The estimates range from 6-21 KTs. The current official estimate is about 13. Fat man was estimated at 23. The W-80 warhead at low yield is actually around half of Hiroshima. And either of those weapons would be considered tactical weapons now. Damn.
First new ICBM since the 70s? Did we forget about the LGM-118 Peacekeeper (MX)? We deployed them starting in 84 or 85, until we threw them away and destroyed the last one in 2005.
"Threw away" is incorrect. They were decommissioned and the missiles converted into satellite launch vehicles. The warheads were redeployed on to Minuteman III. I believe that both MX and Minuteman used the same silos (MX was designed to re-use them, but was outlived by the system it was intended to replace).
The new ICBM isn’t the first in 5 decades. The peacemaker came after the minuteman 3 but was taken out of service with a nuclear treaty we had with Russia. It was a better missile than minuteman 3
I agree and fully support updating/replacing our strategic nuclear deterrent however at the same time we also need to protect our electrical grid from EMP attack and CME events from the Sun. Failure to do so could result with some estimates of up to 90% of the population in the USA being ended by starvation within one year of an EMP event. The Lexington Institute article from July 2020 by Paul Steidler determined that the projected cost at that time to protect the electrical grid in the USA at approximately $50 billion. That is one percent of the estimated total cost that would be needed to replace the entire grid, which would be about $5 Trillion dollars! In my opinion let's do both protecting our power grid and updating our deterrent while we still can for less than a Trillion dollars.
I am a former B-52 Aircraft Commander from the early 1970’s. I had nuclear targets in the Moscow area. It’s good to hear that B-52’s will have 1500 mile standoff capability to deliver an attack and hopefully survive. We wouldn’t have.
Ice water in your veins kind of job- Thank You!!
When I was U.S. Air Force I knew we had many more nukes than anyone thought we did. We also have more places where they are at than anyone knows. And, our enemies and even folks in the States think our bombs and aircraft are based on 1970's technology. That just isn't true. We are well stocked, with state-of-the-art technology.
The one weapon system I wish never existed. Why can’t we all just agree to get rid of all nukes? No one wins once these things start flying.
You and me both.
There doesn't seem to be a suicidal leader of a nuclear nation at the moment, so it is hopefully not likely their use will put into action due to mutually assured destruction.
Amen!🙏🙏🙏
That’s some Teddy Roosevelt action, “Speak softly & carry a big stick”.
Deterrence is based on an overwhelming power, you have to continually build on that power. Proud our country continues show they understand that. Now if we could just show some accountability for every dollar outside of the military for our taxes that’s the next step.
You're joking right? US military spending is out of control for what we actually get from it. China spends way less than we do, yet is able to progress and manufacture at a far higher rate than we do. I'm all for a powerful military, but our spending is so insanely inefficient it makes any other governmental inefficiencies seem quaint, outside of maybe all the money we spend to have a half-rate health insurance system where people still have to pay loads out of pocket.
You mean there's a difference if you get incinerated at 10000 degrees or 30,000 degrees
Beasts?? LOL. I served over 7 years underground in the Titan II ICBM Silos. Nine megatons.
Came for the forensic analysis and journalistic rigour... Stayed for the "has the world gone M.A.D?" pun.. 👌
This is my favorite comment of the day.
@@SandboxxApp
Please pronounce correctly the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal (X-47M2 Кинжал).
The letter Ж,ж (translit. zh) is pronounced like the s in 'pleasure' or 'fusion'.
Say Kin-shal, not Kin-zal
The a is longer like in 'calm'.
The recent launch was a really a test of our interception options
"whether or not the world has gone MAD" in the intro - kudos
Thank you Alex , your input is invaluable, to those of us who believe in peace through strength.
Alex, the answers to your opening questions are YES and YES.
Yes, new Cold War.
Yes, Business as Usual.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis my father was in the Air Force and my family was in base housing in West Germany. We spent about two weeks in the basement fallout shelters wearing our dog tags so that our charred and crushed bodies could be identified. I was all of five at the time. Business as usual...
It is different now, worse situation, and a less capable ability to deter adversaries to protect our assets.
@@HTV-2_Hypersonic_Glide_Vehicle Worse than over 70,000 nuclear warheads? There's officially less than 20,000 now.
@@alancranford3398 Worse in the sense that nukes will likely never be used, but the cold war between China and the U.S. is favoring China since the U.S. relies on them for more than what China relies on the U.S. for.
Not to mention the advantage they have if a conflict in the Pacific were to occur.
@@HTV-2_Hypersonic_Glide_Vehicle Thanks for the clarification. Economic warfare can be devastating. The problem with kleptocracies is that they eventually run out of other people's money.
@@HTV-2_Hypersonic_Glide_Vehicle i don't think that it'll favor the prc, tbh - their demography won't allow them to sustain the ability to push such a conflict past the mid-2030s. not to mention us manufacturing leaving the prc and key military systems necessary for modern strike abilities only being available from us-based or -aligned companies leave the relationship more in the us's favor than in the prc's. the prc would have to start being successfully belligerent to succeed in such a cold war, and it would have to act fast. meanwhile the us just kinda has to keep doing what it's currently doing to come out ahead. having to act to gain the advantage typically isn't what the favored side has to do.
Hell I'm still not happy we retired the B53!
A video about the AAS / FARA (armed scout helicopter) program would be cool. Sikorsky has the S-97 Raider compete with the Bell+Textron 360 Invictus.
The Raider has troop capacity while the Invictus does not, but that gives the Invictus better stealth properties, just like the Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche had. Not sure why Sikorsky abandoned that design, as they first came up with it. Just to push a common scout and transport design when they already lost the Blackhawk transport replacement to the Bell V280 Valor?
I was also curious about the Comanche myself, it definitely looked the part and from the bin laden raid, it looks like they used those (even though it's been said it was a UH-60 variant) and if so, it appears the stealthy helicopter worked back then.
I'm wondering if they're still looking at making the V-247 which is supposed to be an unmanned ISR helicopter.
I seriously hope they get the Sikorsky Defiant X as well, it is definitely stealthy.
The Comanche got defunded by Congress as it wasn't needed for the war on terror. We didn't have a near peer threat so we kinda just went with the whole terror must be unalived routine and quit working on super duper high end stuff. We needed A.C. 130s not stealth hills that can bust tanks from 18 miles somewhat unimpede
China stole its nuclear info from the US.
Greetings from Colorado, brother! First, thank you, Alex. You and the Dark family of podcasts are among the very last holdouts for grammatically correct, spoken colloquial, non-talking heads text spoken by humans instead of congenial (think STUPID writ large) AI computer generated voices. Can you think of a better synonym for 'computer-voices' than 'dumb-bombs?' Since the beginning of covid, the removal of time limits on podcasts and the advent of TickTock (Gak), there's been an accelerating attrition in the number of highly successful and profitable videographers. They're being overtaken by those willing to do the hard, expensive and time consuming WORK (also writ large) of fact checking, editing and quality guest acquisition. Yours continues to improve in the number and topical range of your shows. For which I am grateful. You're doing well, grasshopper. Thank you!
I hope this new sustainable ICBM is also kind to the environment and made from ethical, locally sourced materials .
And LGBTQXYZ friendly 😊
I dont think you have to worry about the environment if these things are used the hole planet would be dead
And, like Subaru's, I hope they're made with love.
@@jamesschenk the hole planet? 🤣
Lmao you really think the us give a fuck about the planet 🤣
The odds of anyone using these weapons on any given day is very small. The odds of anyone using them over long time periods is 100%.
No mention of the AGMs being used for Rapid Dragon? Nothing like measuring nukes by pallet.
Now THAT'S a MIRV! Dear Lord, the absolute unholy firestorm that could be unleashed using Rapid Dragon is nothing short of eye popping.
Open System Architechture Is The Key! However, limiting access to that Architecture is Very Important.
I read the title as “nuclear service weapons,” and began wondering where that would end up on the use-of-force pyramid.
Thanks!
It’s good that we are replacing/updating the old weapons.
Beter we ban those who have a agressive default behavior to Mars.
A new cold war? The cold war never ended. It just got quiet for a while. Updating technology is just a consequence of all those old systems getting old.
"Who told you the Cold War was over?" -Sergei Tretaykov, GRU defector.
Love your videos.
Have you done a video of the E7A replacing the E3 ?
By far your best an most informative video you have done!! Always appreciate your extensive research to inform the uninformed!
Major issues with the Sentinel from what I’ve heard . Delayed and over budget as always . Not to mention all the necessary new infrastructure required . Alex can you talk about this ?
The Mark Milley Hyperactive Nuke
when you fire it, it constantly broadcasts its position and targeting info to enemy anti-missile systems
Boy I wish we had a real leader.
Agreed.Having Joe Biden as commander in chief is like dragging your senile grandpa out of a nursing home & making him president.
@6:40
I've seen this animation of this hypersonic glide vehicle so many times that I have it memorized. It shows up in every video on every channel that talks about hypersonic glide vehicles.
The B61 -13 is a thing of beauty
300t to 360kt, that is truly a one size fits most device to be sure😮
Makes this old 46350's heart all warm and fuzzy.
When it comes to content creators, this is one of two channels regarding this type of subject matter that I watch religiously. The information for me is sometimes scary yet also been there done that because I’m a Gen Xer and have already lived through this scenario. As real as it is, there’s really nothing that we can do if doomsday does come around so I don’t sweat it. There’s way too many things to concern ourselves with other than worrying about who’s going to strike first. Anyhow it’s great information and thanks for video.
"GenX" was a thing 20 years ago and now it is exactly as has been happening for millenia, get it millennial? Just another generation, one that happens to have a numerical rhyme with the number of toes a human has. Congratulations however for capturing the scenario of "doomsday," within the midst of none of the rest of us experiencing it, probably something only a true millennial could do, but that said, why did you comment at all, except maybe to talk about yourself? Oh oh, to thank Alex Hollings for making the video, cool.
Great video! Thanks
a wonderful note too, that shocked me but didn't hit headlines too hard, was the patriot missle system in ukraine stopping a kinzhal missle, meaning our standard AA system can stop the "unstopple" hypersonic nuclear deliever vehicle.
so these new- focused anti-nuke missles must be fantastic.
Hypersonic missiles are only hypersonic in high atmospheric flight, as they dive into the lower atmosphere the thicker air slows them down, otherwise the friction would burn them up.
The khinzal is not a modern hypersonic weapon. It's a ballistic missile launched from the air instead of the ground. Any ballistic missile is hypersonic in the end phase. Modern hypersonic missiles require maneuvering, which would make them near impossible to shoot down.
You have to read between the lines of Russian half truths. The unstoppable Kinzhal hypersonic missile is hypersonic because it's ballistic and it's unstoppable by Russian air defenses which they claim is the best.
I am aware it is not a "hypersonic" missle everyone. But our reality beat their rhetoric.
@@kdrapertrucker so, American hypersonic missiles are not a hypersonic 😂
Awesome channel!! Subscribed!! 👌👍🏻
Bravo 👏
America needs more nuclear missiles and warheads like it had in the 80s. USA needs these as Russia and China are building huge amounts of new nuclear weapons. The USA needs a new MX missle carrying upto 12 warheads and at least a stockpile of 10000 nuclear warheads. The US military needs also to increase the number of nuke submarines, its planning to build only 16😢. This needs to increase at least to 20-24 new submarines.
Totally agree, good to see others with the same view on this as me.. A new version of MX should be built with plenty of very powerful warheads.
Trident nuclear missiles has 8 nuclear war heads with each nuclear war head has a yield of 470 kilotons. 1 Ohio class submarines carries 24 or more of this ballistic missiles around the coastal of their enemies.
The Air Force is definitely trying to do a life extension on the MinuteMan 3. I've seen job ads for the life extension out to 2040. I can't believe they kept these and retired the MX PeaceKeeper instead.
MX had a bunch of unnecessary and expensive features.
@@richardthomas598BS they should have deactivated the aging Minute Man and keep The new more modern cold launched MX missle to make Treaty requirments.But Bush being a new world disorder moron compromised America deterrence keeping the antique and failing Minute man missles. The last two Minute Man test launches have failed badly👎
MIRVs are destabilizing, as they put so many "eggs" in one "basket." If you have a vulnerable land-based component and are limited by treaty to a certain number of warheads, better to provide the adversary with more targets. 400 de-MIRVed Minuteman accomplishes this much more effectively than 50 LGM-118 Peacekeepers.
Requiring all ICBMs to be solid fueled was probably the only truly good thing that McNamara did. SRMs have a long shelf life and from what I read there was a program ending in 2009 that replaced the solid boosters with new ones on MM-III.
@@richardthomas598 Like....? MX was expensive and delayed and smaller than intended warhead footprint, but had everything needed. It was hobbled by inanse basing scheme, which amounted to 80% of total programme cost, had it gone to full deployment.
Thank you, Alex
Intro beat hard AF. W to the producer.
Thank you for sharing this, I was not aware of it.
I find the chemistry of these things fascinating.
12:55 Maybe, Devil Dog. Maybe, indeed.
But...
...because there's Always a But...
We've all had the experience of using electronic devices that were "Made In China"...lol
😆
Excellent work!
I disagree about Russia’s nuclear capabilities. Everything, and I mean everything, that Russia has boasted about as being the best of its kind and has no counterpart, have all been overhyped and utter disappointments. The Bulava has had numbers failures; the Kinzhal is merely a ballistic missile whose trajectory can be calculated to intercept; the Zircon has never been shown in flight; and its bomber fleet is ancient.
China’s nuclear capabilities are much more credible; how I don’t see China threatening to use nukes like Russia has, and China hasn’t attacked another country for around 40 years, and that was against its neighbor Vietnam.
Russia’s not that stupid to test the United States. Unlikes Russia’s own nukes, the Russians know that US weapons work.
Your right that China (CCP) have not openly attacked another Country, but by corrupting POLITIANS and INDUSTRIALIST, they are achieving their goals.
You may be right, but I'm not so certain that I would ever want to put the question to the test.
@@ziggystardust4627 I agree. I just doubt that Putin has that much trust in his own forces to even start using nukes .
They still have them, and they don't need all of them to work just some .
@@Iamabot4708 True, but the US has a very large supply, and they’re more likely to work. I’m just saying that I doubt Putin has that much confidence in his own nuclear forces.
$50million/year to maintain 1.2MT bombs is peanuts. Carping about maintenance expense is missing the point
I'm not surprised that the AS-24 Killjoy is nuclear capable.
Great Video!
Should shift to an all megaton yield nuclear weapon force. Conventional weapons in volume can adequately strike precision targets with sufficient effects and have no nuclear threshold issues. Modernized B83 based cores can be used inside high supersonic to hypersonic short to medium range air to air missiles and replace all B61 series devices and all legacy B83 devices. A weapon similar to thus was proposed but unfunded, with focus on low yield weapons instead. This is a mistake.
Focusing on high yield weapons allows mitigation of reducing total numbers of warheads in stockpiles by keeping strategic deterrence the central and only mission. Numbers in inventory could then drop to 2000 or less without watering down deterrence with a so called lower threshold low yield weapon option that according to studies is highly likely to immediately escalate into a full scale nuclear war. Avoid this by turning back the clock and providing large scale advanced conventional weapons options and platforms to deliver them rapidly in volume. This is a more useful and more cost efficient strategy.
W87 and W88 series warheads should also be updated and upgraded to megaton yields. Then reduce the number of warheads per missile and fill with more penetration aids instead. This disperses treaty limited warheads among more missiles and platforms to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability to a surprise attack on warhead dense platforms. Spread them out and increase defense measures protecting each platform. This prevents the risk of another costly unrestricted production volume arms race by having more than sufficient strategic assets that are better protected and have greater individual yield.
Agree, the bigger the better 👍
7:40 I don't see a nuclear torpedo as much of a threat. In fact it's a waste. I know it doesn't seem like it because it's so abundant, but water is very dense and dissipates a LOT of energy. A speeding bullet under water loses momentum within meters. Radio waves have a hard time penetrating the surface to the point communication with submarines is extremely difficult even with military tech. Nuclear detonations are not directional. You can aim the torpedo, but once it detonates, it's energy is released in a 360 area and most of it will be absorbed and dissipated by the water. There is a reason nukes are detonated mid-air for maximum effectiveness.
We’ll, that was depressing.
Happy holidays! 🎄
Excellent as always
I love seeing concepts for the new future stealth fighter planes. Though I love looking at the future helicopters!!!!
I’d rather spend the money on a defense that can neutralise nukes.
That is a good idea, the United States does that too.
-NASAMS
-SM-3 Block IIA
-Ground Based Interceptor
-THAAD
-Patriot PAC-3
-Arrow 3
These are all defensive weapons the U.S. has in service, made, or helped make for allied countries such as Norway (NASAMS), Japan (SM-3 Block IIA), and Israel (Arrow 3).
The B61-12/13 are likely nuclear JDAM.
With GPS/IMU guided flight paths to a similar flyout range of 12-15nm, right on the detection threshold of threats like S-350 and Pantsir, an average munition speed of 600 knots equates to (12 .16nm/sec) 75 seconds flyout.
millionths )
Never mind much larger, hypervelocity, systems like the S-400/500/550 (which can detect VLO at 40nm and track at 20nm), as a direct threat to mission as predrop delivery platform, the ballistic munition itself becomes targetable over such a prolonged flight time.
And single vehicle systems like the 96K6 are both cheap enough (20-25 million) to be scatterable, all across likely ingress routes and have the dual channel, 38km, RFCG missile plus optronic 3-5km guns, to kill the bomb, with several engagements, even accounting for an airburst.
If you want to have direct delivery, you still need to have the speed to collapse the engagement window and the variable flight path/decoy penaids to come in _fast_, below the radar maskline as clutter boundary, while generating multiple divergent decoy tracks.
Like AGM-131 SRAM-2/SRAM-T could.
The notion of lone wolfing an 800 million dollar heavy bomber or 110 million fighter thru some kind of a hide and seek, lone intruder, laydown attack, with a nuclear wardet as the desired endgame, is brutally stupid. Because the other side likely knows you're coming for mazcat blood, and will prepare a particularly aggressive, overlapping, defense.
So you fire multiple missiles, each with multiple penaids, and hide the genuine special munition in a cloud of similar .63nm/sec clones so that the live weapon is engaged, if at all, with only a 5-7 second residual Ukrainian kill chain completion window and the delivery platform never enters the terminal defensive MEZ at all.
If we ever go hammer and tongs with The Big Boys, everything will likely be resolved in a MAD SIOP level, 'like rain' exchange of MIRV and MARVs. But for the rather more likely Pak-Indi, DPRK, Ukrainian or Iranian terrorism event conditioned retaliatory strike, the need to be decisive, with limited mission assets and controlled fallout inhibitors to multiple munitions overlaps, all point towards a more tactically profile flexible, single platform and powered munition redundant, set of options. No rollback prep, fast-tasked.
Because it may well happen as an escalation of an ongoing conventional war with other warfighters either already fully committed elsewhere, or newly destroyed.
Yup updating missiles from the 1970s should be a priority. After that long the nukes would need a complete replacement. Plutonium forms microbubbles of helium over time that would make the core very brittle causing spallation rather than a good implosion.
When Obama was nominated for the 2009 Nobel peace prize after fewer than 10 days in office, one of the main reasons cited was Obama's promotion of nuclear nonproliferation. Obama went on to initiate a $1 trillion facelift of the US nuclear triad
Obama knew perfectly well he hadn’t done anything to deserve the award. You could tell by the speech he gave. Everyone and their mother knew the only reason he got it was because he wasn’t George Bush. The whole thing was a farce of a political statement, but he tried to act with some dignity without actually calling out the Nobel committee even though they deserved it.
Yet bombed yemen and countless nation at a much higher rate than even bush 🤣
@@blue_ish4499 He might have bombed Yemen specifically more than Bush, but are you really going to just pretend Bush didn't start the war on Afghanistan *and* Iraq? :/
@@maynardburger fair point but both sucks
"Obama went on to initiate a $1 trillion facelift of the US nuclear triad"
Almost as if nuclear disarmament is a fantasy.
1:19: 🌐 The United States has developed three new nuclear weapons, including an air-launched cruise missile, a powerful bomb, and an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), leading to concerns about a new cold war.
5:26: 💣 The video discusses Russia's increasing nuclear rhetoric and the development of new nuclear weapons, including the K47 M2 Kinsel and the avanguard Hypersonic Glide vehicle.
10:05: 💣 China's nuclear stockpile is rapidly growing and surpassing earlier projections, with advancements in scale and complexity.
15:26: 💥 Northrop Grumman acquired Boeing's engine supplier, ending competition and securing a contract for missile development.
20:21: 🔥 The US is developing new nuclear weapons, including the W93 missile and the B61-12 gravity bomb.
Recapped using Tammy AI
Great presentation. Though I can’t help but wonder if something “new” (as in from conceptually forward) should be done instead…
The more I think about these so called upgrades, the more I can only see them in the light of yesteryears Cold War.
Also: This whole not making any more fissile material while russia has been doing precisely this nonstop since 1991… 🤦♂️
Maybe there are, but we won't be hearing of those on UA-cam until those are replaced by even more potent successors
The older weapons will still deter a nuclear war, but they are at an end of service. For reliability, they must be replaced or completely updated with solid rocket motors and propulsion systems.
Russian leadership and key strategic C2 facilities are buried 2-3 kilometers deep, under mountains in the Urals. Ground shock coupling at these depths is not feasible. In the late Cold War 2-3 sequential strikes, spread an hour or so apart, by W/B53 9 MT weapons, were required to take these out. Thats a major reason the Titan IIs hung around so long.
China has similar extremely deep key sites.
that’s okay we’ll just delete the mountains
When an American realizes that France is only the size of Texas.
Be wild if they are planning to strap a X-36B to one of these new heavy lift rockets to perform space combat
Really love your videos - what about the MX?
I think there is something to be said for just having at least one massive 1-10 MT weapon to deploy. Russia scares a lot of people when talking about a 50-100 MT weapon, and I think there is some inherent value in having that.
But it's only propaganda value, not military value. It's more effective and more economical to drop six 300kt nukes in a big hexagon around a megacity, than to destroy it with a single huge nuke. That's why everyone stopped building big nukes once their ICBMs got accurate enough. Well, everyone except Russia, who mostly just pretend to build them for the propaganda value. A declassified Air Force presentation to Congress said six 300 kt nukes totalling 1.8 MT do as much damage to soft targets like cities as a single 20 MT nuke, and for a small fraction of the cost.
What you don't realize is that just ONE of our poseidon ICBMs can carry 14 W68 warheads.... That's a combined destruction that exceeds a single warhead of same megaton.
Russia only tested the 50-100Mt weapon, they don't have one in actual service. They never built more than the first one. The thing was the size of a shipping container and had to be carried into field by a cargo plane. It's not useable as an actual weapon as the plane would never make it to its target.
@@C0LL0SSUS Poseidon was retired long ago,and although there were 14 pads for warheads, that would be with rather limited range. More likely, it carried 10 or fewer, and made up the rest in penetration aids/countermeasures.
Trident D5 can carry up to 12 W88 (475KT) warheads, or up to 14 W76 (100kt) or W76-1 (5kt), but again, the missiles would probably not carry that many, both for range and strategic purposes. In fact, it's likely that there are 2-4 Tridents on each boat with 1 W76-1, for flexible targeting and to reduce the likelihood of escalation if it is used to get a single critical hardened target. I think some may underestimate the likelihood of escalation in that circumstance, but that's how current thinking goes.
But here’s the thing. Ruzzia doesn’t actually have that. They just say that specifically to scare people. The only 50 megaton weapon ever built was far too large to fit on any ICBM, unless you’re planning on using a Saturn V.
I’d like to submit the list of people to witness a atmospheric
Nuclear test .
The UGM-133A Trident II, or Trident D5 is a submarine-launched ballistic missile, is constantly being tested/upgraded and is capable of launching the following warheads 1-12 Mk-5 RV/W88 (475 kt) or 1-14 Mk-4 RV/W76-0 (100 kt) or 1-14 Mk-4A RV/W-76-1 (90 kt)[3] Single or multiple W76-2 (5-7 kt)[4][5] that is a lot of MIRV's en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-133_Trident_II
The Ohio-Class submarine is the American nuclear hammer.
@@ogdocvato No doubt about that.
Thanks for info. Didnt know they could carry all those warheads. Great !
That would be great if it wasn't for our completely unprotected power grid.
There is definitely a new cold war going on.
A Cold War is always preferable to a hot war.
During the 1945-1991 cold war, neither superpower conducted invasion and annexation of other nations. This war is not cold.
The problem now is the west has come to the conclusion that they can take Russia. How long until they make the decision that they have too?
Good point. Russia is also throwing out all of the treaties (although the US threw out a couple too). And the Russians are also actively deploying doomsday weapons that the US rejected during the cold war.
The Russians are going to extreme lengths to prove they are dangerous. And at some point it really could prove a disaster.
Anyone who thinks that the Russians are friends with the west/US is not watching what is actually going .@@jeromebarry1741
I lived through the latter half of the Cold War and remember distinctly that the RUMORED yields of Soviet ICBM warheads were in the 20 megaton range. The USSR was a closed society and the worst fears of Americans were entertained easily. The accuracy/yield debate was ever present even during the height of the Cold War amongst politicians and military strategists which occasionally erupted in public.
Well enjoy this time, because it's worse. China's soft power can have a choke hold on shipping products to the U.S., while the U.S.S.R. did not have anything close to power like that.
@@HTV-2_Hypersonic_Glide_Vehicle This is true, but Japan was one of America's largest trading partners........in December of 1941
@@MrHappy4870 Yes, but Japan had better and fewer weapons than the U.S. which at the time had way bigger industrial power and might in ship building and aircraft and submarines... now the U.S. is behind China to put it simply.
We are Japan, and China is the U.S. of WWII, not in the sense of causing conflict, but in terms of industrial power and capabilities.
Soft power, and hard power capabilities, are in favor of China.
I know we are way ahead of our competition in technology we always have been, you don't even know what we have out there you couldn't imagine. But man that cruise missile look like it was flying pretty slow...lol.. love the show keep up the great work
It's stealth. Low and slow penetrates airspace easier and are smaller than the hypersonic missiles so you can carry more.
it's designed to fly at subsonic speeds.
ha,ha
Going supersonic generates enough heat to make you an obvious target to modern sensors. The sonic boom generated also shows up on some types of doppler radar. That's why our stealth stuff is all subsonic. It's not just about hiding from radar. They have to hide from every sensor an enemy might have active. and every major military has IR sensors these days.
You can make a missile hard to kill by stealth or by going very fast, but never both. At least, not with today's tech.
With a stealthy subsonic cruise missle you can destroy targets before the adversary can detect them. A hypersonic missle will be detected long before it hits its target, allowing for a response. Remember that the earliest of icbms were way faster than merely hypersonic (aprox mach 23). The only advantage that these modern hypersonic missles have is maneuverability, not stealth. And a cruise missle is also more maneuverable than a hypersonic missle due to it being slower. This means it is able to better evade radar and sam sites that might have a chance of detecting it. It can also fly at much lower altitudes to avoid detection.
How vulnerable are these new nuclear delivery systems to EMP offense/defense attacks?
It would be interesting to talk about whether France and the UK would retaliate with nukes if Russia or China nukes some USA foreign bases or mainland. Also does a China attack mean article 5 can be invoked?
@@r2hildur article 6 suggests foreign hosted bases in the Pacific might not count. I guess Hawaii counts but not sure of something like Guam.
I'm so relieved!
I vote for keeping the 1 megaton bad boys in service. they create fear much more than the smaller yield for sure. and in this deterrence game, it's all about fear.
Good timing on this video.
Surely there will be a missle as stealthy as the B21 to go with it?
Once it’s out of the plane, stealth isn’t a significant concern.
That said, stealth capable missiles are being developed IIRC.
The new nuclear- tipped AGM-181 cruise missile that will be carried by the B-21, will be stealthy just as the current conventionally tipped JASSM cruise missile is.
@@thescrambler692 awesome...
Could you do a video about upcoming (or returning) vehicle types?
Laser trucks/tanks seem to be coming soon, the anti air cannon is back from the grave (Gepard is back, SkyRanger will come soon), drone carrier trucks or tanks will add to howitzers, artillery and mortar launchers, drone command center tanks seem plausible as well, EW/jamming trucks will probably become a lot more common, and is the future of the MBT to become a nible sub 50 ton racing tank while IFVs get up to 50 tons as well?