The old nukes are very, very old. MAD doesn't work if people question if your weapons actually still work. They need an update.
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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The way military contracts work doesn’t sound like it’s working anymore either
In what way? Them coming out more than expected? That isn't a new thing, in fact I would say it is the norm for basically all contracts, and not just military ones.
Maybe I'm overly cynical, but it being "only" 81% over budget makes me pleasantly surprised.
I mean, I would love for all that money to go to things that help people directly, instead of "big scary stick to keep other people from maybe hitting us with their sticks at some theoretical point in the future"
Buuuuut honestly when it comes to it's nuclear arsenal, I just assume all government contracts will eventually be 150%-200% over budget, with at least 3 committees assembled to investigate the expense.
There was a really good freakonomics podcast episode about that! https://freakonomics.com/podcast/heres-why-all-your-projects-are-always-late-and-what-to-do-about-it-rebroadcast/
It has seemed to get worse as systems get more complex but I’m admittedly an outsider to that world
The article explains that the scope of work was so big it was very hard to make a real estimate.
I can imagine that they also probably didn't agree to use a contractor who made a more realistic estimation.
A program this big likely has a lot of contractors. The guys designing new rockets aren't going to be the guys refurbishing the silos. Every so often the government does have projects that have "known unknowns" meaning they can't effectively be accounted for. Should they have run 1,000 smaller projects? Maybe, but they didn't and there's trade offs with that too.
Seems to be working for Russia. No one has bothered to call their bluffs in the last year over all the nuclear posturing.
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Well I mean it's not like there's hundreds of thousands of Americans with crippling food insecurity, no homes, no healthcare, inadequate wages, poisonous water, and/or gun violence; so the government is fine making sure it has the capacity it nearly exterminate the human race. Right guys?
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." - Dwight Eisenhower
So as far as legislators are concerned, a win-win.
I'll go against the grain as a liberal leftist and say 141 billion for upgrading our entire nuclear infrastructure in today's political climate seems like a deal.
No shit. Wasnt the f35 total lifetime costs supposed to exceed 2 trillion?
Less moving parts and associated personel in nuclear silos and a big bomb. Absolute steal.
That being said, war is bad. But nukes are M.A.D.
I really hope they dont make enough to blow the whole planet again. Cold war quantity of nukes was absurd...unless Rodan shows up or something.
This isn't the program to produce more warheads. It's the program to update the missile force silos and rockets. Which was really needed.
Really needed for what exactly? To exterminate all life on the planet a few minutes faster?
As dumb as it sounds, mutually assured destruction does have the perk of keeping everyone from using nukes. If modern countermeasures prevent that, it isnt a deterrent anymore. Updating these nukes improves the likelihood we dont have to use them.
Relevant example: russias tanks. They are outdated and weren't adequately improved over decades. and are now getting wrecked by consumer grade drones and guys with while fancy, in all honesty, second grade hand me down rocket launchers. Before we knew this fact, they were a reasonable deterrent to not fucking with russia. Now, not so much.
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Given the state of modern software design and corporate greed I'm not sure this will end well
I'm fairly sure it will end more poorly than I can possibly imagine.
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Do the old ones work on floppy disks? Or was that still way too advanced at the time.
The really big ones
If you want to know why they're overhauling them, John Oliver did an episode on it back in the first season or two of his show, which is now fully posted on YouTube
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WOPR IRL.
Joshua would like to talk to you
The 5 states are Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota and Colorado.
Military spending budget? Military spending goal
Defense Department Dimmadollars
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