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New Sentinel nuclear warhead program is 81% over budget. But Pentagon says it must go forward (apnews.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The new Sentinel nuclear warhead program is 81% over budget and is now estimated to cost nearly $141 billion, but the Pentagon is moving forward with the program, saying that given the threats from China and Russia it does not have a choice.

The Northrop Grumman Sentinel program is the first major upgrade to the ground-based component of the nuclear triad in more than 60 years and will replace the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile.

It involves not only building a new missile but the modernization of 450 silos across five states, their launch control centers, three nuclear missile bases and several other testing facilities.

The expansiveness of the program previously raised questions from government watchdogs as to whether the Pentagon could manage it all.

Military budget officials on Monday said when they set the program’s estimated costs their full knowledge of the modernization needed “was insufficient in hindsight to have a high-quality cost estimate,” Bill LaPlante, under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters on a call.

The high cost overrun triggered what is known as a Nunn-McCurdy breach, which occurs if the cost of developing a new program increases by 25% or more. By statute, the under secretary of defense for acquisition then must **undertake a rigorous review of the program to determine if it should continue; otherwise the program must be terminated. **

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The half life on tritium for h bombs is only 12 years, so those components need to be replaced periodically.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

H bombs don't use tritium for their main fusion stage. Even Castle Bravo used Lithium-6. Tritium was used in initiators to increase neutron flux and as a fission booster for dial a yield (once again, to increase neutron flux). Both of those are just as important for fission weapons as they are for fusion.

Importantly, alpha decay creates helium pockets which is a neutron moderator and screws up the bomb.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

And Lithium-7 accidentally. They didn't realize that the Lithium-7 would produce a fuckton more tritium, which is how a 4-6 Megaton estimated yeild became a 15 Megaton actual yeild, causing us to basically nuke our own civilians and some Japanese civilian sailors.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, they thought lithium-7 was just junk that was left over because they couldn't completely do isotope separation yet. Whoopsie daisy, looks like we irradiated a whole shitton of sodium and blew it all over the place along with our fission products from more completely fissioning the uranium tamper.

Incidentally that's why Russia's nuclear torpedo was called a radiological weapon. It wasn't necessarily salted with cobalt, just the seawater is salted enough that when you neutron activate it you get a very nasty short lived gamma emitter that'll ruin your day if you get sprayed with it just as much as any fission product.

See test Baker from Operation Crossroads, which wasn't even a damn fusion bomb. They kept the sailors trying to clean the ships with goddamn radioactive water. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads#Induced_radioactivity

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

On the one hand, yeah, more civilians need to know about this shit.

On the other hand, we really don't need civilians knowing how to do this shit once we finally overthrow the vampires that are in control. Seriously. Dragons would have stopped extracting shit before now, even Adam Smith would have... I dunno what's going on at this point.