Russia's War Against Ukraine

[GDS_Starfury]

 

[FarAway Sooner]

Sure, he's thinking a backpack weapon, where someone managed to get a few floors up and jumped off a roof or whatever.

That's the immediate scenario we were talking about as specifically relates to Wagner getting their hands on nukes.  But if a non-state actor can get their hands on a nuke, my bet is that a safer/more effective deployment strategy would be to employ a larger warhead in a freight container on a ship docked at the Port of NY & NJ.  Only half the fireball is over water, but I think there's lower risk of detection and good feasibility of getting a larger warhead close to an urban center.

I studied this stuff in a fair amount of detail back in the years right after 9/11, so my info on countermeasures to this strategy is badly out of date.  It's all pretty grim stuff.

I do, and I don't 

I'll do a run using the numbers I suggested, but use a town no one has ever heard of: Waldo, Florida.  That might make it a little less personal.

Tripoli, admit it.  You just chose this town so somebody would have ask, "Where's Waldo?"

[Windigo]

^Would that include non-state actors like lunatics and nutjobs and Chechens?

shhhhhh, don't mention the Chechens.

[Windigo]

Sure, he's thinking a backpack weapon, where someone managed to get a few floors up and jumped off a roof or whatever.

That's the immediate scenario we were talking about as specifically relates to Wagner getting their hands on nukes.  But if a non-state actor can get their hands on a nuke, my bet is that a safer/more effective deployment strategy would be to employ a larger warhead in a freight container on a ship docked at the Port of NY & NJ.  Only half the fireball is over water, but I think there's lower risk of detection and good feasibility of getting a larger warhead close to an urban center.

I studied this stuff in a fair amount of detail back in the years right after 9/11, so my info on countermeasures to this strategy is badly out of date.  It's all pretty grim stuff.

I do, and I don't 

I'll do a run using the numbers I suggested, but use a town no one has ever heard of: Waldo, Florida.  That might make it a little less personal.

Tripoli, admit it.  You just chose this town so somebody would have ask, "Where's Waldo?"

You guys are so inward looking. I genuinely think the risk is in Europe, where the crazies have centuries of being pissed off at each other to grind it into a justification to nuke their own continent.
At the moment I think they hate each other more than they do those bastards across the pond.

[Gusington]

^I said 'eastern Europe' above.

[SirAndrewD]

You guys are so inward looking. I genuinely think the risk is in Europe, where the crazies have centuries of being pissed off at each other to grind it into a justification to nuke their own continent.
At the moment I think they hate each other more than they do those bastards across the pond.

Currently the most discussed and talked about target of a nuclear weapon by the Russians who like to fantasize or threaten such things is London. 

The super nationalists truly believe that the US is just a puppet of an Anglo/Jewish cabal that operates out of there.

[Gusington]

 

[GDS_Starfury]

we even get decoder rings and shit 

[SirAndrewD]

And Space Lasers. 

[JasonPratt]

Sir Andrew beat me to the space lasers.

Gus beat me to the Jewish Missile.

Star beat me to the Jewish Ninjas. (Perhaps relatedly, I'll be going to see MI:7 tomorrow night, and I'm looking forward to hearing new variations on the Mossad's unofficial theme and plot music!)

[Sir Slash]

Question. Do the Nuclear Backpacks come in different colors or are they all just black? Asking for a friend.

[Uberhaus]

If they came in pink, one would have something to wear to the Barbenheimer premier.

[Crossroads]

I genuinely think the risk is in Europe, where the crazies have centuries of being pissed off at each other to grind it into a justification to nuke their own continent.

I wish you all would stop spreading these unfortunate stereotypes around this fine forum. So what my Danish friend calls Scania "the occupied territory", you have to remember it happened just a while ago, in early March.

Early March, 1658, to be precise. Understandably still a festering wound, just give a bit more time to heal. Also, I am quite sure Danes don't have nukes, so all good in that front as well 

[Uberhaus]

An assessment of the threat of Wagner acquiring tactical nuclear weapons from our friends at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.  https://thebulletin.org/2023/06/what-would-happen-if-a-military-group-took-over-russias-nuclear-arsenal/

If a mercenary group were able to seize power and gain control over some of Russian nuclear weapons, "the world [would] find itself in uncharted territory," Alexander Vershbow, a former NATO deputy secretary general and US ambassador to Russia, told the Bulletin. "It is doubtful that the ousted Putin regime would be able to withhold access to nuclear codes for very long, if at all."

Other experts shared this concern. "Any civil instability within a nuclear state raises fears over command and control of its nuclear weapons," Mariana Budjeryn, a senior research associate with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University, told the Bulletin.

However,(emphases in bold are my doing): 

An attacking force, especially a group as heavily armed as the Wagner Group, might be able to take possession of some warheads at such a facility. But that would not mean the attackers could quickly arm or use those warheads, all experts agreed.

For one thing, a group seizing power would not necessarily gain physical control of complete nuclear weapons. "Most, if not all, stored Russian tactical nuclear warheads are not fully assembled," Pifer said. Matej Rafael Risko, a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies in Prague, commented on Twitter that warheads for the OTR-21 Tochka, a Soviet-era mobile short-range ballistic missile launch system now being replaced by the somewhat longer-range Iskander missile system, "are stored in an incomplete assembly, the so-called readiness stage."
"This means that the neutron tubes are not installed, the MED electro-detonators are not connected, and the electrical system is not connected to power sources," Risko added.

Even if rebels gained control of all the physical components of a nuclear weapon and assembled it, they could not necessarily use it. For a nuclear warhead to be used, it would have to go through a complex set of deployment procedures; among other things, a rogue group would need to mate a warhead with the right delivery system. In a blog post, Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, explained that Russian nuclear weapons are stored separately from their delivery vehicles. He estimates that Russia has not only 12 large national-level storage sites but also about 35 base-level storage facilities. In some cases, a base-level storage facility can contain weapons that are assigned to delivery systems collocated at that same base. But in any case, mating a nuclear warhead to its delivery system is a task of extreme complexity, which an invading military group would most likely not be able to accomplish without the active—or forced—cooperation of 12 GUMO personnel.
Then there is the question of activation codes.

Russian non-strategic nuclear warheads are locked via permissive action links (also known as "PALs") that require codes to unlock. (Russian strategic nuclear weapons use other ways to prevent unauthorized and unintended use.) PAL codes were developed in the 1960s to guard against unauthorized use of a non-strategic nuclear weapon. "But PAL locks are like safe locks—with enough effort they could be broken," Budjeryn explains. Moreover, experts are uncertain whether PAL codes are released by the central command or kept on base, as in the United States—a possibly highly consequential detail. "It would be very poor security indeed if PALs were just kept on base," Budjeryn told me. "At least part of the code must be with the national command authority that would release them when they authorize the use."

So, what interest would a military group like Wagner have in seizing a tactical nuclear weapon, if it couldn't be used? "The mutineers could have used the captured weapons as political leverage in the short term," said Budjeryn. Then, she added, "with sufficient expertise and time, PALs could potentially be hacked."

[GDS_Starfury]

anyway, back to the war thats actually happening.
link works, covers some trench clearing.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1680177497332240386