The U.S. Military's Worst Fear: What if Its Nuclear Weapons Don't Work in a War?

[DemolitionMan]

Steve Weintz

The U.S. Air Force is once again pushing for a nuclear-armed cruise missile to “fill the gap” between heavy bombers and ballistic missiles. The W-80 warhead will be the missile’s business end.

The flying branch’s push comes during the largest planned overhaul of America’s nuclear arsenal in decades. Aside from the many serious questions about necessity and cost, the question of reliability lingers.That’s the enduring dilemma of nuclear weapons — few people really want them around, but no one wants to give them up while other nations have them. And will they work as designed?



Nuclear warheads are complex, highly-engineered devices with limited shelf lives. The National Nuclear Security Administration and America’s national laboratories rely on computer simulations and tests of non-nuclear components to assure the safety and reliability of the U.S. stockpile.

Excerpted by Mod2

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-us-militarys-worst-fear-what-if-its-nuclear-weapons-dont-22790

[DemolitionMan]

That is highly unlikely. These weapons are stored at the Pantex facility and other bunkers where they are well taken of.

[DemolitionMan]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAjvJ87JjQ

The W80 is a small thermonuclear warhead (fusion or, more descriptively, two-stage weapon) in the enduring stockpile with a variable yield of between 5 and 150 kt of TNT.
It was designed for deployment on cruise missiles and is the warhead used in the majority of nuclear-armed US Air Force ALCM and ACM missiles, and their US Navy counterpart, the BGM-109 Tomahawk. It is essentially a modification of the widely deployed B61 weapon, which forms the basis of most of the current US stockpile. The very similar W84 warhead was deployed on the BGM-109G Gryphon GLCM.