Robert Burns May 11, 2021 - 2:10 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) â For 50 years the Minuteman missile has been armed and ready, day and night, for nuclear war on a moment s notice. It has never been launched into combat from its underground silo, but this year it became the prime target in a wider political battle over the condition and cost of the nation s nuclear arsenal.
Minuteman was not intended to last half a century, so it s overdue to be replaced or refurbished. Some see this as a moment to push for scrapping it altogether, abandoning one leg of the traditional nuclear âtriadâ â weapons that can be launched from land, sea and air. Most in Congress favor keeping the land-based leg by replacing Minuteman with a new missile; President Joe Biden s position is not yet clear.
USA’s unnecessary plutonium pits production to cost $10+ Billion
Cost Estimate for SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant to Soar to $10+ Billion? Causing Trouble for Contractors and Boosters Pushing New Pit Plant and “Money Pit” ICBM “Needing” New Plutonium Pits? https://www.rnanews.eu/cost-estimate-for-srs-plutonium-bomb-plant-to-soar-to-10-billion-causing-trouble-for-contractors-and-127657.html
11 May 21,
Stay tuned for the release by the US DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration of a “Critical Decsion-1” determination on the proposed SRS Plutonium Bomb Plant. CD-1 would approve the basic project design and present an update cost range. The cost for the bomb plant could soar to $10 billion or more, more than double the earlier estimate of $4.6 billion to convert the partially finished plutonium fuel MOX plant at SRS to pit production.
White House’s slate of nominees would put familiar faces back in the Pentagon 5 days ago Clockwise: Heidi Shyu, Michael Brown, Christine Wormuth and Frank Kendall. (Spc. Isaac Adams/U.S. Army; U.S. Defense Department; Gabriella Demczuk/Getty Images; Tom Pennington/Getty Images) WASHINGTON After three months of silence on who would make up his administration’s top Pentagon leaders, President Joe Biden announced the names of 17 potential officials in April. Of those, four will be critical in deciding how the Pentagon will modernize and how it will transition to focus on China in an era of relatively constrained spending.
Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A the origin of such historic flights as Apollos 8 and 11 saw action for the first time since 2011 with the Sunday morning takeoff of SpaceX’s Dragon and Falcon 9.
The site’s 95th launch was initially scheduled for Saturday,. Read More. Don t Miss Any Updates! News Directly in Your Inbox Subscribe to:
“God fights on the side with the best artillery.” Napoleon
In our age of nuclear weapons and strategy, nuclear wars are fought in the imagination and calculated in nuclear exchange models. Nuclear capabilities influence profoundly the geostrategic chessboard and if used, could win or lose the world in 30 minutes.
Today the “best artillery” is the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In theory, the ICBM is a near-mathematical constant; in reality, it’s operationally ever-ready.
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My October 2020 report, “Surprise Attack: ICBMs and the Real Nuclear Threat,” warned: “A Biden administration or future Democrat Congress is likely to unilaterally abolish U.S. ICBMs … to the grave detriment of U.S. national security.”