So, with the fuse upgrade of W-76s, the W-88 warheads are no longer needed for this job. Numerous upgraded W-76 warheads can instead be used for planned missions against silo-based missiles in Russia and China.
Although 890 W-76s are currently on Trident II submarines, the U.S. has 1600 in total, making the W-76 the most numerous warhead in the American arsenal today. In the eventuality that arms control limitations no longer constrain the size of U.S. nuclear forces, these warheads could readily be added to and carried by the already available at-sea Trident II ballistic missiles, each of which can carry up to 12 W-76 warheads.
With such an “uploading,” there would still be more than enough remaining Trident II ballistic missiles on submarines to carry all of the 400 available 475kt W-88 “heavy” warheads as well.
But let’s talk more about the secret super-fuze or Burst Height Compensating Fuse.
Figure 1: How the super fuse drastically improves the killing capability of ballistic warheads against missile silos (T. Postol)
Figure 1 above illustrates how the super-fuze drastically increases the “killing power” of a ballistic missile delivered warhead.
Figure 1 has a left and right inset, each of which shows a bundle of lines descending from the upper left towards the ground. These lines depict the different trajectories of arriving warheads. This spread in the delivery-accuracy of the warheads occurs due to the combined effects of small errors that lead to differences between the intended and actual warhead trajectories. These errors are from uncontrolled alignment and velocity errors from when the missile is in powered flight, during the missile’s deployment of each warhead, and when the warhead reenters the atmosphere.
The inset on the left of Figure 1 shows the detonation locations of warheads armed with a conventional fuse, and the inset on the right shows the locations of the detonations with the super-fuze.
Both insets show a boundary filled in green that looks like an upside-down cup. This cup shows the volume around the target where the detonation of a nuclear warhead will destroy or “kill” the target.
In the case of the conventional fuse, the warheads land on a plane around the target, some falling outside the lethal volume while others fall within. In the case of the super-fuze, shown in the right inset, each warhead is placed inside the lethal volume, resulting in a much higher percentage of warheads on the different trajectories killing the target.
The super-fuze achieves its fantastic increase in killing efficiency by measuring its altitude at a chosen time while it is still outside the atmosphere but relatively close to its target. If the measurement gives the desired altitude, the fuse determines no corrections are needed. If the altitude is too high, the fuse determines that the path-length and altitude must be changed to assure that the detonation occurs inside the lethal volume.
If the altitude is too low, this means that the warhead will fall short of and outside the lethal volume.This is corrected by intentionally choosing the aim point slightly beyond the target. By shifting the aim point, the fuse both increases the chances that warheads that would otherwise fall both short and long of the lethal volume will be compressed in range (as illustrated in the left inset of Figure 1) to detonate within the lethal volume.
The military implications of this “technically sweet” added capability to U.S. ballistic missile warheads has major implications for the war-fighting capabilities of the United States.
Since super fuse-armed 100 kt nuclear warheads can now replace the much higher-yield 475 kt W-88 warheads for attacks on silo-based ICBMs, the W-88s are now free for other missions, like those against high-priority command and leadership targets. (T. Postol)
Although any technically accurate assessment of the physical consequences of the large-scale use of nuclear weapons instantly shows that “winning” a nuclear war has no meaning, the United States has strenuously emphasized the development of nuclear weapons technologies that could only make sense if their intended purpose is for fighting and winning nuclear wars.
The super-fuze is exactly that kind of technology.
It is now possible, at least according to nuclear war-fighting strategies, for the U.S. to attack the more than 300 ICBM silo-based ICBMs that China has been building since about 2020 with the copious numbers of available 100kt W-76 Trident II warheads. The rapid expansion in “hard-target kill capability” of the 100 kt W-76 warhead also makes it simultaneously possible for the U.S. to attack the roughly 300 silo-based Russian ICBMs.
Couching the development and deployment of these kinds of preemptive strike technologies in misleading terms like “enhancing deterrence,” does not fool the military and political leadership of Russia and China. It instead leaves them no choice but to consider ways of deterring a dangerous U.S. preemption-oriented nuclear-weaponized nation that is constantly striving for better ways to “disarm” large parts of their nuclear forces.
It is no accident that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself approved the development and revealed the existence of the ultimate doomsday weapon — the Poseidon robot submarine, which can carry a 100Mt warhead into the harbors of U.S., European, and east Asian cities — capable of destroying urban areas to ranges beyond 50 miles (80 km) from its underwater detonation point.
The deployment of the Poseidon system by Russia serves as a warning to those who think they can fight and win nuclear wars by preemptively destroying significant parts of China and Russia’s nuclear retaliation forces. No matter how successful a planned preemptive nuclear attack might look like on paper, the reality of a nuclear war initiated with the delusional belief it could be won will be global destruction so great in scale that the very end of human civilization cannot be ruled out.
This is the real bequest of Biden’s new nuclear strategy and the super-fuze.
from the perspective of this reader who is just another moron looking for answers with an open mind, the opinions of an MIT academic, a few former spooks and a Larouchite don’t count for much.
Yeah, the Larouchite is not my favorite for sure.
I’ll write about this one Hank, because I think their ideas have been done and they will be better placed if they got connected with real peacemakers instead of recreating the wheel.
The academic is telling it as he sees it. He has his biases and blind spots as us all, but there is no malice. And as Mr P notes, he assumes it will work, which is may not at all, and/or the tech has unanticipated successful counters. None are as… Read more »
Thanks guys and Madam! What’s nasty is that people who have the option of ordering the use of the nazi super fuzed bomb are the product of a very low quality education, “gentleman’s C’s ” and have the belief that they have a method that will destroy the enemy, when… Read more »
Let us bear in mind that super fuze adjusts altitude of detonation, not accuracy. Further let us consider that both the previous fuze and the super fuze work by radar, radar altimeter. (The bomb RDS1 and Nagasaki and Hiroshima thingies were also radar fuzed). And let’s bear in mind that… Read more »
Thanks for all the tech MrP. So Posol may be correct now, but he may be incorrect now or tomorrow, depending on where the Russki’s are in their calculus? is that a fine basis to think about this foooze thingymajic on a non-technical level?
Yes, that’s my opinion. The S-F looks to me like a way for “Luckup Inc” to skin the taxpayers… BTW, Ted Taylor, a master bomb design guy even before he got his degree, opined that in his opinion there was no reason to make bombs bigger than 500 kt, and… Read more »
It reads like an Edgar Allan Poe. They will continue to pump in the last wunderwaffe, even as failure is assured. It’s the Nazi Way. All the way down into the Führerbunker. F-16s even now, years after all was lost! The Tell-Tale Heart of this matter is the shadow elite… Read more »
Recalling On the Beach, with a wry grin> “MOSCOW, September 1-RIA Novosti. Kim Schmitz, founder of the Megaupload and Mega file sharing sites, also known as Kim Dotcom, suggested that after a vacation on the beach, US President Joe Biden may have to move to a bunker. Biden, after speaking at the Democratic… Read more »
It’s a generally trivial difference in language, lexicon. The differentiation “fuse”/”fuze” is that a “fuze” is the triggering system of an explosive thing, while a “fuse” is a sacrificial current limiting thing in electronic, electrical, or mechanical thing. While a modern bomb, for example, mave have fuses in the control… Read more »
“Russia will change its nuclear doctrine based on an analysis of recent conflicts and the actions of the West in connection with the special operation.” – Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to TASS.
Updated with video of a panel discussion, including Larry Johnson, Glenn Diesen, Ray McGovern and Helga LaRouche, which introduce this article and the larger context.