So we’re at the point where it’s necessary to clarify missiles aren’t nuclear? Great
looks at doomsday clock
Well yes we do, ICBMs are generally associated with nukes because their sheer cost normally makes them impractical for standard explosive payloads.
If it even is an ICBM. Ukraine says it’s an ICBM, and they’re 90% confident about that. The US thinks it’s an IRBM, which given the range involved, would make more sense. If it’s an ICBM, then Russia did it just out of spite.
From wikipedia:
In principle there is very little difference between a low-performance ICBM and a high-performance IRBM, because decreasing payload mass can increase the range over the ICBM threshold.
Sounds like different militaries just classifying things differently
Spite, or to make the point that they have nukes and the capability to deliver them. An ICBM - or an IRBM for that matter - evokes nuclear fears, which is why the non-nuclear part needed to be clarified. They’ve been making threats about that recently, so I suspect this is Russia’s version of passive-agressive.
Why though? A warning to the west?
Cause last time I checked, Russia and Ukraine are on the same continent, making this a huge waste.
Probably a warning in response to letting Ukraine use western missiles deep into russian territory.
“deep into russian territory” is quite an exaggeration. Biden only okayed it for the Kursk and neighbouring regions.
The U.S. official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the decision, said the U.S. is allowing Ukraine to use the weapons to target in and around Kursk — the same region where some 10,000 North Korean troops were recently deployed, according to the U.S. and its allies.
that still doesn’t explain using an icbm against a nation you share a border with. there’s some message russia is sending. it’s either “don’t forget, we have icbms and they’re operational” or it’s “we are running low on standard missiles and have to fight weird”
Don’t let the name fool you, ICBMs not only have a much larger range but they also (generally) have higher payloads and they’re designed around ‘user servicable’ and swappable warheads.
They’re sending a message and it isn’t “we could hit you even if you were thousands of kilometers away”, it’s “we could bolt a nuke to this bad boy”
My guess is the latter, Iran and North Korea aren’t exactly making state of the art weaponry. And Russia has burned through most of its rusted out and repainted armament at this point. That leaves either new weapons, scuffed imports from “shithole”-class countries, or weird weapons.
At any rate, nuking your nextdoor neighbors and having the radiation potentially drifting over parts of your country, potentially even your capital (yield dependent) seems like a stupid idea. Not to mention it ruining their “trophy” land that they illegally acquired.
Funnily enough, it is not according to Russia. The definition of “continent” is almost completely arbritrary anyway, and exactly where you draw the line between Europe and Asia - or if you draw it at all - is probably the fuzziest bit of all. Russia and many other countries just consider Eurasia to be one continent
The report is true. The landings were recorded on CCTV.
https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1859535662539526551
It was even expected. A few days ago, Ukrainian intelligence informed the public that a non-standard missile attack was likely coming. They had seen launch preparations in Astrakhan and speculated that a liquid-fuel ICBM would be launched with multiple hypersonic glide vehicles.
Apparently, multiple shots of something considerably more dumb - what seems like six ICBMs with dummy warheads (alternatively a single missile with six warheads, each with six penetration aids) - rained down on Dnipro. It seems that air defense didn’t even fire, no chance of intercepting and what’s the point.
I guess this must be Putin’s language for “don’t poke our command centers” (Ukrainians recently attacked the command center of Russia’s army group north). I guess Ukrainians can decipher what he means and won’t torch the Kremlin, but will keep poking command centers.
Was it non nuclear or do none of their nukes work?
While i appreciate the whish that Russian nukes don’t work, it would be exceptional for none of their 10.000 or so to work. Even if only 1 in 1.000 work, that is still enough to annihilate some 10-20 million people or so.
Back at the beginning of the arms race, the US believed Russian propaganda that they had significantly more nukes than the US was capable of producing.
By the time the US had around 4000 nukes, later intelligence revealed Russia had 4. The US decided to maintain the policy of the arms race as it was very beneficial to the defense industry and research.
The cost to develop and maintain a working thermonuclear weapon is enormous, let alone fission bombs. Russia never had the resources to maintain an arsenal the West isn’t capable of intercepting. You may recall the “Iron Dome” missile defence system that was removed from Europe.
The rocket platforms are expensive enough. The nuclear material requires time, maintenance, and a fuck load of power to produce.
I get the fear. China can do it, they have all the resources and knowledge to. Same with India.
Facts of nukes help: Tritium has a halflife of 12.3 years. Meaning after 12.3 years, the amount of tritium in a nuke is half. the 500lbs of tritium in the 60s is now 35lbs today. Obviously I dont know how much is needed to make a nuke, but it’s not easy to concentrate tritium well. The most effective way is replacing control rods in nuclear reactors with lithium rods. But that’s not the real issue. That’s relatively minor.
The problem is weapons grade uranium or plutonium. You need to enrich those to very high % of U-235 to get a big enough blast to trigger the fusion reaction. To do that, enormous, power intensive centrifuge facilities are required. And it takes a long time to produce enough for a fission bomb.
Given that Putin operates on wealth, and the shit state of the Russian military? They didn’t maintain any operational nukes after the Soviet Union fell.
Tritium has a halflife of 12.3 years.
A nitpick: that’s why you use lithium-6 deuteride. It gets converted to tritium by radiation at a moment’s notice. Lithium 6 is a stable isotope.
Russia is the largest country and has access to all the natural ressources necessary. Also Russia has a large civil nuclear industry. Not only their power plants, but also production of Rods for nuclear reactors. A lot of the European nuclear plants run on rods produced in Russia.
Also the nukes are Russias main deterrent and western intelligence, in particular the US aren’t stupid. Maintaining a sufficient arsenal must have been Russias main strategic objective since 1990.
If Russia didn’t have enough working nukes for MAD, the western response would look very different.
Again i get the whish to think like this, but it is naive to believe Russia would have zero working nukes.
They definitely report the spending levels to maintain a mixed arsenal, and tbh looking at Russian modernization decisions, they’re focusing on the ‘better’ delivery methods like sea and air launch.
Russian leadership’s apparent conviction that the US ballistic missile defense system constitutes a real future risk to the credibility of Russia’s retaliatory capability. The poor performance and loss of a significant portion of Russian conventional forces in the war against Ukraine and the depletion of its weapon stockpiles will likely deepen Russia’s reliance on nuclear weapons for its national defense.
They got drained hard in Ukraine and showed the world that Russia was a paper tiger - only good for a thunder run leadership decapitation or beating back irregular and militant forces. Nukes are their prestige weapon, and the hand wringing over escalation has only served to validate their faith.
How insane would that be? A nuke that fails to go off and they were like: just kidddding.
Non Xwitter Video link
It’s sad that to avoid twitter, owned by a far right billionaire, the alternative is the telegraph, owned by rupert murdoch, a far right billionaire.
I don’t have to own a peertube instance to be allowed to say it’s sad that video sharing is monopolised by billionaires.
(If I misunderstood your reply, I’m sorry, I’m just used to getting snarky comments here on lemmy)
