U.S. Says Russia Might Be Setting Off Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons

Dispute Over Russian Testing Divides U.S. Nuclear Experts (2001) - https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/04/world/dispute-over-russia...

It's well-known that John Bolton hates arms treaties, see this 2009 op-ed: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26bolton.html

And this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703618504575459...

And this: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/23/659911920/bolton-affirms-u-s-...

And this: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2016/09/26/w...

While the CTBT has not entered into force, a monitoring system has been set up around the world with sensors to detect nuclear explosions, whether they are in the atmosphere, underwater, or underground. Twenty-five of the system’s monitoring stations detected the September 9 North Korean nuclear test.

If your admin is itching to abandon multiple nuclear treaties, I'd like more than a "probably" at a speech at a think tank, given that we have an international monitoring system.

EDIT: Comprehensive thread from @ArmsControlWonk: https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/11338146849627914...

Please read why this article is alarmist garbage.

https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/11338146849627914...

Funny, they use the "safety and reliability" line in the article. Immediately after Congress passed legislation creating the DOE, charged with maintaining S&R, DOE announced that they were going to interpret "safety" to mean, NOT "it won't pop when it shouldn't, or leak or anything" but rather "it pops when you push the button". Then, "reliability" means "it makes as big a bang as promised". Of course the fix was in from the start, but there must have been reps not in on it who would have insisted that not blowing up in the silo was a more important goal than either. They got hoodwinked, and so did we.

>Reports have since emerged that the U.S. government has been monitoring Russia’s tests of its still-in-development nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, which the Kremlin says will be nuclear capable. These launches have occurred from Novaya Zemlya and would, by definition, involve a nuclear reactor smashing into the ground at the end of each test, whether it is successful or not.

it sounds like real reactors. One would hope that it were mock-ups.

Wrt. the nuke warheads testing - Russia being that behind in supercomputer capabilities which are required for simulation probably tries/looks for various sneaking approaches of actual testing. I mean all that glorious super-duper-"wunderwaffe" revealed by Putin in the last couple of years means nothing without working warheads. The improved delivery precision allowed US to produce even further yield tuned-down versions of W76 and W88 which normally would require actual testing and was done using simulation instead. The Russia seems to still stuck with the aging models of its warheads. It makes me wonder that there seems to be no stories on attempted export of HPC stuff to Russia similar to China https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/10/us_intel_china_ban/

> The Wall Street Journal was first to report the accusation on May 29, 2019, citing a U.S. intelligence assessment and comments from U.S. Army Lieutenant General Robert Ashley, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

So this isn't dick waving or Twitter posing: this is a legitimate intelligence officer making this assertion.

This is absolutely terrifying. We are witnessing the unraveling of the near-universal sentiment that the use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable.