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The H-Bombs in Turkey
- ccozan 10y agoQuote "...it does not have any American or Turkish aircraft equipped to deliver them. " What kind of aircraft would be that?
- valarauca1 10y ago>it does not have any American or Turkish aircraft equipped to deliver them. This is a lie. B-61's mount on to any NATO MIL-STD-8591 hard point. Any F-15, F-18 can mount and fire B61's without any modification.
- arethuza 10y agoOut of interest, at what time is the PAL (presumably a code?) entered in one of these bombs? Is it done in flight or before the weapons are loaded?
- valarauca1 10y agoI don't know to be honest. To speculate the B61 is a dumb bomb. And most photo's of the casing show no plug/contact point for electronics. I'm assuming at take off. When the neutron reflector's distance is set, and the barometric pressure for denotation height is calibrated.
- arethuza 10y agoI wonder if arming of a bomb like that has a time limit - so that it safes itself if not "used" or explicitly deactivated within a particular time period.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vonmoltke 10y agoYeah, my guess is the bomb is armed and the yield and other parameters set just before the aircraft is set to taxi out for takeoff. Some part of it must be done on the ground, because no US nuclear weapon can be armed by a single person.
- rtkwe 10y agoIt wouldn't have to have a port. The US has had radio programmed artillery shells for a long time so using the same tech to set and arm bombs isn't a stretch.
- valarauca1 10y ago>The US has had radio programmed artillery shells These are just proximity fuses. I can find no reference to actual communication with in-flight artillery shells. Furthermore Nuclear Artillery shells were armed when loaded. They were one of the few systems outside of the two-man rule. As a single inferior officer would arm the shell when loading it.
- rtkwe 10y agoI didn't mean radio programmed in flight just before they were loaded proximity fuses could be armed and configured via rf.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 10y ago'0000'.
- arethuza 10y agoI think it was actually "00000000" ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Development_and_dissemination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Develop... Edit: Unless you mean that bike locks that the UK used to secure nukes, these days we just trust our submarine crews not to do anything rash.
- jacquesm 10y agoAh, thank you. Some faulty bits in my memory caused an early nul termination.
- arethuza 10y agoAs long as there are no premature detonations! ;-)
- BuildTheRobots 10y agoI had no idea - thank you :) >To arm the weapons you just open a panel held by two captive screws - like a battery cover on a radio - using a thumbnail or a coin. >Inside are the arming switch and a series of dials which you can turn with an Allen key to select high yield or low yield, air burst or groundburst and other parameters. >The Bomb is actually armed by inserting a bicycle lock key into the arming switch and turning it through 90 degrees. There is no code which needs to be entered or dual key system to prevent a rogue individual from arming the Bomb. https://web.archive.org/web/20120311235156/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7097101.stm https://web.archive.org/web/20120311235156/http://news.bbc.c... http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4ad_1227686113&comments=1 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4ad_1227686113&comments=1 I like to believe it's the same bike locks that could be defeated with a ballpoint pen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptonite_lock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptonite_lock
- idlewords 10y agoMy take was the author meant no aircraft with the range to drop them on Russian targets. The New Yorker is pretty obsessive about fact-checking, so I think calling a statement like this a lie is an uncharitable reading.
- vonmoltke 10y agoIf that is what the author meant, that is what the author should have said. "Equipped to deliver" pretty clearly means no aircraft that can load the bomb. At any rate, southern Russia is easily within range of Incirlik.
- idlewords 10y agoYou can load the bomb onto a Toyota Hilux; it doesn't mean it's equipped to deliver it.
- vonmoltke 10y agoThe Toyota Hilux isn't an aircraft. The B61 is an air-dropped dumb bomb. Any aircraft that can load it and drop it in the air can deliver it. If you didn't care about accuracy you could roll the thing out the back of a C-130 and successfully deliver it. The point is, there is no equipment required to deliver the B61 other than a standard weapons rack with any air-to-ground aircraft has. The only A/G aircraft I am aware of that can't deliver the B61 is the F-22A, and only because the bomb won't fit in the weapons bay.
- sdenton4 10y agoI was under the impression that many nuclear bombs had arming mechanisms that required special electronics in the plane. Is that not true for the b61?
- vonmoltke 10y agoThe B61 is designed to be delivered from any aircraft that can carry Mark 80-series iron bombs. Combined with the two-man rule (which means at least partial arming on the ground for a weapon launched from a single-seat aircraft), this means most of the setup needs to be done on the ground. It may be that the weapon is completely armed at that point, save for a failsafe tied to the rack that keeps the bomb from going off when still attached to the aircraft.
- dingaling 10y agoThey can mount it but most exported aircraft models lack the firing circuits that initiate the PAL chain.
- jhayward 10y agoI have no direct knowledge, but I thought there was special command consent hardware required to arm the bomb. I'd be surprised if nuclear consent capability was standard on every plane. Edit: After some googling I'm surprised to find that they do indeed all seem to have consent controls standard. Not sure what I think about that. I read an Air Force safety standards memo[1] which seemed to confirm that the PAL codes are entered on the ground. [1] http://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_se/publication/afi91-111/afi91-111.pdf http://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_se/publica...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Shivetya 10y agoF15s, F16s, and many aircraft that the Navy uses. Still I would think that its high time to get them out of Turkey with the stability of the region in question, let alone the debate on whether or not the coup was staged
- valarauca1 10y ago>let alone the debate on whether or not the coup was staged I don't understand why you are being downvoted for this. A decent number of military analysist and Turkish civilians have come to this conclusion. -No government buildings were seized, only bridges and airports. -Normally within the first 30 minutes of a coup a Turkish Military General was on TV directly addressing civilians as to why this had taken place, and what was going to happen. -The past 5 coups took place in <2 hours. -The Turkish Air Force established air superiority over Istanbul but never shot down the president's plane. -Turkish troops weren't equip for crowd control, or even for fighting most were lacking body armor and helmets. -Turkish troops didn't set up fire-hoses, or wear riot gear for crowd control like previous coups. -More Judges have been fired from their posts in Turkey then Military Officers post coup. -Most military units blatantly weren't involved. In the coup or even scrambled to defend against it. Turkey has had 5 successful coups in the past 100 years why did this one differ so extremely from the previous ones? Incompetence is a simple defense, but this is a NATO trained and drilled military. Officers education requires they be able to switch between nations, and officer sharing programs are common. Saying the Turkish military is incompetent is really damning to the whole of NATO, and it's attempts to standardize education/training across member nations.
- dom1n0 10y ago"Saying the Turkish military is incompetent is really damning to the whole of NATO." A determined invader could probably take Europe in 48 hours. The Cold War days of preparedness are gone; just witness the commitment of EU NATO members to ME conflicts; the lack of preparedness in Nice. The train has already begun derailing, one carriage at a time.
- valarauca1 10y ago
- showerst 10y agoWhile still concerning, they really buried a key detail: "About two thousand U.S. military personnel remain stationed there."
- venomsnake 10y agoHow long will they hold in case of an ally betrayal? In the unlikely event of having crazy Islamist dictator with imperial ambitions as the God Emperor of Turkey?
- dorfsmay 10y agoAren't most/all airplanes, missiles, etc... operated by the Turkish military from the U.S.? Doesn't the U.S. have the capability to disable them remotely?
- avar 10y agoNo, the US doesn't export its armaments with any sort of remote disabling functionality, who would buy arms like that?
- cloakandswagger 10y agoActually it should be a simple as expiring whatever API key the jets use to communicate back to the US-based control servers. So when it POSTs to a StartEngine endpoint or whatever, it wouldn't start.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoYou're joking, right?
- goodplay 10y agoLol. No government would buy unreliable weapons.
- csours 10y agoCommand and Control [1] is highly recommended, and discusses this very situation, along with the always/never constraints on nuclear weapons. Nuclear Weapons should Always go off when used legitimately, and Never go off when not authorized. Before reading this I had never really thought through the idea of fail-safe, especially that it has an implicit opposite: fail-deadly. 1. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#navbar https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
- mikeash 10y agoI'm skeptical that the PALs are as easy to bypass as this article says. It's possible that the arming code includes critical information necessary to properly detonate the bomb, such as timing info for firing the various detonators. Even if it doesn't, the critical PAL hardware is deep inside the bomb, requiring the bomb to be disassembled to get to it, then reassembled afterwards, and that's not quite as easy as swapping out your car's spark plugs.
- sdenton4 10y agoCommand and Control lays out the internal fight over Pals; the military wanted easy access and reliable bombs, and the Pals added complexity, reduce ease of access in an emergency, and so on. So the parts of the military less concerned with safety were arguing for more promising designs. I believe the early Pals could be over ridden with a screwdriver. But yeah, I don't know about these particular ones.
- mikeash 10y agoYes, I've read that book (highly recommended, by the way, for anyone else reading this who's interested in the history of nuclear weapon control and accidents), and if these were the older PALs I wouldn't have any problem with that statement. But "control" seems to have won that fight eventually (for the most part... Navy nukes still don't have PALs) and I'd imagine that modern PALs are far more robust than those early ones.
- red_admiral 10y agoAre those the same PALs that were (allegedly) set to 00000000 for most of the Cold War?
- mikeash 10y agoSort of. Those were on Minuteman missiles, and that was put to a stop long ago. The PALs in the B-61 these days should be much more sophisticated and much less useless. As I said in my other reply, I'd totally believe it if this was happening in past decades, but it seems much less likely now.
- cm3 10y agoWhile Turkey has conflicts with some groups who want to grab part of the land or overthrow the government, they are FWIW a useful ally in the region because they have mostly-friendly dealings with UAE, Saudis, Iran, parts of Africa and also Israel. The degree of diplomacy varies, but there aren't many NATO members in that region who are as compatible when it comes to diplomatic ties with the region's powers. Russia, unfortunately doesn't deal with Iran, Israel and the Saudis the same way. Given their growing business ties and influence in the region, maybe China can be another powerful ally. Or India. It certainly would help to have more than one dependable ally there, but China, like Russia, is in a weird power-play game with the USA, Australia, etc. Russia is more biased than Turkey, and that says a lot since Turkey cannot be a neutral Switzerland type because of their borders and demographic, so they're less of an option. Also, let's not forget that Turkey has better relations with some ex-USSR nation that have considerable natural resources, due to cultural heritage, but then again strained relations with most of the ex-USSR countries. It's a mess, but that's world politics.
- marze 10y agoThat's the complicated viewpoint. The simple viewpoint is that it is completely nuts.
- the_watcher 10y agoTurkey has the same advantages now that caused it to be the arguable center of the Western world for parts of the previous several centuries: it's simply wildly well-placed, geopolitically. Russia needs at least the presence of a relationship given its never-ending pursuit for warm water ports. Europe realizes that, as the sole overland route to the Middle East (and by extension, all of Asia) without going through Russia, that Turkey is key to both the economic and territorial security of the continent. The Middle Eastern nations recognize that Turkey is a nation with enough Islam in its identity that they are more able to sell their populaces on explicit cooperation, and due to Turkey's importance geopolitically, can be a convenient partner that allows them some interaction with the West (that doesn't need to be sold or hidden to their population). Finally, so long as the US continues to have ambitions in the Middle East or in counterbalancing against Russia, Turkey will remain important because of all of the previously listed reasons. Once you start paying attention to geopolitics, it becomes fascinating. It helps explain a huge slice of Russian behavior that seems far less logical at first glance, as well as why certain parts of the world seem to be perennial hotbeds of conflict, no matter the prevailing rulers or ideologies.
- dekhn 10y agoOne thing most people don't hear in the traditional American story about the Cuban Missle Crisis is that we put our weapons close to Russia (in Turkey) before they put any weapons close to us.
- mikeash 10y agoReally? I thought that Kennedy's secret agreement to trade the Jupiter missiles in Turkey for the Soviet missiles in Cuba was the standard ending to the story.
- dekhn 10y agoI don't recall ever hearing that.
- fweespeech 10y agohttp://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Cuban-Missile-Crisis.aspx http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Cuban-Missile-C... > No one was sure how Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would respond to the naval blockade and U.S. demands. But the leaders of both superpowers recognized the devastating possibility of a nuclear war and publicly agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would dismantle the weapon sites in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba. In a separate deal, which remained secret for more than twenty-five years, the United States also agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey. Although the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba, they escalated the building of their military arsenal; the missile crisis was over, the arms race was not. http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis > During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy (1917-63) notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this news, many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s (1894-1971) offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real... > Once that was straightened out, Kennedy himself declared repeatedly that the Jupiter missiles were “the same” as the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Rusk, in discussing the Soviet motivation for sending missiles to Cuba, cited CIA Director John McCone’s view that Khrushchev “knows that we have a substantial nuclear superiority … He also knows that we don’t really live under fear of his nuclear weapons to the extent that he has to live under fear of ours. Also, we have nuclear weapons nearby, in Turkey.” The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Maxwell Taylor, had already acknowledged that the Soviets’ primary purpose in installing missiles in Cuba was “to supplement their rather defective ICBM system.” > if the administration’s domestic political priorities alone dictated the removal of the Cuban missiles, a solution to Kennedy’s problem would have seemed pretty obvious: instead of a public ultimatum demanding that the Soviets withdraw their missiles from Cuba, a private agreement between the superpowers to remove both Moscow’s missiles in Cuba and Washington’s missiles in Turkey. (Recall that the Kennedy administration discovered the missiles on October 16, but only announced its discovery to the American public and the Soviets and issued its ultimatum on the 22nd.) These are all US-based sources so I'm not sure what gave you that impression unless you only heard about it in the 60s/70s when it was embargoed/classified?
- DominikR 10y agoI understand that stationing nuclear weapons is a good way to ensure your allies of your support in case of an attack, but having them stationed anywhere in the Middle East in these chaotic times sounds completely nuts to me. You can't know who will be in power in any of these countries in one year from now and what they'll do. The Turkish military is probably strong enough to easily overpower the US soldiers stationed at that base. What if they decide to simply take the nuclear weapons by force? Edit: The Germans have removed their NATO forces from Turkey some time ago (Turkey protested against that) and I believe that this is due to them viewing the situation in Turkey as extremely unstable. They don't want to get caught in a situation where they might have to go to war to protect a government that acts unpredictable. (meaning: they might incite the war themselves) First thing the Turks did when they shot down the Russian plane was to call for article 5 of the NATO treaty! (collective defence against an attacker)
- adventured 10y agoIt would be a declaration of war on the US and NATO. I think you may be underestimating the results of that attempt to take the nukes by force. Syria, Libya and Iraq are representative of what would happen to Turkey if they did that. The US is vindictive, and tends to hold a grudge for a long time - and it behaves that way on subtle matters, this would be 10x. The US would proceed to do everything possible for the next two decades to destroy Turkey and turn it into a third world basket-case, and it wouldn't care about the fall-out from doing so.
- DominikR 10y agoI'm sure that you are correct. But that doesn't solve the problem what we'll do once they have the nuclear weapons. Turkey is no North Korea, they have strong ties to many governments and are in a strategically central position. On top of that they have a lot of open disputes with many countries around them and they are known to act militaristically.
- dom1n0 10y agoIt's the mosques calling for jihad we should be paying attention to.
- pknerd 10y agoWhy did not they think of this while facilitating coup guys?
- pknerd 10y agoThanks for down voting. Well fact is fact.
- dghughes 10y ago>the “dial-a-yield” of the B-61 bombs at Incirlik can be adjusted from 0.3 kilotons to as many as a hundred and seventy kilotons. Wow that's quite a range. I wonder if it's the hydrogen volume adjusted to determine the yield.
- theg5prank 10y agoThe fuel for the large majority of the fusion energy in a thermonuclear weapon is lithium deuteride, a solid. But here's some theories now how this works, one of which is changing the amount of tritium gas in the primary; but note that the primary (no pun intended) purpose of the tritium in the primary is to boost fission output through neutron release https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield
- dghughes 10y agoI'm picturing an 8 position DIP switch on the side of the bomb and a bomb tech with a small flat blade screwdriver selecting ON ON ON ON OFF ON ON ON lol
- sambe 10y agoIs there no US response to their base being isolated and restricted like that? Or just no direct military response? They've effectively been taken hostage from the sound of this article.
- serge2k 10y ago> Although Incirlik probably has more nuclear weapons than any other nato base, it does not have any American or Turkish aircraft equipped to deliver them What the hell is the point of that?