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Do any other countries routinely fly nuclear weapons the way we (US, UK, Russia etc) used to? I mean Pakistan, India, China maybe? Also, I thought that: at ato

Do any other countries routinely fly nuclear weapons the way we (US, UK, Russia etc) used to? I mean Pakistan, India, China maybe? Also, I thought that: at atomic bomb is pure fission, a thermonuclear bomb is Fusion driven by a fission bombs heat and pressure wave? The article seems to use the term "atomic" to refer to thermonuclear weapons.

pdonis 6y ago
> atomic bomb is pure fission, a thermonuclear bomb is Fusion Strictly speaking, the term "atomic bomb" shouldn't even be used for a fission bomb since the reactions involved are nuclear reactions, not chemical ("atomic") reactions. However, in non-technical contexts, I have seen "atomic bomb" used for both fission and fusion bombs.
- klyrs 6y ago
  Do you have a source supporting this distinction?
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    It's in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon#Fission_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon#Fission_weapons That and high-school chemistry.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - klyrs 6y ago
      > That and high-school chemistry. My 40yo ass would get thrown out of high school before I could ask "where's the chem lab" but thanks
      - nostrademons 6y ago
        Can still buy a textbook. I do that all the time for subjects that my nearly-40-year-old ass didn't bother to learn in college but ended up finding useful.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- philipkglass 6y ago
  The people of the Manhattan Project used the term atomic bomb internally and externally for their invention. "Atomic" was widely used as a synonym for "nuclear" in both lay communication and technical literature for at least a generation afterward. The International Atomic Energy Agency is still called such and never felt the need to correct this imagined terminological mistake.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    That's not what he's referring to, though. In chemistry, bonds between "atoms" are ordinary chemical bonds, held together through electromagnetic forces, and yielding typical chemical reactions like explosions and deflagrations. Fission and fusion are "nuclear" processes, operating between protons and neutrons within the nucleus of an atom only, and moderated by the strong nuclear force. The energy released by breaking these bonds is orders of magnitude greater, and what we normally refer to as a "nuclear" explosion. Calling it "nuclear" vs. "atomic" conveys useful information about what's actually going on when it detonates.
walrus01 6y ago
you'd have to be a madman to fly around with 'live' ready to use nuclear bombs in the modern era, but then again, strategic air command was headed by a madman, curtis lemay... and they did it from the early 1950s for 25+ years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Air_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Air_Command
- tyingq 6y ago
  They do still maintain the ability to launch nukes from various aircraft. There was a famous oopsie in 2007 where they mistakenly flew some live nukes around. In this case, cruise missles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_n...
tyingq 6y ago
Israel comes to mind. Not much is known about what type of nuclear weapons they have.
- neartheplain 6y ago
  The educated guess is somewhere between 80-400 warheads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel They nearly used them in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  I think their doomsday scenario is covered by nuclear subs (supposedly, no public info...)...
nostrademons 6y ago
Colloquially "atomic bomb" usually refers to both fission and fusion weapons. Almost no weapons currently in use by major nation-states are pure fission devices. Two-stage thermonuclear Teller-Ulam designs are more stable, easier to control the yield, capable of scaling up to 1000x the power, and cheaper to manufacture once you have the technology. A major part of the cost of nuclear weapons is enriching uranium or producing plutonium; fusion weapons can use a much smaller amount of these expensive materials and get the bulk of their yield from deuterium, which is distilled from water. Pure fission weapons were used in some artillery shells (where there isn't enough room to get a second stage in) and by emerging nuclear powers that haven't yet developed the technology for fusion weapons. Non-colloquially, scientists would probably refer specifically to "fission" and "fusion" weapons, or to specific design used (eg. gun-type linear implosion, explosive lens, Teller-Ulam).
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Thanks for your excellent comment! I didn't know most advanced powers were using fusion weapons but it makes perfect sense when you say it (cost, stability, power and controlability).
- pinewurst 6y ago
  There's also the intermediate case of boosted fission, where tritium gas is introduced into the fission core, generating neutrons via fusion, that in turn accelerate/enhance the fission process (e.g. allowing more fission energy to be released in the interval between detonation and when the device blows itself apart).
- Koshkin 6y ago
  > ”atomic bomb" usually refers to both You must be talking about “nuclear weapon.” Never in my life I heard “atomic bomb” being used in reference to a hydrogen bomb. > Almost no weapons currently in use by major nation-states are pure fission devices. All tactical nukes are pure fission devices.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    You would refer to the warheads on Minuteman 3 & PeaceKeeper ICBMs, Trident SLBMs, and B63/B81 bombs as "atomic bombs", would you not? All of the above are thermonuclear fusion weapons. The tactical nukes I believe you are referring to are the W54 Davey Crockett, W48 6.1" shell, and W79 8" shell, all pure linear implosion fission weapons. All of those have been out of service since 1992, though.
ufmace 6y ago
It doesn't really make sense to fly armed weapons around as a strategic deterrent now, since you can mount them on missiles instead, which can be stored in safer and faster to launch silos and are harder to intercept anyways. And put them in submarines that are even harder to locate. Before all that, it seemed much more reasonable to do so, if you were concerned that your enemy might sneak their bombers close enough to destroy your bomber airfields before you could get your bombers airborne.
- nataz 6y ago
  It's a lot harder to get a missile to turn around. In theory (specifically US nuclear deterrence) each leg of the nuclear triad has a different purpose (and institutional stakeholders). Bombers flying at a target are slow enough that in theory you can convince someone they are about to make a serious mistake, while still maintaining the ability to deescalate/give the adversary an off ramp. Bombers are visible, verifiable, and put a clock on negotiations. They are a form of communication. They signal premeditated violent intention. ICBM/SLBM are an act of war. There is lots of literature on the practical use of nuclear weapons. All of it thankfully questionable and untested. It can get pretty wonky pretty fast. Countervailing, decapitation, C4ISR, escalation ladders, tactical vs. strategic nukes, etc.
  - hpoe 6y ago
    And all it takes is one blasted radio to be on the fritz and it won't matter. Dr. Strangelove was a fascinating movie.
  - souprock 6y ago
    The nuclear triad probably isn't everything. I wonder which embassies contain nuclear warheads. For the ones that do, which staff know what is in the mysterious secretive box? Who presses the button, and does that person know what the button does?
    - arethuza 6y ago
      "I wonder which embassies contain nuclear warheads" I would guess as a first approximation - almost certainly zero. The risks of discovery are far too high.
rtkwe 6y ago
No one really does it any more and the practice only lasted a around a decade even in the US. Once ICBMs became reliable enough they largely replaced bombers because it was much easier to dig a bunker than to constantly have bombers on standby or in the air and they provided a better strike capability because there's no real defense vs bombers that could be intercepted.
- Giorgi 6y ago
  There is defense and it's pre-emptive strike, being static is one of the weakness of such system, that's why there are subs and Russia (S.U.) has some of the nukes on the trucks. There also was a railway version, SS-24 Scalpel (РТ-23 УТТХ) which was mounted inside always-on-the-move train locomotion. Decommissioned in 2005 but they have new version in development.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    There's a distinction between defense and deterrence the former stops something that's been done, eg shooting down missiles and bombers, and the latter in the nuclear context is always maintaining the ability to strike back. A pre-emptive strike isn't defense it's just starting the war and it also doesn't prevent you from being struck. Unless you're in Cuba firing at the US or Europe aiming at Russia there's always time to launch a retaliatory strike before the first missiles hit and missile bases were designed to survive really close hits. That's part of why the US freaked out so much about missiles coming to Cuba and why Russia developed more mobile launch capability than the US. The only real 'defense' against and ICBM (at the time we're maybe figuring out real defenses now) was to be able to survive to strike back which isn't so much a defense as deterrent.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      The lack of time to distribute PAL codes is why the UK does not use PALs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Usage_by_other_states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Usage_b... Rather we use hand-written letters and a lot of trust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort
mkehrt 6y ago
FWIW, I would use your distinction as well. "Atomic" to me means fission only, where "thermonuclear" means fusion and "nuclear" could mean either. But other comments seem to show this is not universal.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Yeah, I think that's the case.
stretchcat 6y ago
The way I've seen it, atomic bomb and nuclear bomb are synonyms which refer to any sort of fission, boosted fission or fusion bombs. Fission bombs can be specifically referred to like that. Fusion bombs can also be called hydrogen bombs or thermonuclear bombs.

pdonis 6y ago

> atomic bomb is pure fission, a thermonuclear bomb is Fusion Strictly speaking, the term "atomic bomb" shouldn't even be used for a fission bomb since the reactions involved are nuclear reactions, not chemical ("atomic") reactions. However, in non-technical contexts, I have seen "atomic bomb" used for both fission and fusion bombs.

klyrs 6y ago
Do you have a source supporting this distinction?
- nostrademons 6y ago
  It's in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon#Fission_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon#Fission_weapons That and high-school chemistry.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - klyrs 6y ago
    > That and high-school chemistry. My 40yo ass would get thrown out of high school before I could ask "where's the chem lab" but thanks
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      Can still buy a textbook. I do that all the time for subjects that my nearly-40-year-old ass didn't bother to learn in college but ended up finding useful.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
philipkglass 6y ago
The people of the Manhattan Project used the term atomic bomb internally and externally for their invention. "Atomic" was widely used as a synonym for "nuclear" in both lay communication and technical literature for at least a generation afterward. The International Atomic Energy Agency is still called such and never felt the need to correct this imagined terminological mistake.
- nostrademons 6y ago
  That's not what he's referring to, though. In chemistry, bonds between "atoms" are ordinary chemical bonds, held together through electromagnetic forces, and yielding typical chemical reactions like explosions and deflagrations. Fission and fusion are "nuclear" processes, operating between protons and neutrons within the nucleus of an atom only, and moderated by the strong nuclear force. The energy released by breaking these bonds is orders of magnitude greater, and what we normally refer to as a "nuclear" explosion. Calling it "nuclear" vs. "atomic" conveys useful information about what's actually going on when it detonates.

walrus01 6y ago

you'd have to be a madman to fly around with 'live' ready to use nuclear bombs in the modern era, but then again, strategic air command was headed by a madman, curtis lemay... and they did it from the early 1950s for 25+ years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Air_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Air_Command

tyingq 6y ago
They do still maintain the ability to launch nukes from various aircraft. There was a famous oopsie in 2007 where they mistakenly flew some live nukes around. In this case, cruise missles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_n...

tyingq 6y ago

Israel comes to mind. Not much is known about what type of nuclear weapons they have.

neartheplain 6y ago
The educated guess is somewhere between 80-400 warheads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel They nearly used them in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
LatteLazy 6y ago
I think their doomsday scenario is covered by nuclear subs (supposedly, no public info...)...

nostrademons 6y ago

Colloquially "atomic bomb" usually refers to both fission and fusion weapons. Almost no weapons currently in use by major nation-states are pure fission devices. Two-stage thermonuclear Teller-Ulam designs are more stable, easier to control the yield, capable of scaling up to 1000x the power, and cheaper to manufacture once you have the technology. A major part of the cost of nuclear weapons is enriching uranium or producing plutonium; fusion weapons can use a much smaller amount of these expensive materials and get the bulk of their yield from deuterium, which is distilled from water. Pure fission weapons were used in some artillery shells (where there isn't enough room to get a second stage in) and by emerging nuclear powers that haven't yet developed the technology for fusion weapons. Non-colloquially, scientists would probably refer specifically to "fission" and "fusion" weapons, or to specific design used (eg. gun-type linear implosion, explosive lens, Teller-Ulam).

LatteLazy 6y ago
Thanks for your excellent comment! I didn't know most advanced powers were using fusion weapons but it makes perfect sense when you say it (cost, stability, power and controlability).
pinewurst 6y ago
There's also the intermediate case of boosted fission, where tritium gas is introduced into the fission core, generating neutrons via fusion, that in turn accelerate/enhance the fission process (e.g. allowing more fission energy to be released in the interval between detonation and when the device blows itself apart).
Koshkin 6y ago
> ”atomic bomb" usually refers to both You must be talking about “nuclear weapon.” Never in my life I heard “atomic bomb” being used in reference to a hydrogen bomb. > Almost no weapons currently in use by major nation-states are pure fission devices. All tactical nukes are pure fission devices.
- nostrademons 6y ago
  You would refer to the warheads on Minuteman 3 & PeaceKeeper ICBMs, Trident SLBMs, and B63/B81 bombs as "atomic bombs", would you not? All of the above are thermonuclear fusion weapons. The tactical nukes I believe you are referring to are the W54 Davey Crockett, W48 6.1" shell, and W79 8" shell, all pure linear implosion fission weapons. All of those have been out of service since 1992, though.

ufmace 6y ago

It doesn't really make sense to fly armed weapons around as a strategic deterrent now, since you can mount them on missiles instead, which can be stored in safer and faster to launch silos and are harder to intercept anyways. And put them in submarines that are even harder to locate. Before all that, it seemed much more reasonable to do so, if you were concerned that your enemy might sneak their bombers close enough to destroy your bomber airfields before you could get your bombers airborne.

nataz 6y ago
It's a lot harder to get a missile to turn around. In theory (specifically US nuclear deterrence) each leg of the nuclear triad has a different purpose (and institutional stakeholders). Bombers flying at a target are slow enough that in theory you can convince someone they are about to make a serious mistake, while still maintaining the ability to deescalate/give the adversary an off ramp. Bombers are visible, verifiable, and put a clock on negotiations. They are a form of communication. They signal premeditated violent intention. ICBM/SLBM are an act of war. There is lots of literature on the practical use of nuclear weapons. All of it thankfully questionable and untested. It can get pretty wonky pretty fast. Countervailing, decapitation, C4ISR, escalation ladders, tactical vs. strategic nukes, etc.
- hpoe 6y ago
  And all it takes is one blasted radio to be on the fritz and it won't matter. Dr. Strangelove was a fascinating movie.
- souprock 6y ago
  The nuclear triad probably isn't everything. I wonder which embassies contain nuclear warheads. For the ones that do, which staff know what is in the mysterious secretive box? Who presses the button, and does that person know what the button does?
  - arethuza 6y ago
    "I wonder which embassies contain nuclear warheads" I would guess as a first approximation - almost certainly zero. The risks of discovery are far too high.

rtkwe 6y ago

No one really does it any more and the practice only lasted a around a decade even in the US. Once ICBMs became reliable enough they largely replaced bombers because it was much easier to dig a bunker than to constantly have bombers on standby or in the air and they provided a better strike capability because there's no real defense vs bombers that could be intercepted.

Giorgi 6y ago
There is defense and it's pre-emptive strike, being static is one of the weakness of such system, that's why there are subs and Russia (S.U.) has some of the nukes on the trucks. There also was a railway version, SS-24 Scalpel (РТ-23 УТТХ) which was mounted inside always-on-the-move train locomotion. Decommissioned in 2005 but they have new version in development.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  There's a distinction between defense and deterrence the former stops something that's been done, eg shooting down missiles and bombers, and the latter in the nuclear context is always maintaining the ability to strike back. A pre-emptive strike isn't defense it's just starting the war and it also doesn't prevent you from being struck. Unless you're in Cuba firing at the US or Europe aiming at Russia there's always time to launch a retaliatory strike before the first missiles hit and missile bases were designed to survive really close hits. That's part of why the US freaked out so much about missiles coming to Cuba and why Russia developed more mobile launch capability than the US. The only real 'defense' against and ICBM (at the time we're maybe figuring out real defenses now) was to be able to survive to strike back which isn't so much a defense as deterrent.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    The lack of time to distribute PAL codes is why the UK does not use PALs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Usage_by_other_states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link#Usage_b... Rather we use hand-written letters and a lot of trust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort

mkehrt 6y ago

FWIW, I would use your distinction as well. "Atomic" to me means fission only, where "thermonuclear" means fusion and "nuclear" could mean either. But other comments seem to show this is not universal.

LatteLazy 6y ago
Yeah, I think that's the case.

stretchcat 6y ago

The way I've seen it, atomic bomb and nuclear bomb are synonyms which refer to any sort of fission, boosted fission or fusion bombs. Fission bombs can be specifically referred to like that. Fusion bombs can also be called hydrogen bombs or thermonuclear bombs.