7 ms·

In what sense were they Ukraine's nuclear weapons? They were physically inside Ukraine but controlled by Russia, as the article you linked makes clear.

ceejayoz 5y ago
They were the Soviet Union's nukes. That organization ceased to exist. The section of the Soviet military controlling those nukes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43rd_Rocket_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43rd_Rocket_Army) became a part of the Ukranian military. Why wouldn't their equipment?
- trenchgun 5y ago
  Ukraine never had the control of those nukes. “Until then, Ukraine had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile, of which Ukraine had physical, but not operational, control. Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate. Their use was dependent on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate If Ukraine had held on to those nukes, disconnected, an engineer today could re-work them to function under Kiev’s command. (American PALs from the era have de-classified weaknesses that merited upgrades. Post-USSR nuclear safekeeping was roundly criticised for decades [1].) Even barring that, possessing fissile material is no small feat. It would give Kiev the credible capability to e.g. threaten large sections of Russian agricultural production. That’s the sort of thing that deters tanks. [1] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SE-11.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SE-11.pdf
    - morelisp 5y ago
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      And there was this: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/05/02/weekly-document-the-censored-chapter-1946/ https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/05/02/weekly-document-t... and this: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/01/04/weekly-document-8-reexamining-the-the-nth-country-experiment-1967/ https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/01/04/weekly-document-8...
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > “Until then, Ukraine had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile, of which Ukraine had physical, but not operational, control. Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate. Their use was dependent on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system” I don't know where they got it, the book author cited in Wiki. The man cited read too much Tom Clancy I guess. USSR nuclear weapons had no permissive action links as such Kazakhstan's, and Ukrainian's nukes were fully operational, sans confused nuclear weapons officer command chain. The launch codes were employed, but they were used solely for checking the authenticity of launch, and targetting commands.
- jessriedel 5y ago
  > They were the Soviet Union's nukes. That organization ceased to exist. I agree with some of what you say, but "the Soviet Union ceased to exist" is too simplistic. The codes necessary for firing the weapons (without modification) were controlled by military leaders largely in Russia.
  - mprovost 5y ago
    Was the code 00000000? https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/21/air-force-swears-our-nuke-launch-code-was-never-00000000/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/21/air-force-swears-our-nu...
  - zx85wes 5y ago
    The former states of the USSR agreed that Russia was the continuator state of the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_of_states#Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_of_states#Soviet_Un... The "the Soviet Union ceased to exist" argument was also used to circumvent the agreement not to expand NATO towards the east. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16117-document-06-record-conversation-between https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16117-document-06-record-...
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > the agreement not to expand NATO towards the east This is a myth. There was a discussion in the midst of a negotiation that mentioned this. The final agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, which everyone is presently violating, did not.
      - pydry 5y ago
        There were multiple assurances made throughout the years in diplomatic comminques that were later declassified including James Baker's famous "not one inch eastward". https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017... It just didnt appear in any treaty. For the Soviet Union I think the notion that diplomatic assurances were meaningless unless backed by a treaty wasnt considered.
jessriedel 5y ago
They were Ukraine's in the sense that they had physical possession and unlimited time to circumvent the locks ("permissive action link", PAL). It's true the PALs may have been very non-trivial to circumvent (e.g., some PALs require a code to decrypt firing parameters), but I haven't seen anyone argue that this wasn't still vastly easier than developing weapons from scratch. Ukraine had substantial nuclear weapons expertise; it was not just a physical hosting site of the weapons.
- moritonal 5y ago
  Just gonna point out that trying to hack a Nuke would be very high on that list of "NOPE" jobs I have in my head. Either you brick a nuke in which case your boss bricks you, or the nuke bricks you and your local region.
  - arethuza 5y ago
    Pick nukes from a country that doesn't use PALs - like the UK. Edit: Physically getting hold of a UK nuke might be a bit tricky....
  - kadoban 5y ago
    How much of nukes is even hardware vs software? I'd naively think that you'd probably just rip out the core of the device and wire up a new thing that can zap it to go boom.
    - rtkwe 5y ago
      The timing of the explosives around the core is extremely important to actually getting a nuclear detonation instead of just a dirty bomb so the precise timing and triggering of the detonators is a very critical part of the bomb. They're not just simple fuses you can light and run away.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
        Then use rad-hard arduino/esp-32/cortex-m0/RittzkenfaiiV/whatever equivalents running NTP / Precision Time Protocol(PTP) in a cluster, with the elements embedded in the individual explosives. Maybe read about https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+fourth+generation+nuclear+weapons https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+fourth+generation+nuclear+weapons and how that could be applied to the material at hand, Ka-Boom!
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> In what sense were they Ukraine's nuclear weapons? They were physically inside Ukraine but controlled by Russia, as the article you linked makes clear Possession is nine-tenths of the law [1]. Soviet weapons in Ukraine serviced by Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved had no clear owner. Russia would have had to seize them to gain control. Ukraine would have needed to develop or contract out servicing expertise. To say nothing of the threat even inoperable nukes pose. If Ukraine had unserviced warheads in 2014, do you really think they would have found nobody who could get them working again? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_t...
dogma1138 5y ago
Ukraine also probably had half the engineers and scientists that built the damn things in the first place considering how much of the Soviet nuclear industry was located in Ukraine at the time. They ended up with the 3rd largest nuclear stockpile and whilst they would probably would get invaded by both sides if they didn’t surrender the nukes and attempted to assert operational control over them they surely had that capability. Also back then the primary fear was that some of those nukes would end up on the open market, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, North Korea heck even South Africa back then were all likely buyers.
- markvdb 5y ago
  South Africa had its own nuclear weapons. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Nuclear_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_ma...
  - jessriedel 5y ago
    Those were simple gun-type pure fission weapons (~6 kiloton), which are two orders of magnitude smaller than the typical thermonuclear weapons (~1 megaton) left by the USSR in Ukraine.

ceejayoz 5y ago

They were the Soviet Union's nukes. That organization ceased to exist. The section of the Soviet military controlling those nukes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43rd_Rocket_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43rd_Rocket_Army) became a part of the Ukranian military. Why wouldn't their equipment?

trenchgun 5y ago
Ukraine never had the control of those nukes. “Until then, Ukraine had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile, of which Ukraine had physical, but not operational, control. Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate. Their use was dependent on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate If Ukraine had held on to those nukes, disconnected, an engineer today could re-work them to function under Kiev’s command. (American PALs from the era have de-classified weaknesses that merited upgrades. Post-USSR nuclear safekeeping was roundly criticised for decades [1].) Even barring that, possessing fissile material is no small feat. It would give Kiev the credible capability to e.g. threaten large sections of Russian agricultural production. That’s the sort of thing that deters tanks. [1] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SE-11.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SE-11.pdf
  - morelisp 5y ago
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    And there was this: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/05/02/weekly-document-the-censored-chapter-1946/ https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/05/02/weekly-document-t... and this: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/01/04/weekly-document-8-reexamining-the-the-nth-country-experiment-1967/ https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/01/04/weekly-document-8...
- baybal2 5y ago
  > “Until then, Ukraine had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile, of which Ukraine had physical, but not operational, control. Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate. Their use was dependent on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system” I don't know where they got it, the book author cited in Wiki. The man cited read too much Tom Clancy I guess. USSR nuclear weapons had no permissive action links as such Kazakhstan's, and Ukrainian's nukes were fully operational, sans confused nuclear weapons officer command chain. The launch codes were employed, but they were used solely for checking the authenticity of launch, and targetting commands.
jessriedel 5y ago
> They were the Soviet Union's nukes. That organization ceased to exist. I agree with some of what you say, but "the Soviet Union ceased to exist" is too simplistic. The codes necessary for firing the weapons (without modification) were controlled by military leaders largely in Russia.
- mprovost 5y ago
  Was the code 00000000? https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/21/air-force-swears-our-nuke-launch-code-was-never-00000000/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/21/air-force-swears-our-nu...
- zx85wes 5y ago
  The former states of the USSR agreed that Russia was the continuator state of the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_of_states#Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_of_states#Soviet_Un... The "the Soviet Union ceased to exist" argument was also used to circumvent the agreement not to expand NATO towards the east. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16117-document-06-record-conversation-between https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16117-document-06-record-...
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > the agreement not to expand NATO towards the east This is a myth. There was a discussion in the midst of a negotiation that mentioned this. The final agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, which everyone is presently violating, did not.
    - pydry 5y ago
      There were multiple assurances made throughout the years in diplomatic comminques that were later declassified including James Baker's famous "not one inch eastward". https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017... It just didnt appear in any treaty. For the Soviet Union I think the notion that diplomatic assurances were meaningless unless backed by a treaty wasnt considered.

jessriedel 5y ago

They were Ukraine's in the sense that they had physical possession and unlimited time to circumvent the locks ("permissive action link", PAL). It's true the PALs may have been very non-trivial to circumvent (e.g., some PALs require a code to decrypt firing parameters), but I haven't seen anyone argue that this wasn't still vastly easier than developing weapons from scratch. Ukraine had substantial nuclear weapons expertise; it was not just a physical hosting site of the weapons.

moritonal 5y ago
Just gonna point out that trying to hack a Nuke would be very high on that list of "NOPE" jobs I have in my head. Either you brick a nuke in which case your boss bricks you, or the nuke bricks you and your local region.
- arethuza 5y ago
  Pick nukes from a country that doesn't use PALs - like the UK. Edit: Physically getting hold of a UK nuke might be a bit tricky....
- kadoban 5y ago
  How much of nukes is even hardware vs software? I'd naively think that you'd probably just rip out the core of the device and wire up a new thing that can zap it to go boom.
  - rtkwe 5y ago
    The timing of the explosives around the core is extremely important to actually getting a nuclear detonation instead of just a dirty bomb so the precise timing and triggering of the detonators is a very critical part of the bomb. They're not just simple fuses you can light and run away.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Then use rad-hard arduino/esp-32/cortex-m0/RittzkenfaiiV/whatever equivalents running NTP / Precision Time Protocol(PTP) in a cluster, with the elements embedded in the individual explosives. Maybe read about https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+fourth+generation+nuclear+weapons https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+fourth+generation+nuclear+weapons and how that could be applied to the material at hand, Ka-Boom!

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> In what sense were they Ukraine's nuclear weapons? They were physically inside Ukraine but controlled by Russia, as the article you linked makes clear Possession is nine-tenths of the law [1]. Soviet weapons in Ukraine serviced by Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved had no clear owner. Russia would have had to seize them to gain control. Ukraine would have needed to develop or contract out servicing expertise. To say nothing of the threat even inoperable nukes pose. If Ukraine had unserviced warheads in 2014, do you really think they would have found nobody who could get them working again? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_the_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_t...

dogma1138 5y ago

Ukraine also probably had half the engineers and scientists that built the damn things in the first place considering how much of the Soviet nuclear industry was located in Ukraine at the time. They ended up with the 3rd largest nuclear stockpile and whilst they would probably would get invaded by both sides if they didn’t surrender the nukes and attempted to assert operational control over them they surely had that capability. Also back then the primary fear was that some of those nukes would end up on the open market, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, North Korea heck even South Africa back then were all likely buyers.

markvdb 5y ago
South Africa had its own nuclear weapons. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Nuclear_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_ma...
- jessriedel 5y ago
  Those were simple gun-type pure fission weapons (~6 kiloton), which are two orders of magnitude smaller than the typical thermonuclear weapons (~1 megaton) left by the USSR in Ukraine.