As i can't read the article yet. But I will say the development of new weapons is an unfortunate necessity of being a nuclear power. Nuclear weapon design requires unique knowledge and skills and not developing new designs risks a "brain drain" where people with the necessary skills either die off or retire without passing useful knowledge on. Unfortunately, as long as the rest of the nuclear powers modernize and develop new weapons, we must as well to maintain our technological leads and parities.

Equipping SLBMs with just their "fission primary" warheads doesn't make much sense tactically or strategically, imho. They are low-yield but "dirty" and unnecessarily fall-out producing...essentially "a-bombs" like Fat Man.


I suspect the US has deployable (loll...autocorrect wanted to say deplorable) "pure fusion" warheads ...thermonuclear weapons that don't require a fission primary. These weapons could in theory be made to low-yield, and would be much "cleaner&quot pardon my euphemism) and less fallout producing.

These are the kinds of nukes they would want to have to contemplate a greater range of options for their use, tragically.

as the primary event to detonate a fusion reaction. At the heart of every H bomb is a standard A bomb.

I am saying there is some speculation that the US has pure fusion weapons. You do not require a fission implosion primary to initiate a fusion reaction, and indeed we've have billions in fusion research in the intervening seven decades. Most of that research is understood to be "dual use".

I understand if you don't want to follow that rabbit hole, suffice to say in stars, where fusion reactions occur in nature, they are initiated by massive heat and pressure. Scientists have attempted to do the same with magnetic fields, and high powered lasers, for a long time.