Talk:List of nuclear weapons

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Thought: I don't know how to do this, but if you're going to go by when they gained the weapon, Israel should probably be before India.

Avner Cohen, in his book "The Bomb in the Basement", notes that Israel had a rudimentary nuclear force by the 1967 war, assembled quite hurriedly during the last two weeks of May 1967. --Penta 01:40, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Could we change "Nothing found !CLASSIFIED INFORMATION!" into something else? --Apoc2400 19:39, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just got rid of them. They are nonsense and in some cases not accurate (more is known on China's capabilities than "CLASSIFIED INFORMATION". --Fastfission 16:44, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I really think the Soviet Union had more types of nuclear weapons than 2. We need an expert here Swinger222 20:50, 1 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've been working on the Soviet weapons problem. Not much was available until after the Soviet Union collapsed, and only a few scholarly works have been done on the subject. Much of what is available on the web is based upon cold war "estimates' many of which were little more than speculation.Mark Lincoln 13:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New Format

I'm thinking of converting this to a table, but I'm not sure what data columns to use yet. How's this?

**American Nuclear Weapons**
Name	Yield	Applications	Years in Use	# Produced	# in service
Mk 1	15 kT	Little Boy bomb used against Hiroshima	1945	5	0
Mk 2	Unknown	Canceled gun-type bomb using Plutonium	N/A	0	0

Night Gyr 16:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Take a look at: Nuclear Weapon Archive's allbombs.html page. That has too much detail... arguably, the right columns are name(s), Type, Yield, Year of first manufacture, Year of last retirement. I'm not sure that we need number produced (at the summary table level).

I have been thinking myself about merging the lists, so that they follow the numerical sequence rather than the types.

Georgewilliamherbert 22:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

B vs W designators for US weapons

Night Gyr is asserting that W refers to the physics package in any warhead or bomb; I would like to ask if anyone has a source for that. I've been researching this for 20 years and have never seen that; the usage is very consistently W for warheads (of missiles or rockets), B for bombs, Mk/Mark for oddball stuff (Mk 54 SADM) and older designs before they introduced the B/W notation. If there is evidence for W as the physics package, I would like to see it. Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert 03:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chuck Hansen covers this question thoroughly in Volume VI of "Swords of Armageddon".

"W" stands for "warhead" and not the physics package. The B-53 is a bomb, the W-53 has the same physics package as the B-53 but is configured as a warhead. There are significant interface and packaging differences.Mark Lincoln 22:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Articles for cancelled American nuclear weapons

Something that has occurred to me... do we want to have articles for cancelled american weapon designs? There are a whole bunch which got designated and then cancelled prior to introduction. Do we want to just make a list of them? An article covering all of them, each one briefly? Separate articles for each? Your inputs desired... Georgewilliamherbert 07:40, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just filled in the stubs for the cancelled weapons. I figure some information - and some like the W-41 don't merit much - is better than none. I tried to keep it short and sweet so that folks interested enough to be thumbing through the stubs would be able to see where the cancelled systems fit.Mark Lincoln 22:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Progress

I think that I finally completed the list for US weapons last night... I will verify tonight and ask for other editors to review the list for completeness and accuracy.

My priority items at this point:

Articles (at least stub) for all modern US weapons of any type, cancelled or not
Articles (at least stub) for all deployed US weapons of any type, regardless of age
List completeness for USSR missile warheads (currently have several gaps in timeline)
List completeness for UK weapons of all types, primarily from source http://www.skomer.u-net.com/projects/nukes.htm.

Other stuff is at a lower priority, including better intro blurbs for all the national program sections.

Georgewilliamherbert 21:24, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just added the two design programs which are ongoing today at some level (reliable replacement warhead and RNEP) to a new category in the US weapons secion.

Does anyone have input on whether I should add a section for the common/reused primary designs (see Tsetse primary and Python primary for first 2 examples, we also have Robin, Boa, and Kinglet and possibly others to do.)? I'm adding articles for them, but are they list-able? Georgewilliamherbert 07:08, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Russian nukes

I've found a good reference here, though that only covers current arsenals, it's got summarized information on yields and deployment. Night Gyr 01:25, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dead link NYE ROBOTAYET!

-G —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.231.141.76 (talk) 18:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

The best single source I have found is Steven Zaloga's "The Kremilins Nuclear Sword" published by the Smithsonian Institute Press. Mark Lincoln 17:46, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WMD v Nuclear Weapons

I noticed that some nations possess nuclear weapons and others have WMD in the article headers. Would it not be more appropriate to describe them all as Nuclear Weapons and let public opinion decide who the bad guys are going to be? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.159.82.105 (talk) 23:14, 20 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Our standard is to have "Country and weapons of mass destruction" articles, covering all WMD category projects and equipment they have or are claimed to have. Georgewilliamherbert 23:39, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The nuclear weapons articles are subarticles of the WMD per country articles, for those which have large enough arsenals that we need to split it further. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:48, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've edited the US and UK links for consistency, the previous implication being that WMD was a deliberately derogative term applied to certain nations. BeL1EveR 14:55, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Iran

I find the section on Iran to be almost tabloid stuff. The IAEA has issues outstanding which preclude it declaring that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, but they are minor issues, and the IAEA states that they have no evidence of a nuclear weapons program.Mark Lincoln 22:26, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are more reasons than the IAEA inspections to suspect it, and it's widely discussed in the nonproliferation literature. Please leave that alone; it's well sourced. Georgewilliamherbert 22:35, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am leaving it alone. I have been watching the whole debate. Indeed, I have been watching Iran since the early 1970s when the Shah DID have a weapons program (that went no where). I need more 'evidence' than the breathless speculation of folks with an ax to grind before I get excited.

If Iran had bought zillions of Soviet bombs, all they would have had to do was set one off like Korea did and they would not be the subject of a campaign for a new war by Dick Cheney.

Not even the fantastic efforts of South Africa to hide it's weapons program allowed it to develop one without detection. The fact is there is not a shred of factual evidence to support claims of an ongoing Iranian program. There was a low-scale program towards the end of the Iran/Iraq war which wound down after that war ended. At this time the IAEA has NO evidence of an ongoing program.

I will not change the Iranian section though it is far more fit for the New York Daily News than the Times. . . Mark Lincoln 17:53, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thin Man not Mk.-II

There is a BIG problem with the list of US nuclear weapons. The name MK-11 links to a nice article on the "thin man" plutonium gun device investigated by the Manhattan Project. The "Mark" nomenclature was not evolved until after Thin Man was terminated because of predetonation.

The Mk-II was a levitated core design development of which was discontinued due to problems with the implosion geometry. The Mk.-II much changed, emerged as the Mk-1V after the war. I would recommend that the article on Thin Man be unlinked from the Mk-II designation.

No complaint with the Thin Man article, but it simply was not the "Mk-II."Mark Lincoln 13:42, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]