Most powerful Nuclear bomb in America being dismantled!

[Vetteman94]

spurgeonryan said:

Marks said:

mrstickball said:

Marks said:

Does it actually reduce costs? I would have thought paying the mechanics to disassemble costs more than keeping them in storage. I'm not sure though I'm just talking off the top of my head. 

 

The bombs have a shelf life. Therefore, if you want to keep 2,000 in active stock, you have to constantly dismantle and produce new ones, thus costing money. In the case of this bomb, it was a relic from a bygone era. Its so big because it was to be dropped from a bomber (B-52, B2 or B1), thus would potentially be very inaccurate. Alternatively, the ones we have in stock are much more accurate, thus require a smaller yield to achieve a kill (e.g. ICBM, MIRV and SLBM).

On one end, its sad to see this go. On the other end, we have many left to defend ourselves and assure MAD for decades to come.

Cool thanks for the explain. Makes sense. 

So how much do you think it cost us each time we refill all 2,000 plus of these bombs?

Well we have alot more than 2000 of them, but you would do a small percentage of them every year.  It built into our defense budget, which everyone knows is astronomical. So finding out the true cost would be pretty tough.  Although with the technology we have today I am sure we have a streamlined process for something like this given that most of our tactical ones have been built fairly recently.