I can’t image how well the technical components can hold up.

I recently got back from the Smithsonian affiliate Atomic Testing Museum. Two things caught my eye in the exhibits that gave me a similar realization about Russian nuclear readiness.

#1 The USA is currently undergoing a nuclear warhead modernization program refurbishing the existing inventory of nuclear warheads and the result of this “will extend the life of the warhead by as much as 25 to 30 years”. I understand this to mean that the useful life of a nuclear warhead sitting on the shelf is less than 30 years. That means nearly 100% of the warheads that were ready to use when I was born are now non-viable, unless they’ve undergone refurbishment sometime in my lifetime.

#2 at its peak count, the USA has had about 31,000 nuclear warheads at one time. Over the many years since, that number has been reduced to about 2,500 in inventory right now. There are an additional 2000 warheads that are not considered “ready to go” that are schedule to be dismantled and disposed of.

The treaties reducing nuclear warhead stockpiles wasn’t about peace, it was about cost! The US government, even with its incredibly high budgets decided to drop from 31,000 warheads to just 2500 because they are just so expensive to maintain, which it has carried on with the maintenance of the warhead.

Now, Russia has just a tiny fraction of the USA’s military budget, and much more corruption. What are the chance any of Russian’s warhead have been maintained? If the USA’s warheads only have a 30 year shelf life, and Russia’s are the same, that would mean that an unmaintained warhead would have had to be be built in the early 1990s (right when the Soviet Union was collapsing), which doesn’t seem likely.

This leads me to guess that the vast majority of Russia’s current warhead stockpile probably don’t work!