I realize I'm late to the party here...
Me too.
By definition, none of the participants can actually know what they're talking about, nor anyone else in a position to evaluate it here. So it seems like a recipe for a pissing contest and nothing more.
That isn't entirely true.
Dywyddyr could have won the debate with a single word: "Cray"
The US had Cray supercomputers, and Russia did not, until Clinton gave them two Cray Super IIs.
Without a Cray, there is no way to build a cruise missile, so the US had cruise missiles, while the Russians did/do not.
The Cray performs billions of calculations per second, and that is what allows the US to do modeling and "testing" of nuclear warheads without actually having to conduct underground or above ground tests.
Also the goals of the two countries were different. The Russians concentrated on "Bang-for-Buck" and the US on "Bang-at-precisely-Point A."
This...
They have made multiple wareheads the size of suitcases.
...is a bizarre statement. Chaos1956 seems to have conflated devices, but then his knowledge is superficial.
Both Russia and the US had man-portable nuclear devices. These are devices that one person could carry in a back-pack and easily conceal. They consist of two classes: Artillery Fired Atomic Projectiles (AFAPs) and Atomic Demolition Munitions (ADMs).
The US had a uranium-based double-gun device for use with 203mm/8" artillery. It weighed about 60-odd pounds (about 75 pounds if it was in its container -- a wooden ammunition crate). We called them RAPs (Rocket-Assisted Projectiles). You mate the warhead to the rocket, load it into the breech, place a special propellant charge, then jump into your fox-hole and fire it using an electric lanyard. The special propellant charge kicks the RAP out of the tube and when it has cleared the rocket motor ignites and carries the warhead to target about 37 miles down range maximum.
Unfortunately, the RAP tears up the rifling in the gun tube, so you have to place PBX on the gun and destroy it after you fire the RAP. Sometimes it trashed the hydraulics too, and that makes the gun useless as well (when it recoiled the hydraulic breaking system would fail and the gun would flip over backward on the crew).
The Russians never had anything that big artillery-wise. They did have a 152mm RAP, that was equivalent to the US 155mm/6" RAP. The US RAP was a plutonium-based linear implosion device. The Russian version was a plutonium rod-design.
The rocket designs on the 152mm/155mm were different, and that allowed the guns fire multiple RAP rounds as well as continue with a conventional firing mission after firing a RAP round.
The reason the Russians did not have anything larger than 152mm is not because they didn't know how to design one, rather it is because Russian heavy artillery units have a different mission and are employed differently than US heavy artillery units.
If you read
Atomic Audit by the incompetent Steven Schwartz, he disingenuously includes the 155mm RAPs even though the rocket motors were also used with the COBRA system, which was a method of laser guiding the 155mm rounds to target. The point being that if the US never had nuclear weapons, it would still have 155mm/6" RAPs.
The bare warhead package was an 11 in by 16 in (28 cm by 41 cm) cylinder that weighed 51 lbs (23 kg)(Same link).
Pukipedia really isn't a valid source of information. It was a little over 52 pounds and it was 9-1/2" by 13."
That was a plutonium-based spherical implosion multi-yield device. You could double the yield by using a U235 sleeve. The ADM Platoons in engineer battalions at Theater/Army level (echelons above corps) had those (sleeves), but the ADM Platoons at division and corps level did not. At one time the US had 229 of those in Germany (and some more in Italy) before they were secretly withdrawn and shipped to Pantex.
A "small refrigerator" is, by my reckoning, somewhat larger than 11 x 16 inches, let alone a 120 mm artillery shell.
Those are two different types of warheads. One is fission-fusion, the other is fission only, and the yields were vastly different, so of course they'd be different sizes.
The warheads for the Lance and Pershing II (but not the Pershing) were the size of small refrigerators (but then they were fission-fusion variable-yield).
It is supposed that China might have aquired an American W88 warehead and utilized into their designs
It is supposed? By whom? Could you support this supposition or is one of your own?
Clinton gave the "football" to the Chinese. That's common knowledge (the "football" is a euphemism for linear implosion -- which is what allows miniaturization). There's even an entire book devoted to that and the transfer of satellite technology to the Chinese (via the Hughes Corporation) by a very well respected investigative journalist who's name escapes me at the moment.
Also you can read the Congressional Record, since the Republicans weren't very thrilled when they discovered what Clinton did.
As it is also the most efficient design concept for small nuclear weapons, today virtually all the nuclear weapons deployed by the five major nuclear-armed nations use the Teller–Ulam design.Same link).
That much is true. The "football" is used with a pressurized deuterium or deuterium-tritium chamber. That's why they are variable yield warheads or if you want to use the media's term: "dial-a-yield."
The yield is 0.3 kt to 100 kt. The first 12 kt are fission only. That is achieved by venting the gas and manipulating the PBX to get yields from 0.3 kt to 12 kt (thanks to the Cray Super II). The remaining 88 kt is fusion and that is achieved by limiting the amount of gas that is vented. If you don't bleed off any of the deuterium, then the yield is 100 kt, with 12 kt by fission and 88 kt by fusion. When you do fallout predication, you only consider the 12 kt because
Helium is not radioactive.
That is how the warheads for the Lance (the variable yield version used by the US -- not the 10 kt or 20 kt versions used by NATO), Pershing II (but not Pershing) and certain cruise missile warheads. Strategic warheads used in Minuteman, Trident, B63, etc are fixed yield.
That design was also used in the 1 kt and 10 kt ERWs (aka "neutron bomb"). The Russians still have about 3,000+ ERWs, mostly 5 kt to 10 kt missile warheads, but I don't know what design they use.
MacGyver1968 said:
Even if one side has an advantage over the other in nuclear weapon technology...the difference would only be slight...and it doesn't really make much difference in the whole scheme of things.
Well, the argument is that better technology leads to fewer nuclear weapons.
About 10% of all strategic missiles (ICBMs/SLBMs) will fail at some point. That could be the silo doors don't open, the silo doors open only partially, the engine fails to ignite, the engine or 2nd stage booster blows up in the silo, the rocket does not achieve lift and falls over after leaving the silo, the engine/booster blows up before going sub-orbital, the engine fails to separate, the booster fails to separate, the MIRV bus doesn't open its doors, the MIRV platform fails, the MIRV doesn't launch, the MIRV doesn't launch on target, the warhead fails to detonate.
Aside from that, you need large yield warheads and a lot of them if they aren't accurate (a large CEP). As your accuracy improves, you can use smaller yield warheads, and fewer of them. I mean the goal (for strategic forces) is to generate over-pressure at
X-psi to crush the silo doors so the enemy cannot retaliate with its strategic forces, or to flatten the industrial capacity of particular city.
Okay so, some US MIRV buses have 6-9 warheads (usually 6 plus 3 decoys), but then those are 100 kt warheads. Others have 4-5 warheads (usually 4 plus one decoy) and those are 400-450 kt warheads. So what? They Russians have MARVs (those are re-entry vehicles that maneuver ostensibly to dodge anti-missile systems) and then the Russians have mobile ICBM forces while the US does not.
Obviously, both countries have different philosophies and doctrines with respect to organizing, deploying and using their strategic and tactical nuclear forces. If you go back and look at the US Pershing II and the Russian SS-20, the Pershing II was a variable-yield MARV with a radar section attached to it, but the SS-20 was an MRV (and that is MRV and not MIRV).
They were both IRBMs, but they had different functions. The Pershing II was designed to destroy point targets, like headquarters or communication centers (thus they need for a radar section and independent maneuvering to achieve high accuracy and a variable-yield warhead to achieve the desired level of destruction), while the SS-20 was basically a nuclear shot-gun designed to destroy open area targets, like airfields and ports. It flew over head, dumped out all three of its 60 kt warheads and that was the end of it.
leopold99 said:
russia not only developed the hydrogen bomb before the US...
That would be wrong, since the US tested it's first fission fusion device in 1952 (Ivy Mike) and the Russians did their first in 1953.
Dywyddyr said:
American ones are "better engineered" but Russian ones are more, er, user-friendly (in that they are designed to used by less-specialised troops - a consequence of Soviet recruiting).
Russian nuclear weapons were handled by professional soldiers, not draftees.
Just like the Russians, the US put the dumbest troops in infantry, and the not quite as dumb in artillery. The only difference between the Pershing II and SS-20 firing systems is the Pershing II had a small fiber optic cable running from the launcher to the command post, and the SS-20 had big thick heavy copper cable.
A truck is a truck. How smart do you have to drive a truck, park it, and pull a lever to erect the missile?