The New Nuclear Arms Race: Smarter, Faster Nukes | GZERO World

High-tech delivery systems for nuclear weapons increase the risk of conflict.

There's a lot of talk about nukes these days — but not about Cold War-era massive arsenals and mutually assured destruction. Nuclear weapons expert Kelsey Davenport says the risk of
something going horribly wrong is rising because countries like China or Russia are developing smaller warheads and high-tech delivery systems such as hypersonic missiles, which traditional
arms control agreements don’t take into account. "We have to be more creative than thinking just about the numbers," she explains, adding that what's more destabilizing is countries investing in
nukes that are so nimble and travel so fast they can penetrate US defense systems. Watch her interview with Ian Bremmer on the upcoming episode of GZERO World.

#GZEROWorld #NuclearWeapons #HypersonicMissiles

[charlescurtis]

My uncle worked on nukes in the US Army in the 80’s. He said one of the nukes he would maintain were nukes that you would strap on like a backpack, and a team of soldiers could just place it wherever they wanted on the battlefield. Then they had 4 hours to get the heck out of dodge before the weapon would detonate and radiate the entire area. Tactical nuke. Not some advanced delivery system. Literally a soldier and a backpack.
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The specifics of these smaller nukes is of course classified for most governments. But it’s not just jargon when she says “reduce decision-time and blur the line between nuclear and conventional”… imagine a medium ranking military officer now having the authority to tell a soldier to drop off a backpack at a place and time… that also has a nuke in it. Interesting.