The main part of my question involves nuclear weapons industry. An excellent response on this was provided to a similar question of mine by french_stratege perhaps a year or so ago and I deeply regrett not archiving the thread, because now it has dissappeared... In any case, I will definitely archive this one! So... what is the minimum level nuclear and other industry you need to manufacture nuclear weapons through all levels of production (from mining the material to actual weaponization)? What about the manpower requirements (how many nuclear engineers, technicians and other personnel would be needed?) and costs? How long would such an industry take to build up? Would this differ if pure fusion weapons became viable?
What do you think would be a viable minimum nuclear deterrent? How about a limited nuclear deterrent and a maximum nuclear deterrent? How much do you think would these deterrents cost to build and maintain and what would the manpower requirements be? How quickly could these levels of deterrence be built-up provided the nuclear industry was already there? Would this differ if pure fusion weapons became viable? |