Turkey holding 50 US nuclear bombs hostage

[DingoLingo]

now that would be very interesting for the Trump administration if it does turn out to be true

https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/deadly-diplomatic-challenge-turkey-holding-50-us-nuclear-bombs-hostage/news-story/1a89583915a67a51546a1f1f47c396e9

[Hankenhunter]

I would hope that the US would have a contingency plan for a scenario like this. Maybe shaped charges that destroy the consoles rendering them useless with a password. I mean, come on, somebody had to think that things might go pear shaped in the future? 

Sigh, we're boned arent we?

Edited October 16, 2019 by Hankenhunter

[+and-then]

32 minutes ago, DingoLingo said:

now that would be very interesting for the Trump administration if it does turn out to be true

I think it's just stirring up clicks and sensationalizing.  If Turkey refused to allow those weapons to be removed it would cost them dearly and they'd get very little benefit from them.  They don't have the codes nor would they even be guaranteed to have functional devices by the time our techs finished adjusting some components.  I doubt that the design of those devices is significantly superior to what Russia, China or any other nuclear power already has.  Essentially, Erdog would be selling his soul for 50 bomb cores that he probably couldn't efficiently use.  The fissile material is valuable but without the tech background he'd still have to start practically from scratch to use that raw material as his own bombs.

I don't doubt that he'd be capable of surrounding Incirlik and demanding something of value before he allows our 5000 troops there to leave.  He's an Islamist fundy, after all.  Hostage taking is a 100 level course for them, it's just basic.

[+and-then]

27 minutes ago, Hankenhunter said:

I would hope that the US would have a contingency plan for a scenario like this. Maybe shaped charges that destroy the consoles rendering them useless with a password. I mean, come on, somebody had to think that things might go pear shaped in the future? 

Sigh, we're boned arent we?

Those weapons are only valuable once they are armed by codes and even then, the mechanisms are complicated enough with multiple fail-safes that bomb techs could remove or destroy components and render them useless except for the value of the fissile cores.  This is a scare-piece.  It goes out of its way to create fear of something that just isn't a real danger.  Now, that said, it WOULD cause a rupture between the U.S. and Turkey that would likely never be healed.  If the Turkish military surrounded and attacked that base then I'm pretty sure we'd create one hell of a mess in other parts of Turkey and probably even take a decapitation shot at the dog himself.  Either way, the Turks would not get any real advantage or windfall from their attempted theft.  They'd just be left with flaming rubble and an enemy with a really long reach and long memory.

[+OverSword]

I believe the appropriate word for this attempt at scare mongering is pishaw. 

[+Hammerclaw]

3 minutes ago, and then said:

Those weapons are only valuable once they are armed by codes and even then, the mechanisms are complicated enough with multiple fail-safes that bomb techs could remove or destroy components and render them useless except for the value of the fissile cores.  This is a scare-piece.  It goes out of its way to create fear of something that just isn't a real danger.  Now, that said, it WOULD cause a rupture between the U.S. and Turkey that would likely never be healed.  If the Turkish military surrounded and attacked that base then I'm pretty sure we'd create one hell of a mess in other parts of Turkey and probably even take a decapitation shot at the dog himself.  Either way, the Turks would not get any real advantage or windfall from their attempted theft.  They'd just be left with flaming rubble and an enemy with a really long reach and long memory.

If we decide to move them, we won't ask permission. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[+and-then]

2 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

If we decide to move them, we won't ask permission. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My guess is the cores will have already been removed or permanently deactivated.  If not, someone has seriously erred.  Erdog is an opportunist but I don't think he's a fool or has the guts to try something that could lead directly to HIS own martyrdom  

[+Hammerclaw]

16 minutes ago, and then said:

My guess is the cores will have already been removed or permanently deactivated.  If not, someone has seriously erred.  Erdog is an opportunist but I don't think he's a fool or has the guts to try something that could lead directly to HIS own martyrdom  

Erdogan is impotent to do anything if we decide to move them. He's been a pain for quite awhile, but Erdogan is not Turkey--he's just a politician. It must be dawning on him now, what Trump has done. In his eagerness to engage the Kurds he overlooked one key fact. We weren't just standing between him and the Kurds, we were standing between him and the Syrians and the Russians. The Russians, predictably, have facilitated rapprochement between the Kurds and Damascus, rather quickly, I might add. Now the Kurds fight for Syria and Assad, and have the means to counter his tactical advantage with Syrian/Russian armor, planes and artillery. The cakewalk is over. When they start taking serious losses, it will be amusing to watch him howl and plead for us to intervene. Ain't gonna happen. He wanted to start his on little war, like Mussolini invading Southern France. I predict the overall results will be similar.

Edited October 16, 2019 by Hammerclaw

[Space Commander Travis]

 Erdogan the mustache-twiddling supervillain gets better and better! Come on now. "holding 50 Nuclear Weapons hostage hahahaha! " I'm sure he must have a Persian cat.*

* who are of course currently sanctioned by the State Department

[Tatetopa]

And what good to the US are nuclear weapons if they are disabled?  If they are there and ready,  they could be delivered by aircraft pretty quickly if conditions warranted.  Otherwise they might as well be gone. Nobody needs empty bombs,  but it does  take them out of play. Russia might feel safer..  Just the threat causes us to move our valuable chess piece out of striking distance and back into safety.    If the Russians are calling the shots, Erdogan has done his job. 

[toast]

Above all, Erdog has no access and no kind of control to/of the nukes, zero. All we have is a newspaper article which spread some scaremongering. Under no US president, or US president malingerer, the US would make such stunt possible. If the situation would get worse, it would be solved by a very little logistical effort, one C17 would fit to manage the issue.

[+and-then]

1 hour ago, Dumbledore the Awesome said:

who are of course currently sanctioned by the State Department

That's a LIE!  We only sanction their food and catnip.

[Grim Reaper 6]

3 hours ago, and then said:

My guess is the cores will have already been removed or permanently deactivated.  If not, someone has seriously erred.  Erdog is an opportunist but I don't think he's a fool or has the guts to try something that could lead directly to HIS own martyrdom  

The fissile material can't be deactivated, but it certainly can be removed. The rest of the device can easily be destroyed in place. I am certain there are plans in place for a situation like occurring, I don't think Turkey is foolish enough to try anything, in a worst case situation one of the devices could accidentally detonate in place and it could look like the Turks caused the situation to occur.

[Space Commander Travis]

6 minutes ago, Manwon Lender said:

The fissile material can't be deactivated, but it certainly can be removed. The rest of the device can easily be destroyed in place. I am certain there are plans in place for a situation like occurring, I don't think Turkey is foolish enough to try anything, in a worst case situation one of the devices could accidentally detonate in place and it could look like the Turks caused the situation to occur.

Just make sure the fuses are kept separate (which of course they would be while they're in storage in any case,) They're utterly useless without the fuses, unless anyone's thinking of dismantling the casing and taking the plutonium or whatever it is they use these days out, and then there'd be nothing at all you could do with that apart from expose yourself to radiation. 

[Grim Reaper 6]

1 minute ago, Dumbledore the Awesome said:

Just make sure the fuses are kept separate (which of course they would be while they're in storage in any case,) They're utterly useless without the fuses, unless anyone's thinking of dismantling the casing and taking the plutonium or whatever it is they use these days out, and then there'd be nothing at all you could do with that apart from expose yourself to radiation. 

The radioactive cores can be removed with anyone being exposed to contamination. They are contained in a lead covered unit, this is all part of what is known as the core. Like I said above remove the cores and destroy the rest in place.

[Grim Reaper 6]

4 hours ago, DingoLingo said:

now that would be very interesting for the Trump administration if it does turn out to be true

https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/deadly-diplomatic-challenge-turkey-holding-50-us-nuclear-bombs-hostage/news-story/1a89583915a67a51546a1f1f47c396e9

There really is no threat here, I am certain there are contingency plan in place to prevent such a thing from happening. If the Turks tried something this foolish, the entire situation could blow up in their faces.

[+Hammerclaw]

2 hours ago, Dumbledore the Awesome said:

 Erdogan the mustache-twiddling supervillain gets better and better! Come on now. "holding 50 Nuclear Weapons hostage hahahaha! " I'm sure he must have a Persian cat.*

* who are of course currently sanctioned by the State Department

A frightening Spectre.

[DingoLingo]

I find it interesting.. Turkey is loosing favor in nato.. Russians now at their doorstep with the Syrians.. 

I bet $5 that Erdog will be looking at those as some kind of trade off.. either with your lot.. or to some crack pot leader if they fall too far out of Nato's favor.. 

Trumps best be would be move them now.. rather then try later.. 

[RoofGardener]

Hmm... a knotty problem indeed. If only Incirlik Air Base was a large Air Base, then the US could simply fly the bombs home on their huge transport aircraft.  

Oh wait... Incirlik Air Base IS a large airbase. Gosh.. whodathunkit ? 

 

Edited October 16, 2019 by RoofGardener

[AllPossible]

7 hours ago, and then said:

My guess is the cores will have already been removed or permanently deactivated.  If not, someone has seriously erred.  Erdog is an opportunist but I don't think he's a fool or has the guts to try something that could lead directly to HIS own martyrdom  

I agree. Really can't mess with a superpower. Only reason we care about Turkey is for the strategic location. They're the only country around that area that's part of NATO & I'm pretty sure they were bullied into it

[+and-then]

5 hours ago, Manwon Lender said:

in a worst case situation one of the devices could accidentally detonate in place

While I know that nearly anything is possible, I think the odds of that happening would be longer than the ones that keep me buying lottery tickets.  If there's one thing we've learned to do over the past 70 years, it's to make these things fail-safe.  I read a book once called COMMAND AND CONTROL that dealt with that learning curve that we and Russia, primarily, dealt with during the Cold War and if the population had been aware of how often we nearly killed millions of our own people by accident they would have been SERIOUSLY freaked.  But those experiences greatly improved safety.  The one event that was the most chilling to me occurred after a B-52 crashed and burned with weapons on board.  When the salvage was underway and they had a chance to do the forensics they found that of the three components installed to interrupt the detonation cycle, two had failed and the last one had actually been almost an afterthought in the design and was an extremely inexpensive, basic kind of device.  I want to say it cost under a dollar at the time.  YEP...THAT close.

[Dark_Grey]

Lots wrong with this situation beyond just the obvious threats. I think I actually agree with Erdog about a few things:

Quote

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last month declared he wanted nuclear weapons: “We have Israel nearby, as almost neighbours. They scare others by possessing these. No one can touch them.”

And, given his nation’s rapidly deteriorating relationship with the West, the US stockpile could prove a tempting shortcut to becoming the region’s second nuclear power.

“They tell us we can’t have them.” he told a party meeting last month. “This, I cannot accept.”
[...]
“Some countries have missiles with nuclear warheads, not one or two. “There is no developed nation in the world that doesn’t have them,” Mr Erdogan falsely asserted.

In 1945, the US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and then told the rest of the world no one else is allowed to use them. Ever. Then through a mix of propaganda and influential politicians, Israel secured billions of USD in defense funding as well as their own cache of nuclear weapons. All the big boys have the big bombs and Turkey wants to be a big boy too. In that respect, I have to sympathize with them. 

[RoofGardener]

Bombs are NOT going to accidentally explode at Incirlik air base. It's as simple as that. 

[RoofGardener]

24 minutes ago, Dark_Grey said:

Lots wrong with this situation beyond just the obvious threats. I think I actually agree with Erdog about a few things:

In 1945, the US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and then told the rest of the world no one else is allowed to use them. Ever. Then through a mix of propaganda and influential politicians, Israel secured billions of USD in defense funding as well as their own cache of nuclear weapons. All the big boys have the big bombs and Turkey wants to be a big boy too. In that respect, I have to sympathize with them. 

Israel secured billions of USD in defence spending only AFTER the Soviet Union started flooding weapons into Egypt and Syria. The US spending was to counter growing Soviet influence in the region, and was part of the cold war. It was also done to stifle Israeli development of their own fourth-generation jet fighter - the Lavi -  that the US was afraid would compete with the F-16 in international arms sales. 

Prior to Israel getting the bomb, France, China, the UK and the Soviet Union also developed their own, as did India and Pakistan.

 

[+and-then]

44 minutes ago, Dark_Grey said:

Lots wrong with this situation beyond just the obvious threats. I think I actually agree with Erdog about a few things:

In 1945, the US dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan and then told the rest of the world no one else is allowed to use them. Ever. Then through a mix of propaganda and influential politicians, Israel secured billions of USD in defense funding as well as their own cache of nuclear weapons. All the big boys have the big bombs and Turkey wants to be a big boy too. In that respect, I have to sympathize with them. 

Actually, Israel received very little aid from us early on.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-u-s-foreign-aid-to-israel-1949-present

  France was more about being their sugar daddy back then and it was France that helped them build their nuclear capability.  As to the desire to keep others from the bomb... what would you have done differently?  This technology was so profoundly dangerous that it rightly caused even warmongers to be sobered by the potential risk.  I think the non-proliferation regimes of the past have failed as witnessed by India and Pakistan now being members of the club.  A barbaric thug in NK has the big fire now as well.  Iran, if it doesn't already have a crude device, almost certainly will within a few years.  The fairness concept doesn't translate well when we're talking about justification for nations going nuclear.  Insanity and documented aggression against neighbors needs to have its voice heard as well.  If the Turks want an arsenal then they need to get to work building breeder reactors and the other infrastructure necessary to refine fuel and create and test weapon designs.  IOW do all the work everyone else has had to do.  Or, I guess they could buy some designs and test data from everyone's favorite proliferator, AQ Khan.

All I know is that we won't forever escape the madness of using them again.  It WILL happen, sooner or later.  I hope I'm either on the other side of the planet or at ground zero.  Either way is fine.