
The H-Bombs in Turkey - tosseraccount
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-h-bombs-in-turkey
======
cm3
While Turkey has conflicts with some groups who want to grab part of the land
or overthrow the government, they are FWIW a useful ally in the region because
they have mostly-friendly dealings with UAE, Saudis, Iran, parts of Africa and
also Israel. The degree of diplomacy varies, but there aren't many NATO
members in that region who are as compatible when it comes to diplomatic ties
with the region's powers. Russia, unfortunately doesn't deal with Iran, Israel
and the Saudis the same way.

Given their growing business ties and influence in the region, maybe China can
be another powerful ally. Or India. It certainly would help to have more than
one dependable ally there, but China, like Russia, is in a weird power-play
game with the USA, Australia, etc. Russia is more biased than Turkey, and that
says a lot since Turkey cannot be a neutral Switzerland type because of their
borders and demographic, so they're less of an option.

Also, let's not forget that Turkey has better relations with some ex-USSR
nation that have considerable natural resources, due to cultural heritage, but
then again strained relations with most of the ex-USSR countries.

It's a mess, but that's world politics.

~~~
the_watcher
Turkey has the same advantages now that caused it to be the arguable center of
the Western world for parts of the previous several centuries: it's simply
wildly well-placed, geopolitically. Russia needs at least the presence of a
relationship given its never-ending pursuit for warm water ports. Europe
realizes that, as the sole overland route to the Middle East (and by
extension, all of Asia) without going through Russia, that Turkey is key to
both the economic and territorial security of the continent. The Middle
Eastern nations recognize that Turkey is a nation with enough Islam in its
identity that they are more able to sell their populaces on explicit
cooperation, and due to Turkey's importance geopolitically, can be a
convenient partner that allows them some interaction with the West (that
doesn't need to be sold or hidden to their population). Finally, so long as
the US continues to have ambitions in the Middle East or in counterbalancing
against Russia, Turkey will remain important because of all of the previously
listed reasons.

Once you start paying attention to geopolitics, it becomes fascinating. It
helps explain a huge slice of Russian behavior that seems far less logical at
first glance, as well as why certain parts of the world seem to be perennial
hotbeds of conflict, no matter the prevailing rulers or ideologies.

~~~
lighttower
This doesn't explain why you need obsolete nuclear warheads sitting 70km from
ISIS. Maybe it's a honeypot?

------
mikeash
I'm skeptical that the PALs are as easy to bypass as this article says. It's
possible that the arming code includes critical information necessary to
properly detonate the bomb, such as timing info for firing the various
detonators. Even if it doesn't, the critical PAL hardware is deep inside the
bomb, requiring the bomb to be disassembled to get to it, then reassembled
afterwards, and that's not quite as easy as swapping out your car's spark
plugs.

~~~
sargun
So, the PALs can be completely disabled at the pull of a plunger. This plunger
takes <1s to pull and I'm sure that 1 of those soldiers on base could pull it.
Once this happens, the bomb is no longer immediately valuable as it has to be
remanufactured.

There is also a tamper-resistant membrane that prevents individuals from
getting to the fissile material, and nuclear payload. This could render the
bombs likely free of design information. In fact, it turns out these bombs
have a ton of conventional explosives inside of them as well and adjusting the
timing could make harvesting the fissile material a pain in the ass.

Design: [http://i.imgur.com/tv7JVXC.png](http://i.imgur.com/tv7JVXC.png)

Source:
[http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/060315-slides-...](http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/060315-slides-
bellovin.pdf)

~~~
jacquesm
Interesting reading. Thank you for posting that.

------
csours
Command and Control [1] is highly recommended, and discusses this very
situation, along with the always/never constraints on nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Weapons should Always go off when used legitimately, and Never go off
when not authorized.

Before reading this I had never really thought through the idea of fail-safe,
especially that it has an implicit opposite: fail-deadly.

1\. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5R7F8G/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#navbar)

------
showerst
While still concerning, they really buried a key detail: "About two thousand
U.S. military personnel remain stationed there."

~~~
jacquesm
Turkey has the largest standing army in the region. 600K or so. Those 2000
troops wouldn't last long enough to get the weapons out.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I think you're vastly underestimating 1st world intelligence capabilities. By
the time anyone is brainstorming how exactly they want to take the base the
big players in NATO already have guys sitting in jets idling on the taxiway,
an aircraft carrier is taking a hard turn into the wind and an aide is popping
popcorn and cracking a beer so Mr. Putin can enjoy the spectacle.

When nukes are involved things get taken very seriously. Nobody wants to be
the guy who thought it would all blow over and got it wrong.

~~~
jacquesm
Then how come they are still there?

If what you write is true they should have had clear warning about that coup
attempt. It might have succeeded.

~~~
mdrzn
Unless this is exactly what they planned.

~~~
jacquesm
That could be but there is absolutely zero evidence for that, it appears that
they were caught flat-footed, the (Turkish) base commander was arrested.

~~~
yAnonymous
Let's see:

* there's a list of 6000 people to be arrested, military and non-military, which must have existed before

* offensive on the ground took place at a time when they must have known Erdogan wasn't there

* they could have shot down his plane with F16s, but didn't

* the coup was generally terribly organized, in a country where the military certainly knows how to do it

* Erdogan is known to be a mischievous POS

Many people are sceptical and for good reasons.

~~~
jacquesm
If find that a _more_ worrisome scenario than a failed coup. The previous
(successful) coups in Turkey ended with the military handing back power as
soon as it was feasible and they have traditionally only done this to
safeguard Turkey as a secular state.

Going with your suggestion would indicate that this safeguard no longer
exists.

~~~
gkya
> safeguard Turkey as a secular state

In '61 and '97\. Go to turkish leftists, ask what happened in 1980.

------
dekhn
One thing most people don't hear in the traditional American story about the
Cuban Missle Crisis is that we put our weapons close to Russia (in Turkey)
before they put any weapons close to us.

~~~
mikeash
Really? I thought that Kennedy's secret agreement to trade the Jupiter
missiles in Turkey for the Soviet missiles in Cuba was the standard ending to
the story.

~~~
dekhn
I don't recall ever hearing that.

~~~
fweespeech
[http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Cuban-
Missile-C...](http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Cuban-Missile-
Crisis.aspx)

> No one was sure how Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would respond to the
> naval blockade and U.S. demands. But the leaders of both superpowers
> recognized the devastating possibility of a nuclear war and publicly agreed
> to a deal in which the Soviets would dismantle the weapon sites in exchange
> for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba. In a separate deal,
> which remained secret for more than twenty-five years, the United States
> also agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey. Although the Soviets
> removed their missiles from Cuba, they escalated the building of their
> military arsenal; the missile crisis was over, the arms race was not.

[http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-
crisis](http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis)

> During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union
> engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962
> over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90
> miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John
> Kennedy (1917-63) notified Americans about the presence of the missiles,
> explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it
> clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize
> this perceived threat to national security. Following this news, many people
> feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was
> avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s
> (1894-1971) offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S.
> promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S.
> missiles from Turkey.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-
real...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-
missile-crisis/309190/)

> Once that was straightened out, Kennedy himself declared repeatedly that the
> Jupiter missiles were “the same” as the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Rusk, in
> discussing the Soviet motivation for sending missiles to Cuba, cited CIA
> Director John McCone’s view that Khrushchev “knows that we have a
> substantial nuclear superiority … He also knows that we don’t really live
> under fear of his nuclear weapons to the extent that he has to live under
> fear of ours. Also, we have nuclear weapons nearby, in Turkey.” The chairman
> of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Maxwell Taylor, had already acknowledged that
> the Soviets’ primary purpose in installing missiles in Cuba was “to
> supplement their rather defective ICBM system.”

> if the administration’s domestic political priorities alone dictated the
> removal of the Cuban missiles, a solution to Kennedy’s problem would have
> seemed pretty obvious: instead of a public ultimatum demanding that the
> Soviets withdraw their missiles from Cuba, a private agreement between the
> superpowers to remove both Moscow’s missiles in Cuba and Washington’s
> missiles in Turkey. (Recall that the Kennedy administration discovered the
> missiles on October 16, but only announced its discovery to the American
> public and the Soviets and issued its ultimatum on the 22nd.)

These are all US-based sources so I'm not sure what gave you that impression
unless you only heard about it in the 60s/70s when it was
embargoed/classified?

~~~
dekhn
I don't recall any of my social studies books or any reading I did as a high
school student in the 80s mentioning anything other than "we found missle
sites being built in cuba and it led to a crisis".

~~~
fweespeech
Well, it wasn't declassified until 1988 so it wouldn't have been included in
anything written before that year.

~~~
dekhn
I must have misunderstood what you meant by "These are all US-based sources so
I'm not sure what gave you that impression unless you only heard about it in
the 60s/70s when it was embargoed/classified? "

~~~
fweespeech
I made a mistake when writing a post quickly. I really should have just done a
range (i.e. 1963-88).

~~~
dekhn
No, what I mean was, I did most of my "history learning" about the Cuban
Missle Crisis from my parents (my dad lived in florida at the time), and then
in high school ( _just_ before the documents were declassified). I didn't
really look back at the incident until fairly recently (IIRC while reading one
of Rhodes's books about atomic weapons) and it was then that I learned about
the Turkey missles. I don't think most people who heard about CMC are even
aware (post declassification) that we had missles there. Knowing about those
missles changed my opinion about the CMC a bit.

------
dghughes
>the “dial-a-yield” of the B-61 bombs at Incirlik can be adjusted from 0.3
kilotons to as many as a hundred and seventy kilotons.

Wow that's quite a range. I wonder if it's the hydrogen volume adjusted to
determine the yield.

~~~
theg5prank
The fuel for the large majority of the fusion energy in a thermonuclear weapon
is lithium deuteride, a solid. But here's some theories now how this works,
one of which is changing the amount of tritium gas in the primary; but note
that the primary (no pun intended) purpose of the tritium in the primary is to
boost fission output through neutron release

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_yield)

~~~
dghughes
I'm picturing an 8 position DIP switch on the side of the bomb and a bomb tech
with a small flat blade screwdriver selecting ON ON ON ON OFF ON ON ON

lol

------
sambe
Is there no US response to their base being isolated and restricted like that?
Or just no direct military response? They've effectively been taken hostage
from the sound of this article.

------
ccozan
Quote "...it does not have any American or Turkish aircraft equipped to
deliver them. "

What kind of aircraft would be that?

~~~
valarauca1
>it does not have any American or Turkish aircraft equipped to deliver them.

This is a lie. B-61's mount on to any NATO MIL-STD-8591 hard point. Any F-15,
F-18 can mount and fire B61's without any modification.

~~~
idlewords
My take was the author meant no aircraft with the range to drop them on
Russian targets.

The New Yorker is pretty obsessive about fact-checking, so I think calling a
statement like this a lie is an uncharitable reading.

~~~
vonmoltke
If that is what the author meant, that is what the author should have said.
"Equipped to deliver" pretty clearly means no aircraft that can load the bomb.

At any rate, southern Russia is easily within range of Incirlik.

~~~
beachstartup
i think whether or not a plane can actually get to the target is pretty fair
use of 'equipped to deliver'.

new york times is not writing for a military audience, 'deliver' in lay person
speak means _getting it there_ , as in parcel delivery.

i.e. if your truck can only hold 1 gallon of fuel it's not equipped to deliver
the package to a destination 1000 miles away. whether you can put the package
on the truck does not imply any fitness for delivery.

~~~
vonmoltke
> i think whether or not a plane can actually get to the target is pretty fair
> use of 'equipped to deliver'.

So "the target" is always and forever Russia, and mainland Russia at that? No,
the generic statement "equipped to deliver" cannot be interpreted with respect
to a particular use case among many. It means "capable of loading the weapon
and striking _a_ target".

> new york times is not writing for a military audience, 'deliver' in lay
> person speak means getting it there, as in parcel delivery.

Any aircraft capable of carrying air-to-ground ordinance can "get it there",
for some set of "it"s.

> i.e. if your truck can only hold 1 gallon of fuel it's not equipped to
> deliver the package to a destination 1000 miles away.

By your definition no truck is "equipped to deliver the package to a
destination 1000 miles away", yet trucks do this every day. You are adding a
bunch of hidden assumptions about what "equipped" means, many of which aren't
valid.

~~~
beachstartup
i think this level of pedantry is pretty unnecessary.

------
serge2k
> Although Incirlik probably has more nuclear weapons than any other nato
> base, it does not have any American or Turkish aircraft equipped to deliver
> them

What the hell is the point of that?

------
pknerd
Why did not they think of this while facilitating coup guys?

~~~
pknerd
Thanks for down voting. Well fact is fact.

------
DominikR
I understand that stationing nuclear weapons is a good way to ensure your
allies of your support in case of an attack, but having them stationed
anywhere in the Middle East in these chaotic times sounds completely nuts to
me.

You can't know who will be in power in any of these countries in one year from
now and what they'll do.

The Turkish military is probably strong enough to easily overpower the US
soldiers stationed at that base. What if they decide to simply take the
nuclear weapons by force?

Edit: The Germans have removed their NATO forces from Turkey some time ago
(Turkey protested against that) and I believe that this is due to them viewing
the situation in Turkey as extremely unstable.

They don't want to get caught in a situation where they might have to go to
war to protect a government that acts unpredictable. (meaning: they might
incite the war themselves)

First thing the Turks did when they shot down the Russian plane was to call
for article 5 of the NATO treaty! (collective defence against an attacker)

~~~
adventured
It would be a declaration of war on the US and NATO.

I think you may be underestimating the results of that attempt to take the
nukes by force. Syria, Libya and Iraq are representative of what would happen
to Turkey if they did that. The US is vindictive, and tends to hold a grudge
for a long time - and it behaves that way on subtle matters, this would be
10x. The US would proceed to do everything possible for the next two decades
to destroy Turkey and turn it into a third world basket-case, and it wouldn't
care about the fall-out from doing so.

~~~
DominikR
I'm sure that you are correct. But that doesn't solve the problem what we'll
do once they have the nuclear weapons.

Turkey is no North Korea, they have strong ties to many governments and are in
a strategically central position.

On top of that they have a lot of open disputes with many countries around
them and they are known to act militaristically.

~~~
dom1n0
It's the mosques calling for jihad we should be paying attention to.

