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.
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.
The simple viewpoint is that it is completely nuts.
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
Source: http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/060315-slides-...
It's also possible to encode the required code physically into the explosives by mixing high and slow explosives randomly in each bomb. PAL code is then needed to adjust the timing of the detonators so that detonation front is symmetrical. Even if you bypass all the electronics, it's impossible to guess the timing without the code.
As I said in my other reply, I'd totally believe it if this was happening in past decades, but it seems much less likely now.
With a few hours and the right tools and training, you could open one of nato’s nuclear-weapons storage vaults, remove a weapon, and bypass the pal inside it. Within seconds, you could place an explosive device on top of a storage vault, destroy the weapon, and release a lethal radioactive cloud.
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?...
I don't believe there's any realistic scenario where the Turkish military would attempt to seize the bombs, but if they did do something so insane the garrison would force them into fighting and killing hundreds of NATO personnel and capturing the rest. That sets in motion an inevitable response, and one that ensures any rouge military authority in Turkey would not last long.
There's similar logic to why the US maintains a force in South Korea. They aren't expected to solely defeat a full scale attack from the North, but can directly respond to smaller aggressions. If the north did overrun them, killing US troops, there would be no domestic political debate concerning whether to respond in the US.
To put it so bluntly as to be distasteful: they're there to die.
They'd be likely to get carved up in a back-room deal with Russia and NATO. The US would immediately declare war on Turkey and begin destroying its cities and infrastructure. The Turkish air force would be completely disabled within a week. All major access points to Turkey's cities, all transit lines, would be bombed and disabled, shutting down their economy and supply lines. All power generating stations and major grid lines would be disabled or bombed and non-functioning within the first week. Air superiority would be accomplished rapidly, the US could sit outside of Turkey and hit major targets with cruise missiles at will.
So what was your premise again, the US would lose some troops? Well that happens in a war. Is the premise that Turkey would threaten to use or attempt to use the nukes on US allies? All that would accomplish is providing justification for either preemptively nuking Turkey to put an end to the war, or dramatically escalating the all-out attack on Turkey to attempt to cripple them faster and convince the military to turn on Erdogan (which would happen very quickly). There's no scenario in which Turkey is a meaningful threat for long.
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.
Doesn't the U.S. have the capability to disable them remotely?
Because the original "standard" version ("encroaching communists") which I first read in Bobby Kennedy's everywhere-available book Thirteen Days was accepted for decades -- up through the 1980s IIRC.
This article (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real...) pegs the date where the old standard story was rendered untenable, and replaced by the new standard story that you mention, as 1997 -- when tapes from the JFK administration became available. The relevant book (https://www.amazon.com/Averting-Final-Failure-Meetings-Stanf...) was copyright 2003, 50 years after the crisis itself.
It's always hard to remember at what point the old story became the new story. Some caches don't even update at all.
Wow that's quite a range. I wonder if it's the hydrogen volume adjusted to determine the yield.
lol
What kind of aircraft would be that?
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.
The New Yorker is pretty obsessive about fact-checking, so I think calling a statement like this a lie is an uncharitable reading.
Edit: After some googling I'm surprised to find that they do indeed all seem to have consent controls standard. Not sure what I think about that.
I read an Air Force safety standards memo[1] which seemed to confirm that the PAL codes are entered on the ground.
[1] http://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_se/publica...
I don't understand why you are being downvoted for this. A decent number of military analysist and Turkish civilians have come to this conclusion.
-No government buildings were seized, only bridges and airports.
-Normally within the first 30 minutes of a coup a Turkish Military General was on TV directly addressing civilians as to why this had taken place, and what was going to happen.
-The past 5 coups took place in <2 hours.
-The Turkish Air Force established air superiority over Istanbul but never shot down the president's plane.
-Turkish troops weren't equip for crowd control, or even for fighting most were lacking body armor and helmets.
-Turkish troops didn't set up fire-hoses, or wear riot gear for crowd control like previous coups.
-More Judges have been fired from their posts in Turkey then Military Officers post coup.
-Most military units blatantly weren't involved. In the coup or even scrambled to defend against it.
Turkey has had 5 successful coups in the past 100 years why did this one differ so extremely from the previous ones?
Incompetence is a simple defense, but this is a NATO trained and drilled military. Officers education requires they be able to switch between nations, and officer sharing programs are common. Saying the Turkish military is incompetent is really damning to the whole of NATO, and it's attempts to standardize education/training across member nations.
What the hell is the point of that?
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)
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.
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.
