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Comment
re: #203 matthew_db
Are you quite sure of that?
From 1998…
“The May 28 Pakistani tests were so muddled that its government, through various statements, was unable to even decide on how many bombs it exploded.
“The Pakistanis made three different announcements on how many devices they tested,” Wallace notes. “They don’t have an official story that anybody can vet.” He says that however many they blew up, the yield was only a total of 9-12 kT, nowhere near the stated 30-35 kT. The May 30 test was probably 4-6 kT.
“You have to ask the question, ‘what do you gain from this?’ ” Wallace says. “Going back to the May 11 test, you have to ask, was this a thermonuclear device? At 12-18 kT, you may still be able to have a thermonuclear device, but why would you do that? You have to look at everything that was done here through a political lens.”
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Wallace wasn’t the only one questioning the veracity of the Pakistani government at the time, later Pakistani governments haven’t improved their veracity rate by even one iota.
Apparently none of AQ Khan’s customers have successfully tested a nuke, yet. The Chinese, who were also involved in Pakistan’s nuke project, are rumored to have rushed a warhead into Pakistan after the first Pakistani tests failed. But the Chinese have reportedly had issues with the reliability of their own warheads as well. Note the controversy section of the below link.
AQ Khans other customers are, or have been North Korea - fizzled (or was faked if one believes the French), Iran -not yet, Libya - gave it all up to W, and indirectly Syria - crushed by Israel. Not a great success rate there, however…
At this point it is in any governments best interests, (notably India, Israel, the US, and China) to just assume that the Pakistanis actually have functional nukes. For a multitude of reasons.
Most open sources state somewhere between two dozen up to sixty warheads, some sources have stated over one hundred.
As individuals we have the ability to look at all of the collected albeit scanty open source material on the subject, combined with the Pakistani government record for truth telling and make our own judgment calls.
I am convinced at this point that Pakistan doesn’t have functional nuclear weapons. They probably do have a bunch of small dirty bombs suitable for air, truck, or ship delivery, but thus far they haven’t convinced me that they have an actual functional nuclear weapon. Dangerous all right, but not the same.
Their seeming lack of concern with the rapid Taliban advance has only cemented this opinion of mine.
FIX
MY
PING,
R
