Edifice: A History of the National Redoubt

[L'amateur d'aéroplanes]

Just for anecdote, France built at the time a Air base 200 Apt-Saint-Christol for its IRBMs on the Albion plateau, Vaucluse department, in Provence, which entered service in 1971.

At the beginning of 1966, it was decided to build 27 silos and 3 fire control stations (PCT) for the future S2 missiles, but only 18 silos and 2 fire control stations were actually built. Work on PCT3 and its associated silos was started but stopped in December 1968 following budgetary restrictions. Here, De Gaulle will instead increase the capacity of the base with at least 4 firing units of 9 missiles:

1st Strategic Missile Group (France) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Base aérienne 200 Apt-Saint-Christol — Wikipédia

fr.wikipedia.org

For the nuclear tactical, programme Pluton.

Five regiments in the east and north of France were equipped from 1974 to 1978 with eight Pluton launchers each (six operational spread over three firing batteries plus two reserve launchers), for a total of 40 launchers. Plus one or two launchers without nuclear warheads for the artillery school.

I don't know that we can accelerate this program, first shot in 1970, entering service four years later.

French TV News of 1974 :

Pluton | INA

www.ina.fr

 

[Lord Cheddar]

For the nuclear tactical, programme Pluton.

Five regiments in the east and north of France were equipped from 1974 to 1978 with eight Pluton launchers each (six operational spread over three firing batteries plus two reserve launchers), for a total of 40 launchers. Plus one or two launchers without nuclear warheads for the artillery school.

I don't know that we can accelerate this program, first shot in 1970, entering service four years later.

French TV News of 1974 :

Pluton | INA

www.ina.fr

Pluton, for when the Soviets are invading and you really need to nuke the West Germans.

Considering what the French nuclear program got up to IRL, I wouldn’t be surprised if the French government funded some truly extravagant projects in this TL.

Maybe we'll end up with a euroICBM and a euroTriad if there's a sufficiently europhilic government, it had already been proposed before the POD, after all, and maybe those old documents might see a more serious reappraisal considering that the USSR just 'won' a nuclear war with their neighbour.

In any case, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more serious military integration ITTL (e.g. the European Defence Community).

 

[L'amateur d'aéroplanes]

EDC, no, program buried since the mid-1950s, but an enhancement of Western European Union/Union de l'Europe Occidentale ?

Do not forget an unprecedented French and Yugoslav military intervention in Italy. This alone changes the rules between Europeans who are more reactive than in reality.

Union de l'Europe occidentale — Wikipédia

fr.wikipedia.org

 

[Pax_Nihil]

Pluton, for when the Soviets are invading and you really need to nuke the West Germans.

This makes me want to sig it but I've matured past such simple endeavors.... but needed to let you know it was epic.

 

[Catsmate]

Pluton, for when the Soviets are invading and you really need to nuke the West Germans.

Considering what the French nuclear program got up to IRL, I wouldn’t be surprised if the French government funded some truly extravagant projects in this TL.

Maybe we'll end up with a euroICBM and a euroTriad if there's a sufficiently europhilic government, it had already been proposed before the POD, after all, and maybe those old documents might see a more serious reappraisal considering that the USSR just 'won' a nuclear war with their neighbour.

In any case, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more serious military integration ITTL (e.g. the European Defence Community).

Potentially the NATO Multilateral Force could happen? Certainly I'd expect more proliferation (e.g. Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Iran)

 

[JessAH]

The United Kingdom: The British nuclear arsenal also saw significant growth in the period after the Red War. Unlike the allied American nuclear force, the British nuclear program focused more on ballistic missile development, forgoing gravity bombs or tactical nuclear warheads for the most part. The country's Polaris nuclear missiles were upgraded and supplemented by additional land and submarine capabilities, the pursuit of which would give rise to a civilian space program based on the spinoff technology. A desire to strike deep into the Soviet Union, and to be able to launch nuclear weapons against a potentially hostile South African government, should the international situation require it, were major drivers of the decision to pursue ICBM technology over the smaller warheads that were gaining popularity around the world.

France, the final "official" nuclear power recognized under the ill-fated NPT, would see its nuclear arsenal grow in the opposite direction. France expected major threats to come from the east and from its waning colonial empire, both places where on-the-ground fighting would be needed and tactical nuclear weapons would be of significant use. Even lower-yield capabilities were also desired, for smaller interventions like the one in Italy. This possibility was not discussed publicly, and the fact that France considered the use of nuclear weapons for small-scale interventions was relatively uncontroversial when it was revealed in the 90s. The French had developed tactical nuclear missiles and gravity bombs by the late 60s, and would build on these capabilities with the addition of artillery and naval weapons going into the 70s.

West Germany and East Germany were both categorically forbidden from developing nuclear weapons by their allies and conquerors. This did not stop some small-scale studies from being undertaken, although no serious nuclear efforts are known to have taken place during the Cold War in either of the two Germanies. Nuclear weapons were also based in both countries, and the United States shared weapons with West Germany, like many other NATO countries.

Italy began investigating a nuclear program after the military intervention. To avoid scrutiny, the country began making overtures to the South Africans, inquiring about weapons-grade uranium, which would allow them to bypass some of the most industrially demanding and difficult parts of the process. According to CIA records, Italian nuclear researchers had already developed plans for a weapon in the 60s, although the country would not make any public announcements about nuclear weapons during the '70s.

Turkey had hosted American nuclear weapons for some time, and secretly began to develop its own nuclear weapons program in the early 70s. The country's main goal was not to deliver a working nuclear arsenal, but to achieve breakout capability, giving it more strategic options and potentially a more important role in NATO, without upsetting the delicate balance of power in the region.


Other NATO powers benefitted from nuclear weapons sharing with the United States, and to a lesser extent, the other NATO nuclear powers. This gave military units in various countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway to access tactical nuclear weapons for use in a potential conflict with the Soviet Union. Nearly all began some level of nuclear research in the 70s.

The Warsaw Pact States were strongly discouraged from pursuing their own nuclear weapons programs by the Soviet Union. This did not stop some early, secretive research being done in these countries, without any of the industrial infrastructure construction to back it up.


- - -

Author's Note: I realized that in my original version I didn't actually say much about the other NATO powers, which would certainly be expanding or pursuing their own nuclear arsenals, so I quickly whipped up this update. Also, there have been some questions about the economic feasibility of proliferation so I'm going to put my thoughts on that in a post below.

 

[JessAH]

As far as the economics of proliferation, I believe that the nuclear weapons creation process can be broken down into a few steps in terms of cost, which are theoretical design work, materials procurement and enrichment, and warhead assembly.

Theoretical design work is probably potentially the most expensive part of the process, but it's also the one that becomes easier the fastest. The N-th country experiment (see here) shows that theoretical design was pretty much trivial by the mid-60s and could be done by any country with a university that can provide doctorates in physics. This was a huge component of the Manhattan Project's cost, but doesn't factor into costs here. This is also something that nuclear weapons dealers (South Africa ITTL) could transfer easily, infinitely, and very early on.

Materials procurement (specifically, nuclear materials) is the step that likely declines in difficulty the least over time, although weapons dealing would help a little with this, potentially. However, I'm not convinced that nuclear materials enrichment is as difficult as has often been believed. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations with SWUs and figured that the cost of a kilogram of weapons-grade uranium, manufactured at scale, can't be much more than $50,000 in today's money. Plutonium is supposed to be cheaper and require less material (although specific details elude me at the moment) and I think that producing plutonium does not require absurd technical expertise. So I don't think that this would be a barrier for even a medium-sized economy, assuming that international trade permits them to get uranium (which is also needed for plutonium synthesis) in reasonable quantities.

Weapons assembly is hard to estimate the difficulty of. Gun-type weapons are very primitive but challenging to use and low in yield, and could be assembled by probably any country that has achieved the industrial revolution and has access to enough materials. It is just less economical in terms of materials cost. I'm not super knowledgeable about the arms industry, but it seems to me that making the explosive lenses in an implosion-type nuclear warhead would be a challenge. Getting the high-quality detonator materials like krytrons or equivalents might also be difficult, but I imagine that this would be an extremely profitable business for the nuclear arms dealers in-setting and a technological hurdle that would be overcome first very slowly and then all at once. Overall, I think that weapons assembly is difficult but not impossible and another barrier that would lower as proliferation increased.

So I believe that getting a fission weapons program or even a boosted-fission program would not actually be especially challenging for any midsize industrial economy willing to deal with the diplomatic consequences, and it would be much easier ITTL where the diplomatic consequences have been minimized.

On the other hand, the leap to thermonuclear weapons seems to have been quite difficult, historically. I don't know much about the detailed workings and design history of thermonuclear weapons, but given that even countries with strong theoretical bases in their operation seem to have struggled with some parts of the process (like the FOGBANK debacle in the US) it seems like making them would be quite expensive in general, and out of reach of most nations but within the reach of regional powerhouses with global economies. On the other hand, information about thermonuclear weapons might not have been as secret as most histories will say. Black Holes, Wormholes, and Time Machines by Kip Thorne (I believe, I might be confusing it with a different book and can't be bothered to check right now) includes an anecdote where the author says that he guessed at a fair number of details of the inner working of thermonuclear weapons while talking to colleagues about supernovae. So perhaps it's not as hard as it seems. Even with today's publicly available information, it took North Korea a decade to go from a-bomb to h-bomb, so eh.

The short version is: nuclear weapons seem pretty easy, thermonuclear weapons still seem hard.

 

[Catsmate]

That's an excellent summary @JessAH.

The plutonium option is easier because you don't need much isotopic separation, you can produce plutonium from a reactor fuelled with natural uranium,like the CANDU design. After all the Indians did so.
Separating the plutonium is chemistry, not physics, albeit *really nasty* chemistry.

Plutonium cores will be for implosion designs, which are trickier than linear but vastly more efficient (the MK3 used about 6.3kg and techniques have improved greatly). The detonation of the lenses is the main obstacle but this could be reverse engineered with '70s computers.

Producing tritium, for boosted fission designs or certain fusion designs is another requirement but the quantities needed are tiny, grammes per weapon for boosting.
Finally there is the Li6 separation for 'dry' thermonuclear weapons.

 

[Pax_Nihil]

I still don't know if North Korea isn't just mixing radioisotopes in an underground explosives pit and that first test being the supposedly the only time the North "accidentally" vented claimed fission products that allowed international confirmation as to having detonated a nuke. It's not that expensive to fake having an arsenal to buy time until you have a functioning arsenal lol

 

[vetinari]

I still don't know if North Korea isn't just mixing radioisotopes in an underground explosives pit and that first test being the supposedly the only time the North "accidentally" vented claimed fission products that allowed international confirmation as to having detonated a nuke. It's not that expensive to fake having an arsenal to buy time until you have a functioning arsenal lol

Those cunning devils! Who would have thought it!

 

[King of the Uzbeks]

Intriguing. And depressing.