Insert John Pedicini "if only you knew how bad things really are" meme here

srsbzns: When people hear "modernization" they think about new nuclear bombs. They think about new military capabilities and expanding the arsenal. Understandable, but mostly not true.

My nightmare in one graph (+🧵):

March 22, 2026 - 00:04 UTC

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Now imagine the current status of the russian arsenal...
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They couldn't even properly maintain the conventional arms they *knew* they would need...
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Zero reason to think the Russian nuclear arsenal is in as bad shape as the conventional side. Sorry. It's a common belief but it is not based in reality.
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The stockpile is aging, and the infrastructure required to maintain and refresh those old weapons is aging even worse. NNSA has six ongoing weapon modernization programs right now, it's true, but half of these are Life Extension Programs or system refreshes. We are heavily resource limited...
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Yes, everything is aging and we should continue refreshing to keep it all safe and maintain deterrence capability, but does the cost of something like trying to stand up plutonium pit production at SRS make sense? Or is that $ better spent elsewhere in the program?
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...just keeping the existing weapons safe and reliable. (Which is a top of the list need - nobody will or should accept US nuclear weapons that are not safe.)

This glacial pace costs us a LOT of money. Facility renewal means you can go faster, saving a lot of money and programmatic aches and pains.
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the big problem is many of the *people* working on it are old
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Is there a chart like this for estimated aggregate stockpile yield over time?
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I'm sure someone has made one, but I wouldn't vouch for it.
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