Nukes: The Next Generation

jonerik writes: "Following up on the weekend's posting on the revision of American nuclear war-fighting plans, the New York Times has this article on the difficulties in building a new generation of nukes. The American nuclear arms industry is much smaller now than it was ten years ago, testing the new, smaller "bunker busters" would be problematic, and no one's certain that a nuclear weapon with a tiny explosive yield that's capable of penetrating yards of reinforced concrete could actually be built."

Comments

Re:How?

[TrollMan 5000]

IIRC, the force of nuclear bombs is spherical in nature. It seems as if the force is spread upward, since the bombs hit the ground, providing resistance, so much debris is "bounced" upwards.

Another tactical use of nukes is detonating them several miles up and flattening everything on the ground below.

More info can be found here.

Of course small munitions are possible!

[JCMay]

This place has all you want to know about the "Golden Age" of American nuclear testing.

This is a picture of the Hardtack II / De Baca test, which was a small nuclear gravity bomb (11.3 inches in diameter, 15 inches long, weight 66 lb). It had a "disappointing" 2.2 kTon yield.

Even more interesting is Upshot-Knothole / Grable which was a nuclear cannon shell.

How small did they get? Here's the W54 (Davey Crockett) warhead, normally used as a rocket mortar round. It weighs 50 pounds, and has a yield of 22 TONS. Not Kilotons. Not megatons. Tons.

Of course small nuclear devices are possible, even workable. Not every miltary explosive needs to be like Castle/Bravo (the largest nuclear device the US has tested).

Re:Of course small munitions are possible!

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem goes beyond being delicate...modern nukes are implosion weapons...they rely on a prcisely shaped set of shockwaves to compress the plutonium core to supercritical density and (with the help of an initiator) start the reaction. The timing of the detonators on the conventional high explosives that make these shockwaves is critical as is their geometry. Even though you can make a stell (titanium, tungaten, whever) shell that will penetrate through to the bunker, I'd wager that it will be very difficult to keep things arranged precisely enough to work correctly given the vibration and G forces.

Re:Of course small munitions are possible!

[thelizman]

The trick would actually lie an an older system developed for bunker busting - the Leading Shot Sabot. In this system (and I've spent the last hour trying to find reference alas to no avail), a hardened shell is attached in front of the warhead (which, in all fairness, becomes a war ass?). As the device approaches the target, a sabot is cast off and the war-ass (okay, it's my word now) trails a few meters behind. The hardened projectile does the penetrating job, and the warass follows it through the new hole. Of course, the war-ass would still get jumbled around, but the shock from bouncing around would be significantly less than actually doing the job and I'm willing to bet the type of warheads used in Grable (being shot from a cannon can be quite traumatic) would suffice in both durability and yeild.

Re:Get a grip!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've been paying attention for the past hundred years or so you may have noticed that some people are more likely to invade neighboring countries or say, indiscriminately shoot over borders because of this or that belief.

Well, if you were familiar with US history, you'd know that that description applies to US history just as much as it does to the UK's, Japan's, Germany's, or Iraq's. Sorry, but the US isn't any holier than other countries, it's only bigger and its citizens are more ignorant.