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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."
but i thought any nation that was amassing weapons of mass destruction was terrorist?
Are there bunkers in existence that are not vulnerable to the conventional bunker busters? Might those bunkers be in Iraq? I am mighty skeptical that there's a bunker in existence that can't be destroyed by a large precisely targeted conventional bomb. The only exception to this would be a bunker that's extremely deep, but a small nuke would also have trouble with this. Probably nothing that can't be solved with a larger nuke. Funny (not funny haha) how we all thought 5 years ago that since the Russians are our friends we didn't have to worry about nuclear war, and now our President might actually use nukes in an upcoming war.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Couldn't you get rid of Bush before he starts a thermonuclear war?
Cause I don't know about you, but the rest of the planet is getting a little bit scared.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
yeah, there's a big lead mirror in the warhead that reflects the blast skywards!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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.
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).
They don't need to test new weapons, they just need to get a copy of Worms Armageddon or Worms World Party and study the Gopher weapon. He burrows, then *BOOM!*, all gone, go bye-bye.
-Adam
This is a nit, but I've got to pick it: Clinton was impeached. "Impeachment" is what happens when the House votes articles of impeachment (which they did) and brings someone to trial before the Senate (which they also did.) What didn't happen in Clinton's case (nor in the case of Andrew Johnson, the only other President ever to go through the full impeachment process) was conviction -- i.e., a guilty vote by the Senate, followed by removal from office of the guilty party. Clinton, like Johnson, was narrowly found not guilty.
The case of Nixon is a little more complex, since, IIRC, the House did vote articles of impeachment, but he resigned before he could be brought to trial before the Senate. I'm not sure if you could say he was impeached or not.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Here we go again. More, better ways of starting a nuclear war without the inconvenience of an obvious M.A.D-type scenario to dissuade crackpot presidents and dictators, at home or abroad. As if already being able to drop hundreds of megatonnes of death wasn't enough!
I'd like to give all the scientists and engineers involved directly involved with this project a big 'fuck you'.
Sigh....
- undoware.ca
Nuclear bombs are fragile because they can't burrow through 6ft. of concrete and _then_ explode.
Basically this is a big huge egg drop project.
References to a "club" and America being labeled terroristic is absurd! If you ACT like a terrorist and support terroristic acts without even a facade of anti-terroristic belief, you are a TERRORIST.
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. Sometimes I seriously wish we would just mind our own damn business and let all of Europe fall into another World War except this time the enemy has the power to obliterate those countries that ride the neutral line because they aren't directly involved...yet.
Do NOT beat up America for trying to create plans to preserve itself and more than likely OTHER countries. When we start dropping nukes on Canada or Mexico then you can complain.
A view of Iraq.
Recently the VP of Iraq stated that UN arms inspectors were kicked out of Iraq for spying. Spying to me is the uncovering of hidden agendas and or plans. In this case spying was the discovery of weapons of mass destruction or their telltale signs of production. That's EXACTLY what they are supposed to be doing! It was a United Nations mandate to put inspectors there to make damned sure those weapons were removed! The entirety of the WORLD should be behind the obliteration of the existing Iraqi government who openly support terrorism and refuse to abide by UN mandates. The UN is a large body of wussies headed by a patholigical bystander. Britain and the US have been two of the few powers willing to stand up and take physical action against unstable cancers and those that do take flak from those that don't. How quickly people forget their histories!
Whoever scored this guy as insightful is an IDIOT.
When your country begins to worry about the US establishing military presence in or near your country think about WHY we are doing it because I can guarantee it's not because we want your land or require your resources. The American people as a whole would not stand for our government indiscriminately attacking other countries. We don't brainwash easily due to our crazy mixture of beliefs so there's no chance of a Hitler here. When we do things, we do it for what we believe to be the greater good of our country and the world. We have no unified or even predominant religious beliefs so don't expect a holy war from us! Like it or not, we aren't militant marauding bastards out to take over the world.
Slashcrap at it's best.
Mod this!
Done ranting!
So much for the simulations of nuclear detonations.
Speaking from a completly ignorant position, surely it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to extend the simulation to determine the effects of the detonation on bunkers, subterranean caves etc?
Fast, cheap & reliable. Pick two.
I think the idea is that the bomb would dig in a few 10's of meters then detonate and the resulting shockwave would be powerful enough to collaps the underground fortification. The reason for using a nuke at all is to deliver a powerful enough shockwave in a can to the target area.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Shaped-charge nuclear weapons are theoretically possible. See John McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy". There are many anti-armor weapons that put out most of their energy in a specific direction, and apparently that can be done for nukes, too. A bunker-buster that isn't a deep penetrator might be possible.
That would be Saddam Hussein, who received a great deal of support from the freedom-loving US, despite using chemical weapons against his own people.
"hum, from what i've seen yet atomic bombs give away their force to the sides and upwards!?"
1.) Shockwave and other properties brought about from popping off an explosive in a fluid do tend to travel upwards (basic fluid mechanics/thermodynamics). Other effects like the actual blast and the EM flash (which includes radiated heat) are medium independent and are spherical. This is why an air burst does more damage than a ground burst.
2.) A nuke-pumped x-ray laser puts a metric fuckload of energy in any damned direction you please.
As soon as I saw the subject line I knew there'd be a boatload of posts from all the pseudointellectuals about the end of the world and nuclear armageddeon and all that. Your typical knee-jerk reaction.
When all is said and done a nuclear bomb is one thing: a powerful explosive. A device that can generate more thermal energy than any conceivable chemical reaction. No more, no less. The typcal anti-nuke person feels the way they do because a nuke in their mind represents both the ability to destroy a city as well as a device primarily used against civillians.
First off, I hate to break it to you but we've had the ability to wipe out a city for a very long time now. Ask the Romans about Carthage sometime. All technology has allowed us to do is accomplish that goal more easily. Examples range from Moscow to Atlanta to Dresden. Eliminating nuclear weapons from the equation doesn't make that capability go away, it just makes it slightly more difficult (fuel-air explosives, anyone?)
And then there's the persistant vision haunting everyone's nightmares since 1945: using nuclear weapons against civillian targets. Sorry, but if your goal is to go after civillian targets there are weapons far more effective (and more terrifying) to use against a civillian population than nukes. Both chemical and biological weapons are very efficient at wiping out large numbers of civillians (moreso than nukes) and have the added advantage of leaving industrial infrastructure virtually unscathed. In fact, of the three accepted classifications of "weapons of mass destruction," the only one that has real uses that don't violate the Geneva Conventions are nukes. Chemical and biological agents are all but useless against a well-trained and well-equipped military force. Heck, I'm willing to bet the only reason nuclear weapons get more bad publicity than chemical and biological weapons put together is the fact that they're so shiny and visible and scary-looking compared to an invisible killer.
Not that any of the above matters because what we're talking about is developing nuclear explosives that are tactically useful rather than stratiegicly. Low- and sub-kiloton explosives that are small enough to have their uses on a battlefield. In such a situation having a device with a blast radius that large is more damaging to your own forces almost as much as those of your target's. The main focus of weapons design (ANY weapon) for the past few decades has been on weapons that are capable of putting a lot of hurt in as small an area as possible, the so-called surgical strike. Take a look at what India and Pakistan are doing with their weapons development. They're so focused on developing tactical nuclear explosives that they couldn't care less about developing thermonuclear devices. Both of them have tested devices with below-kiloton blast yields with virtually no fallout.
And speaking of fallout, fallout is both a tactical hinderance and a sign of inefficiency in the explosive. Unlike the "dirty bombs" the media is currently panicking over ("radiological" as opposed to "nuclear," if you will), those that are developing and those that are asking for tactical nuclear weapons want as little fallout as possible, preferably none. As it stands now, if a tactical nuke was used to open a hole in an enemy's defensive line, the only forces that could best exploit that hole are MBTs, and sending in tanks without infantry support can get quite ugly. Tacticians want something they can use against a designated target and still be able to capture that target with no ill effects.
"Nuclear weapons" doesn't automatically mean ICBMs. A Minuteman III is just as able to carry mustard gas as well as it carries a thermonuclear warhead.
"Nuclear weapons" doesn't automatically mean megaton-sized explosions capable of wiping out a city. We're probably nearing the point where we'll be able to use a kinetic-kill weapon to do the same thing.
"Nuclear weapons" doesn't always mean the end of the world. Stratiegic weapons are all but useless in a tactical situation, but even if they weren't it IS possible to use just one and not unload the whole arsenal.
The only thing, the ONLY thing that "nuclear weapons" always means is "explosive devices based on fissioning atomic nuclei." Just as "gun" could mean anything from a pistol to Jules Verne's Columbiad, a hollow Californium bullet is just as much a nuclear weapon as Fat Man.
Hell, at this point I wish we'd start using some tactical nukes here and there just to stop the damned knee-jerk reaction everybody has to the word "nuclear." Maybe then we could actually focus on some real problems, like the willingness to wipe out civillian populations to begin with. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Amin and Milosevic did just fine without nukes, or hadn't you noticed?
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