Building a Better Bomb

dr who and the darlix writes "There is a nice article here about carbon composite warheads being tested. They destroy their targets while minimizing collateral damage."

Comments

By the way

[RealisticWeb.com]

For any of you who don't catch this reference that is endlessly quoted on slashdot, you can learn about it here:

http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/story.shtm l

Re:Collateral damage

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's part of it. But it also includes the destruction of buildings, property, cables, pipes, etc. So the killing of people just is too specific; it's but a subset of "collateral damage".

No Chance

[TheAncientHacker]

Since it minimized the death of civilians, it also minimizes the ability to blame quite intentional civilian deaths and civilian target damage as "unavoidable collateral damage".

After all, with our "surgical strikes" and "smart bombs" and "precision munitions", we've managed to kill somewhere between 6,087 and 7,798 civilians so far in this war. (Figures from IraqBodyCount.net)

Another "thing" they are working on

[CharlieG]

A few months back, I saw a tech article about another type of bomb they are working on, that is very related - Small bombs!

Right now, the "standard" US bombs are 500 lbs, 1000lbs or 2000lbs. Bombs this big were needed so that the blast/schrapnel would take out the target even if you hit 10-20 yards from the intended target. (talking blast effect here)

As the latest generation of bombs got more accurate, they started to realize that this was SERIOUS overkill. If you can hit the exact building you want, there is NO need for a bomb that big. So, for the first time since Pre WWII, the USAF is working on designs for bombs in the 50-100 lb class.

It gives them a BUNCH of advantages

1)Less colateral damage - yep, I'll be blunt - we kill less of the people we don't want to kill
2)Less danger to our own troops working close
3)The odd one - if we develop new load racks, you should be able to carry approximately 10 times more 50 lb bombs than you could 500 lb bombs

You see, even back during "Gulf I", we had to send multiple aircraft against one target to destroy it - it didn't make sense to worry about it. Now, we actually task one aircraft to destroy multiple targets. If you can carry 10x more bombs, you could (in theory) attack 10x more targets per mission. In reality, the fact is that the bombs have NOT become so accuate that each 50 lb bomb will hit exactly on target, and the kill radius is small enough, that even a small miss wont work. So they will probably task 2 or 3 bombs to each target, so figure each aircraft can attack 2-3 times more targets per sorte

Like it or not, it's interesting technology. You may not like what it's used for, but it is "cutting edge"

Re:Another "thing" they are working on

[WegianWarrior]

The odd one - if we develop new load racks, you should be able to carry approximately 10 times more 50 lb bombs than you could 500 lb bombs

Not quite - there is way more to a bombrack than an eyebolt screwed into the wing of an airplane. For each bomb you'll need a pair of swaybraces to stabelice it while it's mounted on the plane, you'll need two plungers to ensure a clean seperation, you'll need two cartridges to produce the gas needed to operate the plungers (you want two to make sure the weapon lets go when it shall) and various sundry bits of wire - and if your weapons are guided, that adds even more wire. Thus, a bombrack designed for carreing ten small bombs will weight more than one designed for carreing one large one.

Also, one must consider what is refered to as parasite drag. Anything you stick on an aircraft casues drag - and two 500lbs bombs have more drag than one 1000lbs bomb, just as 4 250lbs bombs causes more drag than two 500lbs ones. A larger (longer / wider) bombrack will cause more drag than the slick design used for a single bomb.

When we (yes, I do work in the armed forces) talk about the weight of a bomb, we talk about the weight of the filled bombshell. Things like a guidancepackage is not really figured in until you strap it on and place the now guided weapon on the wing of your plane. And I can't honestly see that a modern guidancepackage can be made much lighter - maybe half as heavy, but not by a factor of ten.

To sum up; developing a bom that weight 1/10th of todays bomb while not allow you to carry ten times the number of bombs. I would guess six, maybe eight, times the number.

Re:well...

[Migrant Programmer]

I am simply stunned at the quality of your education. Do you even know who Eisenhower was? Here's a hint: before he was a President, he was a General.

Before you try to play the history card, make sure it's in your hand.

Re: Cost?

[Black Parrot]

> Anyone know how the approximate cost of a current steel-and-explosive shell?

I don't know about artillery shells, but for ariel bombs there's a nice chart in the February 2003 issue of Scientific American. Range varies greatly, from about $1000 for a dumb bomb to $700,000 for a cruise missile.

The JDAM "strap-on" combo uses a $20,000 guidance kit on a $1,000 - $3,000 bomb. There are other more expensive systems listed in the table as well, e.g. various types of cluster bombs cost $14,000 - $300,000 before you add a smart guidance system.

Modern warfare is expensive.

Did the Neutron Bomb exist?

[Latent Heat]

We all know about the neutron bomb, that was supposed to kill the crews of Warsaw Pact tank columns crossing into West Germany while leaving the civilian infrastructure intact, and we all know the propaganda about the "Capitalist Bomb" that killed people but left their property standing. But was the neutron bomb itself a deception campaign or is their some "physics" for building such a thing?

The Ulam-Teller H-bomb is this Rube Goldberg contraption of a series of effects: a good-sized A-bomb to give off x-rays, a casing to channel the x-rays into Styrofoam, a blanket of deuterium (or lithium deuteride) to be compressed by the Styrofoad given oomph by the x-rays, a central "sparkplug" of plutonium to be compressed and give of yet more neutrons, and finally a U-238 jacket to take all those neutrons and convert them into explosive power.

Is a neutron bomb something as simple as an H-bomb with the U-238 jacket removed? With the plutonium sparkplug (essentially the second A-bomb imploded by the first A-bomb?) removed? Does this thing still work with those modification? If you take off the U-238 jacket and keep the sparkplug, you still have a very dirty bomb with a lot of fission effect. If you take out the fission secondary, are you even able to ignite deuterium to any effect? You can boost an A-bomb handsomly with lots of tritium, but that is an expensive, messy thing with a short half-life to use a lot of.

But the original H-bomb took essentially two, staged fission devices to get anything going with the deuterium (which fuses to produce a lot of energetic neutrons), and the original Teller idea of sticking an A-bomb at one end of a can of deuterium got nowhere -- the thing would have just fizzled. Is it possible that the "neutron bomb" was a fiction? I am thinking that a flood of fusion neutrons from a very low fission yield has to be, otherwise efforts to control fusion for power generation wouldn't be so difficult.

Re:Did the Neutron Bomb exist?

[Tranzboy]

IIRC, a neutron bomb really is just about as simple as an H-bomb with the U-238 jacket removed. I am not sure about the Pu sparkplug you mention; when lithium deuteride is compressed by the plasma generated by the Styrofoam, it starts fusing, which gives off massive amounts of neutrons. On a standard, multimegaton bomb, the U-238 jacket absorbs those neutrons. Normally, if you bombard U-238 with neutrons, you will just get a bunch of Plutonium, but since there are so damn many neutrons flying about, the U-238 undergoes fission itself. (Either that, or it is converted to Pu-239/240 and THAT fisses, I don't know)
Without the Uranium casing to absorb them, the neutrons go for a long, long way, greater than the blast effect would damage. Since neutrons are damaging to people (and semi-conductors) it was felt this would enable NATO to stop teeming Soviet hoards from over-running the Fulda Gap without completely destroying Germany. Wishful thinking, I'd say.
If the current Administration has its way, we will soon be developing "mini-nukes," which may be like small neutron bombs, for the purpose of destroying bunkers. Why they couldn't develop thermobaric weapons that would do nearly as good a job, I don't know.

Concrete Bombs

[Detritus]

The USAF already has concrete bombs. They contain no explosives. They use kinetic energy to destroy the target and are useful for attacking air defense sites in populated areas.

Re:well...

[noewun]

And Eisenhower's final speech as President warned about the creation of a military-industrial complex and the ways this could damage our democracy.

As an ex-general, Ike knew the dangers of limitations of military power.

Re:Collateral damage

[Corgha]

wouldn't "accidental casualties" be even clearer than "collateral damage"?

RTFA -- "casualties" does not encompass damage to buildings and equipment, which is part of "collateral damage". Such damage was specifically mentioned in the article:

In addition to providing more safety to soldiers and civilians on the ground, the new, low collateral damage munitions will also minimize the rebuilding that is needed after a war.

After all, most people (including myself) don't know that collateral = accidental.

RTFD. "collateral" != "accidental"

"accidental" would not be appropriate -- collateral damage may be unfortunate, but it is not always unanticipated. When you carpet-bomb a city and civilians get killed and schools get destroyed, I don't think you can say "oops -- that was accident," because such damage, though not your primary goal, was unavoidable, and you knew it and bombed the city anyway. Instead, you'd call it collateral, in the sense that it is "1 a : accompanying as secondary or subordinate : CONCOMITANT b : INDIRECT"

I agree with the AC, even though I hadn't thought about it this way before -- the phrase "collateral damage" is precisely correct for what the military types are trying to describe. If that doesn't fit with your preconceptions of what those words mean, maybe those are what need to be examined.

Re:well...

[zaddikim]

ummm, AFAIK, not all of the data was destroyed. What we know today about hypoxia and hypothermia, we owe to their sick experiments. Not the "cleanest" information, but after the fact, it did come of good use after time

Re:I hate it..

[no-body]

"Bombs are rarely used for the purpose of killing people these days. They're used to destroy facilities, bridges, buildings. That kind of things."

Very good, who told you that? Look there. Amazing technology. This shows what a bomb really does and the effects are very well known and intended. The damage to humans is so immense, would the real effects shown on TV, people in US would not support this.

Why do you think that napalm-like fire bombs are developed and used? Probably to surgically melt down bridges and buildings at night;)

I find it interesting that in almost all press reports in USA only US losses are counted and never the total count of injured and killed humans is mentioned. Could it be that the numbers would not look very good?

It is talked about 60-something billion $'s of cost for this war - the total material cost of destroyed infrastructure, building, bridges, equipment is completely unknown.

Human losses are not publicized either the www.iraqbodycount.net tries to get number but those are only civilian deaths. How many are injured and to which degree is unknown.

The total count of humans killed in this escapade is intentionally kept quiet, or maybe the corpses of "other" soldiers dug under somewhere are not even counted.

I guess, it would be simpler, to lock the "leaders" causing wars into a room and only let them out again, once they get along. This would save all this stupid and destructive war making and weapons developing.

Re:well...

[composer777]

Umm.., Saddam didn't attack the WTC, but I'm sure you already knew that, or did you?

"You mean Saddam didn't attack the WTC? Whah?"

...and just for those wondering

[aerojad]

...we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Taken from here.

The neutron bomb existed - good link.

[caveat]

The High Energy Weapons Archive has a good rundown of neutron bombs. They're a bit more complicated than just taking the jacket off a hydrogen bomb (still needs the jacket to get the fusion going) - see the FAQ for a rundown. The Mk 70-0 nuclear artillery shell was apparently a tactical neutron device (~1kT yield); I dont know if it was ever tested. I wouldn't really call a staged implosion H-bomb a Rube Goldberg device, though..its a bit more complicated than you paint it to be; the tolerances are on the order of a few microns and nanoseconds. See the rest of the FAQ for a hugely in-depth discussion of the physical principles and engineering that goes into one of these things (you need a grasp of thermodynamics and physics, though).