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Iran's Smart Concrete Can Cope With Earthquakes and Bombs
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs. UHPC is based—like its quotidian cousins—on sand and cement. In addition, though, it is doped with powdered quartz (the pure stuff, rather than the tainted variety that makes up most sand) and various reinforcing metals and fibers. UHPC can withstand more compression than other forms of concrete. UHPC is also more flexible and durable than conventional concrete. It can therefore be used to make lighter and more slender structures. All of which is fine and dandy for safer dams and better sewers, which threaten no one. But UHPC's potential military applications are more intriguing—and for many, more worrying. Deep bunkers can be tackled in other ways. America's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has looked at what is known in the jargon as functional defeat, in other words bombing their entrances shut or destroying their electrical systems with electromagnetic pulses. They are also working on active penetrators—bombs which can tunnel through hundreds of meters of earth, rock and concrete. Development work is also under way on esoteric devices such as robot snakes, carrying warheads, which can infiltrate via air ducts and cable runs."
...brought to you by "the department of give-us-more-tax-dollars."
capable of withstanding repeated ballistic impacts: Many engineers are seen with iPads doing structural-ballistic simulations involving various geometries made of wood, ice and stone, and green "test animals", whose survival indicates the durability of said structures.
Will it blend?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
mind their own business.
Really.
Hey, you war-mongering assholes, fuck off and stop trying to justify your next mass-murder. If you start this war, the blood is all on your hands, just like the last one was.
Nobody else find ironic that the "America's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)" is studying how to attack Iran, a country that it's physically unable to even touch America?
This amazing product not only slices, dices and puree's, but melts faces, and causes near catatonic states for non-purified members of the elite guard(ranked IR5 or lower).
Om, nomnomnom...
So, just because this "high performance" concrete was developed in Iran, it has dangerous military applications? Dangerous as in able to withstand US bombs? Should we start banning defensive technologies in order to make it easier for the US to invade?
If this was developed in any other nation, "military applications" would never have been mentioned.
Please don't fall for the fearmongering, Iran is not going to attack anyone, they know very well they would be instantly overrun. This is Iraq all over again.
As an aside, while I very much object to anyone including the US having nuclear weapons, I can't really see why Iran having them - if they indeed do - is a problem while Israel having them is not, a country that has constantly refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty and employs an Apartheid-like policy towards Palestinians.
We may need all of this to defeat their arsnel of 3 warheads in the next decade or so.
Money well spent.
Iran is a very religious country, so is the US. Muslims want to kill Christians, Christians want to kill Muslims. Iran has corrupt leaders, that allow their people to suffer hunger, poor health care and bad education in order to spend millions in armament, this is also true about the US. It's also true that Iran is a fairly small country with few resources, while the US is a huge country and the most resourceful on the planet, and while Iran has failed in most military operations it has attempted, the US has succeeded. Iran is trying to get some nuclear weapons, the US is the only country to have ever used them on a civilian population. Currently Iran has no nuclear weapons, while the US has thousands. Iran is not currently at war, while the US has been consistently starting wars every year for 200 years.
And yet, when the US develops a new weapon, a new fighter, a new bomb, a new droid, or any other military advancement and clearly plans to use it soon at war, it's praised for its technological achievement. But when Iran develops a new construction technology, that has tens of applications, one of them, defense, then it's something we should be worried about and it makes Iran evil, and we should ask the glorious united states of america to destroy them real soon.
Fuck that bullshit, your western christian theocracy is no better than the eastern muslim theocracies, and just as crazy, delusional and violent.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
1) Economy in the toilet
2) Election looming
3) No real credible enemies around (like who would be stupid enough to attack a country whose military budget dwarfs most of the rest of the planet)
4) INVENT ENEMY out of thin air using tried and true scaremongering.
5) PROFIT! (and/or re-election)
Three Squirrels
Putting aside the obvious political flamebait, are we really now at a point where anything that's been at all updated since the 1950s is considered "smart"? The term makes sense for things that have a microcontroller added to them, but that's not the case here. This concrete isn't any smarter than my toothbrush.
As a non-American, and someone who doesn't hold fully with American law and philosophy, I'm somewhat more worried by the mentioned American "penetrators" than the Iranian concrete.
thanks for the heads up!
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
If the US actually attacks Iran that isn't going to matter and if it doesn't then it doesn't matter.
So it doesn't matter.
to the point of it not mattering... Who says you need to drop one bomb on a target? Can't you just drop a bomb that makes a big crater... and then drop a bomb in the middle of that crater to make a deeper crater... and then drop a bomb in the middle of that crater to make a deeper crater... you see where I'm going here. Doubtless there are diminishing returns but I should think with a few penetrators all on the same target you could eat through to the bunker.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Could we stop the comments on abstract issues and just stick to the concrete one.
So smart concrete is more resilient in the face of the seismic effects of bombardment, but how well does it block radiation? I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see tactical nukes in addition to bunker busting bombs brought to bear against these enrichment facilities. That sucks big time for everyone downwind but I have little doubt that all options are on table to keep this genie bottled up.
If you think we've got it bad, imagine how they feel.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Mare tits? Kinky.
Back in 2003, an Iranian student, with the help of a professor from Iran, won the first prize in a competition organized by the American Concrete Institute
For more info, look into this page ---> http://www.concrete.org/STUDENTS/st_concreteprojects03_winners.htm
About the prize winning concrete ?
It has been used for building Iran's underground bunkers, which house Iran's nuclear facilities
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Conventional bombing? Silliness!
When you have aerosol drones capable of dispensing enough biological agents to render that entire side of the world extinct of human life, knit picking about resilient concrete is the least of anyone's worries. America, just keep taking your "flu shots".
I find the concrete tech fascinating though. I wonder what it would do for the roads? We seriously need to talk to them, because we need to spend the next decade working on our own hi-ways before they crumble under us. We could use more rails to save road traffic from trucks as well. Infrastructure, people! We need to improve it!
Take the Red Pill.
There is no limit to the clever ways we invent to destroy ourselves.
Hell, they could put a nuke in a train, and drive the train right into the middle of the white house; then detonate it.
Maybe they could get Bruce Lee to drive the train, jump out right before it hit, and rip the pres' heart right out of his chest and show it to him before he dies.
Once you take that little step into insane, there is no point in coming up short.
Get real. Israel is the known threat to peace in the Middle East.
Israel have a history of attacking neighboring countries since the country was created in the 1940s.
The reason? The same reason which made Hitler expand Germany. Lebensraum.
Iran has some nasty rhetorics. But they have not taken the unacceptable steps Israel repeatedly have, attacking neighboring countries.
Iran needs everything it can to defends itself. note that the puppet EU organization has collaborated with the pro-war activists (i.e. criminals responsible for Iraq) again in this issue. the oil and central banking sanctions are a disgrace. we shouldn't be attacking a country like that. fuck that EU which is turning its constituent countries into financial dictatorships. fuck NATO, the umbrella puppet of the US military forces.
I could write something better, but I'm tired and this is slashdot.
Pretty much everyone has known for quite awhile how to make super-hard concrete. Both the USA and USSR used it to make missile silo covers in the 1950s, and improvements on that recipe gave us silos able to withstand 2000 psi in the 70s. The recipes aren't difficult for UHPC - it's really a quality-control issue with just a little tinkering to get the recipe and pour right.
The new interesting concretes are not for hardness, but flexibility. Only a moron would use quartz for this kind of application - synthetic fibers in the mix seem to be the way to go, with some change in the types and geometrics of gravel used as the aggregate (including replacing it with funky star-cut composites). To earthquake resistance, you don't want a more rigid (and hard) concrete, you want one which will flex without cracking.
I don't doubt that Iran has been using the super-hard stuff for various military facilities, though I doubt they've got the good quality-control needed to have the 2000 psi stuff done right. Still, 500 psi stuff (5x better than 'average') is Good Enough for most things. I also wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to get into the more advanced flex-crete business, though I seriously doubt they've got the materials science industry to make serious headway on that.
And, the primary problem with Iran having a bomb isn't having them use it on Israel. Or the Saudis, or anyone else. Nope, Iran itself wouldn't actually use it one anyone; rather, it's the decent probability that they might just "loan" or "lose" one to one of the myriad of truly crazy real terrorist organizations they sponsor. Those people will use it on someone. That's been the big issue with the Pakistani nukes for two decades - not so much that Pakistan might nuke someone (even India), but that the lax controls the Pakistanis have on their nukes might result in one or more of them going walkabout. That risk is even bigger with Iran, and something I don't think can be tolerated.
That said, the current path of sanctions and diplomacy to get the Iranian leadership on-board with IAEA inspections again and giving up the weaponization programs (which are in low-gear, not overdrive) seems to be working fine. There's no need to bomb anyone at this point. We're a couple of years away from really having to do that, at the worst-case scenario. So the Israelis need to just shut their mouths again, and recognize that the USA and Israel's best interest (not to mention the Saudis, Turks, and most of the region's) interests are all aligned here with making sure that Iran doesn't actually get the bomb.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Iran has earthquakes? You learn something new everything.
On another note, I wish we'd stop playing hero. Nobody seems to be buying it, and it's getting expensive.
Now cement is dangerous? "experts" are worried!
OK, Iran is an evil sexist country with a lot of political problems being handled poorly. Not a country I'd ever live in.
But guys? Can you really afford another war? You hardly finished in Iraq - you'll be doing it again in twenty years. You're doing worse in Afghanistan!
Let them have the damn cement, it sounds like they could really use it anyway. So could we, actually.
Just let this one go, try to devise a long term plan to improve relations over time - its has to be cheaper and frankly couldn't be worst then ranting about ways you'll kill them even if they do hide in these possible bunkers.
Its a bit insane sounding. Imagine being from Iran reading these paranoid threats?
Canadian for the record, but we are generally loyal to even our loud, obnoxious, untrustworthy friends to the south.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
Iran is not an Arab nation. Its population is Caucasian, and is non Arab,
although it is a Moslem country.
It is the cradle of civilization, a beautiful country despite the US Propaganda that
makes it look like a pile of rubble, stones and mud huts. It has a high degree of
education, many fine universities and research institutes and takes foreingn aid
from no one.
Iran has never invaded any other country, and as far as I know they have never
lifted a finger at the USA. Other than shooting down our million-dollar drones
that violate their airspace.
Lets take "Iranian concrete" as the "yellow cake uranium". It would be fun to watch Hillary Clinton going to UN arguing for a war/bombing because of new enhanced and suspicious Iranian concrete. It would be comedy gold. Please support the idea...
Brought to you by Israel.
Sure. But are they America proof?
Ideas are powerful.
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
Worthy of invasion.
The shape of the US and Israel are clearly superior although the latter is in the continuing process of tweaking it.
If you're not familiar with MEMRI, this article puts it in context:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/12/worlddispatch.brianwhitaker
They've an Israeli run translation 'Research Institute' that translates selective news stories from Israels enemies, designed to emphasize the worst aspects of those countries in western media.
So a typical example will translate some extremist religious nuts comments, but not the people calling him a fringe crazy. Thus you get the impression of Israels enemies as all extremist nuts and thus are more likely to continue the $3 billion a year in donations you make to Israel.
As some comments above have pointed out, the media as of late (well, probably always) has taken a really bias view of this Iran vs. US thing, to the point that.. I don't really know what to think.
In my quest to find less bias opinions, I turned to al-jazeera and other arab news sources to view comments from those who refer to Isreal as the "evil zionist regime." While many comments were ludicrous (but perhaps no more ludicrous than pro-US comments on CNN or something), there were many who pointed out that the US and Isreal have been known to carry out assassinations in Iran and other countries with basic impunity.
The question posed was, if Iran assassinated a scientist or politician in the United States, what kind of blow-back would there be? Why is the US/Isreal allowed to carry these out events without any world condemnation?
It's a difficult topic, because as much as I believe the US is going about things in the wrong way, if there's going to be someone who is the "world police" and the global power, I would prefer the US to any other country. Yet, it is clearly shielding the public from the double-standards it holds. Why does nobody else (general public) notice this? It's weird.
"If we cannot bomb it into oblivion, it's a threat." — yet somehow I cannot help but sympathise that other people would like not to be bombed into oblivion and so would take steps to prevent that. And Iran has seen enough neighbours get razed to the ground, citizens die, culture get destroyed one way or another, not to mention that this regime is in power thanks to you-know-who. Not the first time a puppet has cut its strings, either. Someone's being in denial about the whole thing.
News for nerds ?
Stuff that matters ?
Is this from the propanganda dept of slashdot ?
....And what does Saudi Arabia have to do with Iran? They're close allies with the US and enemies with Iran, which happens to have a fair number of native Christians (mostly Armenians and Georgians) as well as Jews and Zoroastrians who actually are allowed to own Bibles and Torahs are allowed exemptions from certain Islamic laws such as the ones on alcohol consumption. Said Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians also have their own guaranteed members of parliament, as set by the Iranian constitution.
I certainly won't sugarcoat the condition of minorities in Iran as paradise, and as an atheist I wouldn't want to live in either country, but Iran is certainly leaps and bounds better than the Saudis in terms of minorities. The Saudis don't even tolerate other sects of Islam, and in fact they destroyed the tomb of Mohammed, as well as other prominent Muslim figures, in the fear that they might turn into objects of worship by Islamic sects that have traditionally venerated at those sites. Bringing up Saudi Arabia as a reason to stop Iran really is a red herring.
I'm a Brit so I was [thankfully] unaware of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) another piece of paranoid alphabet soup. However these boys [for I expect they are mainly boys] really need to read the Zap Gun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zap_Gun or just go directly to the cited source, The Blue Cephalopod Man from Titan. I know the arms race is fun, but it 2012, me might start moving beyond that, at some stage.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
The Onion's irreverent piece: Iran Worried U.S. Might Be Building 8,500th Nuclear Weapon.
The US has thousands of 20 megaton warheads and certainly could create a 100 megaton monster...I doubt it is possible to achieve or create any degree of separation thick enough to withstand that sort of thing especially if repeated a sufficient number of times. Besides one good example of actually doing that would probably discourage anyone from trying to create such a sanctuary in the first place. Is why the US does not try to build such a shelter itself...against the sort of opponent such a thing is designed against, it's useless.And it would kill and hurt fewer people and do less damage to the ecology that either nuking Iran altogether or letting them get nukes and start WWIII.
It's not like the USA and Israel don't have the same thing, or similar construction methods that Iran does not have. The 13.6-ton "bunker-buster" bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea, the report said. http://thecomingcrisis.blogspot.com/2012/01/us-bunker-buster-not-powerful-enough.html We would have to use TWO of those! OH NOES!
Will somebody tell the ayyatollahs and Arm-a-dinner-jar that the rest of Iran is not made of indestructable concrete, so don't get into a nuclear war with Israel.
Why do people have to put this into the context of another silly, horrible fucking war. They made same great concrete. Awesome! Congratulations, Iran! Good on you!
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Oh dear. Poor old USA, the bully boy of the world, is scared because poor little Iran might be able to protect themselves slightly.
Oh well. looks like the USA might have to find another country full of defenceless brown people whose oil they can steal.
All of which is fine and dandy for safer dams and better sewers, which threaten no one. But UHPC's potential military applications are more intriguing—and for many, more worrying.
I'm personally terribly worried about those Iranian concrete bullets. Those threaten my personal way of life thousands of kilometers away from the concrete factory. They must be estoppeled for my personal way of life to continue!
What good is an impregnable bunker, if you cannot get in or out of it?
...knew perfectly well how to destroy heavily-armoured bunkers in the 1930s. He wrote a paper on it for the RAF in 1941: "A Note on a Method of Attacking the Axis Powers".
Even the Brits had trouble understanding the principle then, though they invented it, and the Yanks never seem to have understood it. I will repeat it again, but suspect that no one will read it here either.
1 - You need to transfer as much energy as possible from the bomb to the target.
2 - Air is a very bad transmission medium. A blast wave in air will certainly kill people and knock down brick walls, but will leave heavy objects like machines and hardened bunkers relatively unscathed.
3 - So exploding a bomb in air is bad. Even if you explode it INSIDE a bunker, the pressure waves will dissipate through the corridors - killing people, but leaving the building capable of being re-used.
Answer - explode the bomb in a SOLID medium which is CONNECTED to the object - like the foundations. ALL the energy will then be transmitted to ALL the structure, causing maximum damage.
That was was Barnes Wallis' insight, and why he invented the 'earthquake' penetrator bomb. NOT to penetrate armoured structures, but to penetrate the ground around them. Once the bomb gets sufficiently deep not to break the surface when it explodes, it goes off and it is the resulting pressure wave that shakes the target to pieces. Concrete is strong in compression, but weak in tension, and it is the tension phases of the shock wave which make the concrete crumble.
Alternatively, if you place the bomb correctly, you make a hole that the target then falls into. But the critical thing is NOT to hit the target, which is armoured, and designed to dissipate the force of the explosion.
You can see this engineering theory applied if you google for 'Bielefeld Viaduct', or the Blockhaus at Eperlecques, or La Coupole at Wizernes. This last is a classic proof of the genius of Wallis - the dome-shaped roof was completely bomb-proof - even resisting Tallboys, but in the report recommending abandonment of the site the project head, Dornberger, reported that "...the bunker is jeopardised from underneath..."
I would have thought that Slashdotters would understand this idea. It is simply straight engineering principle, brilliantly applied to the problem. But the military have never really appreciated how the British Tallboys and Grand Slams were designed to work, and keep designing penetrators to go INTO bunkers...
It's the soft squishy parts that are the real targets, and no amount of concrete can prevent them from suffering the concussive force of a large blast... even if the building stays mostly intact.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Are sharks with lasers not enough?
And people are afraid of Iran creating nuclear weapons when we should also be very afraid about the US for creating such devestating devices (and especially a country which still creates nuclear devices and have proven to actually use them (and made a LOT of innocent victums (by direct hit, and later due to the radiation) with that action which wasn't even necessary to begin with)..
I'm not for Iran having nuclear weapons (far from it), but if other countries (like the US, France and israel) still are making/having them, then I must admit that Iran has just as much right for having them as the countries telling them they cannot. Those countries are just a bunch of hypocrits when it comes to such things..
just CBR - Concrete of Bomb Resistance
Samzenpus, I may be a nerd or a geek. I still would like to be taken serious, as an audience, and be able to read at least two different viewpoints upon the same news item. Lardering a contribution with exactly one source is, at the best, amateuristic.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Robot snakes?
Aren't laser sharks not used any more?
You are a whore. We wish you ill. Go spam 4chan.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
The IACA (International Atomic Concrete Agency) inspected a new facility and confirmed that 500 centrifuges are without doubt being used to develop weapons-grade concrete.
Imagine if they used their technology for good. Like to protect people from earthquakes ... oh wait!
Weapon of Mass Defense? ;-)
It's a typical situation: a man, a stash and another man after that stash.
The rule is - never go after the stash, always go after the man.
Why bomb the facilities while you can go after leadership?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
They didn't make Bam out of it.
"Weekly Iran war propaganda, brought to you by Slashdot! Were the world needs another war! "
Too sad what /. has become, where is the world is Malda??? Geek stuff?
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
...can it make roads that don't self destruct every winter?
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
The consensus is that Iran has not made any decision to build a bomb.
This may sound incredible because this kind of statements only is made in a low key fashion so they are mostly going unnoticed.
Sometimes they appear as little throwaway lines in articles with a general thrust that is always very anti-Iran.
Panetta, Dempsey, Clapper, and in Israel Barak, Dagan, Pardo are on record as confirming this.
It is becoming more visible because of the current tension between those pushing for war and those trying to avoid it.
Panetta on CBS news. Odd inconsistency in his tough talk about Iran.
www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57354647/face-the-nation-transcript-january-8-2012/
Israeli intelligence report
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-iran-still-mulling-whether-to-build-nuclear-bomb-1.407866
Barak
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/19/israel-tamp-down-iran-war-threats/
Even the NYTimes has picked up on it now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/world/middleeast/in-din-over-iran-echoes-of-iraq-war-news-analysis.html?_r=3
Now it's always possible that Iran goes as far as possible within the NPT limits and then suddenly locks the IAEA out and starts making a bomb. It is always possible with every nuclear capable country. But that would be a very visible and costly move. And there is no indication they want to take that step. The assessment can be colored a bit "still mulling creating a bomb", but all that is behind it is there is no intent. It's not as if they're on the edge of taking a decision.
One question, where can I get the formula for said concrete, I dunno about nuclear bombs, but I want my house to be grenade and bullet proof (yeah, there has been some of those lately over here).
If you are going to rip off The Economist wholesale, please include in your submission at least an acknowledgment of the original source beyond merely the URL of the originating site. It's only polite.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
Smart concrete
""ran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Such materials could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs.""
http://www.economist.com/node/21548918
from the american government's perspective, a foreign power's the ability to protect it's self is an assault on the freedom and values of every american citizen.
Logical fallacies are strictly fallacies only when the premises are completely known. A lot of fallacies are derived from heuristics that people use when they have incomplete knowledge of the premises, and in this case, the government is known to classify key premises as official secrets. So let me rephrase falsus in uno more rigorously: The probability that a statement is false given circumstances where other statements have proven false is greater than the probability that a statement is false given no such circumstances.
It's unlikely spying is a real rational concern for Iran,
WTF? Don't be ridiculous.
It's about the capability it provides. Can they for example deliver a nuclear warhead to Europe? They claim about 2000km, just short of Europe but that is probably a deliberate underestimate. You do not want people knowing your capabilities, you want them overconfident, underestimating you.
So if they do attack you, you can drop a conventional missile on top of Rome, and mention that the next one will be nuclear. You do not want them believing you have the capability to hit their cities knowing you have a nuclear programme in the works. That invites preemptive attack. If they know you don't have nuclear weapons that threat is ineffective and you get invaded.
It's absolutely crucial that your opponents not know your capabilities one way or another.
Deleted
There are two possible options on this topic: a) Iran wants to build an A-bomb b) Iran wants only to use nuclear energy and have the option to build a bomb.
If is is option (b) we could stop worrying about attacks on Israel and other countries in the region. then the Iranians only have the same stupid nuclear waste disposal problem. And we could try to help them there.
If it is option (a) then the situation is a little different. An Iran with a fair number of nukes and missiles would be able to eliminate any neighboring country in a first strike. This situation will make other countries in the region very nervous. When they attack Israel, which has its own nukes, they could cause the total destruction of Israel. However, Israel has the capability for a second strike. If there is any doubt in that, the US, the UK and France could support that capabilities by providing support with their nuclear arsenals.
That would result in the following situation (between Israel and Iran). Iran could destroy Israel. However, it will be destroyed just 20 minutes later. Therefore Iran cannot win that situation. They could commit suicide, yes, but I do not believe that the Mullahs want to destroy Iran. This results in an situation where the Iran cannot be attacked with conventional weapons by its neighbors and it cannot attack Israel. What is missing is a way to provide similar protection to other middle east countries so they do not have to develop their own nuclear weapons.
This OP took a direct, unattributed fragment from an article in this week's issue of The Economist, without even a link to the original source.
Bunch of crazy anti-Cementists !!
They developed concrete which could be used to build better bunkers and 1000 other things which can profit from it. This concrete will allow the Iranians to kill us all with their mid-range missiles. True those only are sufficient to hit Israel which would then retaliate with their own nukes on their own missiles proudly mounted on German submarines. So that would mean suicide for Iran, but they are fanatics, aren't they?
Honestly! They have to fear the US or Israel much much more than the other way round.
If we want a regime change in that country, then we should not support the government. However, when we need an enemy ready all the time, like Saddam Hussein, then we should wave our arms and cry wolf. And if it doesn't work very well, then we hit them in the face even kill some Iranians. That will keep them angry and the Mullahs and radicals (like their president) in charge.
OK, so Iran has nice concrete and it makes y'all scared because they might actually build a 1950s era weapon. Oh noes!
When was the last time Persia attacked anyone? Gee, let's see, hmmm, when they were invaded... and that time they were invaded... and all those other times they were invaded... oh, yeah, the Peloponnesian Wars. Right.
Compare & contrast to the current nuclear powers, who like to invade foreign countries at the drop of a hat. Libya, Iraq, Eastern Europe, Africa... the list is pretty long. The US and USSR each invaded dozens of countries with no real casus belli.
Iran just isn't really very scary, with nukes or without them. Not even with super concrete. I'm not afraid.
To be fair, when your president has said publicly that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, that sort of diminishes your points considerably.
Perhaps it was just a West propaganda translation error and what he really said was "I wish we could all be happy and coexist. Fluttershy is my favorite pony!"
Exactly. Remember when Judith Miller and the NYT were spreading propaganda about how scary and space-age the weapons in Iraq would be?
I can understand people not learning from history, but this was only like 10 years ago. It's people not even learning from life experience.
The liars at the pentagon (where they loose trillions in $$$$ often in clerical errors) had all the high tech to know Saddam had zero WMD, but went in any way.
If america wants to rape you and get praised, they will do so.
Now earth, bend over, for the 12 million incher.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
DU -- depleted uranium could be the goal more than enriched
uranium. DU is critical for tank busting.
And yes a container can deliver most any "device" there
is little or no reason for rocket launch mass reduced
devices. WP tells me about a 20 foot container: "Subtracting the tare mass of the container itself,
the maximum amount of cargo per TEU is reduced to approximately 21,600
kilograms (48,000 lb).", which is a big old device. Fatman was
10,213 pounds (4,633 kg) and Littleboy 9,700 pounds (4,400 kg).
Somehow the lesson so clearly stated in WarGames
"The only winning move is not to play." needs to be acted on.
USA's Smart Corporations Can Cope With their propaganda. Why they only talking about invading other countries ? Is this your "democracy" ?
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
Whoever wrote this doesn't know much about focused kinetic energy or explosives. The only thing that defeats modern bunker busters is just more bunker. The penetration we are talking about is amazing and the energy transfer is like talking about Trillions of dollars... people have no real frame of reference. Plus... you don't always have to actually make it completely through a bunker to inflict material and personnel casualties.