Pentagon Document Confirms Existence of Russian Doomsday Torpedo (popularmechanics.com)

Popular Mechanics reports that "a key U.S. nuclear weapons document confirms that the Russian government is developing the most powerful nuclear weapon in more than a half century...a 'new intercontinental, nuclear-armed undersea autonomous torpedo'" with a range of 6,200 miles. But what really makes "Kanyon" nightmare fuel is the drone torpedo's payload: a 100-megaton thermonuclear weapon. By way of comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 16 kilotons, or the equivalent of 16,000 tons of TNT. Kanyon's nuke would be the equivalent of 100,000,000 tons of TNT. That's twice as powerful as Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever tested. Dropped on New York City, a 100-megaton bomb would kill 8 million people outright and injure 6 million more.

Kanyon is designed to attack coastal areas, destroying cities, naval bases, and ports. The mega-bomb would also generate an artificial tsunami that would surge inland, spreading radioactive contamination with the advancing water. To make matters worse there are reports the warhead is "salted" with the radioactive isotope Cobalt-60. Contaminated areas would be off-limits to humanity for up to 100 years.
Slashdot reader schwit1 adds that "being sea-based makes it immune to ballistic missile defense."

Comments

Seems like propaganda

[king neckbeard]

I don't find this scary in and of itself because we're already at the point where we could destroy human civilization several times over, and have been for decades. I'm far more concerned that so many are goading Trump into escalating with Russia to "prove" he isn't a puppet.

Such information being made public so quickly seems to be in line with the "make people fear the Russians" campaign that's been going on since the election. Normally, this kind of thing would be classified (we overclassify EVERYTHING, and Russian nuclear capabilities is a legit secret), so a public release likely indicates an attempt to shape policy. IIRC, US intel overestimated the number of Soviet nukes by an order of magnitude, which made an easy sell for building a fuckton of nukes.

Yes, Putin is bad. Russia is bad. That doesn't mean we should trust something the Pentagon releases.

Re:Murphy's Law

[Alain Williams]

Nuclear weapons have prevented major wars for 70 years

5 years ago I planted a greengage tree in my back garden. I have not had an elephant sit on my fence in 5 years. Behold the protective effect of my greengage tree.

Correlation is not causation.

I don't think nukes are preventing wars

[rsilvergun]

globalism is. The Aristocracy is global now. They don't own countries, they own the world. More specifically they have property all throughout the world and don't want to see it blown up. They'll allow a few bush fire style conflicts to keep war profiteering going (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) and they'll put down rebellions (Yemen) but they won't allow another full scale war to dip into their profits and break their stuff and, well, they're the aristocracy so they're in charge.

Hell, maybe about a decade ago Pakistan basically looked the other way while a major terrorist incident happened in India and nothing came of it. That's because an India/Pakistan war would be bad for business.

Re:I don't think nukes are preventing wars

[gordguide]

I like your use of the word "allow" and the phrase "they won't allow". It's quaint.

History tells us, and with startling consistency, that wars don't start based on who allows what, they don't play out based on who allows what, and they don't end based on who allows what.

They start because of brinkmanship (check), territorial ambitions (check) and unexpected, often improbable and generally unanticipated (by both sides) events which lead to ad-hoc responses that weren't in the playbook devised by those who plan for such things.

They play out in such a way that the weaker employs tactics that negate the stronger's advantages, and the stronger applies force that the weaker doesn't possess. Lord help everyone if there is no demonstrably weaker and stronger side, because then the Shit Really Hits The Fan, and for longer than everyone, often including the eventual losers, would like.

The latter often means bigger and nastier weapons, often of a type yet deployed in battle, because ... well ... it's a perfect proving ground, there's a justification (to win the war and save {our side's / innocent civilians / the enemy's conscripted soldiers etc} lives ... and interested minds want to know how effective the thing is, and what's the weakness we need to engineer out for the next war, or this one, if it lasts long enough.

Today we have a complex web of alliances and treaties that tends to prevent big conflicts by addressing small ones, but when the improbable and unexpected happens, that just means you get a bigger war. Throw in some widely held beliefs about the other side (one widely held by America's foes is that the US domestic population can't stand a prolonged conflict and will force political concessions to the enemy), regardless if they are actually true or not.

Really, I don't see much "allowing" going on. More like stumbling, guessing, thrashing, and suffering. Oh, and let's not forget the best one of all, "testing".

Re:A great leap backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, this is America's fault.

Did Russia invade and annex the Crimea? No. It was America.

Was MH17 shot down by a Russian missile? No. It was American.

Has Russia violated numerous trade encumbrances with North Korea? No. America has.

Has Russia provided North Korea with nuclear missile technology? No. It's all American.

Does Russia have a troll farm trying to exploit divisions in rival countries in an effort to destabilize them? No. That's the American way.

Re:Practically immune, not theoretically immune

[Hal_Porter]

The whole story sounds like complete and utter bollocks quite frankly.

Consider

1) How big is the torpedo. There's a picture of the original Tsar Bomba here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's enormous. Way larger than a torpedo tube.

2) How far away from the launching submarine would 100 Mt warhead need to be? 100 Mt is obviously an enormous amount and explosions under water are more damaging.

3) How is an 'intercontinental torpedo' propelled? It seems the propulsion system would add more weight to an already heavy concept

4) How is it guided? GPS won't work because it's underwater. Submarines use all sorts of subtle techniques like passive sonar to avoid revealing their location and ultra low frequency radio transmissions. A human crew on a sub can do this. It's far from clear a drone submarine is viable

5) Why salt the bomb? That would poison the oceans over a vast area.

It just sounds like the Russians have leaked this in attempt to make the US give up on missile defence. There's no evidence this project got funded. And Russia is so cash strapped it didn't even an SLBM subs patrolling as recently as 2006. Putin has pushed for new SLBMs and new subs to put them with the result the US no longer has nuclear primacy but that process was not exactly embarrassment free - tests failed for a while.

E.g. here in 2013

https://www.military.com/defen...

The idea Russia is going to get what is effectively a drone submarine working anytime soon when it seemed to have significant teething troubles doing what was the Russian equivalent of an Ohio class replacement is absurd. Most likely they're bullshitting in the hope it gives the US left an excuse to say that 'ballistic missile defence can't non ballistic missile threats, therefore it's not worth doing'.

Actually what it reminds me of is the US announcement of 'Star Wars' aka SDI. It wasn't technically practical then but the Russians didn't know that. If you read Gorbachev's autobiography him and Shevardnadze used SDI to make the case that the USSR had lost the Cold War and it was time to surrender. Rumours of this device are presumably intended to cause the same sentiment in the US.

Re:Hmmm

[TheDarkMaster]

It looks too much like "Hey, look!! The evil child-eating communists are deploying bigger doomsday weapons!!! We must spend another trillion dollars in weapons NOW!!!" (many time later someone points that the document about the russian weapon is fake or just speculation, but it does not matter anymore because money has already created new millionaires)

Re:A great leap backwards

[Archtech]

The US went to war all over the globe to stop the spread of global communism...

Yes, and that worked out really well. One of the classic cases, of course, was Vietnam. Several US presidents and other Washington officials solemnly assured us that, if "the commies" were allowed to "overrun" their own country, there would immediately ensue a "Domino Effect" with all the rest of South-East Asia going communist, followed by India, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, South America... and eventually they would come for the good ol' loveable US billionaires and take away their hard-earned dollars to give to worthless starving poor people.

Anything was preferable, so the USA spent over a decade and about 50,000 of their own soldiers' lives to kill over 3 million Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians while destroying villages, farms, and forests with napalm, Agent Orange and other pleasant substances.

And when they finally got ignominiously kicked out, having to fight for places on the last helicopters out, what happened? How many nations did the Domino Effect claim? Did the Red Tide reach the shores of the USA? South America? Africa? Europe? India?

No, it didn't. So those 3 million people died for nothing at all, except to boost the MICC's profits and to prove that the Domino Theory was complete and utter nonsense.