New Nukes? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

JoenOcoee · 11-24-2003, 08:41 PM

So if I am understanding this correctly Bush just signed a 400 Billion Dollar Military Budget Increase that, in part, will be used to fund research for lower end nuclear weapons? But at the same time the government increasingly admits that the war on terrorism will be comprised of urban warfare where the general populace of the country is not the target. Damn, for the most part I support what our military has been doing, but the thought of testing or building newer smaller nuclear weapons can only create infinitly worse problems.

Any thoughts?

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-24-2003, 08:56 PM

I personally like the idea of tactical nukes better. Granted no nukes would be ideal, its not however going to be a reality.

Jeff · 11-24-2003, 08:59 PM

I believe the 400 billion dollars is to pay for our defense budget next year. 7 billion is to be used to research new nuclear weapons that act like Bunker Busters.

Just doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I wish Bush would put some money into education instead.

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-24-2003, 09:16 PM

Plenty of money is put into education, and Bush didn't set the defense budget as it is (maybe he did up spending, but we've always had a high budget for defense).

OFKU0 · 11-24-2003, 09:19 PM

Well at 2 billion a day, I expect the pullout from Iraq to be just about finished by the 4th of July.

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-24-2003, 09:19 PM

Actually I stand corrected. He uped spending from 330mil in 02'. No sweat though, I'd say its an obvious step in light of how the geo-political scheme has changed. Big part of it though is that he is uping military pay by nearly 5%.

apechild · 11-25-2003, 05:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeff
Just doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I wish Bush would put some money into education instead.

Wish granted.

In 1992, the Dept. of Ed. was appropriated some $32.2 billion. In 2000, at the end of Clinton's second term, it was appropriated $38.4 billion - an increase of almost 20%.

Under the Bush administration, the Department of Education has seen its budget balloon to an appropriation of $56.2 billion in 2002. That's an increase of 46% in two years.
[Source - http://www.ed.gov/offices/OUS/Budget.../EDhistory.pdf]

Regarding tactical nukes, they're designed not for urban warfare, nor for wholesale destruction, nor for shooting up some terrorists lighting farts in their pup tent. They're designed for precise, calculated strikes against heavily fortified armaments, and would be deployed under only the most desperate of circumstances. They're the sort of thing you hope you never have to use, but if you do...

onetime2 · 11-25-2003, 07:04 AM

I don't see a problem with it. There is an obvious need for effective weapons to attack heavily fortified bunkers. Current technology isn't doing the job. They've created the conventional MOAB and need more power. That means nukes. Not that I think they should/would be used in a case like Saddam, but we don't know the future and it could reasonably be assumed that we will meet an enemy entrenched in a bunker similar to those used by Saddam and we will have a need to destroy him. Better to know how to do it now, than try to figure it out later.

Waiting till later to figure it out will almost guarantee that we will be forced to use a larger than necessary device. If we HAD to go nuclear, wouldn't it be best to use the smallest device possible to meet the objective?

dimbulb · 11-25-2003, 08:20 AM

the problem with 'tactical' nuclear weapons that do 'limited' collateral damage is that there will be a temptation to go nuclear.

which is a thought that I don't really want to contemplate. Does the US have a 'no first use' policy regarding WMD?

me? personally, i'm intrigued by the idea of weapons that give big booms and blow things up really well.

On the other hand, it also violates the principles of nuclear non-proliferation. So the US can go ahead and develop WMD. ( "tactical" or not, lets not kid ourselves here.. ). It has the computing and scientific power to conduct nuclear tests via simulation, but pushes a ban on nuclear testing on other states.

its all just a little bit hypocritical here.

apechild · 11-25-2003, 09:41 AM

The whole point of going tactical is to avoid "mass destruction."

It brings up an interesting topic though - how much destruction must a weapon be capable of producing before it is considered a weapon of mass destruction?

To help frame the context of this question, it would be worthwhile to read the definition of "Weapon of Mass Destruction" as it appears in the US Code:

Quote:

the term ''weapon of mass destruction'' means -
(A) any destructive device as defined in section 921 of this
title;
(B) any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or
serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or
impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors;
(C) any weapon involving a disease organism; or
(D) any weapon that is designed to release radiation or
radioactivity at a level dangerous to human life.

TITLE 18--CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE
PART I--CRIMES
CHAPTER 113B--TERRORISM
Sec. 2332a. Use of certain weapons of mass destruction

(Link)

Phaenx · 11-25-2003, 09:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by JoenOcoee
So if I am understanding this correctly Bush just signed a 400 Billion Dollar Military Budget Increase that, in part, will be used to fund research for lower end nuclear weapons? But at the same time the government increasingly admits that the war on terrorism will be comprised of urban warfare where the general populace of the country is not the target. Damn, for the most part I support what our military has been doing, but the thought of testing or building newer smaller nuclear weapons can only create infinitly worse problems.

Any thoughts?

This is a smooth political move. It will give conservatives a huge throbbing boner, and the Liberals will feel safer knowing our military is strong when the entire world goes to war for us to avenge the evils of capitalism and our war in Iraq.

Can't stop working even though the Russians are beat, people will catch up if we don't, and that will be trouble. We're lucky wars don't have casualties in the millions now that the U.S. is the only super power, imagine if the U.S. had gone to war with Russia, the numbers lost in that war would have been staggering.

dimbulb · 11-25-2003, 03:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by apechild
[B] The whole point of going tactical is to avoid "mass destruction."

It brings up an interesting topic though - how much destruction must a weapon be capable of producing before it is considered a weapon of mass destruction?

Its a tough call. I'm a bit of a military nut, so yes, the idea of a tunneling bunker busting nuke is very appealing to that side of me.

The fact is that even conventional nuclear weapons ( what a misnomer... ) of even high megatonnage ( yields in the megatons of TNT) exploding at ground level cannot do sufficient damage to deeply buried bunkers. The damage a bomb does to the buried bunker increases with the penetration.

Yet, even these reduced 'yield' weapons are capable of vast destruction. Don't trust me, trust the scientists...
go to the link for more pictures and videos...

it seems that even with low yields, ( it is actually hard to make nukes with yields of less than 5kt) the warhead needs to penetrate to a very deep depth in order to totally eliminate the risk of fallout. I think they calculated it to be 230 feet for a 0.1Kt device. 0.1Kt = 100 tonnes. I think Tim McVeigh had much less than that for Oklahoma City.

And this assumes that there are no shafts and whatnot leading out of the bunker to channel radioactivity.

http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm

Quote:

FAS Public Interest Report
The Journal of the Federation of American Scientists January/February 2001
Volume 54, Number 1
FAS Home | Download PDF | PIR Archive

Front Page
Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons
A Faith-Based Science Policy?
FAS Welcomes Sherman to Staff
R&D A Priority For FAS Newest Project
Defense Export "Reforms" Revisited
FAS Obtains First Bush Presidential Directive

Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons
By Robert W. Nelson

Fig. 1 Diagrams like this one give the false impression that a low-yield earth penetrating nuclear weapon would "limit collateral damage" and therefore be relatively safe to use. In fact, because of the large amount of radioactive dirt thrown out in the explosion, the hypothetical 5-kiloton weapon discussed in the accompanying article would produce a large area of lethal fallout. (Philadelphia Inquirer/ Cynthia Greer, 16 October 2000.)

Despite the global sense of relief and hope that the nuclear arms race ended with the Cold War, an increasingly vocal group of politicians, military officials and leaders of America's nuclear weapon laboratories are urging the US to develop a new generation of precision low-yield nuclear weapons. Rather than deterring warfare with another nuclear power, however, they suggest these weapons could be used in conventional conflicts with third-world nations.

Critics argue that adding low-yield warheads to the world's nuclear inventory simply makes their eventual use more likely. In fact, a 1994 law currently prohibits the nuclear laboratories from undertaking research and development that could lead to a precision nuclear weapon of less than 5 kilotons (KT), because "low-yield nuclear weapons blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war."

Last year, Senate Republicans John Warner (R-VA) and Wayne Allard (R-CO) buried a small provision in the 2001 Defense Authorization Bill that would have overturned these earlier restrictions. Although the language in the final Act was watered down, the Energy and Defense Departments are still required to undertake a study of low-yield nuclear weapons that could penetrate deep into the earth before detonating so as to "threaten hard and deeply buried targets." Legislation for long-term research and actual development of low-yield nuclear weapons will almost certainly be proposed again in the current session of Congress.

Senators Warner and Allard imagine these nuclear weapons could be used in small-scale conventional conflicts against rogue dictators, while leaving most of the civilian population untouched. As one anonymous former Pentagon official put it to the Washington Post last spring,

"What's needed now is something that can threaten a bunker tunneled under 300 meters of granite without killing the surrounding civilian population."

Statements like these promote the illusion that nuclear weapons could be used in ways which minimize their "collateral damage," making them acceptable tools to be used like conventional weapons.

As described in detail below, however, the use of any nuclear weapon capable of destroying a buried target that is otherwise immune to conventional attack will necessarily produce enormous numbers of civilian casualties. No earth-burrowing missile can penetrate deep enough into the earth to contain an explosion with a nuclear yield even as small as 1 percent of the 15 kiloton Hiroshima weapon. The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout.

Moreover, as Congress understood in 1994, by seeking to produce usable low-yield nuclear weapons, we risk blurring the now sharp line separating nuclear and conventional warfare, and provide legitimacy for other nations to similarly consider using nuclear weapons in regional wars.

Conventional Earth-Penetrating Weapons

Fig. 2 The Pentagon has a growing collection of high precision conventional weapons capable of defeating hardened targets. In this sled-driven test, the GBU-28 laser guided bomb with its improved BLU-113 warhead penetrates several meters of reinforced concrete. Fig. 3 A B2 bomber releases an unarmed B61-11 earth-penetrating bomb during tests in Alaska. Despite falling from an altitude of 40,000 feet, this bomb burrowed only approximately 20 feet into the soil. Any nuclear blast at this shallow depth would not be contained, and would produce intense local fallout.

Video clips from CNN (2.2MB) and Lockheed Martin (2.8MB)

The Pentagon already has a number of conventional weapons capable of destroying hardened targets buried within approximately 50 feet of the surface. The most well-known of these is the GBU-28 developed and deployed in the final weeks of the air campaign in the Gulf War. The Air Force was initially unable to destroy a well-protected bunker north of Baghdad after repeated direct hits. The 4000 lb GBU-28 was created from a very heavy surplus Army eight-inch gun tube filled with conventional explosive and a modified laser guidance kit. It destroyed the bunker, which was protected by more than 30 feet of earth, concrete and hardened steel.

The precision, penetrating capability, and explosive power of these conventional weapons has improved dramatically over the last decade, and these trends will certainly continue. Indeed, the GBU-37 guided bomb, a successor to the GBU-28, is already thought to be capable of disabling a silo based ICBM — a target formerly thought vulnerable only to nuclear attack. In the near future, the United States will deploy new classes of hard target penetrators which can land within one to two meters of their targets.

The B61-11 Nuclear Bomb
However, mini-nuke advocates — mostly coming from the nuclear weapons labs — argue that low-yield nuclear weapons should be designed to destroy even deeper targets.

The US introduced an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon in 1997, the B61-11, by putting the nuclear explosive from an earlier bomb design into a hardened steel casing with a new nose cone to provide ground penetration capability. The deployment was controversial because of official US policy not to develop new nuclear weapons. The DOE and the weapons labs have consistently argued, however, that the B61-11 is merely a "modification" of an older delivery system, because it used an existing "physics package."

The earth-penetrating capability of the B61-11 is fairly limited, however. Tests show it penetrates only 20 feet or so into dry earth when dropped from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Even so, by burying itself into the ground before detonation, a much higher proportion of the explosion energy is transferred to ground shock compared to a surface bursts. Any attempt to use it in an urban environment, however, would result in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low end of its 0.3-300 kiloton yield range, the nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area.

Containment
Just how deep must an underground nuclear explosion be buried in order for the blast and fallout to be contained?

The US conducted a series of underground nuclear explosions in the 1960s — the Plowshare tests — to investigate the possible use of nuclear explosives for excavation purposes. Those performed prior to the 1963 Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty, such as the Sedan test shown in Figure 4, were buried at relatively shallow depths to maximize the size of the crater produced.

Fig. 4 The 100 KT Sedan nuclear explosion, one of the Plowshares excavation tests, was buried at a depth of 635 feet. The main cloud and base surge are typical of shallow-buried nuclear explosions. The cloud is highly contaminated with radioactive dust particles and produces an intense local fallout.

In addition to the immediate effects of blast, air shock, and thermal radiation, shallow nuclear explosions produce especially intense local radioactive fallout. The fireball breaks through the surface of the earth, carrying into the air large amounts of dirt and debris. This material has been exposed to the intense neutron flux from the nuclear detonation, which adds to the radioactivity from the fission products. The cloud typically consists of a narrow column and a broad base surge of air filled with radioactive dust which expands to a radius of over a mile for a 5 kiloton explosion.1 In the Plowshare tests, roughly 50 percent of the total radioactivity produced in the explosion was distributed as local fallout — the other half being confined to the highly-radioactive crater.

In order to be fully contained, nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site must be buried at a depth of 650 feet for a 5 kiloton explosive — 1300 feet for a 100-kiloton explosive.2 Even then, there are many documented cases where carefully sealed shafts ruptured and released radioactivity to the local environment.

Therefore, even if an earth penetrating missile were somehow able to drill hundreds of feet into the ground and then detonate, the explosion would likely shower the surrounding region with highly radioactive dust and gas.

Long-Rod Penetration

Fig. 5 Underground nuclear tests must be buried at large depths and carefully sealed in order to fully contain the explosion. Shallower bursts produce large craters and intense local fallout. The situation shown here is for an explosion with a 1 KT yield and the depths shown are in feet. Even a 0.1 KT burst must be buried at a depth of approximately 230 feet to be fully contained. (Adapted from Terry Wallace, with permission.)

It is straightforward to show, however, that the maximum penetration depth is severely limited if the missile casing is to remain intact. One can make reasonably accurate estimates of the penetration depth based on the well-developed theory of "long-rod penetration." The fundamental parameter R is the ratio of the projectile ram pressure to the yield strength of the material.3 The target material yields, and penetration occurs, when R is greater than one. For a steel rod to penetrate concrete, the minimum velocities for penetration is about one half a kilometer per second (1100 miles per hour). For ductile materials, the kinetic energy lost from the penetrator can deform the target and dig out a penetration crater.

Fundamentally, however, the depth of penetration is limited by the yield strength of the penetrator — in this case, the missile casing. Even for the strongest materials, impact velocities greater than a few kilometers per second will substantially deform and even melt the impactor.

An earth-penetrating nuclear weapon must protect the warhead and its associated electronics while it burrows into the ground. This severely limits the missile to impact velocities of less than about three kilometers per second for missile cases made from the very hardest steels. From the theory of "long-rod penetration," in this limit the maximum possible depth D of penetration is proportional to the length and density of the penetrator and inversely proportional to the density of the target. The maximum depth of penetration depends only weakly on the yield strength of the penetrator.4 For typical values for steel and concrete, we expect an upper bound to the penetration depth to be roughly 10 times the missile length, or about 100 feet for a 10 foot missile. In actual practice the impact velocity and penetration depth must be well below this to ensure the missile and its contents are not severely damaged.

Given these constraints, it is simply not possible for a kinetic energy weapon to penetrate deeply enough into the earth to contain a nuclear explosion.

The Weapons Labs and the CTBT
The most vocal proponents of new small-yield weapons come from the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories, at Los Alamos and Livermore.

In a 1991 Strategic Affairs article entitled "Countering the Threat of the Well-armed Tyrant," Los Alamos weapons analysts Thomas Dowler and Joseph Howard II, argued that the US has no proportionate response to a rogue dictator who uses chemical or biological weapons against US troops. Our smallest nuclear weapons — those with Hiroshima-size yields—would be so devastating that no US president could use them. We would be "self-deterred." To counter this dilemma, they argued the US should develop "mininukes," with yields equivalent to 0.01-1 KT: "... nuclear weapons with very low yields could provide an effective response for countering the enemy in such a crisis, while not violating the principle of proportionality."

More recently, in a speech to the Nuclear Security Decisionmakers Forum, Sandia Laboratory Director Paul Robinson stated

"The US will undoubtedly require a new nuclear weapon ... because it is realized that the yields of the weapons left over from the Cold War are too high for addressing the deterrence requirements of a multi polar, widely proliferated world. Without rectifying that situation, we would end up being self-deterred."

A more cynical interpretation of these statements is that the laboratory staff and leadership simply feel threatened by the current restrictions on their activities, and want to generate a new mission (and the associated funding) to keep them in operation indefinitely. Indeed, beginning in 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, there was serious discussion of closing one of the bomb labs.

Moreover, President Clinton ended US nuclear testing in 1993, and signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) — a permanent worldwide ban on nuclear testing — in 1996. Despite the Senate's failure to ratify the CTBT in 1999, its proponents believe the treaty will eventually come into force. The major nuclear powers continue to abide by the world moratorium on nuclear testing, and even India and Pakistan appear to have joined the moratorium after their May 1998 nuclear tests.

The nuclear weapons labs are particularly threatened by the CTBT, since it will probably limit them to maintaining the stockpile of weapons already in our arsenal. Keeping young scientists interested in the weapons program is especially difficult when their main job is the relatively mundane task of assuring reliability. The labs desire the challenge of designing new nuclear weapons, simply for the scientific and technical training experience the effort would bring. Hence, there is tremendous pressure to create a new mission that justifies a new development program.

But could the US deploy a new low-yield nuclear earth-penetrating weapon without testing it? Under continued political pressure to support the Test Ban and its related Stockpile Stewardship Program, Los Alamos Associate Director Steve Younger has stated, "one could design and deploy a new set of nuclear weapons that do not require nuclear testing to be certified. However, ... such simple devices would be based on a very limited nuclear test database."

On the other hand, it seems unlikely that a warhead capable of performing such an extraordinary mission as destroying a deeply buried and hardened bunker could be deployed without full-scale testing. First, even if the missile casing were able to withstand the high-velocity ground impact, the warhead "physics package" and accompanying electronics must function under extreme conditions. The primary device must detonate and produce a reliable yield shortly after suffering an intense shock deceleration. Second, there must be great confidence that the actual nuclear yield is not greater than expected. Since the natural energy scale for a fission nuclear weapon is of order 10 KT, much lower yield weapons must be sensitive to exacting design tolerances; the final yield is determined by an exponentially growing number of fission-produced neutrons, so the total number of neutron generations must be finely-tuned. Given that these weapons may be used near population centers, it thus seems highly unlikely that designers could certify a low-yield warhead without actually testing it.

What would be the consequence if the US decides to go ahead and test a new generation of nuclear weapons? As House Democrats expressed in a letter to Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee,

"The resumption of nuclear test explosions that will result from such a program involving nuclear weapons would decrease rather than increase our national security and undermine US and international non-proliferation efforts."

If the US abandons the moratorium, Russia and China will almost certainly respond in kind — destroying prospects for eventual passage of the CTBT.

Conclusion
Proponents of building a new generation of small nuclear weapons have seldom been specific about situations where nuclear devices would be able to perform a unique mission. The one clear scenario is using these warheads as a substitute for conventional weapons to attack deeply buried facilities. Based on the analysis here, however, this mission does not appear possible without causing massive radioactive contamination. No American president would elect to use nuclear weapons in this situation — unless another country had already used nuclear weapons against us.

The end of the Cold War should allow us to place further limits on the development and use of nuclear weapons. The danger of moving from a conventional to a nuclear war is so enormous, that the US refrained from using nuclear weapons in Korea even when US troops were in danger of being overwhelmed. Attempts to develop a new generation of low-yield nuclear weapons would only make nuclear war more likely, and they seem cynically designed to provide legitimacy to nuclear testing - steps that would return us to the dangers of Cold War nuclear competition, but with a larger number of nations participating.

Robert W. Nelson, a theoretical physicist who works on technical arms control issues, is on the research staff of Princeton University and a consultant to FAS.

Notes:

1The base surge radius scales roughly as 4000 W1/3kt feet, where Wkt is the yield in kilotons.

2In general, NTS tests are buried at depths of D 450 Wkt1/3.4 feet to be fully contained.

3R = v2 / 2Y = (v/vc) 2 where is the projectile density, v is its velocity, Y is the yield strength of the material, and the critical velocity vc = (2Y /)1/2

4For a penetrator which is much stronger than the target, D/L (p / t) ln(Yp / Yt), where L is the length of the penetrator, is the material density, and Y is the material strength to plastic yielding; the subscripts p and t stand for the penetrator and target.

dimbulb · 11-25-2003, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mojo_PeiPei
I personally like the idea of tactical nukes better. Granted no nukes would be ideal, its not however going to be a reality.

Quote:

Originally posted by apechild

Regarding tactical nukes, they're designed not for urban warfare, nor for wholesale destruction, nor for shooting up some terrorists lighting farts in their pup tent. They're designed for precise, calculated strikes against heavily fortified armaments, and would be deployed under only the most desperate of circumstances. They're the sort of thing you hope you never have to use, but if you do...

After some reading on this issue, I read that the two warheads under consideration for modification under the new program are the B61 and the B83. Now the B61 is a 'dial-a-yield' warhead, with yields from 0.3kt to 340kt. However, the B83 has yields in the megatons. Definitely not tactical.

Considering that the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of around 10kt. NONE of these nukes would hardly be considered "tactical". Tactical yes, when you are talking about strategic nuclear war. They would not suffice to destroy hardened missile silos, but are more than good enough to level cities.

Consider also that airburst (which were what the hiroshima and nagasaki bombs were) produces MUCH less fallout than groundburst weapons.

I don't see how you could justify the equivalent of(actually several hundred times) a massacre on the scale of 9-11 to destroy a hardened bunker ( which, if they are smart... will be in a civilian area) which may or may not contain possible leadership or WMD. ( they might not even be in the COUNTRY!!!)

nirol · 11-25-2003, 05:09 PM

I think these things are being developed to counter the threat of N Korea, where we may need to strike comprehensively to eliminate any retaliation upon Seoul.

I find it disheartening that Nukes have gained such a reputation as a weapon of last resort. I see no reason to risk our air crews numerous times, when one of these can achieve the objective.
A weapon of mass destruction is very relative, if you are in the way, it will definitely be mass destruction.

Zeld2.0 · 11-25-2003, 09:00 PM

Yes and no.

As much as I hate to bring up this part, but I do think that using nukes to save a few airmen cannot be all that great when one does realize that nukes don't just affect those that get fried, but those who have nothing to do with it many miles away.

Personally I think its a foolish endeavor on the one hand. On the other, being a military nut, its intriguing.

But i think the money would be better spent elsewhere at this point, and lots of this talk is ending up in the "bluffing" section.

[edit] Oh and I'd also like to see how they're going to be getting the bunkers really - the deeper penetration is defenitely needed to take out many bunkers. A nuke isn't all that great of a solution against most bunkers anyways. Nukes weren't exactly designed for that in mind in the first place - and you're not really going to be finding many ways of altering the blast honestly.

dimbulb · 11-25-2003, 09:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by nirol
I think these things are being developed to counter the threat of N Korea, where we may need to strike comprehensively to eliminate any retaliation upon Seoul.

I find it disheartening that Nukes have gained such a reputation as a weapon of last resort. I see no reason to risk our air crews numerous times, when one of these can achieve the objective.
A weapon of mass destruction is very relative, if you are in the way, it will definitely be mass destruction.

at what cost?

not to mention that both China and Japan AND south korea will be non-too pleased to be in the way of the radioactive plume.

with your kind of attitude, I'm almost tempted to root for the 'terrorists'.

Anything that can cause millions of casualties should be weapon of last resort. What are you talking about? are you on crack?

hmmm... lets ask ourselves why nukes have a reputation as a weapon of last resort... hmmm....... perhaps because they inflict horrific injuries and can cause millions of instant deaths? or could it be because they cause radioactive fallout that affects many future generations.

And whats the point of these weapons if you don't know where to aim? I mean, if you had used a 10000000000000000000 tonne bomb on Iraq to turn it into one radioactive crater, you would have destroyed... hmm.. lets see.... ZERO WMD??

I see it as a weapon of deterence.... although this might not hold against terrorists.. North Korea, on the other hand, is a state. He might be delusional, and a dictator, but Kim Jong Il is not stupid. There's only one place he'll end up if he starts using nukes. Right now, the nukes are being used as a tool of diplomacy. pretty scary diplomacy, but .....

Again, more hypocrisy. You want to invade other countries to prevent nuclear proliferation? but want to develop nukes to nuke them???????????????????????

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-25-2003, 09:23 PM

I don't get the post ahead of mine... Perhaps because I'm drunk but still. Kim Jong is a goon, through and through... he has threatened America by Bathing us in a "holocaust of nuclear fire" or by selling weapons to these who would destroy us. I have no reservations about fucking his shit up.

Iraq was a different Story. Motives are questionable, but the outcome is obvious 1) we want a stable country in the mideast to promote democracy and a sensibility for the future 2) we want a country that will serve our HYPER power interests.

If you are rooting for the terrorists fuck you. Seriously if you back the deaths of innocents that have no way of affecting policy, they you are a goon just as bad as Saddam or OBl, shame on you. Nukes are not pretty, but they are a reality. Get fucking serious, the world is in a transition stage with "Islamofacisim" ( I know its not all muslims that why I paranethatsize"... Shit is going to start hitting the fan within the next decade or two... so Brace yourself for the worse. The U.S. is not the bad guy here, we look out for our own which is seriously our only our only responsibility.

dimbulb · 11-25-2003, 10:29 PM

I see the Iraq invasion as a good thing in the long run, helping to create a democracy in the middle East, and hopefully a domino effect. Now, they could have just told us that from the beginning, and not assume everyone is an idiot.

I'm not supporting the terrorists by any stretch of the imagination, so please take your "fuck you" back. I'm almost tempted to ask you to go fuck yourself, but that would be very rude of me.

The capability to take out bunkers is a good ace in the hole to have, but I also believe that you have to take other factors into account. Like massive human loss of life and nuclear holocaust. And not to mention that developing new nukes is equivalent to ripping the Nuclear test ban treaty into tiny shreds, and shitting on it while they are at it.

I'm not saying that the US is the bad guy. You've done pretty good, and I much prefer and respect the US to the French.. for example, who have pretensions to 'world leadership' but have jelly for balls. (and follow their wallets... ).

Quote:

Originally posted by Mojo_PeiPei
I don't get the post ahead of mine... Perhaps because I'm drunk but still. Kim Jong is a goon, through and through... he has threatened America by Bathing us in a "holocaust of nuclear fire" or by selling weapons to these who would destroy us. I have no reservations about fucking his shit up.

the only problem with 'fucking his shit up' is that you have to stuff your cock into his ass, thus getting it dirty as well.

South Korea, Japan would probably be very much more affected by you reaming his shitty ass up. not very good for stability. So your option is to ignore him until you chose to nuke him??? which seems to be what the US is doing now.

Lebell · 11-26-2003, 10:30 AM

Interesting analogies, but while colorful, I don't think they're appropo.

My only comment is that if you don't use the capabilities, you lose them.

That was why the Navy went ahead with the Seawolf attack submarine and that's also why we should move forward with developing nuclear weapons.

SLM3 · 11-26-2003, 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mojo_PeiPei
we want a country that will serve our HYPER power interests.

The U.S. is not the bad guy here, we look out for our own which is seriously our only our only responsibility.

I don't understand the contradiction here. What about when "looking out for our own" directly affects others? You don't live in a vacuum. The US is dependant on its exploitation of others so why is it so surprising when it comes back to hit them in the face? The US is not the bad guy because exploitation is simply a matter of fact and we should all accept it?

SLM3

Arc101 · 11-26-2003, 01:29 PM

Quote:

They're designed for precise, calculated strikes against heavily fortified armaments,

Hello wake up please - they are NUKES, nasty things which destroy everything around them and leave the area and surrounding areas seriously fucked up. And no matter how precise you think something is - things do tend to go wrong.

MSD · 11-26-2003, 05:07 PM

The main problem I see with bunker buster nukes is the potential for serious complications if somehting goes wrong.

Every system has a possibility of errors. If a conventional bunker buster hits the ground, then detonates before it should, or doesn't penetrate the ground at all, the worst case scenario is that it's in or near a populated area whose residents would have been safe if the fround penetrator had gone down a few hundred feet, then taken out a bunker. In the case of malfunction, it bounces, or doesn't go all the way down, goes off on impact, or is a dud. In one of those scenarios, hundreds of civilians could die, civilian buildings could go down, or the enemy could crawl out of his hole and capture a weapon with an advanced computer, guidance system, and big-ass warhead.

No wwhat if the big warhead happened to contain a few kilograms of plutonium? Take the same scenarios as an example. Premature detonation blows hundreds of tons of fallout into the air, the intial detonation kills a few hundred or a few thousand civilians, and we have a big, glowing (not literally) mess to deal with, as well as the war crime of a WMD first-strike. In case of a bounce, you have the same situation, but with more initial damage. The dud is the big problem. The bad guys are sitting there in their bunker, engaged in whatever diabolical activities bad guys do. Suddenly, the walls shake. The guys up on the surface radio down and tell them to come up and help. They all get outside, and there's a big hole with smoke coming out of it. They wait a while, get a crane, and pull it out. Not only has an advanced guidance computer and detonator fallen into enemy hands, but they have a complete, assembled, nuclear warhead to use for their purposes.

The effects of reverse-engineering, or use of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist group or hostile "rogue nation" would be disatrous.

The.Lunatic · 11-26-2003, 05:46 PM

Nuculear is stupid, and causes more problems than it fixes, however the chemical explosives that we have today are very inefficient, which is a problem because we often need high yield in low volume, so that leaves us with nuclear.

Bassically we need a high yield explosive
should be clean
shouldn't have nuclear implications
shouldn't be large in size
And should be stable

So i say we just dump a buncha money into anti matter research

I mean shit the swiss already make it at CERN (not really swiss and if your europian i'm sure you know what CERN is)

http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/live...factory00.html

filtherton · 11-26-2003, 10:30 PM

How exactly is creating new nukes better? Are we going to save more lives? Hmm, sounds fishy.

Quote:

from mojo_peipei
Seriously if you back the deaths of innocents that have no way of affecting policy, they you are a goon just as bad as Saddam or OBl, shame on you.

Isn't backing the use of nuclear weapons sort of implicitly backing the deaths of innocents who don't affect policy? The innocents are probably going to be the ones most effected if the US arrogantly develops and employs new and uneeded nuclear weapons. Shame on you, sir, pretending to care about the innocents while expressing support for new weapons, which by their very nature, will end up killing innocents by the tens of thousands.

Besides, according to the article from FAS, "low yield" nukes as bunker busters are as grounded in actual science as the star wars defense system.

Instead of creating new WMD's for rougue nations to eventually get their hands on, the bush administration should actually try allocating some funding for new training, equipment, and protocols for the people who will end up responding to, god forbid, the next attack on american soil.

Ustwo · 11-26-2003, 11:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by filtherton
How exactly is creating new nukes better? Are we going to save more lives? Hmm, sounds fishy.

Isn't backing the use of nuclear weapons sort of implicitly backing the deaths of innocents who don't affect policy? The innocents are probably going to be the ones most effected if the US arrogantly develops and employs new and uneeded nuclear weapons. Shame on you, sir, pretending to care about the innocents while expressing support for new weapons, which by their very nature, will end up killing innocents by the tens of thousands.

Besides, according to the article from FAS, "low yield" nukes as bunker busters are as grounded in actual science as the star wars defense system.

Instead of creating new WMD's for rougue nations to eventually get their hands on, the bush administration should actually try allocating some funding for new training, equipment, and protocols for the people who will end up responding to, god forbid, the next attack on american soil.

Good post, you pointed out that innocents die in war, showed you know the needs of the US military, know the new bombs won't work, and warn that rogue nations will get these weapons (that don't work) while also complaining that the Bush admin doesn't do enough for homeland security. That’s a lot of ground in only a few sentences.

Lets try this example. Lets say some piss ant nation that was allowed to become a nuclear power thanks to the inept polices of the Clinton administration, lets pretend Korea, decided to threaten the use of nukes against the US. We for some reason decide its better to stop the launches then to give the local authorities more body bags and band aids to 'respond' to the attack. The Korean nukes are lets say in deep hardened bunkers as are the command centers. Now we could try a conventional bomb, which may not be powerful enough, resulting in the loss of say L.A., or we could nuke the crap out of the area with huge H bombs, which will need to be used enmass since they are not designed to damage below ground, or maybe we could have a smaller 'less lethal' nuclear bunker buster to remove the threat.

filtherton · 11-27-2003, 10:41 AM

Quote:

Good post, you pointed out that innocents die in war, showed you know the needs of the US military, know the new bombs won't work, and warn that rogue nations will get these weapons (that don't work) while also complaining that the Bush admin doesn't do enough for homeland security. That’s a lot of ground in only a few sentences.

Please, drop the condescending bullshit. Maybe if i talk to you like that, you can talk to me like that, but as it stands, i wasn't talking to you. So don't treat me like you're higher up than me, because your not in any way.
What's your point? How many sentences does it take you to fit your obligatory and oft irrelevant anti-clinton message in to every other thing you post? Don't kill the messenger. We have established that innocents die in war- that was relevant because mr. mojo professed to care for the plights of the innocents and also professed support for the development of new ways of killing that will result in more innocents being deformed and killed. I was pointing out the hypocrisy of that.
The idea that the bombs won't work wasn't mine, it seemed to be the idea of Robert W. Nelson(http://www.princeton.edu/~rnelson/) who wrote the article for the federation of american scientists, i think he gets more cred than you could ever hope to have on the issue of the viability of nuclear weaponry.
For a nation that seems so intent on keeping wmds out of the hands of those who don't agree with our personal brand of free marketry, it seems rather the result of misplaced priorities to try to develop new wmds. Didn't we give iraq atleast some of the wmds that we have yet to find? What if we follow through and find a way to make these low yield nukes actually work as intended? How long until we give the technology to some other dictator who turns out to not have our interests at heart?

As for knowing the needs of the us military, i really doubt that you know any more than i do. We're just two tools on the internet arguing about decisions we will never get to make. Don't call me on not being an expert when you could hardly be considered an expert yourself.

The bush admin hasn't done enough. How many people snuck boxcutters and bomblike packages onto airplanes this year to prove that point? It only takes one person with bad intentions to get through still lax security to provide us with a sequel to 9/11.

Quote:

Lets try this example. Lets say some piss ant nation that was allowed to become a nuclear power thanks to the inept polices of the Clinton administration, lets pretend Korea, decided to threaten the use of nukes against the US. We for some reason decide its better to stop the launches then to give the local authorities more body bags and band aids to 'respond' to the attack. The Korean nukes are lets say in deep hardened bunkers as are the command centers. Now we could try a conventional bomb, which may not be powerful enough, resulting in the loss of say L.A., or we could nuke the crap out of the area with huge H bombs, which will need to be used enmass since they are not designed to damage below ground, or maybe we could have a smaller 'less lethal' nuclear bunker buster to remove the threat.

Well, if you read the article from the federation of american scientists, you'd see that currently it seems impossible to develop a delivery system that could penetrate deeply enough into the surface of the earth to actually pose more of a threat to threat to the bunker than the surface. Further, your example seems a little contrived, since if n korea or any other "piss ant nation" was actually intent on nuking us, probably our only warning would be the missles on our radars or the mushroom cloud on the horizon. How usefull is a nuclear bunker buster when the missles have already been fired?
Your "less lethal" nuclear bunker buster is only slightly less lethal. It still results in a huge explosion that will fill the surrounding area with radioactive debris that will damage people for generations.

This idea is just another can of worms.

redravin40 · 11-27-2003, 11:00 AM

It looks like I'm going to have to use my own mini-nuke and this thread goes down.

11-24-2003, 08:41 PM	#1 (permalink)
JoenOcoee Tilted Location: Athens, Georgia classic city my ass....	New Nukes? So if I am understanding this correctly Bush just signed a 400 Billion Dollar Military Budget Increase that, in part, will be used to fund research for lower end nuclear weapons? But at the same time the government increasingly admits that the war on terrorism will be comprised of urban warfare where the general populace of the country is not the target. Damn, for the most part I support what our military has been doing, but the thought of testing or building newer smaller nuclear weapons can only create infinitly worse problems. Any thoughts? __________________ Remember kiddies, panic attacks can be fatal

11-24-2003, 08:56 PM	#2 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	I personally like the idea of tactical nukes better. Granted no nukes would be ideal, its not however going to be a reality. __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

11-24-2003, 08:59 PM	#3 (permalink)
Jeff And we'll all float on ok... Location: Iowa City	I believe the 400 billion dollars is to pay for our defense budget next year. 7 billion is to be used to research new nuclear weapons that act like Bunker Busters. Just doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I wish Bush would put some money into education instead. __________________ For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. --Charles Bukowski

11-24-2003, 09:16 PM	#4 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	Plenty of money is put into education, and Bush didn't set the defense budget as it is (maybe he did up spending, but we've always had a high budget for defense). __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

11-24-2003, 09:19 PM	#5 (permalink)
OFKU0 Junk	Well at 2 billion a day, I expect the pullout from Iraq to be just about finished by the 4th of July. __________________ " In Canada, you can tell the most blatant lie in a calm voice, and people will believe you over someone who's a little passionate about the truth." David Warren, Western Standard.

11-24-2003, 09:19 PM	#6 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	Actually I stand corrected. He uped spending from 330mil in 02'. No sweat though, I'd say its an obvious step in light of how the geo-political scheme has changed. Big part of it though is that he is uping military pay by nearly 5%. __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition. Last edited by Mojo_PeiPei; 11-24-2003 at 09:22 PM..

11-25-2003, 07:04 AM	#8 (permalink)
onetime2 Junkie Location: NJ	I don't see a problem with it. There is an obvious need for effective weapons to attack heavily fortified bunkers. Current technology isn't doing the job. They've created the conventional MOAB and need more power. That means nukes. Not that I think they should/would be used in a case like Saddam, but we don't know the future and it could reasonably be assumed that we will meet an enemy entrenched in a bunker similar to those used by Saddam and we will have a need to destroy him. Better to know how to do it now, than try to figure it out later. Waiting till later to figure it out will almost guarantee that we will be forced to use a larger than necessary device. If we HAD to go nuclear, wouldn't it be best to use the smallest device possible to meet the objective? __________________ Strive to be more curious than ignorant.

11-25-2003, 08:20 AM	#9 (permalink)
dimbulb Riiiiight........	the problem with 'tactical' nuclear weapons that do 'limited' collateral damage is that there will be a temptation to go nuclear. which is a thought that I don't really want to contemplate. Does the US have a 'no first use' policy regarding WMD? me? personally, i'm intrigued by the idea of weapons that give big booms and blow things up really well. On the other hand, it also violates the principles of nuclear non-proliferation. So the US can go ahead and develop WMD. ( "tactical" or not, lets not kid ourselves here.. ). It has the computing and scientific power to conduct nuclear tests via simulation, but pushes a ban on nuclear testing on other states. its all just a little bit hypocritical here. Last edited by dimbulb; 11-25-2003 at 03:25 PM..

11-25-2003, 05:09 PM	#14 (permalink)
nirol Crazy Location: South East US	I think these things are being developed to counter the threat of N Korea, where we may need to strike comprehensively to eliminate any retaliation upon Seoul. I find it disheartening that Nukes have gained such a reputation as a weapon of last resort. I see no reason to risk our air crews numerous times, when one of these can achieve the objective. A weapon of mass destruction is very relative, if you are in the way, it will definitely be mass destruction. __________________ 'Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt. Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

11-25-2003, 09:00 PM	#15 (permalink)
Zeld2.0 Cherry-pickin' devil's advocate Location: Los Angeles	Yes and no. As much as I hate to bring up this part, but I do think that using nukes to save a few airmen cannot be all that great when one does realize that nukes don't just affect those that get fried, but those who have nothing to do with it many miles away. Personally I think its a foolish endeavor on the one hand. On the other, being a military nut, its intriguing. But i think the money would be better spent elsewhere at this point, and lots of this talk is ending up in the "bluffing" section. [edit] Oh and I'd also like to see how they're going to be getting the bunkers really - the deeper penetration is defenitely needed to take out many bunkers. A nuke isn't all that great of a solution against most bunkers anyways. Nukes weren't exactly designed for that in mind in the first place - and you're not really going to be finding many ways of altering the blast honestly.

11-25-2003, 09:23 PM	#17 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	I don't get the post ahead of mine... Perhaps because I'm drunk but still. Kim Jong is a goon, through and through... he has threatened America by Bathing us in a "holocaust of nuclear fire" or by selling weapons to these who would destroy us. I have no reservations about fucking his shit up. Iraq was a different Story. Motives are questionable, but the outcome is obvious 1) we want a stable country in the mideast to promote democracy and a sensibility for the future 2) we want a country that will serve our HYPER power interests. If you are rooting for the terrorists fuck you. Seriously if you back the deaths of innocents that have no way of affecting policy, they you are a goon just as bad as Saddam or OBl, shame on you. Nukes are not pretty, but they are a reality. Get fucking serious, the world is in a transition stage with "Islamofacisim" ( I know its not all muslims that why I paranethatsize"... Shit is going to start hitting the fan within the next decade or two... so Brace yourself for the worse. The U.S. is not the bad guy here, we look out for our own which is seriously our only our only responsibility. __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

11-26-2003, 10:30 AM	#19 (permalink)
Lebell Cracking the Whip Location: Sexymama's arms...	Interesting analogies, but while colorful, I don't think they're appropo. My only comment is that if you don't use the capabilities, you lose them. That was why the Navy went ahead with the Seawolf attack submarine and that's also why we should move forward with developing nuclear weapons. __________________ "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis The ONLY sponsors we have are YOU! Please Donate!

11-26-2003, 05:07 PM	#22 (permalink)
MSD The sky calls to us ... Super Moderator Location: CT	The main problem I see with bunker buster nukes is the potential for serious complications if somehting goes wrong. Every system has a possibility of errors. If a conventional bunker buster hits the ground, then detonates before it should, or doesn't penetrate the ground at all, the worst case scenario is that it's in or near a populated area whose residents would have been safe if the fround penetrator had gone down a few hundred feet, then taken out a bunker. In the case of malfunction, it bounces, or doesn't go all the way down, goes off on impact, or is a dud. In one of those scenarios, hundreds of civilians could die, civilian buildings could go down, or the enemy could crawl out of his hole and capture a weapon with an advanced computer, guidance system, and big-ass warhead. No wwhat if the big warhead happened to contain a few kilograms of plutonium? Take the same scenarios as an example. Premature detonation blows hundreds of tons of fallout into the air, the intial detonation kills a few hundred or a few thousand civilians, and we have a big, glowing (not literally) mess to deal with, as well as the war crime of a WMD first-strike. In case of a bounce, you have the same situation, but with more initial damage. The dud is the big problem. The bad guys are sitting there in their bunker, engaged in whatever diabolical activities bad guys do. Suddenly, the walls shake. The guys up on the surface radio down and tell them to come up and help. They all get outside, and there's a big hole with smoke coming out of it. They wait a while, get a crane, and pull it out. Not only has an advanced guidance computer and detonator fallen into enemy hands, but they have a complete, assembled, nuclear warhead to use for their purposes. The effects of reverse-engineering, or use of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist group or hostile "rogue nation" would be disatrous.

11-26-2003, 05:46 PM	#23 (permalink)
The.Lunatic Psycho Location: Somewhere just beyond the realm of sanity...	Nuculear is stupid, and causes more problems than it fixes, however the chemical explosives that we have today are very inefficient, which is a problem because we often need high yield in low volume, so that leaves us with nuclear. Bassically we need a high yield explosive should be clean shouldn't have nuclear implications shouldn't be large in size And should be stable So i say we just dump a buncha money into anti matter research I mean shit the swiss already make it at CERN (not really swiss and if your europian i'm sure you know what CERN is) http://livefromcern.web.cern.ch/live...factory00.html __________________ Proud memeber of the Insomniac Club.

11-27-2003, 11:00 AM	#27 (permalink)
redravin40 Loser Location: With Jadzia	It looks like I'm going to have to use my own mini-nuke and this thread goes down.