The Most Dangerous Weapon Ever Rolls Off the Nuclear Assembly Line

No, no, no, Tsar Bomba is the way to go! That weighed in like 53-55 MEGATONS....since theoretically there's no size limits on thermonuclear devices go 100, 200, 500...build 'em big enough that detonated high enough we could devastate an entire continent in one pop! Then I could sleep like a babe at night.

 

It all depends on how nukes are used. There are artillary nukes - Hiroshima sized ones
that will one day be used to break up tank formations and infantry. Their blast zones are
fairly small- the Hiroshima one damaged things out to about 3 mile radius. At 4 miles or
underground you're ok.
And it takes time to prepare for the launch of nuclear missiles - a lot of clanging, banging
and stuff as missiles are readied and bay doors are opened. The big danger for subs in
this state will be strike subs searching for them - at best you sign your own death warrant
and at worse you don't launch your full payload.

 

Tsar Bomba was gross and inelegant. With yields above 30 megatons, inertial confinement fusion is superior to the Teller-Ulam design.

Plus, 100 megaton bombs (Tsar Bomba only tested at 50 megatons because they tested it without the fission stage) are so big that they had to hang out of the belly of the bomber.

The only US bombers that can carry a 100 megaton bomb (and this only with it hanging out of the bomber's belly) are the B52 and B1b. I wouldn't want to lay odds on them reaching their target without being shot down.

It is usually our SLBMs that we rely on to guarantee the devastation of a enemy that has destroyed us. So any weapon that is meant to completely destroy our enemies should be chosen for its ability to fit atop a US SLBM.

 

The Obama Administration designed a new generation of bombs that have a low yield and very high precision.

http://fas.org/blogs/security/2013/09/b61-12holland/
http://fas.org/blogs/security/2013/10/b61-12hearing/
http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/01/b61capability/
http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/02/b61-12pictures/
http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/03/b61-12integration/
http://fas.org/blogs/security/2014/04/b61-12features/
http://fas.org/blogs/security/2015/11/b61-12_cartwright/
http://fas.org/blogs/security/2016/01/b61-12_earth-penetration/

They will likely be delivered by our new unmanned stealth bombers though. These new bombs won't be fired by artillery.

I would not count on a nuclear war failing to escalate past precision strikes against enemy military forces however. Once we use these new bombs to erase an enemy's military from existence, they are likely to want to strike back.

Our guys know to carry out their duties silently.

 

Saddam didn't use chems for the same reason neither side used them in WWII, and why everyone stopped using them in WWI. They were just as dangerous to you as to your opponent if the wind shifted. The same thing applies to biological weapons only more so. The only reason anyone even develops and stockpiles either one of them anymore is that there is an ongoing arms race in countermeasures and nobody wants to be caught out if a really good countermeasure is ever developed by one side.

As far as tactical nukes I had thought they might be as useful as the "bunker busters" they were getting to drop on al-Qaeda in Tora Bora back in the 00s but everybody moved out of there anyway.

 

Just opening missile doors can give you away.
And submarines cannot go very deep. I think
500 meters or yards is about the max depth.
Just look up your road that distance and that's
about how deep a modern submarine can dive.

 

That is unlikely to happen.

That is more than adequate for them to stay undetected.

 

Well in a war you need to open those hatches. The process of arming
missiles, opening missile hatches and the like is a noisy process.
It's understood that this is the most dangerous moment for the
'boomer' subs.
Of course, the moment those missiles fire is the moment your enemy
has your exact co-ordinates even if he couldn't hear you.
Yes, 500m isn't far down the street. But water is opaque essentially
and subs can stay invisible.

 

We build our subs so everything happens quietly.

Yes, but there is little that they can do about it. The missiles are launched quickly, and the sub is far away from retribution.

 

I think it’s a great idea. I’m sure this isn’t a first resort thing but needs to definitely be available if needed.

 

We already have weapons that fill that role. The B61-12 bomb for example.

Our SLBMs are meant to be held in reserve for an apocalyptic doomsday strike against enemy population centers.

 

Not anymore. The D-5s are accurate enough to threaten hardened military targets. More accurate than our handful of Minutemen ICBMs in fact.

 

The fact that they can be used for other purposes does not change that their best use is to be held in reserve for massive apocalyptic strikes.

Bombers, on the other hand, are best used in limited nuclear attacks when there is still hope of constraining the scale of the war.

Massive apocalyptic strikes can include hardened military targets as well as soft industrial centers, so this SLBM capability is not incompatible with holding our SLBMs in reserve.

 

The U.S. nuclear arsenal in terms of ready to use weapons is not really big enough to hold anything in reserve.

 

We have a hundred bombs and two hundred ALCMs ready load on bombers to make limited strikes without using ballistic missiles.

It also shouldn't take us long to get the rest of the bombs and ALCMs out of cold storage if we get to the point where we are actually nuking someone.

 

How long would be quickly enough? Especially if your goal is to be able to destroy the other sides nuclear weapons before they can be used?

 

It depends on how fast the war escalates.

If tensions have been high for awhile, or if a conventional war is ongoing with a nuclear armed enemy, we might get extra nukes out of storage even before we start using them.

But even if our bombers are constrained to 100 bombs and 200 ALCMs, that is still ample for conducting limited nuclear attacks while holding all of our ballistic missiles in reserve.

If we get to the point of attacking every single enemy nuke that we can locate then we are well past the point of limited war.

 

I haven't heard it suggested that any nuclear war would be "limited".

 

Well, military people who know more about subs that I do have said that
'boomers' give away their position when they go through the process of
launching, even before missiles are fired. And they are prey to hunter subs
who'se job it is to destroy boomers before they can fire those missiles.

 

It is generally accepted (and I am in agreement) that it would be very hard to keep a nuclear war limited.

But it is also generally accepted that if your enemy has only made a very small nuclear attack it might be a good idea to keep your retaliation proportionate just in case there is a chance of avoiding escalating all the way to the apocalypse.

Our bombs with their single explosion per bomb and their variable yields are quite well suited to small scale nuclear attacks. Taking one of our SLBMs and giving it a single low yield warhead just to duplicate what our bombs already do better is a terrible waste of resources.

 

I've never heard this, and I don't see why we couldn't keep things quiet.

But let me be clear, I have no inside knowledge of submarine operations, so I am no authority here. It is certainly possible that I am wrong.

But I just don't see why those doors can't be designed to open silently.

Hopefully the sub will be way in the middle of nowhere and far away from anyone who is hunting it.

And if the nuclear war escalated from a conventional war, hopefully the US Navy has already sunk most of the enemy's subs during the conventional phase of the war.

We're actually starting to look at building new SLBM warheads that provide greater punch than our 90kt warheads, but are much lighter than our 455kt warheads so our subs can have greater range and stay further out of harm's way.

https://www.rollcall.com/2020/07/29/trump-teams-case-for-new-nuke-cites-risks-in-current-arsenal/

 

I can see the shallowness and motionlessness. But I don't see why the noise can't be eliminated.

 

Because heavy machinery being prepped to be pushed out of a launch tube is very hard to keep quiet.

 

Why is this thread now in the "Music, TV, Movies" forum??