Quoted: Quoted: Is there a cumulative effect of multiple strikes with penetrating type warheads?  I've wondered why we just don't hit the same point with staggered, successive waves.  Seems like we have the accuracy to hit to within meters on a repeatable basis. Depending upon how far apart they are staggered.  If they are staggered too tightly, the blast from one could throw off the next. Too far apart and you'll have to plow through rubble caving back in from the first hit or even worse, the high value targets in the bunker may have time to get out. Additionally, the really expenisve part of each bomb is the guidance package.  When a bomb cost 100,000 dollars the breakdown is probably something like 10k on the bomb casing and explosives and 90K on the guidance package.  I'd rather spend that money only once or twice rather than 20 times to dig down to the same target.

Nuke it from orbit...

Right now we are in the process of developing what are refeered to as 'Pure Fusion' weapons.

Conventional fusion explosives in the Teller/Ulam in line configuration uses a fission primary in which a sub critical-mass sphere or plutonium or Uranium 235 is compressed by high explosives causing a runaway chain reaction. During the miliseconds after the primary fires the X-rays and slow nutrons are chanled down the center of the weapons onto a sphere of lithium duteride which causes it to transmute into tritium and deuterium which then undergo fusion and provide the bulk of the yeild of the 'gadget'.

The current direction of weapons development is using non-nuclear hyperexplosives to compress a vial of tritium to ignition temprature and presto. Since there is no fission procesess there are no long lived daughter particles to produce fallout....that is the future and the way to take out those harden facilities, by producing useable 'nuclear weapons', which also might get around arms treaties by not being considered 'nuclear' since they don't use fissile products.

Quoted: Right now we are in the process of developing what are refeered to as 'Pure Fusion' weapons. .

It's very 'Blue Sky' at the moment but if they could pull this one off… were talking Star Trek weaponry!

"The source of this article is: The US News and World Report
Monday October 13th, 2003

By James M. Pethokoukis
To most people, what makes nuclear weapons so frightening is their immense power. But many arms-control experts think the scariest nukes are small ones, which could conceivably be used on the battlefield. Once part of the Cold War arsenal, small nuclear mines and shells were scrapped in 1991. But mininukes may be poised for a revival. Last May Congress lifted a 1993 ban on researching nukes with an explosive force of less than 5 kilotons of TNT (compared with hundreds of kilotons for many warheads today). And the Senate version of an energy spending bill now includes $6 million for research on new low-yield nuclear weapons, although so far the House bill does not.

If the House and Senate agree on funding, its first fruits will likely be smaller versions of existing devices. Planners see such baby bombs as a means of, for example, vaporizing buried weapons labs--although such uses would very likely release deadly radioactive fallout. But activists and researchers say that in the long run, the green light for research could also give a boost to an entirely new mininuke called a pure-fusion bomb. "By condoning mininukes, you are . . . opening the door to building even more advanced nukes such as pure-fusion weapons," says Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico.

Clean sweep. Pure-fusion bombs could be more compact than today's nukes and yield almost no fallout. Current devices get most of their power from hydrogen atoms fusing together, but it takes a mighty match--a fission blast--to spark the process. And fission means fallout. A pure-fusion weapon would emit plenty of killing radiation, but as short-lived neutrons. "You could move your troops in 48 hours, because there would be no fallout," says Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Md. That's a military advantage, but it could lower the threshold for using these weapons.

Fission also requires a critical mass of plutonium or uranium; without it, pure-fusion weapons "can be as small as you like, virtually atomic bullets," says Andre Gsponer of the Independent Scientific Research Institute in Geneva, which studies arms control. He thinks, however, that they will make their debut as ultrapotent cruise-missile warheads.

The technical hitch--a big one--is sparking fusion without fission. The $3.5 billion, stadium-size National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California will explore one approach. Starting in 2008, NIF will fire 192 laser beams at pea-size capsules of hydrogen isotopes, crushing and heating them to 100 million degrees to ignite fusion. NIF officials point out that they are not developing laser-powered bombs. "No, not from any aspect that you could possibly look at," says NIF chief George Miller. "It is not feasible, and we are not planning on doing it." NIF's mission is to study the possibility of civilian fusion power plants and do basic research to help assess the readiness of the existing nuclear arsenal. But what NIF reveals about triggering fusion without fission could prove useful to weapons designers, say some experts. Says Glen Wurden, a fusion physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory: "Laser fusion works in a way very similar to a weapon."

Clues could also come from Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, where the "Z machine" runs an enormous jolt of electric current through a bundle of very thin wires. The result is an imploding plasma, which emits a burst of X-rays that might catalyze fusion. Some theorists even speculate that morsels of antimatter could serve as the trigger, although so far physicists have created no more than a few antiatoms.

The hurdles could stretch the timetable to decades. But even in 1997, pure-fusion weapons seemed plausible enough for Hans Bethe, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and veteran of the A-bomb effort, to urge President Clinton not to fund research on them. These days, little bombs are starting to loom bigger."

www.nukewatch.org/media2/postData.php?id=544

Quoted: Quoted: A GPS guided billet of solid chrome vanadium steel, 40,000lbs in weight dropped from 50,000ft by a B1B would leave a mark… I reckon it would go though a lot of concrete and earth… Gravity is your friend! Andy Reminds me of Project Thor, an idea from the 60s: Think "Flying Crowbars From Outer Space". Essentially, orbiting weapons launchers that dispense  steel bars of considerable size and weight, equipped with a basic guidance and maneuvering system.    Pieces of railroad track impacting the ground at something like mach fifteen. Ouch. Have we got any C-141 Starlifters left, or have they all been retired and chopped up by now?    If we have some left that are retired but could still be made flyable,  equip them with remotely controllable, GPS guided autopilots and fill them chock full of explosives.     Fly them into the target. It'd make one hell of a bang.   Bunker DUSTER.   And a fitting, full-on combat death for a proud warhorse that served us well for many years.  (They're being retired because they're just used up. They're hitting their airframe design lifespan of 50,000 flight hours.  Further use of them would prove to be unsafe, and there's no retrofit for a plane whose entire structure is fatigued out!) CJ

A RV made with Depleted Uranium or Tungsten "penetrator" would be devastating if one would let it come back into the Atmosphere at 17,000 + mph, it would moving so fast as to cut rock and concrete like a hot knife thru butter.   The energy release would be farking incredible, the faster you can get that bitch moving, the more havoc it could reek.  

They also re-enter so damn fast as you enemy has no chance to escape or prepare especially in an area were we we own the airspace and can jam all radars.

Hmm...Tactical Nuculear Device. That will work.

The P-51 went from pencil to prototype in 117 days IIRC.  

I have a video how do I post it????

Quoted: A GPS guided billet of solid chrome vanadium steel, 40,000lbs in weight dropped from 50,000ft by a B1B would leave a mark… I reckon it would go though a lot of concrete and earth… Gravity is your friend! Andy

Maybe it'd come out of the other end and hit china

Quoted: I have a video how do I post it????

I have a Bunker Buster video that is very cool. How can I post it here?

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I don't know where the idea came from that fissionable materials can be traced to their production source AFTER they have been detonated.  Before perhaps but not AFTER. The UK made one attempt at "marking" a nuclear device in a test in Austrailia in 1958, it failed. You can tell from the fall out how "cleanly" a bomb detonated and then make inferences on the quality of material and construction but you CANNOT pinpoint a source.  That is fiction. Doesn't this assumes that 100% of the fissionable material is consumed in the explosion. All US produced plutonium is recorded by isotope makeup. If any plutonium traces remain after the explosion would not the same isotope ratio remain? Serious question here, because I was under the impression that US source materials could be traced (before or after explosion). <-- Woohoo: 762! No, transmutation occurs from the neutron bombardment that causes the fission reaction.  Elements form in a nuclear reaction that did not exist in the bomb.  They are not their beforehand and scattered like in a chemical explosion. If we captured nuclear fuel for a bomb, we could tell if it was ours or Russian or European.  But if its made by someone in their back yard, we could not tell who made it only who DIDN"T make it. And after a explosion, the fallout is determined by how well the bomb functioned, not by what was in the fuel.  Other than poorly enriched fuel would generate more fallout than high quality enriched fuel.  But a badly put togeather bomb with high grade fuel that partially "fizzles" would leave a high quantity of waste too.

I stand corrected - thanks for the info!

What about a Rocket propelled capsule launched from a space craft or sat that protects the penetrators from intense pressure and heat from reentry as well as getting them up to speed only to "peel away" after entering the atmosphere at some 100,000ft or so allowing multiple hits in very short order from one mother projectile. The ablative coating on the mother pod would only have to last one time so it would not have to be "high tech" and there are also rocket motors we have now that would work. Think of it as an orbitla cluster bomb.

S.O.

Here we go. Bolt yerself in.... Haji Buster JDAM

Quoted: Space-dropped penetrators don't need a rocket boost.    They'll achieve sufficiently impressive velocities in the fall that a rocket boost for one would be like a tit on a whale. If you want to envision some SERIOUS kinetic energy weaponry,  get out your high school physics textbook,  and run the kinetic energy numbers on a 100 pound (or 100 kilogram) object dropped from lunar orbit.  (The moon's orbit, some 243,000 miles out.) Hope the people on the moon (when there are any) never decide to start throwing rocks at us! Read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein. CJ

Yea, all a rocket boost would be needed for is to give you more velocity, more velocity the better.  IIRC, most orbiting objects are moving in the neighborhood of at least 24,000 mph, which is pretty damn fast but that is slow compared to some meteors that travel as fast as 50,000 mph.

Kerry from last nights debate:

"Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense.

You talk about mixed messages. We're telling other people, "You can't have nuclear weapons," but we're pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using.

Not this president. I'm going to shut that program down, and we're going to make it clear to the world we're serious about containing nuclear proliferation. "

None of this matters anymore anyway.  John Kerry actually said that he would get rid of all our nuclear weapons.  After all, it is hypocritical for us to have any when we oppose them for Iran and North Korea.  

His first duty as President would be to CANCEL any new nuclear weapon, including a nuke bunker buster.

Quoted: BASTARD.      I hope he's diagnosed with something fatal. CJ

Fortunately, he is.  Unfortunately, so are the rest of us.

Don't worry, his political demise will be occuring in the somewhat near future.

Quoted: Quoted: Is there a cumulative effect of multiple strikes with penetrating type warheads?  I've wondered why we just don't hit the same point with staggered, successive waves.  Seems like we have the accuracy to hit to within meters on a repeatable basis. Depending upon how far apart they are staggered.  If they are staggered too tightly, the blast from one could throw off the next. Too far apart and you'll have to plow through rubble caving back in from the first hit or even worse, the high value targets in the bunker may have time to get out. Additionally, the really expenisve part of each bomb is the guidance package.  When a bomb cost 100,000 dollars the breakdown is probably something like 10k on the bomb casing and explosives and 90K on the guidance package.  I'd rather spend that money only once or twice rather than 20 times to dig down to the same target.

Actually, you'd be surprised at how much the actual bomb body (for a non-forged case weapon) is.  A MK-82 is somewere around $250 for the bomb body.  A concrete filled MK-84 (BDU-56) costs more (something like $1000) than a live one (somewhere around $500)...

JDAM tailkits are in the 17K-20K range.

Quoted: Space-dropped penetrators don't need a rocket boost.    They'll achieve sufficiently impressive velocities in the fall that a rocket boost for one would be like a tit on a whale. If you want to envision some SERIOUS kinetic energy weaponry,  get out your high school physics textbook,  and run the kinetic energy numbers on a 100 pound (or 100 kilogram) object dropped from lunar orbit.  (The moon's orbit, some 243,000 miles out.) Hope the people on the moon (when there are any) never decide to start throwing rocks at us! Read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein. CJ

The rocket would be used to propel and give directional stability to the "containment pod" from the sat through the atmosphere and to kick start the projectiles free fall once inside earths atmosphere. Once it breaks the 60 miles mark above ground the pod would seperate, launching several rod's.

S.O.

Quoted: Quoted: Do the following: Take GBU-28 shell Place one of these inside it:nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W54davy2.jpg A W-54 spherical plutonium bomb of 10 or 20 tons equivilant. Fill the rest of the space with styrofoam or aerogel to cushon the impact. Problem solved. No one will be able to tell it was NOT a conventional bomb. That sounds like a useful idea. I like it. Stuff a tactical nuke into a regular bunker buster hull and drop that bastard. Being it's a tactical nuke, you won't have to be that concerned with fallout anyway. And since it will explode underground, that really takes away any such worry. But the power of such a weapon would likely render Iran's facility into a pancake. Me no think even 9' walls and springs will save the facility if a nuke detonation occurs right over it's ceiling. Then we can always claim it was a super penetrating MOAB or something.

Umm you will know a nuke went off, a buster makes a prett fucking big hole lol, it won;t be like under ground nuclear testing, that was done very deep. You would have a giant crater with something like that above.

Once again, who cares if they know it was a nuke? I bet once they get nukes they aren't going to be worried about being PC once they attack us with one. Let the world know. Maybe this crap will then stop.

Quoted: Once again, who cares if they know it was a nuke? I bet once they get nukes they aren't going to be worried about being PC once they attack us with one. Let the world know. Maybe this crap will then stop.

It isn't that simple lol, I know it you know it. The back lash would be horrible and could really have an effect on the USA.
With over $710billion in exports a year (jobs americans need), and oil being our major import. We need to be very PC when dealing with the world.

If this had no value, we would have already blew the fuck out of iran.