Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on October 26, 2005, 07:38:13 am
-
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9820682/
¡°The proposed weapon, more than 70 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, would have caused unparalleled collateral damage.¡±
Personally I am glad this thing was dropped. I think that certain US policymakers have a dangerous obcession with "the nuke".
-
That's a good thing :) But admins, you should change this thread title to "Nuke "bunker buster" plan dropped," cause I came into this thread expecting them to actually be testing it or something! :D
-
you scared the SHIT out of me!
-
Good, but also bad in that they spent so much money on this already...
-
Originally posted by Bobboau
you scared the SHIT out of me!
Lol, sorry about that. Admis, please do change the title.
-
[color=66ff00]For the sake of everyone's peace of mind... :lol:
[/color]
-
ha!
And yeah, it's always fun hearing politicians hammer on about nuclear proliferation in rogue nations when the US has about 40x as many nukes as anyone else, they've used them in the past, they've stated they have intentions to use them in the future, they're researching new ones, and oh yeah, they can attack any other sovereign nation without cause, without restriction, and without penalty.
Wow, that was a totally off-the-cuff, uncharactaristic rant from me. :blah: Can't see how you could argue with it, though... meh.
-
Good stuff. :yes:
-
Originally posted by Unknown Target
That's a good thing :) But admins, you should change this thread title to "Nuke "bunker buster" plan dropped," cause I came into this thread expecting them to actually be testing it or something! :D
shut up you lol! :p
-
Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]For the sake of everyone's peace of mind... :lol:
[/color]
You ruined the fun!! :(
-
Thank god. No matter how clean or safe or efficient they would be, the message sent to the rest of the world - including Iran, NK, Brazil and, uhh, everyone - would be pretty much "hey lol NPT second pillar sucks lol" and would antagonize even more people. It would be such sweet propaganda material, and I don't want even to think about the implications of actually using one.
-
This is good news. Very good news. :yes:
-
Hmmm, *scratches head.
We have had the non-nuclear "Bunker Buster" since the Gulf War. It's very effective, so why does that article say, they are working on one.:confused:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/gbu-28.htm (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/gbu-28.htm)
Sounds like old news brought back up to me.
-
Originally posted by WeatherOp
Hmmm, *scratches head.
We have had the non-nuclear "Bunker Buster" since the Gulf War. It's very effective, so why does that article say, they are working on one.:confused:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/gbu-28.htm (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/gbu-28.htm)
Sounds like old news brought back up to me.
In case the enemy builds bigger bunkers!
Maybe it comes from those bizarre stories (completely unfounded AFAIK) of huge SMERSH style Al-Queda bases in Afghanistan.......
-
Originally posted by WeatherOp
We have had the non-nuclear "Bunker Buster" since the Gulf War. It's very effective, so why does that article say, they are working on one.:confused:
Highlighted for clarity. We've had a non-nuclear Bunker Buster, but this plan that was dropped was one for a nuclear version of the famed Bunker Buster of the Gulf War.
-
Originally posted by aldo_14
Maybe it comes from those bizarre stories (completely unfounded AFAIK) of huge SMERSH style Al-Queda bases in Afghanistan.......
I did love those. According to them Osama had stuff that would make Dr No weep.
Had the war in Afghanistan lasted I'm sure the next set would have intercontinental ballistic missile launchers and a launch pad for Osama's own personal space shuttle :rolleyes:
-
I guess it would be remiss to point out the other nuclear plans of the US; http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/jp3_12fc2.pdf
See particularly the latter one, page 47, parts 1d),e),f), g) and h), all of which could have given commanders permission to request nuclear weapons use during the Iraq war; apparently this is on the verge of becoming official policy.
I have to be amused at the naming of a type of ICBM as 'Peacekeeper', though.......surely Big Pointy ****er of Firey Doom would be equally effective as a name?
-
Surely a nuclear weapon would be an effective way of stopping a biological weapon if said weapon existed?
-
Yes. If you caught it early enough, though it would sort of defeat the purpose.
-
Originally posted by WeatherOp
Hmmm, *scratches head.
We have had the non-nuclear "Bunker Buster" since the Gulf War. It's very effective, so why does that article say, they are working on one.:confused:
The GBU-28 was designed for the F-111. (Specifically, the F-111's centerline external stores rack.) The Air Force sent all the F-111s to the Arizona boneyard shortly after the First Gulf War. The GBU-28 might be usable with a B-52, nobody's tried that yet AFAIK, but as these are generally assumed to be defended targets, a B-52 is not the best choice. A B-1B can probably carry it on one of the wing external stores racks, but that destroys the stealth characteristics and might pose nasty trim problems (undesireable when flying low at or above Mach 1). The B-2 can't fit it inside the bomb bay. It's something like 28 feet long.
-
Originally posted by ngtm1r
The GBU-28 was designed for the F-111. (Specifically, the F-111's centerline external stores rack.) The Air Force sent all the F-111s to the Arizona boneyard shortly after the First Gulf War. The GBU-28 might be usable with a B-52, nobody's tried that yet AFAIK, but as these are generally assumed to be defended targets, a B-52 is not the best choice. A B-1B can probably carry it on one of the wing external stores racks, but that destroys the stealth characteristics and might pose nasty trim problems (undesireable when flying low at or above Mach 1). The B-2 can't fit it inside the bomb bay. It's something like 28 feet long.
Acording to that site I posted, 153 inches or 12.5 feet. And the GBU-28 is usable with the F-15E Strike Eagle.
However it will destroy the stealth ablitys of an aircraft if carried on the wing like you said. However, the F-117 can carry it, so whats the worry.:p
Originally posted by nuclear1
Highlighted for clarity. We've had a non-nuclear Bunker Buster, but this plan that was dropped was one for a nuclear version of the famed Bunker Buster of the Gulf War.
Yeah, but the part that made me think of this as old news is this.
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has abandoned research into a nuclear “bunker-buster” warhead,deciding instead to pursue a similar device using conventional weaponry a key Republican senator said Tuesday.
Ether this senator is very ill-informed or it's old news.
-
Peacekeeper is kinda a good name, because when you think of it...
Ironicly, the most powerfull weapons are weapons of peace
Noone would ever use them, or decalre war on a country that has them...
-
Wanna bet? That's the whole reason these things were being developed...
-
Sure i'l make a bet on that, i cant lose, because even if i do, you wont be alive to kow it!!!!!
Muahahahahah!!!
-
If we could blow through the submarine pens in WW2 with non-nuclear weapons, then we sure as hell can crack any bunker built now. Unless it has Chobham Armour of course (but we don't sell that to anyone) so what's the big fuss? It's not the force of the explosion anyway, it's the penetration. And you achieve that by good design and high-speed...
-
Originally posted by Deepblue
Surely a nuclear weapon would be an effective way of stopping a biological weapon if said weapon existed?
Well... lemme think of the problems;
1) Fallout;
Radiation......sure, you may not give a **** about other countries civillians, but other people do; that's assuming the storage is not within a major city, which is kind of a sensible hiding place if you want to deter nuclear attack
2) Precedence;
Once you use a nuke 'defensively', you're likely to establish a precedence for anyone else to use it; a bona fide excuse for first strikes. This is a bit of a biggie; I bet China would love to be able to really threaten Taiwan, for example, or maybe Pakistan and India will decide to have a bit more sabre-rattling.
3) Fallout (2);
Political, this time. Not only will the world be really, really ****ing narky about nuclear weapons deployment (especially as the countries likely to be hostile and have bio-weapons are all much, much smaller than the US in terms of military capacity), you're also encouraging countries to develop 'defensive' WMD; seeing as the Us would have shown a willingness to first strike, a lot of countries would be a mite nervous and anxious to build up a big CBW arsenal to threaten global/regional devastation if attacked.
4)Defense
Sensible enemy will already, as a matter of course, have hidden and dispersed CBW locations just in case of some form of attack, nuclear or otherwise. And that would definately be deployed in the event of a nuclear attack, even if in a SCUDs-to-Israel type way rather than a direct attack.
-
I just had a thought. ( :eek: )
I remember a little while back, somebody (aldo?) posted some info about the development of space-based weapons platforms, that would drop high-density projectiles onto targets from orbit. IIRC it talked about depleted uranium or tungsten projectiles, which would provide excellent penetration of pretty much any structure (something that dense travelling at such high speed). Could they be talking about this when they say they're going to pursue a "conventional" solution? Though the orbital weapon would have pretty much the same effect as a nuke, but without the fallout...
And Clave makes an excellent point. We developed the Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs in the early 40s, on a tiny budget. Surely it's not that hard to develop that idea a bit?
-
Rods from God
kinda related
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
-
Although Tallboy and Grand Slam were excellent weapons, they were HUGE. The emphasis now a days is on much smaller weapons. Bunker technology has come a long way since the 1940s, after all.
The US further developed the Grand Slam into the T-12, to be carried by the B-36. This weighed 43,000 lbs!!
(http://members.aol.com/nukeinfo2/t12onnose.jpg)
-
Yeah, if I remeber right, they droped the "Grand Slam" bomb on the Tirpitz. And completly destoryed it.
-
It was the Tall Boy they dropped on the Tirpitz, after it had been crippled by mini-subs.
-
Originally posted by pyro-manic
I just had a thought. ( :eek: )
I remember a little while back, somebody (aldo?) posted some info about the development of space-based weapons platforms, that would drop high-density projectiles onto targets from orbit. IIRC it talked about depleted uranium or tungsten projectiles, which would provide excellent penetration of pretty much any structure (something that dense travelling at such high speed). Could they be talking about this when they say they're going to pursue a "conventional" solution? Though the orbital weapon would have pretty much the same effect as a nuke, but without the fallout...
If they do that, say goodbye to GPS, sattelite surveillance and sattelite communications in general. It's a lot cheaper to deny orbital space than it is to put ground attack weapons in space. And any country with basic space launch capabilities could do it, you just need orbital launch rockets and lots and lots of BBs. And the US would be the most affected, proportionately, by the denial of orbital space.
-
Unless they got there first and threatened any ground threat with SBW. Which is possible; bugger knows what they actually have up there already, after all........
-
Originally posted by aldo_14
Well... lemme think of the problems;
1) Fallout;
Radiation......sure, you may not give a **** about other countries civillians, but other people do; that's assuming the storage is not within a major city, which is kind of a sensible hiding place if you want to deter nuclear attack
2) Precedence;
Once you use a nuke 'defensively', you're likely to establish a precedence for anyone else to use it; a bona fide excuse for first strikes. This is a bit of a biggie; I bet China would love to be able to really threaten Taiwan, for example, or maybe Pakistan and India will decide to have a bit more sabre-rattling.
3) Fallout (2);
Political, this time. Not only will the world be really, really ****ing narky about nuclear weapons deployment (especially as the countries likely to be hostile and have bio-weapons are all much, much smaller than the US in terms of military capacity), you're also encouraging countries to develop 'defensive' WMD; seeing as the Us would have shown a willingness to first strike, a lot of countries would be a mite nervous and anxious to build up a big CBW arsenal to threaten global/regional devastation if attacked.
4)Defense
Sensible enemy will already, as a matter of course, have hidden and dispersed CBW locations just in case of some form of attack, nuclear or otherwise. And that would definately be deployed in the event of a nuclear attack, even if in a SCUDs-to-Israel type way rather than a direct attack.
One of the primary reasons for the development of a bunker buster nuke was to minimize fallout by trapping it underground.
-
Originally posted by pyro-manic
I just had a thought. ( :eek: )
I remember a little while back, somebody (aldo?) posted some info about the development of space-based weapons platforms, that would drop high-density projectiles onto targets from orbit. IIRC it talked about depleted uranium or tungsten projectiles, which would provide excellent penetration of pretty much any structure (something that dense travelling at such high speed). Could they be talking about this when they say they're going to pursue a "conventional" solution? Though the orbital weapon would have pretty much the same effect as a nuke, but without the fallout...
Like FireCrack said, Rods from God, which were made of tungsten. About a year ago, Popular Science ran an article on that and a few other technologies that the US military is looking at... including some sort of some sort of UberKillerDeath Minigun that would be capable of something like 300,000 rounds a second, using electromagnetism or something like that.
-
Originally posted by Corsair
Like FireCrack said, Rods from God, which were made of tungsten. About a year ago, Popular Science ran an article on that and a few other technologies that the US military is looking at... including some sort of some sort of UberKillerDeath Minigun that would be capable of something like 300,000 rounds a second, using electromagnetism or something like that.
Nah, that laser that shot true several inches of Titanium was cooler. Allthough it was a bit large.
-
Originally posted by Deepblue
One of the primary reasons for the development of a bunker buster nuke was to minimize fallout by trapping it underground.
Which it wouldn't be able to do (see top story).
Anyways, I though you were referring (given proximity) to the articles I linked, which allowed nuclear - without restriction - attacks to be requested upon WMD stores (although it mentioned storage bunkers, it doesn't restrict to them).
-
The electronic gun thingie has been around for years ('twas on Tomorrow's World on the Beeb back in the 90s, before it went crap and got cancelled) - rate of fire of a million RPM was demonstrated back then, so it's entirely possible that's been upped now. IIRC it was to be used as a point defence weapon for ships and large vehicles, to destroy incoming missiles etc. It wasn't like a conventional gun at all - rather than having the bullets fed into the barrel(s) one at a time, the barrels were actually filled with bullets stacked end-to-end, and fired by means of an electronic pulse that fired the charges. Looks more like a little rocket pod than a gun, though it was much smaller. Bit heavy on the ammo, though...
-
Bombing a Bunker in Four Steps (From Pop-Sci)
1. A B-2 bomber flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet drops a modified B83 nuclear weapon carrying a 1.2-megaton warhead. It travels 2,000 feet per second towards it's ground target.
2. Assuming the soil is composed of granite, the nuke will penetrate to a depth of 20 feet within 100 milliseconds. Radar sensors on the warhead detonate the nuke once it has plowed to it's target depth, releasing the engergy of more than a million tons of TNT.
3. The balst creates a 1,200 foot wide crater and sends a shockwave travelling 1,116 feet per second through the ground. The wave will destroy everything down to 1,000 feet. Any bunkers deeper than that could survive the blast.
4. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that the explosion will shoot some 300,000 tons of radioactive debris up to 15 miles into the air. The total number of casualties will vary but could exceed one million, depending on weather, wind velocity, and the blast's proximity to towns and cities.
Sorry if there are any typos I had to type it from the magazine.
-
Originally posted by pyro-manic
It wasn't like a conventional gun at all - rather than having the bullets fed into the barrel(s) one at a time, the barrels were actually filled with bullets stacked end-to-end, and fired by means of an electronic pulse that fired the charges. Looks more like a little rocket pod than a gun, though it was much smaller. Bit heavy on the ammo, though...
Google for MetalStorm.
It could fire grenades in a similar manner at a similar rate, too. It was designed as an area-denial defensive weapon rather than an offensive weapon.
As for electromagnetic rail-weapons, the fire rate of a railgun is in theory limited only by the time taken for the projectile to leave the barrel, meaning that faster, more powerful projectiles could be fired more rapidly...
Of course, that assumes we find a way to prevent erosion of the rails and can actually pump the weapon with a continuous stream of pulses of the required power.
-
And powering it without using a nuclear reactor would also be nice.
-
Originally posted by Grey Wolf
And powering it without using a nuclear reactor would also be nice.
There's one thing in common for all these sci-fi systems people are so thrilled about.
They all are pretty damn energy hungry. We're talking about big nuclear reactors required to keep even some systems online and operational.
-
You should read 'Footfall' by Niven and Pournelle - great descriptions of aliens totally owning our defences using flying rods dropped from space...
-
Or the Asimov Foundation series, where in the early books, having nuclear powered ships was the equivalent of a Borg cube in Trek. :p
-
:lol: I remember those, nuclear everything, even the coffee maker needed a reactor the size of a baseball pitch before the Foundation moved in. At least Asimov discovered Gravitics in time for Golan Trevise to go looking for Gaia ;)
-
Originally posted by Flipside
:lol: I remember those, nuclear everything, even the coffee maker needed a reactor the size of a baseball pitch before the Foundation moved in. At least Asimov discovered Gravitics in time for Golan Trevise to go looking for Gaia ;)
I have no idea what the hell you just said...:wtf:
-
Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth, aka 'the Seldon Plan has one massive flaw in it so it's going to be replaced with something totally different'.
Interesting books, actually. A character from some of his other books (the ones set 20000 years before the Foundation) turns up. No time travel involved...
-
It's from the Foundation series. I recognize all that. :D The first book was the best by some distance, though.
-
Originally posted by aldo_14
Unless they got there first and threatened any ground threat with SBW. Which is possible; bugger knows what they actually have up there already, after all........
Not likely. You can launch your orbital denial rockets from a submarine if your ground-based installations are threatened, and plenty of countries have ICBM launch capability on submarines. You don't even need that, one of those truck-based missile launchers the Soviets loved so much would be more than enough.
-
Originally posted by Clave
You should read 'Footfall' by Niven and Pournelle - great descriptions of aliens totally owning our defences using flying rods dropped from space...
Heh, yeah. It's not really necessary to bring weapons in space, since some scrap metal (heat shielded or big enough) will cause absolute devastation wherever it hits.
Also, USN is actually researching gauss guns. Why use explosives, since you could just fire a rod of metal going... well, really fast, miles per second into some warehouse 25 nautical miles away.
-
Well, it all depends on how big a boom it makes when it hits, theres no point developing something that isn't going to look as impressive as it's name sounds ;)
-
Originally posted by Styxx
Not likely. You can launch your orbital denial rockets from a submarine if your ground-based installations are threatened, and plenty of countries have ICBM launch capability on submarines. You don't even need that, one of those truck-based missile launchers the Soviets loved so much would be more than enough.
:o :nervous:
Forgot those. They still work?
-
Originally posted by CP5670
It's from the Foundation series. I recognize all that. :D The first book was the best by some distance, though.
Well, I found Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth to be a better Story, however, the first book, and the second to a fair degree were absolute works of arts with regards to Tolkeins grasp of the Social and Political makeup of the Foundation, and how basic human instincts still apply, no matter how much technology you have.
Anyway, I could go on about the Foundation series for hours, so I'll stop before I do ;)
-
I also thought they were interesting in their own right, but all the mind control business kind of threw me off. It didn't fit in with the style of the original IMO. (although the first half of the second book fit in very well with the original and I liked it just as much)
-
Originally posted by Flipside
...with regards to Tolkeins grasp of the Social and Political makeup of the Foundation...
Uh-huh... you know something I don't?
http://www.brainzipper.com/files/this_here.wav
-
Ummm... Yeah... the keys are right next to each other, it's a common typo....
:nervous:
Edit : To be honest, I thought Asimov, but for some reason my brain sent 'Tolkein' to my fingers :wtf: