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2 New WMD's?
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ast3r3x
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2004-08-04, 12:21

During Clinton's speech at the DNC, he said how there are 2 new nuclear weapons being developed. Does anyone have any information about these? I wasn't away until I heard it then, and I forgot about how surprised I was until I was re-listening to the speech today.
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hustlin
 
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2004-08-04, 13:06

He was likely talking about tactical nukes.
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Akumulator
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2004-08-04, 13:25

We're fucked. Us using "mini" nukes will only lead to other countries using nukes. There will no longer be that "having nuclear weapons is a deterrant". This country is taking us and the world down a road of shit.
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thegelding
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2004-08-04, 14:15

yes, kinda funny (if it wasn't so scary)...it use to be that nucs were so feared that nobody dared use them...now we want to make mini nucs to use in all our wars...yeah for the future


g

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everything is food if you chew hard enough
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Moogs
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2004-08-04, 17:17

I am having a hard time fathoming why ANY modernized country would be pouring money into designing different types of nuclear weapons in this day and age. I guess we want the ability to destroy ever more concentrated areas without all the huge peripheral damage and fallout of a typical multi-megaton nuke. Very encouraging.


...into the light of a dark black night.
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alcimedes
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2004-08-04, 18:08

if a mini nuke does less damage than a daisey cutter, is it worse because it hass the word "nuke" somewhere in the title?
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SKMDC
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2004-08-04, 18:28

i'm not saying i approve, but i think tactical nukes are a responsive tool, for a terrorist attack using chemical weapons or a "dirty bomb".
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SonOfSylvanus
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2004-08-04, 18:58

/OT You can't respond to a terrorist attack with war. Terrorism (though not state terrorism) is a scattered affair. That's why right-thinking people went when the US decided to invade Afghanistan.

Alcimedes a nuclear warhead IS worse than an even more destructive conventional warhead because of radioactive fallout. Plus, the whole image-thing. I mean, NUCLEAR, man. That word scared the shit out of the world for 20 years. Lets not start going down that road again.

Not developing nuclear weapons shows that states can maintain a modicum of self-control over their own destructive potential, which is nice, I think.

bouncy bouncy
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psmith2.0
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2004-08-04, 19:06

Alcimedes read my mind...

I think some people are just programmed to jump at certain words: nukes, Halliburton, Ashcroft, etc.

Of course, I admit I tend to do the same with swift boat, Air America and Sharpton.

So I guess it all evens out...
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thegelding
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2004-08-04, 19:29

just see it as a slippery slope...we use our "small" nucs...other countries use their "large" nucs because they don't have small ones...

please remember that only one country has used nucs in war...we keep pushing the envelope and other countries might get jealous and want to join in on the fun


g

crazy is not a rare human condition

everything is food if you chew hard enough
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Moogs
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2004-08-04, 19:37

Quote:
Originally Posted by alcimedes
if a mini nuke does less damage than a daisey cutter, is it worse because it hass the word "nuke" somewhere in the title?
Except that, a mini-nuke is very unlikely due less damage than a daisy cutter, especially if you consider the contamination and fallout issues. The blast may well be daisy-cutter like, but the after-effects would be much worse.

...into the light of a dark black night.
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alcimedes
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2004-08-04, 19:38

it just reminds me of how NMRI's are always referred to as MRI's.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imagry was too scary for people, so instead it became MRI.

looking into tactical nukes, from what i can see, they do less collatoral damage, are designed as deep underground bunker busters (not much radiation leak into the air) and are the most effective tool.

i have the sneaking suspicion that if they were called anything other than "blah blah nukes" no one would care one way or the other about them.
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ast3r3x
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2004-08-04, 19:40

So let's develop tactical directional neutron bombs then. If the goal is to do as little physical damage as possible. I am not a big WMD buff, but do neutron bombs give long lasting radiation like other nuclear bombs? I thought since it's neutrons they would dissipate very quickly and rather harmlessly. Since neutron guns are possible to make, I don't understand why these aren't being developed.

Edit: I know neutron bombs cause some damage, but I have no idea how they work. Are they, like hydrogen bombs, a mini nuke to set off the reaction so the radiation would still be bad, or is it really a clean bomb.

Last edited by ast3r3x : 2004-08-04 at 21:40.
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Moogs
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2004-08-04, 19:45

Quote:
Originally Posted by alcimedes
I have the sneaking suspicion that if they were called anything other than "blah blah nukes" no one would care one way or the other about them.
They would notice less, certainly. It's a natural reaction given the history of the weapons in warfare and testing. Bunker-buster nukes wouldn't be as bad if as you say the radiation was limited to sub-terranean areas but still... who knows if that ends up contaminating a major aquafer or something that feeds some town downstream.

I just think there are so many ways we can get to people with conventional weapons that it's kind of silly to pour big money into developing "new and improved" nuclear bombs. Just MHO. I could be wrong of course.

...into the light of a dark black night.
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alcimedes
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2004-08-04, 19:48

actually, finding worthwhile information on tactical nukes isn't easy. it's almost all knee-jerk in one direction or the other. i'll see if i can dig something up. i just got back from Japan, and am on totall screwed up time tables, so it might not post until odd hours.

that and i'm working on a comprehensive set of photos of the trip, and have over 1,000 to go through. that's going to take some time.
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hustlin
 
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2004-08-04, 21:29

Quote:
Originally Posted by pscates2.0
I think some people are just programmed to jump at certain words: nukes
Yeah. We call them "foreign countries that use multi-kt weapons because the US uses .1-1kt nukes." Oh, but then we'd be discussing one of the real issues and not just taking pot shots at our fellow americans.
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psmith2.0
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2004-08-04, 22:12

Relax, and get over yourself just a bit. I included a self-dinging side to what I said (which, of course, you didn't quote) and I used smileys, which usually mean something.

If all that escaped you, not my problem. Lighten up.
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autodata
hustlin
 
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2004-08-04, 22:59

Quote:
Originally Posted by pscates2.0
Relax, and get over yourself just a bit ... If all that escaped you, not my problem.
two ad hominems with no smilies.

From what I can tell, the real issues concern fallout and the potential for other nuclear countries to justify their use of nuclear weapons by citing our use of tactical nukes. For the second one, it doesn't really matter whether such a justification is valid or not. Use of nuclear weapons is a big no-no following the destruction in japan. As it stands, any non-us country that uses them against an enemy would have hell to pay for likely a century or more. If the US sets a new precedent, you can expect these other, lest stable countries that are now being armed to become emboldened.

There is a reason that members of the manhattan project founded FAS and the Bulletin.
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Kickaha
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2004-08-04, 23:11

Backpack and battleground sub-kton nukes date back to the 50s, they're nothing new. (Heck, the Army had a prototype bazooka nuke working by 56. A *BAZOOKA*.)

Making them cleaner is. Yes, I actually said cleaner. The residual radiation from Fat Man and Little Boy were on the order of a few hundred times more devastating than those from designs just 20 years later... and we're considerably past that. Heck, you want minimal radiation, ast3r3x has the right idea: neutron bombs cause very little physical damage, but irradiate and kill anything living (animal, plant, bacterial) within a rather large range... and not all the quickly either. Nasty deaths. But, in 24 hrs, an opposing force can move in and safely set up camp unshielded.

But the most devastating effect from any weapon/item/tool/medical technique/power source is of course the purely psychological fear of the word 'nuclear'. Well, that and tendonitis of the patella.
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Maciej
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2004-08-04, 23:21

I'm sorry to be stepping into the discussion a little late, but might he be talking about the new nuclear bunker busters President Bush has approved for development?
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Kickaha
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2004-08-04, 23:35

Yup.

Personally, I'm a fan of the new Navy railguns. Mach 7.5 muzzle velocity of a 250kg steel rod. Range: 350miles, 10m accuracy. No explosive, no warhead - but it hits like a mother... the steel vaporizes on impact, and has the equivalent of a Tomahawk missile.

Oh, and one of the new destroyers is supposed to be able to fire 6 rounds a second, ship-wide, until it runs out of projectiles. (10 rds/min = 6sec/barrel, 36 barrels = 6/sec) To accomplish this, the entire output of one of the new reactors is diverted to the gunnery system.

Where have we seen this before?

Oh yeah. The Wave Frickin' Motion Gun.
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ast3r3x
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2004-08-05, 07:20

We have rail guns ready?! No freak'n way!
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Moogs
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2004-08-05, 08:44

The ultimate kinetic weapon. Now Railgun is a technology I can get into.

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ast3r3x
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2004-08-05, 09:21

Is there a big difference between a magnet gun and a rail gun? I mean I understand? Is it just magnet propels from the back, and rail gun propels along the whole "barrel"?

My physics teacher showed us a magnet gun he made, to shoot a steel ring, about the size of a ring you'd put on your finger. Well it really shot a marble, but the steel ring was the magnetic propellant. He said he hadn't used it since he first shot it, because he was a new teacher and it shot the marble (straight) but across the room, into the chalk board, where it stuck. Said he couldn't believe how strong it was, or how careless he was to do that with a class room, even with them all standing at the sides of the room. He had boxes setup, but he had no idea how strong it was gonna be He is a real physics genius, but you'd only know by his applied knowledge and understanding, not from anything you'd learn in his class
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Moogs
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2004-08-05, 09:24

Now there's a teacher with some zest for teaching and an innovative spirit!

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Argento
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2004-08-05, 11:41

[quote=Kickaha] (Heck, the Army had a prototype bazooka nuke working by 56. A *BAZOOKA*.)


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stoo
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2004-08-05, 12:25

Your teacher probably made a Gauss gun , which uses an electromagnet (coils + projectile) to propel the projectile. A rail gun has a conducting projectile between two metal rails with a voltage across them The projectile is propelled by the magnetic field generated by the huge current in the rails.

At six 250kg rounds per second at Mach 7.5, the ship would be gaining momemtum in the oppsite direction at 4Mkgm/s^2.
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Kickaha
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2004-08-05, 12:55

Impressive, no?

I suspect that recoilless platforms are intended.

Also, the same ships will have a defense system that apparently makes Phalanx look lame, capable of handling dozens or hundreds of incoming projectiles with only a few square centimeters of cross-section. And again, the reactor power can be diverted to this solely for tight situations.

So one day we really *WILL* hear...


"I canna raise the shields while we're firing Cap'n!"
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ast3r3x
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2004-08-05, 15:43

Two mental images. One sick, one neat.

1) Imagine what that would do to a person if you were in the way of that? It would go through you, no problem of course, but just aw, that would be disgusting.

2) Imagine being 100miles along and 10m off the path of this thing...out of the danger path. This thing comes flying mach 7.5 by you. Just THINKG about the cool (incredibly loud) ripping sound you'd hear after that thing flies by?
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Kickaha
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2004-08-05, 16:22

1) It'd do what anything else would do - punch a big hole, not even blink, and keep going. The person however... I'm thinking 'big red spray'.

2) Naw, it arcs up and over, no smart missile guidance system on this, just a pure ballistic trajectory. It's you're 10m away from it at 100miles, then you're in midair, and the passing wash alone would likely tear you to bits.
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