BSM: “It’s ok folks, todays nukes are much safer!”

Look up one post. That's what they were talking about. SADM's I think they were, IIRC. Atomic Demolition Munitions. Take out bridges, railyards, tunnels, funnel points. Man portable.

That is the so-called suitcase nuke.

Probably could have put it in a big Samsonite, too. But that would have been a bitch to hump into East Germany...

Sirhr

I heard somewhere that the Russians had a snuke in their Wash embassy and we had one in our Moscow embassy. Sort of like a last resort MAD device standoff. Might have been just a tall tale.

I will say I'll bet our estimates of Chinese nukes are way low. Wouldn't surprise me if they had more than us and the Russkies combined. When we have dodo's like Hans Brix overseeing nuke inspections, anything is possible.


(Edit: that's weird, autocorrect changed Chinese nukes to chicken nukes. Maybe that's some sort of message..)
 
Look up one post. That's what they were talking about. SADM's I think they were, IIRC named Small Atomic Demolition Munitions. Take out bridges, railyards, tunnels, funnel points. Man portable.

That is the so-called suitcase nuke.

Probably could have put it in a big Samsonite, too. But that would have been a bitch to hump into East Germany...

Sirhr
And just think how often they practice with one of them “jugs” rigged to themselves on a HALO. Seems most are for “equipment” now, but the deep seated practicality of it is on there still. Whether they will say it out or not is another topic.
 
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the only safe nuke in the hand of terrorist is the one that detonates it's self while still on a launch platform which we can watch like the old Benny Hill show as Jihadist kill them self in mass .
What about nukes in the hand of anyone in dc? Does anyone else consider them terrorists? I sure as shit do
 
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My Grandpa was involved in tests with 4751th air defense wing. Responsible for early BOMARC testing.

And was a test Pilot with the Black Knights, 17th Bomb wing.

When I was a kid he used to talk to me about the toss bombing tactics... to avoid the blast. Both paternal and maternal grandparents were around nuclear related cold war testing.
 
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Are these "kinder, gentler" nukes?

I remember when going through Basic Training they showed us to lay on the ground on our stomachs, head towards the blast, and cup our nuts in our hands. Like that's gonna do anything.
LOL, I forgot about that. We had to lay on our rifles when we hit the ground and put your face in the dirt. Our DI would spring them on us at any time during that day of training. I remember getting hit in the chin so hard by the muzzle one time I saw stars because I was trying to drop straight to the ground and didn't pull the rifle into my body fast enough.
Aaah the good ole days.
 
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Not disagreeing… but where are the neocons in this??? I thought they were busy chanting orange man bad in their irrelevant hovels?

Sirhr

Na, the neocons that you're thinking of are just the ones that are either too dumb (Steve Schmidt) or too old (Dick Cheney) to adapt to the current political environment. The ones currently staffing the White House mostly came up the ranks under Obama, who for all his bluster pretty much served to continue the GW Bush foreign policy (largely summarized as "bombing people into accepting democracy").

Also never forget that both Biden and Clinton are warhawks who were staunch advocates of Bush-era foreign intervention:



They're all neocons, regardless of to which party they pretend to bring and what domestic policies they support (and by the way, GW had his own problems with spending and excessive fed.gov interference that no one really wants to accept nowadays).

I keep bringing this stuff up and hammering on it because I remain deeply concerned that conservatives will fall for the same thing again. Put an R next to the name of a warhawk on the 2024 ballot and 95% of the conservatives who oppose US intervention in Ukraine and talk about the need to avoid nuclear war will be right back to advocating that we preemptively nuke North Korea or Iran.

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With regards to blast effects, this is a potentially useful resource:



The second is particularly instructive, as the advanced settings allow one to play around with the airburst height, and maximizing that value for overpressure tends to minimize fallout for the yield that we might consider for a tactical device (100 kt).

The effects of a device of this size are indeed devastating for a radius of a few miles and I'm not keen on the thought of normalizing the deployment of such weapons. Maybe one gets popped off in this conflict and we still managed to avoid an all-out exchange, but that simply increases the chances in the coming years and decades.
 
An important part of the subject is that small devices are usually fission (or these days pretty much all boosted fusion boosted fission) devices.
Current generation and prior generation huge output devices are always going to be fusion devices with a fission starter.

Fission fuel is very radioactive
Fusion fuel has very low radioactivity by comparison.

With Fusion weapons you can design them to have minimal (compared to blast effect) radiation if so desired, at the cost of less yield and larger size.
The dampening / containment material you choose has a direct effect on that.
Plus you can use more exotic reflectors in your fission plug to shrink that as well.

Now you can also go the other way, you can include stuff in your nuclear warheads that has a very long half life and will render a large area saturated by radiation for generations.

The next of course ultimate holy grail of future generation nukes is being able to kickstart the fusion reaction without needing a fission core.
That is the really crazy science stuff that is unlikely to happen for some time, but if it ever does, it will make folks a lot more ready to use such devices.

Do you mind at least mentioning your credentials to be a credible source of information on nuclear weapons design and/or performance?
 
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View attachment 7978531
My Grandpa was involved in tests with 4751th air defense wing. Responsible for early BOMARC testing.

And was a test Pilot with the Black Knights, 17th Bomb wing.

When I was a kid he used to talk to me about the toss bombing tactics... to avoid the blast. Both paternal and maternal grandparents were around nuclear related cold war testing.

Was he involved with the naming of Liza Jackson Park?

Don't spin up...just a joke.
 
Do you mind at least mentioning your credentials to be a credible source of information on nuclear weapons design and/or performance?

If I'm wrong in my rough basic outline of the issue, you are welcome to post any scientific papers you want on the subject to show a different version of the broad basic overview.

The basics are fairly well known and there are a number of books and articles widely available for decades that give the basic overview of the differences as well as records of who generally tested what and such back in the days that everybody was openly showing off how their new designs worked.
 
Was he involved with the naming of Liza Jackson Park?

Don't spin up...just a joke.
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Not Liza Jackson Park... that is him standing next to Bob Duke. The guy who Duke Field(eglin range) is named after. He is the unnamed airmen on the left.

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His B-17 leaving for England and him there.
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Church he helped build in Puson, he said they needed a place to pray.
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If I'm wrong in my rough basic outline of the issue, you are welcome to post any scientific papers you want on the subject to show a different version of the broad basic overview.

That's not what I asked you. I asked what are your professional or technical credentials to be talking about nuclear weapons the way you are.

It take it that you answer is "none" and that you are regurgitating stuff that you find online.

When it comes to technical subjects I would rather pay attention to people who actually have some credibility.
 
I find it absolutely bizarre and insane how there are people trying to normalize the idea of a nuclear war. Even more stunningly how people go along with it, actually thinking it's a good idea, or at least not that bad of one.

We are sleep walking toward a nuclear war, and most people seem either relatively unaware, apathetic, or even welcoming of this. All over whether the Donbass region is considered part of Ukraine or Russia.

Pretty fucked up.
 
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Not Liza Jackson Park... that is him standing next to Bob Duke. The guy who Duke Field(eglin range) is named after. He is the unnamed airmen on the left.

View attachment 7978990

His B-17 leaving for England and him there.
View attachment 7978993
Church he helped build in Puson, he said they needed a place to pray.
View attachment 7978994

If you didn't know...

Liza Jackson Park is a couple miles east of AAF 9 (Hurlburt Field). At one time there was a mockup of a Bomarc in the center. Someone started the rumor that the park was named for a young girl who died when a missile came apart and a piece struck and killed her.
 
Once the nuclear option has been unleashed, who believes that it will be limited to only tactical, low yield devices?

The side that thinks it is losing will not respect the leash.

The west has already responded that if a nuke is deployed in Ukraine, they will respond with force.

They didn't suggest they would respond "in kind" (with nukes), but it would warrant conventional warfare between NATO and Russia. How that doesn't turn into a nuclear exchange I don't know.
 
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If you didn't know...

Liza Jackson Park is a couple miles east of AAF 9 (Hurlburt Field). At one time there was a mockup of a Bomarc in the center. Someone started the rumor that the park was named for a young girl who died when a missile came apart and a piece struck and killed her.
I did not know (never heard that) that and don’t think that is right. She was a local in the community who did a lot to get fort Walton started.

I have been there literally thousands of times. Used to live right next to it.

 
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I did not know (never heard that) that and don’t think that is right. She was a local in the community who did a lot to get fort Walton started.

I have been there literally thousands of times. Used to live right next to it.


It wasn't; just a rumor.

I lived to the east, west and north...couldn't afford to live to the south.
 
That's not what I asked you. I asked what are your professional or technical credentials to be talking about nuclear weapons the way you are.

It take it that you answer is "none" and that you are regurgitating stuff that you find online.

When it comes to technical subjects I would rather pay attention to people who actually have some credibility.

It kind of sounds like you don't actually have any presentable evidence that my statement was incorrect and so you are devolving to trying to attack me for some unknown reason?

I'm not sure where your hostility to a fairly simple and as far as I can see uncontested description of basic scientific principles comes from?

Do you think any actual classified government labs employees that actually work building, designing and maintaining current generation nuclear weapons are going to be on some internet forum showing off their credentials and explaining how things work to unknown keyboard warriors???

If you have actual experience, building, designing or maintaining nuclear weapons, or have direct contact with someone that does, by all means please feel free to post said credentials and explain where I'm wrong and what the correct answer is. I'd love to see your credentials and learn about how I'm wrong in what I thought and what the correct answer is.

Why don't you post what you feel is the correct broad based explanation for the basics of Fission, boosted Fission and Fusion devices.

Most of the non-classified papers, books and records from around the world on the broad strokes overview of nuclear device theory were generated and available long before the internet. Could it all be a lie? Possibly but highly unlikely given the amount of crossover such things have with things commonly studied in research universities all around the globe. Things such as records of experiments with reflectors are openly discussed (who knows maybe that's all a lie too)?

So how about stop with the personal stupid attacks and if you think the information is wrong, go ahead and post the correct information and add all the annotations and such that you seem to want. If my grasp of the basic concepts that I have acquired from reading non-classified publicly available sources over the decades is wrong, I'd be happy to be told the actual correct information which I can then see if I think it is reasonably likely to be correct.

Again this is pretty basic broad strokes physics concepts so I don't see why you get upset about it?

If you want to say "I would rather pay attention to people that actually have some credibility" well then it seems the onus is on you to show writings by said people, document their credentials and explain what the correct answer is.
 
It kind of sounds like you don't actually have any presentable evidence that my statement was incorrect and so you are devolving to trying to attack me for some unknown reason?

I'm not sure where your hostility to a fairly simple and as far as I can see uncontested description of basic scientific principles comes from?

Do you think any actual classified government labs employees that actually work building, designing and maintaining current generation nuclear weapons are going to be on some internet forum showing off their credentials and explaining how things work to unknown keyboard warriors???

If you have actual experience, building, designing or maintaining nuclear weapons, or have direct contact with someone that does, by all means please feel free to post said credentials and explain where I'm wrong and what the correct answer is. I'd love to see your credentials and learn about how I'm wrong in what I thought and what the correct answer is.

Why don't you post what you feel is the correct broad based explanation for the basics of Fission, boosted Fission and Fusion devices.

Most of the non-classified papers, books and records from around the world on the broad strokes overview of nuclear device theory were generated and available long before the internet. Could it all be a lie? Possibly but highly unlikely given the amount of crossover such things have with things commonly studied in research universities all around the globe. Things such as records of experiments with reflectors are openly discussed (who knows maybe that's all a lie too)?

So how about stop with the personal stupid attacks and if you think the information is wrong, go ahead and post the correct information and add all the annotations and such that you seem to want. If my grasp of the basic concepts that I have acquired from reading non-classified publicly available sources over the decades is wrong, I'd be happy to be told the actual correct information which I can then see if I think it is reasonably likely to be correct.

Again this is pretty basic broad strokes physics concepts so I don't see why you get upset about it?

If you want to say "I would rather pay attention to people that actually have some credibility" well then it seems the onus is on you to show writings by said people, document their credentials and explain what the correct answer is.

So a good long explanation to say your expertise is from wikipedia. Got it.

I don't have to prove you wrong or right. I only asked if you had any subject matter expertise and you've proven that you don't. That's all I need to ignore your explanation.

Oh yea, not a personal attack to ask for credentials when someone rolls heavy into a technical topic. Not unless you think you should be immune from that.
 
so I can’t run 100ll in my aircraft because based on one debunked study, and despite nothing has shown it to be a issue, because it’s “not green” but lobbing nukes around is aiiight?

Does anyone take these asshats serious?

There should be a rule, if you authorize a nuke the major you give the order to first draws his pistol and puts a round in your forehead, then follows the order, if it ain’t worth your life you shouldn’t be blasting those things off, we need accountability and consequences for politicians actions
 
I find it absolutely bizarre and insane how there are people trying to normalize the idea of a nuclear war. Even more stunningly how people go along with it, actually thinking it's a good idea, or at least not that bad of one.

We are sleep walking toward a nuclear war, and most people seem either relatively unaware, apathetic, or even welcoming of this. All over whether the Donbass region is considered part of Ukraine or Russia.

Pretty fucked up.
They are trying to normalize cross dressing kid fuckers, and this shit shocks you?
 
So a good long explanation to say your expertise is from wikipedia. Got it.

I don't have to prove you wrong or right. I only asked if you had any subject matter expertise and you've proven that you don't. That's all I need to ignore your explanation.

Oh yea, not a personal attack to ask for credentials when someone rolls heavy into a technical topic. Not unless you think you should be immune from that.

The publicly available information all predates wikipedia as it all was from before the internet was this common thing, but the Wikipedia editors probably have compiled information from those same sources.

So in the end do you have any statement that my information is wrong?
 
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The publicly available information all predates wikipedia as it all was from before the internet was this common thing, but the Wikipedia editors probably have compiled information from those same sources.

So in the end do you have any statement that my information is wrong?
he only listens to "Experts" So you'll need a certificate from a government approved institution that shows you actually read the books.
 
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@308pirate and @W54/XM-388

Ladies, ladies. You're both pretty.

The person that compiles the information is not the source. The sources are the references from which the information is compiled. To discount the information provided by an individual, based on that person's lack of expertise in a field, is sophomoric- at best. But, the information provided is only as good as the reference material. And, without citation, no one can vet that information.
 
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That's not what I asked you. I asked what are your professional or technical credentials to be talking about nuclear weapons the way you are.

It take it that you answer is "none" and that you are regurgitating stuff that you find online.

When it comes to technical subjects I would rather pay attention to people who actually have some credibility.

You just want to slap people in the face with your dick. You have always been an asshole.
 
@308pirate and @W54/XM-388

Ladies, ladies. You're both pretty.

The person that compiles the information is not the source. The sources are the references from which the information is compiled. To discount the information provided by an individual, based on that person's lack of expertise in a field, is sophomoric- at best. But, the information provided is only as good as the reference material. And, without citation, no one can vet that information.

Here is a quick paper that has some of the basics and has names / references you can cite:

The problem is however it doesn't go too much into the design options for Fusion ones.

There's a specific out of print book I'll see if I can find a link to anyone selling that has a lot of the old design details including pictures of bits and pieces of devices that professors had on their desks and such.
 
An important part of the subject is that small devices are usually fission (or these days pretty much all boosted fusion boosted fission) devices.
Current generation and prior generation huge output devices are always going to be fusion devices with a fission starter.

Fission fuel is very radioactive
Fusion fuel has very low radioactivity by comparison.

With Fusion weapons you can design them to have minimal (compared to blast effect) radiation if so desired, at the cost of less yield and larger size.
The dampening / containment material you choose has a direct effect on that.
Plus you can use more exotic reflectors in your fission plug to shrink that as well.

Now you can also go the other way, you can include stuff in your nuclear warheads that has a very long half life and will render a large area saturated by radiation for generations.

The next of course ultimate holy grail of future generation nukes is being able to kickstart the fusion reaction without needing a fission core.
That is the really crazy science stuff that is unlikely to happen for some time, but if it ever does, it will make folks a lot more ready to use such devices.

Someone with some good info. Don't forget the firestorm that will burn for a few days.

In general:

Conventional > Nuke > Chemical > Bio - depending on scale.

Fallout is bad news. Worse still will be the mobile fallout in water and the air and people and birds and the metal cars and shit. Chernobyl was localized and is nothing compared to a nuclear fireball and resultant firestorm that will loft huge amounts of contaminated material through the tropopause. The fast neutrons will also convert cars and tanks and guns and other stuff into radioactive isotopes and these will get carried around. Even if its a neutron bomb.

The big problem with NBC is that it can boomerang on the attacker. A ground burst will render that area untrafficable due to radioactive debris and can send the fallout back on the attacker - either via air or refugees or water/rain. And an air burst or neutron bomb can misfire and become a dirty ground burst. or just not work.

Thirty years ago I sat in a few exercises and we just scratched our head trying to figure out how we could use tactical nukes and not hurt our own people or fuck up Western Europe etc.. The only scenario that remotely seemed to work were the small nuclear land mines that would just leave huge holes and have little residual fallout outside the target area. When the Engineers looked at how they could address this if the Russians did this, a couple of D9s could quickly cut through the debris, we realized it was not much of a tool. And when the maneuver commanders looked at it, they just saw a huge barrier to maneuver for later operations. And then the Air Force looked at it said any CAS in the area would come back contaminated. it was a big mess - a very big mess.

I was told that the AirLand battle came out of much earlier exercises that showed nukes were a net negative at the operational level as well. Not to mention the Russians escalating until we created an Apocalypse.

The Russians have a very strong memory of all the nuclear accidents on their soil. I highly doubt they will use them. I don't like Putin, but don't know why he is talking about using them unless he fears the West invading Russia proper. Its always been Russian policy that any land attack or air attack into their borders that is an existential event would trigger a nuke. All the BS from Biden and some others may have triggered him to reiterate this policy.
 
To those who think "tactical nukes" are only 1kt yield or more....

I present you Operation Ivy Flats in 1961... nothing says Murica like a live fire W54 warhead combined arms training exercise in the Nevada desert 🇺🇸 🤣🤣




I'm no expert, but me thinks our technology may have gotten a bit better in the past 60 years, and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
 
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To those who think "tactical nukes" are only 1kt yield or more....

I present you Operation Ivy Flats in 1961... nothing says Murica like a live fire W54 warhead combined arms training exercise in the Nevada desert 🇺🇸 🤣🤣




I'm no expert, but me thinks our technology may have gotten a bit better in the past 60 years, and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

We did some pretty goofy shit back then. Thankfully, computers took the place of nuking our land and people.
 
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The Russians have a very strong memory of all the nuclear accidents on their soil. I highly doubt they will use them. I don't like Putin, but don't know why he is talking about using them unless he fears the West invading Russia proper. Its always been Russian policy that any land attack or air attack into their borders that is an existential event would trigger a nuke. All the BS from Biden and some others may have triggered him to reiterate this policy.

Using a nuke may very well be Putin's way of saying "I'm taking my ball and going home" or "If I can't have it, no one will". I wouldn't call this rational behavior, but that's the direction things have been headed lately (ex.: the recent infrastructure bombings).

Part of the reason that Putin is making threats like this is that it's his nature, and part of it is that idiots like Blinken, Sullivan, and Haines cannot be assumed to be rational actors because they don't have the experience required to act rationally.