Fox News today reported that the Pentagon has released a document outlining its plans for the development of a lean flexible highly mechanized military. The report focused on unmanned fighting jets 'carrying an array of high tech missiles.'

The thing that got me was the reporter who also said that the report indicates the use of 'nuclear tipped bunker buster.' He said this without batting an eye or drawing attention to it whatsoever, as though it was just run-of-the-mill ordinance.

Don't people understand the psychological import of not crossing the line of acceptance on the use of nuclear weapons? Small nukes aren't 'just like a regular bomb.' Talk about slippery slopes, not to mention the obvious problems associated with the development of smaller nuclear weaponry.

It is clear to me that in spite of their military brilliance thus far, this adminstration (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfovitz) is clearly out of touch with reality. The brouhaha with the ICC (they need to be spanked for that idiocy!) and now this shows that they are a menace to the future of civilization that cannot be taken lightly.

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The menace are the people who are out to destroy us, using whatever means they can.

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you actually believe this reporter nute? I haven't seen this yet, but I imagine he/she is getting raked over the coals.

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We already use nuclear-tipped nuker busters... it doesn't mean what you think. You put radioactive material (depleted uranium, I think) in the tip of a missle - it's stronger, and can go through more, tougher material. We've been using them for years. They don't go nuclear boom. They are slightly radioactive, and it did cause a little stir in Bosnia/Kosovo. But it's not like we're using baby nukes; they're just tipped with radioactive material. Yeah, it's still an ugly weapon (show me one that isn't), but it's not nuclear.

Leaky.

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Leaky rights, the reporter I think is referring to depleted uranium. Now everyone knows that depleted uranium is perfectly safe. Nobody in the Balkans is suffering from cancer as a result of its use, and no one in the NATO armed forces is complaining to the High Command about a rise in cancer rates amongst the troops. Depleted uranium is fine mmmmkay.

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Depleted uranium is self-sharpening, I think, which makes it useful (plus it is very dense). It isn't a nuclear bomb, like the radiological bomb that Padilla was accused of plotting to make, as there is no nuclear chain reaction.

DU is dangerous though, particularly the dust that is left afterwards. US servicemen will be suffering from increased cancer rates already I should think.

If the reporter said 'nuclear' he is a fool.

Last edited by Smug Git on 07-15-2002 at 08:43 AM

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
If the reporter said 'nuclear' he is a fool.

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no he's not. He's a hack

and yes DU is defintely dangerous.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Phil
Leaky rights, the reporter I think is referring to depleted uranium. Now everyone knows that depleted uranium is perfectly safe. Nobody in the Balkans is suffering from cancer as a result of its use, and no one in the NATO armed forces is complaining to the High Command about a rise in cancer rates amongst the troops. Depleted uranium is fine mmmmkay.

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of course its a mistatement, but he's a journalist. What do you expect?

N.B. note he's also a journalist working for the Dirty Digger.

P.S. Leaky I was not having a go at you. I was just being deliberately sarcastic about DU because NATO are still claiming its safe even when their own soldiers are dropping like flies from leukaemia (sp?)

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Micro Nukes - a buyers guide

Of course, I don't know if this reporter was clued up but both the US and UK defence establishments are both developing 'micro nukes' for 'bunker busting' and high precision attacks. And YES this means full on fission/ fusion warheads NOT DU.

I think 'Micro' means sub 20 kt yield (small in modern day thinking - although about 3 kt bigger than the 'fizzle' of Nagasaki, about the same side as what were referred to as 'battlefield' nukes in the Cold War).

The thinking is that current bunker busters are by necessity small warheads (bigger the warhead the less accurate they will be) - the largest weigh in at about a ton of high ex (J-DAMs). Even these have proved pretty 50/50 in winkling out Al Qaeda cave complexes and even Saddam's more well protected bunkers and hangars; FAE (Fuel Air Explosive) has to be dropped by a drogue chute and is a massive 'area effect' weapon (actually probably more - explosively at least - devasting than a micro nuke), what other options are there? (The Sovs used Sarin gas to 'smoke out' Afghan cave complexes in the eighties, but even the US wouldn't stoop to that... (would they??)

Whereas a half ton micro nuke (give it a cute name to make it sound cuddly) can provide 20,000 times the explosive force of a traditional bunker buster with the same accuracy as a convential precision weapon. And if it's a 'clean bomb' fallout should be kept to a minimum (well, who gives a toss about Arabs in the Pentagon anyway if you get my drift). Both the Nevada and Aldermaston nuclear test centres have recently undergone expensive refits to conduct this 'low yield' production.

The other point on 'micro nukes' is that they are also looking to have uses on a 'strategic level'. Even if Saddam manages to cobble together a nuke of his time by the time Uncle Sam kicks his ass by the (now widely touted date) end of February and uses it, it is highly unlikely to be anything above a 'Hiroshima' ie 25kt - which will take out 20 luckless city blocks in Tel Aviv presumably and kill 20 - 60,000. Anything in the current Western nuclear arsenal would be extremely disproportionate (nuclear cruise as a 500 kt warhead, and that's a wiener/ Trident warheads are at least 1 MT yield and each missile has 12 I think) and would turn Bagdhad into a glass puddle and hundreds of thousands would die.

Hence, we're brushing up our low yield Weapons of mass destruction in case Saddam uses a nuke (or indeed a chemical weapon) on civilians so we can respond proportionally and kill 'only' 10,000 Bagdhadis and make Saddam's moustache fall out.

Whoeee, pass the sick bag.

(Final weapons pedantry - DU isn't used on most bunker busters, they're hardened with tungsten alloy and have a delayed impact fuse - a rocket motor fires on imapct so the missile buries itself into the rock/ concrete before exploding. DU is most commonly found in the FDSU rounds fired by NATO Main Battle Tanks and the 30mm Vulcan cannon ammo on the A-10 aircraft. Many thousands of rounds were fired in the Gulf.)

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git
Depleted uranium is self-sharpening, I think, which makes it useful (plus it is very dense).

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Bunker Busters are a real concept. The idea is that they would
1/ be able to penetrate deep into the earth where powers would otherwise be able to hide chem-bio stashes

2/ they would destroy the chem/bio stashes without a trace so as to keep (esp bio) materials from leaking and wreaking havoc

3/ b-c they are deep underground the environmental impact would not minimal akin to underground testing (vs. atmospheric testing)

So, they are thinking of uses for this weapon to accomplish a goal.

Is it a psychological threshold that can't be crossed? arguable. definitely arguable. Nuclear weapons were built to be bigger and badder than ever. They were built to be unusable. T hey were built to maximize fear. They could have, however, evolved toward tactical battlefield nukes which could have actually had purpose. *shrugs* it's possible. just think out of the box for a minute.

we have a terrible habit of classifying things together out of habit. For example--it makes little sense to classify Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons together. T hey ahve different dissemination needs, different effects, etc. etc. They aren't for any purpose the same. The concept of putting a thermonuclear device in the same category with tear gas is bizarre. of demonizing them on the same level: it makes no sense.

and sometimes, it actually leads to more death. There have been times that incendiary agents have been used to BURN people out of caves rather than tear gas, because under some interpretations tear gas is an irritant and its use could be considered a violation of international law (although the US has never interpreted it as such)

all i'm saying, at the risk of getting my ass kicked, is be careful about over-simplifying and classifying things together in big lump groups. Sometimes you do more harm than damage and take away useable resources that could more humanitarily accomplish a goal.

MOrality does not lie in a weapon, it lies in the use of that weapon. A weapon is not inherently moral or immoral, its all in how it is employed.

What is a weapon of mass destruction? in my opinion it's defined by its effect, causing mass destruction. Most weapons could be used to do that if wielded properly. Certainly some weapons and they delivery systems that they are mounted on could ONLY be used for mass destruction, but this is rare.

It's an old argument, but I think a good one. anyway. i'm going to bed now.

Last edited by Indigo on 07-16-2002 at 07:20 AM

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There would be an explosion in anti-US sentiment worldwide, pressuring othert governments to distance themselves from the US, I would have thought. I don't know if that is seen as a bad thing by the US, or a minor irritant.

Lets hope that Israel don't follow the lead in their own inimitable style (like they did with the 'War on Common Sense').

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quote:

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Originally posted by Indigo
Bunker Busters are a real concept.

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I think that the Iodine and Strontium istopes might be in the region of 70-300 years at a guess; very long halflives (millions of years) would be safer, very short (seconds) would be OK too (as long as you weren't' nearby during those seconds. Of course, when unstable nuclei decay, they often decay to another radioactive istope, so the whole decay chain has to be considered. Iodine is bad because it's chemical properties are such that it is taken up by the body and concentrated in the thyroid, for example; I think that some of the others might have similar unpleasant effects on humans.

Alpha particle emitters is dust form are the worst; the alpha particles are so strongly ionising that they cannot penetrate skin (air range is a couple of inches only) but if ingested (unavoidable if there is a lot of it about as dust, or in the food chain) that strong ionising takes place in live cells (rather than the outer skin cells) and that is bad mojo, oh yes. Beta is also bad inside the body; gamma radiation (at a guess) wouldn't be much worse inside than outside the body, but can't really be easily shielded against.

I believe that the Chernobyl explosion has killed a lot of Ukranians (and pretty much all of the 'volunteers' shoveling the stuff back into the hole, and they only had 45 seconds exposure); the fall out was found in North Wales, for example (milk from cows there was poured away), so particulates can spread a pretty long way.

I am pretty pro-US, but I'd be pretty fucking pissed off with them if they let the nucelar genie out of the bottle again, I think.

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