Last night while listening to BBC Worldwide on the Net while doing a bit of harassing over on another Board I heard a ref. to a 'secret' meeting in Nebraska re. the development and use of mini-nukes for 'bunker-busting' and protesters being kept at bay. Figured I'd see a bunch of articles re. the matter in the morning and, son of a gun, the only news sources addressing the matter were non-US! So here it is ... From the BBC: US experts debate 'mini-nukes' And for some background: Q&A: America's new nuclear weapons :m: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! :m:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/08/06/hiroshima.anniv.ap/index.html here is an article on the topic from CNN.com Bush wants more useful practical nuclear weapons. Can you immagine the fallout from this? Do you think when the reports of this kind of thing being used in combat reach other nuclear powers they are just going to shrug and say "Oh it was only 5 kilotons, we'll let that go by" what in gods name is he thinking? More practical nukes mean nukes that are going to be more likely to be used in real situations, and ill be damned if i didnt think that nobody wants nukes to be used! But i guess i was wrong, seems the bush administration has a hardon for nuclear war.
I would also like to point out that one of your links misquotes Al Gore. It reads clearly this could not have been what Al Gore said because he is an American. What he DID say is notice the altered spelling of program (or programme) spelling it with the additional m and e imply that Gore speaks with a British accent, which he does not. also, i dont know what you mean by "Mini-Bush" in the topic line. We Americans pride ourselves in almost alwayse electing the taller candidate.
What can I say other than it was reported by the BBC ... So what do you expect? Colonialese? Re. Mini-Bush ... His father's son and shorter than the old man. :m: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! :m:
Oh you may have invented the language, but I'm willing to bet that we have created more printed and recorded material that contains our version of English than you have... which in a round about way means we win.
SpyMoose, I suggest you check my profile before you make any more ridiculous statements. :m: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! :m:
The nukes have been in production for over a year. All that is needed is the final assembly*... like loading a gun. *(illegal by international treaty)
Yep. Only had to decide 'who, when, where'. :m: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! :m:
These weapons really aren't anything new. The W-80 warhead, which surface penetrators will likely be encasing, was designed in the early 1980s as a tactical warhead for cruise missiles and gravity bombs. For a while, it was the nuclear loadout for the venerable RGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile, the AGM-86 ALCM, and the B61 tactical bomb. The W80 is a very flexible device because it has a very wide yield selection, starting with a relatively paltry 0.3 kilotons and extending to close to 300kt. Many yields are selectable at graduated intervals throughout this range, and no uploading/downloading of fuel is required for any range. With such a small minimum yield it holds the title as the smallest published weapon in current stockpiles, and the second smallest ever produced (second to the W54 0.1kt tactical bomb for the Davy Crockett 88mm reciolless rifle). What's being developed now are hypervelocity encasements for these warheads to allow them to penetrade hardened targets, and deeply at that. Reseach in this vein isn't new either. It started after the first Gulf War, where surface penetrators first showcased their worth as desireable pursuits for modern militaries, since every tinpot dictator tends to bury his stuff to try to make it untouchable. Research started in 1992 and continued until the present day. It's just getting publicity now because surface penetrators have reached a level of refinement necessary to bury a weapon deep enough to contain its blast. Right now all we have is the B61 mod 10 tactical bomb. It's small - the size of a standard Mk. 83 1,000 pound bomb, and deliverable as such (A F/A-18 can carry four of them, two under each wing). It can be gravity dropped, parachute deployed with airburst via radar altimeter, or surface bursted with a laydown parachute. But even gravity dropped from 30,000 feet it won't penetrate more than a few dozen feet of dirt, less of rock or concrete. Hardly enough to contain even a 300 ton blast. That's why new casings are needed. As far as these supposedly new weapons go, it's nothing to be concerned about. This isn't anything new, really. Battlefield weapons have been heavily reserached and sought after since the 1950s. Last time it was seriously looked at was in 95 or 96 or so, at the suggestion of the Clinton administration. Now the difference is that there's a line-item for it in the budget ahead of time, and that alone seems to be making people nervous. The proliferation worries have failed to sway me yet. The suggestion that the US is pulling a "do as we say, not as we do" is somewhat correct. However, the US is already a well-established nuclear power with a large stockpile that's been historically committed to the defense of more than a few notable nations. We have a duty and an interest in maintaining the integrity of that stockpile, and if that means replacing aging weapons with newer more contemporary designs, so be it. We won't be adding any new capability to the inventory, we're just changing the flavor. Other nuclear nations do the same thing on nearly a continual basis. Does anyone really beleive that there isn't an army of Indian or Pakistani scientists working on revising their designs, making them more applicable to the battlefields they foresee in the future? Don't forget that North Korea is another matter entierly. That's introduction of new nuclear capability where there was none before; and that they've not done a whole lot to demonstrate to the world that they'd maintain them in a responsible manner. This is kneejerk alarmism by our attention whoring media more than anything else. No they're not.
Stokes Pennwalt, so are they destroying the old nukes and replacing them with these? Or are they continuing on making more? US agreed on not creating any more nukes along with other nations.
We're not making more nukes, but we're not destroying our older strategic warheads yet either. Our enduring stockpile is in quantitative stasis. Dismantling won't begin until START II is ratified by the Senate, which won't happen until it's ratified by the Russian Duma. I'm not aware of the specific state of the START II at the moment.
And we do expect everybody else to renounce to develop nuclear weapons, in order for us to have the monopoly if it?
