Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Nuclear "bunker busters": The Union of Concerned Scientists hates them
4 Comments:
By 
Georg Felis, at
Tue Apr 18, 02:23:00 PM:
One small problem with their cute animation. It assumes a large nuke. Nuclear weaponry can actually be designed to yield much less than their optimal bang, all the way down to large conventional yield of a few tons, such as the old Davy Crockett (.01 Kt).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield
The whole purpose of the nuke bunker buster is to punch the warhead far enough below ground that the fallout does not escape the hole, leaving the possibly intact bunker deep below radioactive rubble and inaccessible even if not destroyed. Blowing up surface access tunnels as they show only makes the enemy dig a new hole.
By 
, at
Tue Apr 18, 04:48:00 PM:
The Union of Concerned Scientists just lost a lot of credibility, at least among anyone who knows even a little about this subject.
1. The whole purpose of the nuclear bunker-buster program in to design a very small yield warhead "physics package" that can withstand the impact with the target and detonate after a delay. The U.S. already has plenty of one megaton bombs (1000 kilotons), as depicted in the animation. The purpose is to design something that penetrates and yields 10, or 5, or 1, or even less, kilotons.
2. Pentagon planners thought of bunker "entombment" long before the UCS did. The problem is reliably finding hidden access points. To be certain that you have successfully entombed the site will, in many cases, require U.S. ground troops at the target. And, as georgfelis suggests, then periodically restriking the target.
(We discuss the nuke vs. ground troop trade-off at Nukes or boots-on-the-ground?.)
So what will the U.S. do when it needs to strike a WMD bunker of unknown strength, inaccessable to U.S. ground troops, and must do so urgently in order to prevent the dispersion of the weapons inside? Such a scenario could happen any day now, if Al Qaeda successfully overthrows the Pakistani government.
The only option available now may be the use of large, old, dirty nuclear warheads, with all of the horrible consequences.
Westhawk
By Lanky_Bastard, at
Tue Apr 18, 08:13:00 PM:
We should be smart enough to do it better.
By Fabio, at
Fri Apr 21, 09:32:00 AM:
If the problem is the penetration depth, using a small nuclear warhead isn't going to do much good.
It may be useful in selected cases, but it isn't going to be the ultimate bunker killer some think RNEP will be.
The "self-tunnelling" bombs being studied now can penetrate much deeper and thus solve many problems. They may even carry a nuclear warhead if required.
