How accurate does a nuke need to be if it is launched from a ship offshore. You bring it over on a tanker and then launch a 30 foot boat from the tanker. then you sink it. No imagination or skill required to launch one. Building a small nuke is a different story and that is what is need for a missle, whether it is intercontinental or cruise. Fat Man and Little Boy were large weapons and not easily launched on the end of anything. It would make more sense to use a DC-3 or maybe a Falcon-20. But then, a suicide squad would actually have to learn to fly an airplane.
I asked this same question on another board some time ago… and a nuclear scientist said emphatically that NO. So unless you get info somehow beforehand you cannot prove thru the fallout or trace elements where the bomb material came from.
So a smuggled in bomb scenario means no clear and true retaliation target… which of course didn’t stop the US from lashing out on Iraq.
Well I did say almost certainly & I definitely don’t want to make over the top claims. However to play this game further: TIME is not the place to go for in-depth Military-Intel analysis.
Here is the president of Northrup Gruman saying it on record (of course he has a $$$ ax to grind)
http://www.northropgrumman.com/news/101003_rs_aei.html
Here is the Director CIA and Director DIA saying it on record (see below for thier biases)
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/02132003/world/12719.htm
This is what the FAS says on the matter:
Although the U.S. Intelligence community has provided the U.S political leadership and policy makers with the worst case analysis of the potential threat from Iran and North Korea, with rare exception this level of a threat has rarely turned out to be the historical reality. Furthermore, in most cases the military intelligence community overestimates the security threat posed by Iranian and or DPRK ballistic missiles.
This tells us the FAS says you are right & “the U.S. intelligence community” says I am. GD material. Not saying you, or anyone, who disagrees on this is ignorant or unintelligent – I could easily be wrong.
Hezbollah got Israel to ‘claim victory’ and hightail it out of Lebanon, and actually gave a bloody nose to the US military with their unconventional tactics. Why would they ever need a nuke?
I bet if anything a terrorist would snatch a traveling US nuke and redirect it. The real art to being a terrorist is to use the other countries’ weapons, faciities and laws against them. That makes for real terror.
The US uses space based radiation detection systems that aid in detecting fissable material as it’s being transported. Add in to the mix something like over 800 ground based radiation detectors stationed around the US (most concentrated around borders and major cities).
The point is, that if any of these sensors are tripped it obviously raises red flags. At that point, you get more intensive surveillance of the area by more detecting assets, with the goal being to triangulate the source in ever tighter radi.
Is it possible to smuggle fissable materials into the US? yes, anything is possible. However the longer you transport them (especially around major cities or near the border) the more likely you are to trip a sensor, and then NESTs will be crawling up your rear end with a flashlight and a geiger counter.
The comparison to a war on drugs isn’t really the same simply because drugs don’t emit the same kind of detectable particles.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
You are correct. People undergoing radiation treatments have set off these sensors. That is why a sea launch is the likely avenue.
I know satellites are used to detect nuclear explosions, but are you sure they can track a nuclear warhead during transport? I can’t think of any way to do it myself. This article seems to indicate that they mostly use optical satellite images to observe suspected weapons research/production facilities.
I don’t know if this would be an impediment.
Assume it’s a bluff, then nothing’s holding you back.
Assume it’s not a bluff, what’s preventing the nukes from being detonated even if you comply and at the same time, the terrorists making a getaway to some country where they know the US won’t attack (with missiles)? The US complying with the terrorists just delays the response, not eliminate it. The main reason to do that is for the terrorists to get away leaving the original host country to take the fall alone. Better, in such a case, to retaliate quickly.
The exception that I can think of, is this:
The US has a good idea of where the nukes are, but not an exact location. And they positively think, they can hold off the terrorists long enough to locate and neutralize these weapons. That’s the only scenario that I can concieve right now where the US might want to hold back retaliation initially.
North KOrea’s nukes, if they exist, are probably the size of a small house. It takes high technology that they don’t have to mount nukes on missiles that can reach the US.
India and Pakistan also are unable to deliver nukes by any means other than bombers, although they are working hard on making a nuke that can go on a missile.
scr4,
Gamma Radiation Spectrometer.
http://www.sandia.gov/LabNews/LN02-11-00/la00/arms_story.htm
“An ultra-low-power (25 mW), ultra-small (2.5 in3), gamma-radiation spectrometer was demonstrated on a small, radio-frequency security sensor platform by the Integrated Nuclear Materials Monitoring (INuMM) Program in July 1999. This technology allows for the long-term monitoring of gamma-radiation spectra using a small, battery-powered sensor platform. An INuMM-based, gamma radiation spectrometer has been used to demonstrate the continuous monitoring of spectra of nuclear warheads stored in containers. (2300, 2200, 8300, 1700, 5300, 8400) (NWSBU)”
It is but one sensor type out of quite a few, and the system is set up to err on the side of caution. This means that radiation/chemotherapy patients or those with prostate cancer treating radioactive implants can set them off. It’s important to understand that US efforts to monitor for this start beyond it’s own borders. It gives money and equipment and training to quite a few other countries to help them detect any wandering fissle materials in their territory. So it’s not just a matter of smuggling it into the US. First you have to smuggle it OUT of a monitored country in most cases, then you have to transport it to the US where there is more monitoring, then you have to transport it within the US to it’s destination, where there is still more monitoring.
It’s NOT a foolproof system. But it would be very difficult to move the material around the world from Russia (the most likely source) to the US without crossing multiple monitoring points. Any of which might raise a red flag. The closer you get to a major US city, the more sensors there are to trip. You could probably blow up parts of Montana without anyone besides NORAD noticing the thermal bloom and radiotion spike… but driving it into downtown NYC would be quite a bit more difficult.
A Sea Launch presents the same or more issues in terms of detection unless it’s a cruise missle attack. It’s hard to imagine terrorists getting a stolen naval vessel and a nuclear tipped exocet in range to launch, but then again, you never know.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
It doesn’t say this is a spaceborne detector. In fact I’m pretty sure this detector is designed to be installed at nuclear facilities or shipping containers, and transmits the readings by radio. (Why else would it have to be battery operated?) There’s no way an orbital gamma ray detector can see a lump of plutonium sitting on the ground, especially if it has enough shielding to be safe for transport (i.e. doesn’t kill the truck driver).
Your link talks about other satellite-based detectors, but one is a communications equipment, another is a nuclear detonation detector and the third is an optical/IR imager. None of thse can monitor radioactive material on earth.
WWII technology with Little Boy and Fat Man, 100 kiloton, tactical nuclear weapons, by today’s standards were not “high tech” and neither of them was the size of a small house. Tactical nukes from the 1960’s onwards were far more compact, but not significantly so.
It would probably be fairly easy to bring a cargo ship close inshore to just about any seaport of any country. There is far too much sea trade for any coastal security to be able to cover everything. An explosion outside a seaport would also create a tidal wave which would cause a different kind of devastation.
Forget missiles. A sneak attack by sea is the most likely scenario, and not necessarily directed against the United States. Israel is probably more likely to be the primary target.
In the final analysis, all of the responses to the OP are based on guesswork, so perhaps there will be peace on Earth instead.
I would think an attack on Israel is less likely because of the likely Israeli response. I believe it’s a powerful deterrent. The US response is less certain, although I personally think it would be similar to Israel’s. But the terrorists don’t know that because we’ve shown ourselves to be weak in the past, and judging by the debates on SDMB, I almost wonder why we bother to have nuclear weapons since many here think we should never use them even if they are used against us.
Might as well just sit down with bin Laden right now and discuss the surrender terms.
Are you sure of this? (that’s an actual question, not a rethoric one). Both countries have missiles, and it was my understanding that these missiles could deliver a nuclear payload…
I can’t be 100% certain because I’m sure that info is classified. I’m just going off what Strategypage and orbat.com and globalsecurity.org have said about it in the past. Strategypage in particular had an article about India’s attempts to manufacture nuclear warheads for their missiles.
October 29, 2003: India and Pakistan are putting more money and effort into their ballistic missile programs. This is because delivering nuclear weapons by aircraft is too unreliable. Aircraft can be shot down, missiles cannot. But missiles require smaller nuclear weapons, and bombs built to deal with the enormous stresses of missile launch and re-entry. It’s expensive, as well, for many missile tests need to be done not to test the missile, but warhead design (a warhead without explosives and radioactive elements is put in the missile, with radio gear aboard so that warhead performance can be monitored before it crashes into the ocean.)
I made a slight mistake on the yield of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. They were about 20 kilotons and quite bulky in comparison to modern tactical nukes with five times the yield, but could still fit into the little room.
With more countries manufacturing such devices, the likelihood of a group of fanatics gaining possession and using one or more such devices approaches certainty.
My estimate is sometime in the next 10 years.
No, It will not be the end of the world, but it will be the end of the world as we know it.
We’ve had quite a few “ends of the world as we know it” in the past decades, the trick is to get to know the new world. Personally I think the fear of terrorists nuking the USA is unfounded as of yet. The countries in the middle east (pakistan and india in particular) have had nuclear capabilities for some time but don’t use it, even if the relationship between these countries has been streched to the limit several times.
No-one takes nuclear weapons lightly, until now there has only been one country has been callous enough to use them against other human beings.
Have you noticed that the men who fear most about their women being adulterous are those who are adulterous themselves? I think the same rules apply here.
Like someone already stated, port security in the US is almost nonexistent and I think that if someone wanted to take a nuke to the US and detonate it they could already have. Never mind taking them into the big cities, detonating in the harbour or even on sea outside some city would have the desired effect.
Callous enough? Our use of those low-yield nukes saved over a million lives on both sides.
The moral relativism so fashionable these days is just beyond sickening.
Since people are talking here as if non US nations are the only ones who form a thret to the world in general; let’s have some fact.
As far as I know there is only one country that still uses openly WMD’s and that is the USA.
But maybe I’m mistaken and is - besides from the A bombs - the use of innocents wartoys like “Agent Orange” and depleted uranium not to be classified under WMD?
Does anybody ever read the reports about the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam and the DU used in the “Gulf War” on the Iraqi population. And the already showing effect of the DU used in the recent invasion and occupation?
I suppose this is for a majority of US’er not a crime since done by the USA.
Looking at the post adaher just made here above, adahar shall probably be most ready to classify Agent Orange and DU under “saving lives”.
Can it be a bit more cynical please, adahar.
Salaam. A