Whoops, slip over Osirak. I must admit the “given that it’s in Iraq” line made me shoot tea out my nose.
But my point is still valid. Attempts to militarily disrupt the Iranian nuclear weapons program (for that is what it is) are highly unlikely to succeed. And they will, of course, screw up America (and, by extension, Europe and the rest of the West’s) relations with the Middle East. For example: today in the Independent (a British broadsheet) the commander of British forces in Basra said that the Iranians could take the city “with twelve mullahs and a sound truck”, despite the British troops there. Even if this is no more than sabre-rattling, it will alienate both the Muslim world and a good portion of reasonable people throughout the rest of it. And sabre-rattling can be dangerous when you have no sabre. The Iranians have the whip hand in this situation, and they know it. Such heavy-handed tactics can only help their diplomatic situation, and any attempt at military action would almost certainly, IMO, be a costly fiasco.
In that case, any country that wants to has a free pass to attack America, because we already have nukes, and used them as well.
As if we would care.
First you assume they would care; if they are angry or afraid enough, they might not. Second, given that America has become a trading and not a manufacturing nation, it would hurt us much more.
Just out of curiosity, what would the effect of dropping a 100kt+ bomb on a Nuclear Development Facility be? Judging by the lists of data posted, I gather that such a Bunker Buster would be unable to penetrate beyond a few hundred feet, at best, and would thus probably be far higher than the stored nuclear material when it detonates.
Would it sterilize the nuclear waste - or just spread it with the winds?
Incidentally, I don’t think they’ll attack NYC first. My hunch is that they’ll attack Israel first. Not only are they the only formidable enemy in the region, but they know that a large group of Americans are tied to Israel with their hearts and souls. Then after the Jews have been annihilated, the people of Iran can band together and really go for America’s bared throat.
I knew one was being researched …I assumed we have one. Appearently I was incorrect…thanks for being so nice about pointing that out in such a tactful way.
BTW, the weapon I recalled wasn’t an ICBM-launched RV…it was basically a hardened case nuke, similar to a conventional ‘bunker buster’ bomb simply with a low yield nuclear weapon and dropped via aircraft. As the program seems to have been halted for political rather than engineering reasons…well, I’m not the only ignorant one it seems.
I’m unsure what you mean exactly here to be honest. Are you saying the weapons EFFECT would be in the 100kt range…or the weapon itself would be in the 100kt range? Because the bomb proposed for the ‘nuclear bunker buster’ seems to be at the lower end of the scale (i.e. in the 5-10kt range…though you can ‘dial’ it up to the 300kt range if you wanted as its basically just a modified B61 warhead).
Granted the EFFECT would be pretty spectacular…but far less than an air burst of the same weapon. Certainly if the target is in a populated area it would be pretty massive destruction…but how much more than dropping one of the conventional MOABs (except for the radiation I’m guessing THIS would be pretty spectacular in a populated area as well)? I’m sure it will be somewhat larger…but do you know exactly how much more destruction we are talking about? I can’t believe its all THAT much with the range of weapon they seem to have considered anyway.
As to the radiation, my understanding was that these weapons were relatively clean…i.e. the radiation effect wouldn’t be long lasting (though the initial radiation would be fairly high)…i.e. hours or perhaps days basically fading to background reasonably quickly. If thats wrong then simply pointing that out to me would be enough.
Ok…I agree.
Um…I didn’t say tactical nukes were cleaner than strategic? Where did you get that impression? I said the weapons I recalled were relatively clean nukes…i.e. the residual radiation would fade quickly after the initial blast.
IIRC the background radiation of even the two bombs we dropped in Japan went away relatively quickly. Of course, anyone exposed DURING the attack got the full dose with all the nasty consequences you pointed out earlier.
Anyway, yes…I was wrong (ignorant as you pointed out). My impression was that we indeed have a nuclear BB type weapon with similar ground penetration capabilities as our conventional weapons of similar type (in rhetrospect I can see where the engineering would be more difficult as nukes are more fragile). In addition I would have thought the explosion would be (mostly) contained in the ground, with the shock basically directly against the target. You seem to be indicating that the ground would not contain the blast, and doing a google search seems to bear this out since though the size of the war head is relatively small the ground penetration is also relatively shallow.
Thanks for fighting my ignorance.
I don’t see it happening conventionally OR nuclear. If it does happen it will be conventional though. I’m sure it will be great comfort to those killed that they were blown to bits or burned up with conventional weapons instead of nukes…
Just to make sure, does this mean you are opposed to the use of nuclear armaments on any target under any circumstance?
Also, I could’ve sworn that there was another news story a few years back that was very similar to this, about plans (in a similar stage of contingency planning) to use nukes on… North Korea was it? Does anyone else remember this?
(And FWIW, I believe a lot of the howls of anguish on this thread are not necessarily from the plans themselves, but that the article seems to imply that the government is eager to use them. A lot more outrageous, and a lot harder to prove.)
Actually, the Iranian population by and large doesn’t detest the U.S. or our values. From everything I’ve read, the Iranian people are probably one of the more pro-American populations in the Middle East. Of course, the Iranian people are also pretty nationalist (or patriotic, to put it another way), so a sustained (possibly nuclear) bombing campaign would likely be an excellent way to win over their hearts and minds…
If he’s not, I am, with the exception of retialiatory action. Even then you have to ask yourself, do you really want revenge that badly?
No, the plans are quite enough. Anybody who takes plans beyond the contingency stage to actual discussion and advocates actual usage and implementation of nuclear weapons in this day and age is off their rocker.
Destroying a target buried 1,000 feet into rock would require a nuclear weapon with the yield of 100 kilotons. It’s true that some variants of the B61 are variably yield down to fractional kt, but the B61-11 is a single option high yield (>300kt) weapon. Far from the image of drilling down through dirt (an impossible task for an RV) it hits and blasts out a gignormous crater. Some of the proposals for ground penetrating weapons have relied on a sequence of smaller yield strikes, but the result is still a lot of activated material cast into the air.
Of course the area of effect would be less than that of an air burst by virtue of the blast wave being able to propogate futher before being damped by ground effects; this isn’t even in question. The primary radiation effects and resultant thermal pulse will be less attenuated, however. Get the notion out of your mind that this thing is going to nuzzle its way into the ground and make a big burp that will be contained by soil and rock; it will, instead, evacuate a large bowl of incinerated ground material, and the deeper it goes the more material it will elevate as fallout.
“Relatively clean” is a relative term. Modern nuclear weapon are much “cleaner” than early single stage atomics by virtue of being more efficient; the radioctive shells are almost foil-thin, in comparison to the wastefully thick mass of uraniumin Little Boy or even the plutonium imposion shell of Fat Man, and the use of fission boosting via incomplete fusion of tritium adds additional yield with little additional radioactivity. However, the neutron flux will serve to activate otherwise inert elements in the soil creating a heavily radioactive fallout. This, in turn, will be consumed and inhaled, resulting in both immediate radition poisoning and chronic disease like leukemia. There is no such thing as “clean” nuclear weapons; even Herman Kahn, the advocate for survival after a nuclear exchange (see On Thermonuclear War) accepted that there would be elevated levels of radioactivity for an extended (decades) period of time.
From your own statement, which I quoted in the original post:
See?
I apologize if my response was unduly harsh, but in the single paragraph I quoted there were a number of implied and explicit errors and misrepresentations. The idea of using nukes in any but the most dire of circumstances harkens back to General [del]Turgidson[/del] LeMay and his campaign to wipe Cuba off the face of the Earth during the Cuban Missile Crisis, an event that would have resulted in the virtual annihilation of two superpowers and who knows how many allies and satellites.
Iran was long noted as one of the more progressive regimes in the Middle East (which may nonetheless be damning with faint praise) and it took the US backing the repressive Shaw government to encourage the populace to follow the mullahs into a dictatorial theocracy. It’s commonly known that people have chafed under the Ayatollas and that political unrest is fermenting; it’s certain that the population has a great thirst for Western popular culture despite the restrictions and penalties impose from above. The best thing we could bomb Iran with is Britany Spears albums and Chuck Norris movies. While this might be seen as some as crimes against humanity (oh, the humanity) it would certainly result in fewer negative reprecussions among the populace…at least until they evolve the same sense of revulsion for Hollywood detritus that the majority of America has. Oh, wait a minute…never mind.
As for John Mace’s wager, I wouldn’t even consider it a possibity under any previous Administration. Even Nixon, at his most paranoid, wasn’t itching for the nuclear option (and to hear Kissinger talk now, Big Kiss would have forestalled that in some kind of Oval Office mutiny anyway), and despite his rhetoric Reagan never sought an exchange or seriously prepared options for a first strike. But the current occupant seems increasingly prone to irratic, short-sighted, and highly illogical decisions born, I have to assume, from a distrubingly messiah-like view of the world and his place in it. Call it Manifest Destiny with hymns and the nuclear option.
