Nuclear Weapons

[wellendowed1911]

I have question hopefully someone can answer- in terms of nuclear weapon- what is the most vital access to have nuclear weapons- is it the technology or actually having the raw material?
I assume during WW2 only the U.S and Russia- and perhaps the Germans had the technology to actually know how to build one- but that was over 50 years ago- surely every developed county has physicists and or scientist who know how to build the weapon- so is it more so having the natural raw materials(enriched uranium) to build the bomb?

[royamcr]

Both really. They need the technology for the enrichment and the raw materials. And of course also the technology/guidance is needed to actually hit something other than lobbing it over to the next country blindly.

[JD Barleycorn]

The biggest problem with building the first weapon was understanding how it would happen. Some believed that the bomb could set the atmosphere on fire. So after they accepted the idea that it would work then they had to build it. That required all sorts of new technology to be invented and procedures created to make it safe (at least in the US). The next step was acquiring the fissionable material which seems to be the big sticking point today. That has been the hate and discontent with Iran. They were building centrifuges to enrich uranium. When I went to junior high school (about 1972) I found the declassified documents of the Little Boy bomb in the school library. Many pages were redacted but the main part was there. A modern government knows that it works, it just has to expend the money and time to make it happen.

Creating a workable, targetable, reliable missile delivery system is a different problem.

[wellendowed1911]

Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

The biggest problem with building the first weapon was understanding how it would happen. Some believed that the bomb could set the atmosphere on fire. So after they accepted the idea that it would work then they had to build it. That required all sorts of new technology to be invented and procedures created to make it safe (at least in the US). The next step was acquiring the fissionable material which seems to be the big sticking point today. That has been the hate and discontent with Iran. They were building centrifuges to enrich uranium. When I went to junior high school (about 1972) I found the declassified documents of the Little Boy bomb in the school library. Many pages were redacted but the main part was there. A modern government knows that it works, it just has to expend the money and time to make it happen.

Creating a workable, targetable, reliable missile delivery system is a different problem.

Thanks Royamcr and JD for shedding some light- but couldn't a develop nation detonate the weapon in the same manner the U.S did- drop it from a plane? Remember both bombs were dropped from bombers who just flew over the city and dropped the bomb.
Also, during wars- countries constantly fire rockets at other countries- for example during the persian gulf war Saddam had his army launch scud missiles- I know some were fired at Isreal and I believe some at U.S positions in Kuwait- so if a country had nuclear weapons could they not simply fire them from a ground based rocket launcher or am I just thinking too simplistic?
The reason why I ask this question was because back in the 80's when I was in school I remember my teacher saying that soon many other countries will have the ability to have nuclear weapons and that was 30 years and from the countries that had nukes when I was in school to the present day- only like 5 other countries have joined the "nuclear family"- it would just seem to me in present day 2013 that the technology- that has been around since the 40's hasn't spread o more countries.

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

Thanks Royamcr and JD for shedding some light- but couldn't a develop nation detonate the weapon in the same manner the U.S did- drop it from a plane? Remember both bombs were dropped from bombers who just flew over the city and dropped the bomb....

It's very difficult to penetrate the air defenses of a technologically advanced nation such as the U.S. by flying a bomber into its airspace. The probability of achieving success via such crude means would be quite low.

Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

Also, during wars- countries constantly fire rockets at other countries- for example during the persian gulf war Saddam had his army launch scud missiles- I know some were fired at Isreal and I believe some at U.S positions in Kuwait- so if a country had nuclear weapons could they not simply fire them from a ground based rocket launcher or am I just thinking too simplistic?

Producing large, first-generation nuclear weapons of the type we used in 1945 is something of a challenge in and of itself, but it's an almost incomparably more difficult task to accomplish a level of "miniaturization" sufficient to marry the weapon to a small missile, or to the final stage of an ICBM.

[Kloie]

Interesting... Do you guys think nukes will be used if we go for it against Korea? I saw on CNN today that we had warships off the coast doing maneuvers earlier this year?

[Sidewinder]

The hard part, these days, is coming up with the requisite quantities of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium.

Everything else is almost childishly easy. The basic theoretical design of a fission bomb is easily within the reach of a talented upper-division undergraduate physics student. (One of Freeman Dyson's students at Princeton, several years ago, did that exact thing, as a term paper. He got an "A". The paper was immediately classified by the DOE.)

The mechanical engineering is simple. The explosives, to form and confine the critical mass while the reaction gets going, are commercial off-the-shelf from Dow Chemical.

I am told that the necessary numerically-controlled precision machine tools are available straight out of the big Sears catalog.

Tom Clancy's Afterword to "The Sum of All Fears" has a good bit of relevant information.

[CuteOldGuy]

I really think nuclear weapons are a thing of the past. Even Kim Ill Son (intentionally spelled that way) knows that if he drops a nuke on South Korea, Japan or anyone else, the US will make sure that North Korea is uninhabitable for thousands of years.

The real threat is an EMP bomb. We wouldn't survive that. A nuclear attack would band us together, and EMP will set us at each other's throats.

[wellendowed1911]

Originally Posted by Kloie

Interesting... Do you guys think nukes will be used if we go for it against Korea? I saw on CNN today that we had warships off the coast doing maneuvers earlier this year?

Kloe good question and ditto to COG- however, I don't thnk nukes would be used by the U.S because let's say hypothetically N.Korea launched a nuclear attack- f the U.S was to launch nuclear counter strike they would run the risk of killing literally hundreds of thousands of innocent people in which the media would exploit and the U.S would be condemned- the one negatve aspect of having nukes is that you can't use them w/o killing masses of innocent people. Honestly if the U.S was to use nuclear weapons wouldn't they violate the Geneva treaty in which you are not supposed kill innocent civilians? The collateral damage would be way too high. This is a reason why I think even if Iran was to get a nuke they would never fire it on Israel because of the possible collateral damage. Jerusleam is regarded as the 2nd holiest city n Islam- there's no way Iran could launch a nuclear strike w/o the high risk of killing massive numbers o palestinians and/or destroying sacred religious sections of Jerusleam- keep in mind the nation of Israel is very small geographically -so it would be nearly impossible to launch a nuclear strike in any Isreali city w/o another city being affected from the aftermath..

However, isn't reasonable to assume that if every nation had a nuclear weapon their would be less wars? I believe in modern times there has never been a war between 2 nations who have nukes- the closes has been Pakistan and India and the fact that both have nuke are pretty much the reason why they haven't had a full blown war.

[JD Barleycorn]

The size and mass of a intial nuclear weapon will probably be much larger than our warheads. The warhead on a missile is relatively small compared to a gravity bomb. Then there is targeting. China was given the technology because they couldn't develope it on their own. Our missiles can strike a target within a few feet. Theirs? Who really knows but it would probably be measured in thousands of yards off target. Would it even work if they got it here? That is a very good question. We have be testing for reliability for decades.

Can they put it on a plane? Of course, or a ship, or a train, or a truck. The more transitions that you have to make the more likely someone will catch on to what you are doing. I can easily see a plain old tugboat and barge pushing itself through channel at Norfolk. They could detonate and take down a massive part of our Atlantic fleet.

How would we respond? Depends on many things but nukes will be last on the list. We have smart bombs to take out their command and control or leadership. We have bunker busters to get into their buried command centers. We have MOABs and Daisy Cutters to kill off tens of thousands of troops. If a nuke was used on US forces, a nuke was fired at the US (even if it failed), or a nuke used on Japan are probably the most likely reasons that we would go nuclear.

We have some anti-missile capabilities but it is still being tested. We also lost three years of heavy research and testing when the program was put on the back burner. Rather like when the US built it's first aircraft carriers and then we stopped building for seven years. The Japanese caught up and passed us in technology to our regret in the opening days of World War II.

More nuclear weapons, less wars... trying to make the gun analogy? We limit who gets guns but mental state (if they know), military discharge, or legal status (felon or illegal alien). If we knew who the crazies were we won't give them guns. Same with countries; Israel has nukes, England has nukes as do France and India. They are all democracies and their government has to answer to the people. The Soviet Union had plans for world domination and you can't do that with your country reduced to smoldering ruins. Now we worry about the crazies who follow a philosophy of Armegeddon to discover the 13th Iman like Iran, countries with governments that could fall like Pakistan, and governments that are being ran by a single individual without limits or reason or common sense like North Korea. The more nukes does not mean less wars. Some countries like Spain or Italy could have nukes if they wanted them but they don't...right now.

[LexusLover]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

It's very difficult to penetrate the air defenses of a technologically advanced nation such as the U.S. ....

Boy isn't it?

[LexusLover]

Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

I assume during WW2 only the U.S and Russia- and perhaps the Germans had the technology to actually know how to build one- but that was over 50 years ago- ...

Actually, the effort in WW2 was to build an "atomic" bomb .. the Germans' problem was their error was trying to build an atomic bomb, but were not getting there because their actual calculations were in the direction of a nuclear bomb, and without a scientific course correction they were not going to succeed in building an atomic bomb. Their "physics/math" was wrong.

An "issue" with North Korea is their propensity to sell there "stuff" ... whether it be materials or product. So even if they lack one component they may sell what they have to someone who has the missing component.

"The main commonality between the three periods of North Korea’s foreign dealings in missile technology is geographic: most of North Korea’s opportunities to sell or codevelop ballistic-missile technology have been found in the Middle East. But this observation cannot overshadow the extent of the change. Over the years, complete missile systems from North Korea reached Iran, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, and also Pakistan; Pyongyang now deals primarily with Iran and Syria in the area of missiles. While the earlier group of missile buyers included both Western-oriented states and their opponents, the current partners are, like North Korea itself, revolutionary states,
relatively isolated from the world community."

http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/npr_18-...trajectory.pdf

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by LexusLover

Boy isn't it?

Conflation of two completely different scenarios.

What do you think would happen if a rogue state such as North Korea tried to fly a bomber capable of carrying a nuclear weapon into our airspace?

That's the sort of possibility the thread-starter apparently intended to consider.

[LexusLover]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Conflation of two completely different scenarios.

What do you think would happen if a rogue state such as North Korea tried to fly a bomber capable of carrying a nuclear weapon into our airspace?

That's the sort of possibility the thread-starter apparently intended to consider.

I don't have the luxury of reading others' minds, nor do I limit the "scenarios" for delivery systems .... actually the architects of those buildings didn't either ... nor did the architect of the Empire State Building ... unfortunately neither factored in a fully fueled airplane just taking off ... they were considering lightly fueled incoming from a transAtlantic flight or international flight.

The more likely scenario for this country is a "loaded" tanker entering say ...

... Houston Ship Channel ... or a similar strategic target.

Or a commercial airliner loaded with women and children passengers, as the Iranians attempted against our Navy 30-40 years ago in the Persian Gulf. We would have the choice:

...... killing the women and children or taking a potential hit.

North Korea and the midget "running" the place are incidental ..

..... they have to run the gauntlet ... to make a strike by air. The real issue is:

what will even a "limited" nuclear war do to the condition of ....

..... the Earth and the world's economy. We have had neither for historical reference.

911 had a significant impact (ripple effect) on your economy and ...

.... we are still paying 12 years later.

That was peanuts in comparison. Does "Chernobyl" ring any bells?

[Texas Contrarian]

LexusLover, I don't fundamentally disagree with your assessment of any of the risks you mentioned. I do think a couple of things you listed should be among our biggest concerns.

It's just that I merely intended to answer the OP's specific question:

Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

Thanks Royamcr and JD for shedding some light- but couldn't a develop nation detonate the weapon in the same manner the U.S did- drop it from a plane? Remember both bombs were dropped from bombers who just flew over the city and dropped the bomb.

I just don't think such an attempt by a rogue state would have much likelihood of success.