Current Nuclear Weapons Development

Sferrin said:
How did you arrive at that?
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Standard rule of thumb for air burst explosive.

Multiple spread out over a area in a pattern is more effective then a single massive one.

Shockwave combining and the like will weak unholy damage to any none bunker structure caught in-between the blasts.

Only thing that can really nullify let alone stop is terrian.

Nagasaki was less damage then Hiroshima due to terrian despite Fat Man having 6 kilotons on Little Boy.

Same principal here.


Love a good big boom as much as the next soldier but often several smaller is better.

With several smaller bombs with modern INS accuracy allows you to put multiple targets under immensely threat if not out destruction far more reliably over dropping one big bomb in the rough center. 50 kilotons at 20 feet is far more dangerous to a target then a 25 megatonner at 10 miles. Putting 3 of those in the same city will cause more damage from multiple overpressure then a single 25 megatonner.

And will 100 percent destroy the targets in the city unlike the maybe probably of the bigger bomb.

Straight up there isn't a target that can take 50 kilotons bomb inside 100 feet. We been able to get INSIDE that accuracy for the last 30 years.

We don't need to destroy the city to get the factory or bunkers.

We can target those directly now and there is fuck all that you can do bout it besides shooting down the RVs.

There isn't a need for multi megatonner any more.

Not unless you going for straight up fuck you everything.

Which the US hasn't been looking at doing since the 70s.
 
Firefinder said:
Standard rule of thumb for air burst explosive.

Multiple spread out over a area in a pattern is more effective then a single massive one.
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Thought maybe you had something specific.

According to this calculator:

nuclearsecrecy.com

NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein

NUKEMAP is a website for visualizing the effects of nuclear detonations.
nuclearsecrecy.com nuclearsecrecy.com

I would take 24 200kt W80s to equal the "heavy blast" area to 1 B41. And even then it's not going to be equivalent. Peak pressure will be larger for the B41, thermal pulse will last longer, larger crater if ground burst, etc. Load a B-52 up and you get 20 W80s max. Or you get the equivalent of 48 just internally, the B-1B 72 and the B-2A 96.
 
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Josh_TN said:
Or they learned the alternative lesson: the only way to keep someone from fucking with you is to actually have a bomb.
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They haven't learned that people are willing to go to war to prevent them specifically from having a bomb. That is the lesson I was referring to.
 
Scott Kenny said:
They haven't learned that people are willing to go to war to prevent them specifically from having a bomb. That is the lesson I was referring to.
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I think that intent is pretty clear on Usrael’s part. Less clear if the U.S. administration actually has that conviction. The U.S. presence in Diego has emptied out.

If I were them I would develop a weapon as quickly as possible. It is the only way to forestall an open ended Israeli campaign that bombs Iran a couple times a year when a new threat is identified.
 
Josh_TN said:
I think that intent is pretty clear on Usrael’s part. Less clear if the U.S. administration actually has that conviction. The U.S. presence in Diego has emptied out.

If I were them I would develop a weapon as quickly as possible. It is the only way to forestall an open ended Israeli campaign that bombs Iran a couple times a year when a new threat is identified.
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Except that they don't have the HEU available. Which likely means that they don't have access to any Pu, either.
 
Josh_TN said:
Once you pass 20%, it gets pretty easy, and 60% is just a hop skip and a jump.
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My understanding is that once 5% enrichment (The upper end of U-235 enrichment for making fuel-slugs for thermal nuclear-reactors) is reached a lot of the hard enrichment work has been done.
 
NMaude said:
My understanding is that once 5% enrichment (The upper end of U-235 enrichment for making fuel-slugs for thermal nuclear-reactors) is reached a lot of the hard enrichment work has been done.
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That is also my understanding.

Example: You have 1000kg of raw uranium metal, it assays at 0.5% U235 (This is a little low for actual ore, but makes much easier math for an example). Simple math now says that you have 5kg of pure U235 and 995kg of U238(etc). To get 5% enriched, you need to sort out 900kg of DU and you now have 100kg of 5% LEU. To get 20% enriched, that 100kg goes down to 25kg. To get 50% enriched, that 25kg goes down to 10kg. 90% enriched out of that is 5.5kg.​
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That's about 1/3 of the amount needed for a standard critical mass of U235 with a U328 tamper (relatively standard big-nuke design).​
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Yes, 600kg of 60% enriched is enough to make a few weapons. That's ~360kg of pure U235 by math, roughly enough for 20 weapons. Ignoring any cheating with squeezing the heck out of subcritical masses, which requires a lot of math and probably testing.

This also explains why the US has so much DU lying around that we use it in ammunition.
 
Sferrin said:
Thought maybe you had something specific.

According to this calculator:

nuclearsecrecy.com

NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein

NUKEMAP is a website for visualizing the effects of nuclear detonations.
nuclearsecrecy.com nuclearsecrecy.com

I would take 24 200kt W80s to equal the "heavy blast" area to 1 B41. And even then it's not going to be equivalent. Peak pressure will be larger for the B41, thermal pulse will last longer, larger crater if ground burst, etc. Load a B-52 up and you get 20 W80s max. Or you get the equivalent of 48 just internally, the B-1B 72 and the B-2A 96.
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Wellerstein doesn't (IIRC) model the interactions of multiple shocks, which tend to strengthen blast effects.
 
Sferrin said:
Without knowing the timing, separation, etc. it amounts to hand-waving.
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Exactly, my point is that the whole thing is a mess to model so equivalence between low yield multiple and higher yield is not that easy to assess from the outside. That said, it seems like everyone has gone that way
 
whatismoo said:
Exactly, my point is that the whole thing is a mess to model so equivalence between low yield multiple and higher yield is not that easy to assess from the outside. That said, it seems like everyone has gone that way
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Mostly because increased accuracy and lower weight is preferred for most applications. Really, the only thing giant nukes are good for are hitting sprawling soft targets or extremely hard point targets, when you need the target to be inside the crater. (Or, if you're numerically limited by treaty, being able to kill more targets.)
 
Sferrin said:
Really, the only thing giant nukes are good for are hitting sprawling soft targets or extremely hard point targets, when you need the target to be inside the crater. (Or, if you're numerically limited by treaty, being able to kill more targets.)
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Witness the small number of new B61-13s, high yield precision weapons.
 
With a 340kt maximum yield setting the B61-13 is an intermediate warhead that is a sub-strategic weapon at best. The term 'high yield' should only really apply to megaton range weapons and above.
 
Grey Havoc said:
With a 340kt maximum yield setting the B61-13 is an intermediate warhead that is a sub-strategic weapon at best. The term 'high yield' should only really apply to megaton range weapons and above.
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So you meant things like dropping a 10Mt onto an airfield, so that the entire airfield is engulfed in the crater?
 
Grey Havoc said:
With a 340kt maximum yield setting the B61-13 is an intermediate warhead that is a sub-strategic weapon at best. The term 'high yield' should only really apply to megaton range weapons and above.
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Pershing 1A, basically Iskander in function, had a 400kt warhead. Even the B83, our biggest nuke at a paltry 1.2 Mt, isn't "high yield". Those would be bombs like the Mk17/24, Mk36, and B41.
 
How many multi-megaton warheads are even in service in the world's nuclear arsenals these days?

US Navy deemed W88 combined with Trident II's accuracy to be sufficient for hard targets, and even the higher yield MUNSTER topped out at 800kt.
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
US Navy deemed W88 combined with Trident II's accuracy to be sufficient for hard targets, and even the higher yield MUNSTER topped out at 800kt.
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That assessment and similar ones are pretty much discredited these days.

A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
NATO considered 200kt to be sufficient to knock out airfields during the Cold War.
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Standard anti-airfield loadout on both sides was 600kt, I thought? 200kt was usually more associated with anti-carrier warheads.
 
Grey Havoc said:
That assessment and similar ones are pretty much discredited these days.
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Are they? I'm not aware of any recent projects to greatly increase warhead yields (if anything, the opposite), and this is something that every other nuclear power appears to agree with, given the fact that the Russians have withdrawn their 20mT ICBM warheads from service, and the majority of Chinese DF-5s in service are MIRVed with 200-300kT warheads.

Reading Pavel Podvig's The Window of Vulnerability that Wasn't, the US greatly overestimated the hardness of Soviet ICBM silos, ranging from 5000psi to 15-25,000psi, with the reality being that a sizeable plurality of the Soviet ICBM force was in 30psi silos, with the hardest silos being hardened to 1500psi.

Grey Havoc said:
Standard anti-airfield loadout on both sides was 600kt, I thought? 200kt was usually more associated with anti-carrier warheads.
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It was the main driver in the development of the 190kT WE.177C.
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
Are they? I'm not aware of any recent projects to greatly increase warhead yields (if anything, the opposite), and this is something that every other nuclear power appears to agree with, given the fact that the Russians have withdrawn their 20mT ICBM warheads from service, and the majority of Chinese DF-5s in service are MIRVed with 200-300kT warheads.
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It now seems likely that Russia only temporarily (at best) withdrew those warheads from service. And the assumption by some western analysts that most of the DF-5s had lower yield warheads may have been a classic case of mirror thinking, not least given recent reports that a 3-4Mt MIRV (not just the already known older single warhead) has been progressively introduced by China to it's DF-5 fleet since the early 2020s.

And even before the advent of the Second Cold War and the effective collapse of the NPT, such building down the capabilities of nuclear weapons, and by extension national nuclear deterrents, was increasingly controversial in the western nuclear powers, not least because those programs were pretty much all failures in one way or another (in some cases deliberately, for example the B61-13 was only built in tiny numbers). The Obama and Biden administrations had a well deserved reputation for 'switch and bait' projects and other equally dubious tactics regarding defense programs.

A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
It was the main driver in the development of the 190kT WE.177C.
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If I am not mistaken, another major factor for that yield being picked for that variant was a shortage at the time of available nuclear material, as well as the usual Treasury shenanigans.
 
Scott Kenny said:
So you meant things like dropping a 10Mt onto an airfield, so that the entire airfield is engulfed in the crater?
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FWIW the 60 megaton Class A that SAC wanted in the late 1950s was wanted for 'runway cratering'. The usual weapons effects calculations give a crater diameter of 3km, which equates to the normal length of a runway for strategic bombers.

All of which I take to mean not 'put a crater on the runway' but 'make a crater so big there's no runway left. Destroying the aircraft and their associated facilities doesn't need anything like so much damage - and while I don't know the limit, AIUI the thermal effects of a nuclear burst will wreck a runway long before cratering takes place.
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
It was the main driver in the development of the 190kT WE.177C.
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Also the 170 kiloton maximum yield on the tactical versions of the B-61, and the derivatives thereof. NATO policy at the time was that 'tactical' nuclear weapons would be limited to 200 kilotons - the existence of a limit should of course alert us to the fact that the limit might otherwise be exceeded!

There was a shortlived weapons effects metric called 'Counter-Military Potential', which was defined as CMP = yield^(2/3) / CEP^2 and indicated effectiveness against point targets. It was criticised because it became dominated by CEP. But in reality, that was the point - you don't need a lot of yield if you're confident you'll actually hit the target.

All the discussion of extremely high yield warheads is of course irrelevant: the Columbia class will carry Trident D5, which by virtue of its design cannot carry a large unitary warhead of any yield.
 
Yellow Palace said:
ll the discussion of extremely high yield warheads is of course irrelevant: the Columbia class will carry Trident D5, which by virtue of its design cannot carry a large unitary warhead of any yield.
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Which arguably means that it is obsolete long before it hits the water.

Yellow Palace said:
Also the 170 kiloton maximum yield on the tactical versions of the B-61, and the derivatives thereof. NATO policy at the time was that 'tactical' nuclear weapons would be limited to 200 kilotons - the existence of a limit should of course alert us to the fact that the limit might otherwise be exceeded!
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That limit had apparently been dispensed with by the 1980s, ironically in part due to the Dual-Track (sometimes also referred to as Double-Track) policy I believe.
 
The Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N) program, reintroduced in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review to counter Russian and Chinese regional nuclear threats, gained legislative momentum with the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which mandated its development and initial operational capability by 2034 despite initial cancellation in 2022. Recent Congressional funding reflects bipartisan support.

60(a). Do you support the SLCM-N program as a necessary enhancement to U.S. theater deterrence?

Yes. I fully support the development of the SLCM-N program. SLCM-N will provide the President with enhanced flexible response options, which will support deterrence of limited nuclear use and high-consequence non-nuclear strategic attacks against U.S., allied, and partner vital interests.

60(b). Given Congressional backing and the deteriorating global security environment highlighted in 2024 testimony, what steps would you take to accelerate the SLCM-N’s timeline to meet the 2034 operational goal?

If confirmed, I am committed to seeking the necessary resources to develop SLCM-N to the Congressionally mandated IOC of 2034. Further, I am committed to working with select stakeholders, such as Strategic Systems Program, to accelerate facets of the SLCM-N program as applicable.
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Grey Havoc said:
cdrsalamander.substack.com

What Does the Expected New CNO Think?

well, just read his answers
cdrsalamander.substack.com cdrsalamander.substack.com
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Grey Havoc said:
Which arguably means that it is obsolete long before it hits the water.
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It's (no doubt intentionally) unclear how much of the original D5 will be in D5LE2 when that enters service in 2039. It's been described as not like the current missile, but also not completely new.

But the physics of stuffing a missile into a tube put certain restrictions on what you can do. You might wish to consider putting manoeuvering warheads or hypersonic gliders on top to help defeat terminal defences. But barring a major breakthrough in propulsion, you're not getting significantly better throw weight or range.

Improvements to guidance, penetration aids, and so forth, we can safely assume. Continuing to call the thing 'Trident II' and/or 'D5' seems to be poor politics, but doesn't look like D5LE2 is fully defined yet, much less funded.
 
Yellow Palace said:
All the discussion of extremely high yield warheads is of course irrelevant: the Columbia class will carry Trident D5, which by virtue of its design cannot carry a large unitary warhead of any yield.
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There's shenanigans that can be done there. Up to and including cutting the third stage in half so it no longer sticks through the bus, or deleting the 3rd stage entirely.

While we're ranting about the limitations of Trident design, we can include that there's no way to fit any current HGVs into Trident. All HGVs are far too long to fit in the tube.



Yellow Palace said:
Continuing to call the thing 'Trident II' and/or 'D5' seems to be poor politics, but doesn't look like D5LE2 is fully defined yet, much less funded.
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If it is a whole new missile, you have to compete the whole thing.

If it's "just" an "upgrade" you don't. See also AH-1 Cobras.
 

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