The US, The UN and Iraq

And to your last reply:

And do you think he'll manage to make many?

And do you think he'd survive the use of one?

When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the defense industry. The government did not prop it up to keep it going. I hired on at GD when it employed 31,500 and rode it down for five years of layoffs every Tuesday at 1:00 PM. You never wanted to answer any phone call to your cube that rang at 1:00 PM on Tuesday. They laid off 20,000 people before they got to me. So my personal experience is that Krupp strategy was not in effect.

My guess is that most defense contractors went out of business in the 1990s. A lot of the biggest players shrunk down to the point where they merged and shrunk more.

Also, from what I saw, the defense contractors did not hold much sway over the military. They were scrambling to do what the military said. The dangerous thing about the military is that if you make one officer mad, you can lose a multi-billion dollar contract in a heartbeat.

Tantor

Read this link and weep:
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/000064.html

Time Magazine poll shows a 51% for war.
Knight Ridder poll shows 2/3 for war.
Newsweek poll shows 2/3 for war.
ABC News poll shows 56% for war.

Of course, these are old. Here are some new ones:

http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm
Chicago Tribune poll shows 49% favor war, 33% against.

http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/transcripts/2002/dec/021217.pinkus.html
NPR poll shows 58% favor war.

http://www.publicagenda.org/specials/terrorism/terror_pubopinion6.htm
CBS/New York Times poll shows 70% favor war.
ABC News poll shows 64% favor war.

You were so right, Blatham. Finding links is fun. Was it good for you too?

Happy Elephant Dancing,

Tantor

Actually, Blatham, if nukes are used in a war it becomes a nuclear war. Israel is a small country, which makes it particular vulnerable to nukes. You would only need a handful of nukes to end Israel's existence.

We don't know what kind of delivery vehicles Saddam has. North Korea would be happy to sell them missiles and no doubt has. I wouldn't want to bet my life on Saddam not having missiles accurate enough to hit within a mile or so from intermediate range.



Nuclear deterrence was in fact the strategy the US used successfully to thwart a general war with the Soviet Union. Israel's nukes has convinced the Arab nations that they can not destroy Israel in a conventional attack. Nukes have a very inhibiting effect on would be attackers

Tantor

If there are no objections from the participants I'd like to spin the "military-industrial complex" comments off into a new thread. I think they may be out of place here and don't want to continue cluttering up this thread (which is quite lengthy already) with a side topic that could stand on it's own.

If there aren't any objections I'll split it off in the morning.

Of the two types of nukes we dropped on Japan, one was considered so simple that it did not require a test detonation. The other one required a test out at Trinity.

I think it was the Fat Man bomb that required testing and the Little Boy did not. As I recall one bomb was detonated shotgun style by shooting the two halves of uranium together to achieve critical mass. That was simple. The other method of achieving critical mass was by surrounding the two halves of the uranium sphere with shaped explosive charges, all of which had to detonate within nanoseconds of each other to detonate the weapon. That was considered tricky enough to require testing.

Tantor

There are conditions in all these poll questions but it boils down to going to war only with proof of WOMD and a lack of cooperation to declare and dispose of any weapons found. Some of the conditions of these polls are also that we have UN authorization and/or a coalition of allies. Pollsters too often frame their questions to get the results they want, some because they are experimenting with different ways to ask the question. It makes for a puzzling consensus that is difficult to interpret, that is, if you're opinion is driven by polls. Take a poll often enough and you get the bandwagon effect. Maybe it won't matter because with all the nukes flying here and there in this forum, it's beginning to look like World War III.

When I say Arab Muslim culture is inferior, there is no need for me to say that does not mean the Arab race just as there is no need for me to say it does not mean Arab cooking nor Arab textile weaving nor Arab calligraphy. I mean what I say, not what you would want me to say to make it easier for you to rebut.

Bigotry refers to a false sense of superiority to other religions. It was later applied to a false sense of superiority to other races. It is not bigotry if you are in fact superior. If you win the World Series, you are not a bigot to claim your ball team is superior. If you sell the most candy bars, you are not a bigot to claim your product is superior. And if you are the West, you are no bigot to claim that the Arab Muslim civilization is inferior.

You have a nice Christmas, Craven. Easy on the egg nog.

Tantor

It was the implosion theory that was the reason for the test.

tantor, I have worked with nuclear weapons during my four years in the US Air Force, and your description of how they work is not correct. c.i.

Cicerone,

You are simply wrong. That is how the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs worked. How modern atom bombs work, I'm not quite sure even though I was nuclear qualified to drop them. They didn't teach us the internal mechanism of the B-61 tactical nuke, just how to set it off. It is possible, even likely, that they have developed an improved detonation mechanism since WWII.

Tantor

For a simple nuke, its still implosion ... a reaction mass of fissionable material is divided into 2 or more components kept sufficiently far from one another to prevent spontaneous fision. By means of conventional explosives, the components of the reaction mass are driven together with great force. The combination then undergoes an an almost instantaneous and for all practicle purposes complete fission. A few kilograms of weapon grade nuclear material will suffuce. In fact, a crazy with enough fissionable material could make a serviceable regular nuke by placing about 10 Kg of properly shaped fissionable mass in a fitted pocket within a suitably reinforced, thick-walled concrete box (it would have to be a big, but not inordinately so, box ... easily contained within a basement) beneath, and open only to, a "Chimney" 10 stories or so high. Atop the chimney would be the other half of the reaction mass, shaped and sized to mesh satisfactorily with the lower mass. To this upper mass would be attached, sort of sabot-wise, a very heavy weight of just about anything of great density ... a few hundred Kg of lead will do fine, fitted to close tolerance with the bore of the chimney, held in place primarily by friction (though a removeable safety rod supporting it during assembly and preparation would be a good idea) The close-fitting "Plug" assembly would be fitted with a few readily available small-munition rocket motors, configured to thrust the assembly down the chimney at an accelleration of a few dozen G. The rocket motors should have sufficient fuel that they still produce significant thrust and accelleration for some brief period following the conclusion of the trip down the chimney. Fire the rocket motors pretty much simultaneously, and physics takes over. A "Thermo-Nuclear Device", a Hydrogen Bomb, is rather more complex; it is essentially triggered by regular nukes, with both engineering and physics of a more sophisticated nature.



timber

tim, "Sufficiently far apart" is very subjective, but you're close to describing it correctly. The fissionable material used to be incased in a lead ball, but that no longer is necessary with new technology. c.i.

Didn't want to be too precise with the recipe, c.i. I also left out the matter of anti-radiation shielding required to allow humans to live long enough to assemble such a toy. The point is, its possible to use astonishingly low tech means to achieve a multi-kiloton nuclear explosion. That cat is well out of the bag, and it ain't goin' back in. With the required materials, a bit of math, and a suitable building in which to work without being noticed, the Boy Scouts could build a Bomb. Apart from the reaction mass itself, just about everything other than the building will be found either at a building supply store or at a military surplus dealer. A militarily practical device is considerably trickier to make, but with the right technology its no real challenge to produce a "Tactical Nuke" which can be fired by a truck-towable conventional cannon having a range of some thousands of meters.

The midldle ground is pretty broad. Much of the hardware required to manufacture the components of a Bomb is available on the global market. With Computer Controlled Manufacturing Equipment it is possible to fabricate damn near anything for which detailed plans can be drawn. A fairly sophisticated, very deliverable Nuclear Device can be built by anyone with the money and the industrial infrastructure to do it. Pakistan, India, Israel, and probably South Africa have done so. So did France, Britain, China, and The Former Soviet Union. It has been done and done again. There are a number of nations easily capable of it from a purely manufacturing perspective.

Fortunately, the limiting factor is the reaction mass of weapons grade fissionable material. Production of the stuff is complex, staggeringly expensive, and pretty much can't be done without attracting attention. The prospect of a rogue state assembling for itself all of the components necessary to produce a useable weapon is the stuff of nightmare. Sadaam and those of his ilk must not be allowed to produce nukes. Another dimension has been added to matter; a rapid, relatively bloodless success in Iraq
would serve as warning to N. Korea. I'm sure "The Planners" are not unaware of this, and that accommodations and adjustments are being made to The Battle Plan. I further imagine there is a considerable bit of "private" Washington-Peking interaction taking place (but thats another subject). Chem/Bio agents are nasty to be sure, but have little if any military value. They are, however, horrificly effective against unprepared civilian popultions. They are much easier to produce than are nukes, and if the goal is simply to kill a large number of people over a fairly broad area, they'll do fine. Such capability must be denied to those reasonably to be expected the most likely to use such weapons. I believe there is a moral obligation to do so. Its a nasty job, but somebody's got to do it, and were the only one who can.

And I sure hope what happens in Iraq impresses hell out of N. Korea.



timber

tim, We used to handle those lead balls with uranium in it. How they managed that task alone would be a challenge for any scientist even today. As you say, making the fissionable material is very costly, and it's not the easiest science in the world - to contain exposure, and produce enough for a nuclear devise. We wore badges for radiation exposure, and had to keep the containers with uranium at least 15 inches apart. By the time it was ready for my discharge from the air force, we didn't have to handle them manually, and the weapons were more powerful and smaller after only four years in the late fifties. I'm sure the advance in nucleear weapons technology is way beyond what we had almost fifty years ago. When I first learned I would be working with nuclear weapons, we were told not to talk about our work outside our secured area. If we got caught, the fine was $10,000 and 10 years in prison. I'm sure that has changed too. At any rate, it was interesting work, and during my four years, I didn't see another Japanese-American in the same field. c.i.

I never played with "The Building Blocks" so to speak, but I was given some training in the tactical use of the critters. Never got to be around for the firing of a live one, though ... those tests predated my service. Did see some films, and there was quite a bit of "Book Learnin" involved, including an overview of the "Bigger Toys". A Few-Kiloton Nuke is bad enough. A multi-megaton Thermonuke's effect is nearly incomprehensible. It seemed surreal at the time, and seems more so now. I don't want crazies to have Nukes.



timber

tim, We also saw some "training" films on nukes, but I was never in the vicinity of a live explosion. I know I didn't have any ill effects from exposure, because I fathered to healthy, intelligent boys. c.i.

Tantor, I know exactly how those black boxes that armed the nukes looked like, because we had the responsibility to test those too. c.i.

Doctrine of Pre-emptive Was now in force:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/021226/226/2xhzy.html

Don't want to get too specific here, but it isn't even necessary to achieve critical mass for a nuclear device to do alot of damage. Absent the blast effects, both high and low energy radiation could kill, sicken and make large areas virtually uninhabitable. Even a modest nuclear device that had a lethal radius of only one city block could induce a panic that would make 911 seem tame by comparison.

This strategy isn't likely to be followed by any legitimate national government, because the price they would pay would be truely terrible. I doubt that there would be many who would not support massive nuclear retaliation if an American, or any other Western, city were attacked with such a device. Personally, I think that the United States has ample resources to totally destroy any national entity utterly without resource to nuclear weapons. 911 was a wakeup call. Yamamoto warned his masters of the danger of awakening the American giant, pay heed! We may currently be in love with PC, but the wrath of this People is not to be trifled with.

However, Al Queda and other terrorist groups might use such a device since we would have no obvious target for retaliation.