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Nukes - The ultimate weapon?
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| Jackson |
This idea was brought to me from reading on another forum (as much of a shock that may be to you :) ) It was a thread about "If aliens invaded, what would we do?". And obviously someone said we'd respond with nukes.
Now, nukes were developed in the 40s and 50s...we were developing them in leaps and bounds with higher and higher megaton bombs being produced. Now, it seems that not much has been developed in the way of nuclear weapons since the 60s (prove me wrong if i am) and the amount of money spent in the military has grown vastly. So my question to you is:
What kind of weapons would they be spending this money on?
It might just be the case that money was spent on developing nukes dues to WW2 and the Cold war. Are there any thoughts on this? |
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| St_Andrew |
Well, nukes are not really a powerfull weopon. They are good to completely destroy something, but really, thats not an effective weapon if you: 1. Want anything left when you have invaded the country 2. want to keep in phase with international opinion etc.
So it would be complete waste of money to develop anything more powerful imo. |
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| Yoepus |
| quote: | Originally posted by St_Andrew
Well, nukes are not really a powerfull weopon. |
They pack more punch then dynamite or C4 and can be used in arnaments just like every other explosive. One could imagine nuke bullets, and there is defintely nuke artillery out there. Current research in nuclear weapon has been to make it smaller and more deliverable by payload (i.e. artillery, tanks, etc).
Not just a big bomb, today you are talking about theatre nukes, not the strategic nukes of the Cold War. |
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| Dervish |
Yeah mini nukes are being developed, but when you have daisy cutters and so on I don't see the point really.
And all the money went on posh electronics to make stuff more precise. I was speaking to a Tornado pilot and when they first came out paveways (a bomb) with the full laser guidance package cost something like £2 million for each one!
:crazy:
Then you have US B2's or 2.2's as in $2.2 Billion a pop dropping amazing expensive cruise missles (also being launched from ships).
And all the tech to aquire vast amounts of information (targets) and condence it down into a useable format for small crews.
Not to mention integrating vastly differnet systems (in terms of age and hence tech, but also functionality, sometimes different nations) togeather tightly to share information.
Basicly information and accuracy is where the money went (and genral wastefulness).
Also dunno about the US but in Britain the MoD get ed over on most contracts (ohh what you want a slight change at this stage.... hmmm ok but it'll cost you double). Poor planning/specification is a big problem. |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| Well, yeah, strategic and tactical nukes are a pretty good weapon and currently the strongest we have. It is not really true that the research stopped back in the 60's because current nukes are much more powerful than the first ones, especialy H-bombs. Now, if aliens invaded, I don't think really that nukes would really save us..but that of course depends on the size of the alien invasion force. If they invaded with like 2 ships, then sure, they could be useful. Anyways, we seem to be moving towards precision weapons, like lasers and space launched missiles, which are not as powerful, but they're certainly effective and often more useful. |
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| josh4 |
It would be silly to say there haven't been any advancements in weapons technology since the nuclear bomb. The difference is the nuclear bomb is the last of these weapons to be used publically.
I don't know much about this field but I've heard of bombs that do what their nuclear cousins do minus some of the negative effects. Such as a bomb the same size of a nuclear one that will destroy everything organic (humans) but leave buildings and such unharmed. Also what about the whatever you call it bomb that takes out anything electrical (thinking Oceans 11). |
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| Jackson |
I guess i was thinking along the lines of "If something as destructive as the A-bomb was built 60 years ago, imagine what kind of weapon power is being hidden from us today by governments".
But i guess that when you can drop a bomb through a doorway from 50,000 feet up everytime, that would have seemed impossible 60 years ago. |
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| Belgian Bonzai |
| quote: | Originally posted by josh4
I don't know much about this field but I've heard of bombs that do what their nuclear cousins do minus some of the negative effects. Such as a bomb the same size of a nuclear one that will destroy everything organic (humans) but leave buildings and such unharmed. Also what about the whatever you call it bomb that takes out anything electrical (thinking Oceans 11). |
That would be the neutron bomb Trancer-X was posting about. It releases a considerable amount of neutrons which thermalise in air. When entering this cloud, thermal neutrons can be captured by the the nuclei of youratoms, which then form a new nucleus, this decays and the radiation that is released on that decay, destroys chemical bounds in your body, notably that of your DNA. A wall can stand having damage to one out of every say a billion billion atoms, but you with your DNA damage will develop cancer. |
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| Dervish |
| ^ are you a nuclear chemist or something? |
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| Belgian Bonzai |
| 1 year away from nuclear engineer :) |
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| Dervish |
Sweet, I'm gonna be working in that stuff too (not a nuclear engineer tho, electrical stuff). I've gotta go off on a course to do it though which is a pain in the ass.
Is it exclusively nuclear engineering your doing? |
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