Hitlery and nukes
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We attacked Iraq even though they didn't attack or threaten us.....
/popcorn
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Oh, and to the best of my knowledge, we have not used Nuclear bombs of any sort, including tactical nukes in either the Iraq/Afghanistan war fronts. We do use bunker busters, but they are not loaded w/ nuclear materials.
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darkelvis;216265 wrote:
read boys. bunker busters are a low level tactical nuke.
The bunker busters that we use are only conventional and not nuclear. In fact, a nuclear penetrator was never built and all funding for developing a nuclear bunker buster was removed in 2006.
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http://science.howstuffworks.com/bunker-buster1.htm
One way to make a bunker buster heavier while maintaining a narrow cross-sectional area is to use a metal that is heavier than steel. Lead is heavier, but it is so soft that it is useless in a penetrator -- lead would deform or disintegrate when the bomb hits the target.
One material that is both extremely strong and extremely dense is depleted uranium. DU is the material of choice for penetrating weapons because of these properties. For example, the M829 is an armor-piercing "dart" fired from the cannon of an M1 tank. These 10-pound (4.5-kg) darts are 2 feet (61 cm) long, approximately 1 inch (2.5 cm) in diameter and leave the barrel of the tank's cannon traveling at over 1 mile (1.6 km) per second. The dart has so much kinetic energy and is so strong that it is able to pierce the strongest armor plating.
Depleted uranium is a by-product of the nuclear power industry. Natural uranium from a mine contains two isotopes: U-235 and U-238. The U-235 is what is needed to produce nuclear power (see How Nuclear Power Plants Work for details), so the uranium is refined to extract the U-235 and create "enriched uranium." The U-238 that is left over is known as "depleted uranium."
U-238 is a radioactive metal that produces alpha and beta particles. In its solid form, it is not particularly dangerous because its half-life is 4.5 billion years, meaning that the atomic decay is very slow. Depleted uranium is used, for example, in boats and airplanes as ballast. The three properties that make depleted uranium useful in penetrating weapons are its:
* Density - Depleted uranium is 1.7 times heavier than lead, and 2.4 times heavier than steel. * Hardness - If you look at a Web site like WebElements.com, you can see that the Brinell hardness of U-238 is 2,400, which is just shy of tungsten at 2,570. Iron is 490. Depleted uranium alloyed with a small amount of titanium is even harder. * Incendiary properties - Depleted uranium burns. It is something like magnesium in this regard. If you heat uranium up in an oxygen environment (normal air), it will ignite and burn with an extremely intense flame. Once inside the target, burning uranium is another part of the bomb's destructive power.These three properties make depleted uranium an obvious choice when creating advanced bunker-busting bombs. With depleted uranium, it is possible to create extremely heavy, strong and narrow bombs that have tremendous penetrating force.
But there are problems with using depleted uranium.
Tactical Nuclear Weapons
The problem with depleted uranium is the fact that it is radioactive. The United States uses tons on depleted uranium on the battlefield. At the end of the conflict, this leaves tons of radioactive material in the environment. For example, Time magazine: Balkan Dust Storm reports:NATO aircraft rained more than 30,000 DU shells on Kosovo during the 11-week air campaign… About 10 tons of the debris were scattered across Kosovo.Perhaps 300 tons of DU weapons were used in the first Gulf war. When it burns, DU forms a uranium-oxide smoke that is easily inhaled and that settles on the ground miles from the point of use. Once inhaled or ingested, depleted-uranium smoke can do a great deal of damage to the human body because of its radioactivity. See How Nuclear Radiation Works for details.
The Pentagon has developed tactical nuclear weapons to reach the most heavily fortified and deeply buried bunkers. The idea is to marry a small nuclear bomb with a penetrating bomb casing to create a weapon that can penetrate deep into the ground and then explode with nuclear force. The B61-11, available since 1997, is the current state of the art in the area of nuclear bunker busters.
From a practical standpoint, the advantage of a small nuclear bomb is that it can pack so much explosive force into such a small space. (See How Nuclear Bombs Work for details.) The B61-11 can carry a nuclear charge with anywhere between a 1-kiloton (1,000 tons of TNT) and a 300-kiloton yield. For comparison, the bomb used on Hiroshima had a yield of approximately 15 kilotons. The shock wave from such an intense underground explosion would cause damage deep in the earth and would presumably destroy even the most well-fortified bunker.
From an environmental and diplomatic standpoint, however, the use of the B61-11 raises a number of issues. There is no way for any known penetrating bomb to bury itself deeply enough to contain a nuclear blast. This means that the B61-11 would leave an immense crater and eject a huge amount of radioactive fallout into the air. Diplomatically, the B61-11 is problematic because it violates the international desire to eliminate the use of nuclear weapons. See FAS.org: Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons for details.
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Just to clarify, DU is used in all kinds of military systems and doesn't make something a fission weapon. Infact, U238 is "poison" in fission weapons as it won't sustain a chain reaction like U235 or Pu244 will (the latter of which are used in both power systems and fission weapons, but both are refined from U238 via extensive effort).
The point being -- nobody has presented evidence of a fission weapon detonated in combat since 1945.
I think we were >< that close to using them in Afghanistan when we thought we knew were Bin Laden was, but we opted not to, and it cost us.
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tjamz;216346 wrote:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/bunker-buster1.htmOne way to make a bunker buster heavier while maintaining a narrow cross-sectional area is to use a metal that is heavier than steel. Lead is heavier, but it is so soft that it is useless in a penetrator -- lead would deform or disintegrate when the bomb hits the target.
One material that is both extremely strong and extremely dense is depleted uranium. DU is the material of choice for penetrating weapons because of these properties. For example, the M829 is an armor-piercing "dart" fired from the cannon of an M1 tank. These 10-pound (4.5-kg) darts are 2 feet (61 cm) long, approximately 1 inch (2.5 cm) in diameter and leave the barrel of the tank's cannon traveling at over 1 mile (1.6 km) per second. The dart has so much kinetic energy and is so strong that it is able to pierce the strongest armor plating.
Depleted uranium is a by-product of the nuclear power industry. Natural uranium from a mine contains two isotopes: U-235 and U-238. The U-235 is what is needed to produce nuclear power (see How Nuclear Power Plants Work for details), so the uranium is refined to extract the U-235 and create "enriched uranium." The U-238 that is left over is known as "depleted uranium."
U-238 is a radioactive metal that produces alpha and beta particles. In its solid form, it is not particularly dangerous because its half-life is 4.5 billion years, meaning that the atomic decay is very slow. Depleted uranium is used, for example, in boats and airplanes as ballast. The three properties that make depleted uranium useful in penetrating weapons are its:
* Density - Depleted uranium is 1.7 times heavier than lead, and 2.4 times heavier than steel. * Hardness - If you look at a Web site like WebElements.com, you can see that the Brinell hardness of U-238 is 2,400, which is just shy of tungsten at 2,570. Iron is 490. Depleted uranium alloyed with a small amount of titanium is even harder. * Incendiary properties - Depleted uranium burns. It is something like magnesium in this regard. If you heat uranium up in an oxygen environment (normal air), it will ignite and burn with an extremely intense flame. Once inside the target, burning uranium is another part of the bomb's destructive power.These three properties make depleted uranium an obvious choice when creating advanced bunker-busting bombs. With depleted uranium, it is possible to create extremely heavy, strong and narrow bombs that have tremendous penetrating force.
But there are problems with using depleted uranium.
Tactical Nuclear Weapons
The problem with depleted uranium is the fact that it is radioactive. The United States uses tons on depleted uranium on the battlefield. At the end of the conflict, this leaves tons of radioactive material in the environment. For example, Time magazine: Balkan Dust Storm reports:NATO aircraft rained more than 30,000 DU shells on Kosovo during the 11-week air campaign… About 10 tons of the debris were scattered across Kosovo.Perhaps 300 tons of DU weapons were used in the first Gulf war. When it burns, DU forms a uranium-oxide smoke that is easily inhaled and that settles on the ground miles from the point of use. Once inhaled or ingested, depleted-uranium smoke can do a great deal of damage to the human body because of its radioactivity. See How Nuclear Radiation Works for details.
The Pentagon has developed tactical nuclear weapons to reach the most heavily fortified and deeply buried bunkers. The idea is to marry a small nuclear bomb with a penetrating bomb casing to create a weapon that can penetrate deep into the ground and then explode with nuclear force. The B61-11, available since 1997, is the current state of the art in the area of nuclear bunker busters.
From a practical standpoint, the advantage of a small nuclear bomb is that it can pack so much explosive force into such a small space. (See How Nuclear Bombs Work for details.) The B61-11 can carry a nuclear charge with anywhere between a 1-kiloton (1,000 tons of TNT) and a 300-kiloton yield. For comparison, the bomb used on Hiroshima had a yield of approximately 15 kilotons. The shock wave from such an intense underground explosion would cause damage deep in the earth and would presumably destroy even the most well-fortified bunker.
From an environmental and diplomatic standpoint, however, the use of the B61-11 raises a number of issues. There is no way for any known penetrating bomb to bury itself deeply enough to contain a nuclear blast. This means that the B61-11 would leave an immense crater and eject a huge amount of radioactive fallout into the air. Diplomatically, the B61-11 is problematic because it violates the international desire to eliminate the use of nuclear weapons. See FAS.org: Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons for details.
that was some good read'n -
I'd nuke Iran too if they nuked Israel. That place is the world's asshole anyway.
> Mitch Hedberg wrote:
> I'm sick of following my dreams, I'm just going to find out where they are going and hook up with them later.ASE certified parts specialist.
2004 Impala LS 3.8 -
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