>B41 nuclear bomb: 25 megaton yield. Largest warhead in US inventory 19XX-1976.
>B53 nuclear bomb: 9 megaton yield. Largest warhead in US inventory 1976-1997
>B83 nuclear bomb: 1.2 megaton yield. Largest warhead in US inventory 1997-202X
>B61 nuclear bomb: 0.4 megaton yield: Largest warhead in US inventory pending B83 phase-out
where does this end??? We won't have a single warhead capable of over 1 megaton soon. Seems weird. Will the B61 also be discontinued for a pipsqueak 0.05 megaton bomb in a few years?
Any noooook experts want to chime in? I get the value of tactical, small-yield precise nukes, but still...
I suppose for comparison, 0.4 mt is still 26X more than Little Boy's yield.
But what? The more accurate you are the less yield you need. The smaller the yield, the lighter the weight. Even 5MT really struggled to find targets worthy of that yield back in the 70s.
stop that
what's wrong with LB/FM comparisons, popsciish?
It's just better to have more smaller nooks than a single big one. Smaller ones are stealthier, plus there is a diminishing return at play. Inverse square law of proportions do matter, anon.
aren't low yield nukes really inefficient though?
does Russia still have big yield devices, or china? details are hard to come by (obviously).
Yes, because they can’t into advanced fusing or (actual) maneuvering hypersonic vehicles.
Russia has torpedoes with 100MT yields
No they don't
Did you know Russia has T-I-G-E-R-S?
Russia retired the 20mt warheads for the R-36M a decade or so ago and still uses the 1mt Topol-M missiles.
The reason we had nukes llike that was because our shit had a CEP radius of 1400 meters, meaning we'd be lucky if we had a nuke land within a klick of where we aimed it. This meant we had to have fricking titanic warheads to destroy the hardened targets we were aiming for. Nowadays our warheads can land within 30 meters, basically right on top of where we want. combine with MIRVs making it so we can stick 10 of the things plus decoys on a missile and aim them at individual targets and it makes a lot more sense to have a lighter and smaller warhead.
is ~.4 mt then about where this trend line will plateau? Or do you think we'll go smaller, and only have 10kt warheads or something.
For ICBMs and gravity bombs, dial-a-yield 100kt is probably about where it'll stop, with options for missiles to be outfitted with anything from 5kt to 475kt yields per warhead. For other uses like say, a cruise missile, we might see a 5 to 150kt design come back, like on the W80.
If you're ever to the point of using nukes, why would you ever have the yield dialed to anything under the maximum other than a last desperate attempt to stop enemy conventional forces from advancing on your cities or something?
not that low, to be able to attack hard targets like higher level underground command posts you need pretty high yield even if your accuracy and intel is perfect, >100kt sounds just about right
0.4 megatons is 400 kilotons
You essentially said 400kt is too small we need 100kt+.
>Or do you think we'll go smaller, and only have 10kt warheads or something
We did plan on using 20+ megatons with the ripple devices. The idea was to defeat any soviet anti ballistic missiles with having the warhead go off much higher in the atmosphere. The Housatonic test used the Ripple II and had a 99.9% of its energy come from fusion; which is insanely efficient.
>Any noooook experts want to chime in?
By increasing the nooook power, you're effectively putting more energy into the volume of the expanding sphere, and as a result, the blast radius is proportional to the cube of the power that produced it. I.e. if you want to level 10x more area than you can with your warhead, you either need to make a 10*10*10=1000x more powerful bombs, or just use 10 individual bombs and spread them over the area. If your goal is to simply destroy as much as you can on the surface - smaller nukes are preferable, ideally as low yield as you can make them. But if you need to also destroy reinforced bunkers - you have no choice but to employ a powerful device. 0.4MT probably turned out to be the perfect size needed to destroy most reinforced structures on an accurate hit - can't go lower because it will stop breaking shit we absolutely need to break, can't go higher because it's unreasonable due to the diminishing returns.
vintage 1-5kt test footage is funny to watch. Like an oversized firework https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4McwM-qORWE
hmm nukes got weaker as precision got better it’s as if there is some correlation there
>Seems weird.
what target needs a megaton when you have superfuze? we aren't depraved animals like turdies that clap like seals when being told they could vaporize a city.
doesn't MAD depend on capability to vaporize cities?
If you destroy their entire c2 infrastructure it doesn’t matter
do you think turdie leaders care about peasants? the only thing that matters to them is control. the US targets military infrastructure, because without that the turdoids are nothing.
MAD is a meme that's been irrelevant since the 60s.
Fun fact, multiple small warheads do a much more efficient job if your goal is widespread destruction. Learn about the inverse square law and how it applies to the effects of na explosion.
When do we see cluster MIRVs dropping 100 W54s for maximum squared cubes?
>One big nuke drop in the center of a city
>Nuke blast wave travels through city center
>Wave is slowed down more and more the more buildings it goes through
>Does not reach city edges
Compared to
>5 little nukes dropped around the city
>5 nuke blasts travel through their areas of the city
>5 waves slow down but eventually overlap each other
>The combined 5 nukes have successfully destroyed a city
Thanks satan.
The real killer is heat though. 5 small warheads will level a city, one very large warhead will cook everyone alive.
Depends on city materials and weather.
Weak
Frick off Galen Erso
No
>get the value of tactical, small-yield precise nukes
Those are strategic, not tactical. The dick meausring meter you're looking for is the kt/kg ratio.
Its because smaller nukes are far more likely to be used. What good is an Armageddon nuke if you never get to Armageddon? A clean tactical nuclear strike is the most likely nuclear scenario barring a dirty bomb or reactor issue
If no terrorists group used a dirty bomb after the collapse of the USSR when they were the easiest to acquire we will never see one used
You just need properly radioactive material and fertilizer. Just pollute a whole government or economic sector of a city
Based moron, what a waste of digits
>Dirty Bomb
>A device containing conventional explosives and radioactive material, designed to spread radiation over a wide area.
Anon the only moron here is you, he's right.
>where does this end??? We won't have a single warhead capable of over 1 megaton soon. Seems weird.
No delivery system.
>The weapon was 12 ft 4 in (3.76 m) long, with a body diameter of 4 ft 4 in (1.32 m). It weighed 10,670 lb (4,840 kg). It was carried only by the B-52 Stratofortress and B-47 Stratojet.
With development of SAMs bombers with free fall bombs doesn't cut in anymore and these big bombs don't fit into ballistic missiles or cruise missiles.
Though with development of cruise missiles it seems plausible and interesting to make big cruise missiles to deliver heavy ground burst warheads for dealing with deeply buried protected targets.
It's the memevofvthe guy breaking through a window and running off into the distance.
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it's over we'll literally be unable to deter homosexuals with nuclear weaponry anymore