US to build new nuclear gravity bomb::Experts say this new higher-yield nuclear bomb appears intended to pave the way for retiring the older B83 megaton bomb.
US to build new nuclear gravity bomb::Experts say this new higher-yield nuclear bomb appears intended to pave the way for retiring the older B83 megaton bomb.
『geekout about the cold war』
Nope. We have planes that fly really high and are shielded enough to withstand the effects at distance. Our air-dropped nukes are the most potent used by the US at 2.1 megatons (which is a sweet spot involving physics I don’t understand.)
Soviet bombs were bigger and more plentiful to compensate for their inaccuracy (so they’d shotgun strategic targets to assure a likely hit). This turned into justification for the arms rwce in the 1960s to get ridiculous with General Electric pushing the missile gap. It’s how we ended up with so many nukes we could wipe out humanity many times over, not just by carpeting all the continents but with nuclear winter and lingering radioactive fallout.
At that point, the doomsday device in Doctor Strangelove, a really huge cobalt bomb or salted bomb became the more cost-efficient deterrant. While there were actual designs, I don’t think anyone actually built it.
『/geekout』
Basically the sweet spot is because nuclear explosions, for that matter all explosions, are spheres. So to double the radius it takes 8 times more “oomph.” So a big bomb like the 100MT Tzar Bomba could be replaced by 16 × 1.2 megaton bombs and blow up the same area of ground, without blowing up the 20 cubic miles of air above the ground at the same time. It would also use about 1/4 the fissionable material to produce the 16 bombs as opposed to the one big one.
We are basically being cheapskates with nukes. Yay! I see No PoTeNtIaL iSsUeS aRiSiNg" directly because of this.