Who do you drop a nuclear bunker buster on?

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 23:49:28 +0100, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:


One must assume that the other side would have made an awful mess of NW
london just to knock out Northwood.



That assumption was fair I suspect, I never thought
the Soviets would take us off the target list cause
Brent Council declared us a nuclear free zone

LOL! Dont remind me.



Keith


--
"vying with Platt for the largest gap
between capability and self perception"

Keith Willshaw wrote:
I rather think that the hundreds of miles of tunnels
that make up the London Underground system are
really quite serious.

So were the Cabinet war rooms and the underground
military HQ in London and Northwood.

All built under clay

The Germans had weapons that could have killed these facilities, if they
had known exactly where they were.

-HJC

"Henry" == Henry J Cobb writes:

Henry Keith Willshaw wrote:
I rather think that the hundreds of miles of tunnels that make
up the London Underground system are really quite serious. So
were the Cabinet war rooms and the underground military HQ in
London and Northwood. All built under clay

Henry The Germans had weapons that could have killed these
Henry facilities, if they had known exactly where they were.

Yeah. They could have won the war - if they'd known how. And if
they'd been able to do anything useful with that knowledge. Ahem.

--
G Hassenpflug * IJN & JMSDF equipment/history fan

In article , Dave Eadsforth
wrote:

In article , Howard
Berkowitz writes

*sigh* should they, then, have built Northwood in Slough?

I assume you are thinking of:

'Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough,
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow,
Swarm over, Death!'


Precisely.

"Henry J Cobb" wrote in message
...
http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/...0406020904.asp
Gen. Richard Myers, in a May 2003 briefing, explained that a nuclear
bunker buster could minimize the threat from biological or chemical
weapons at an enemy site.

By the time the nuclear bunker buster is fielded, both Iran and North
Korea will have nuclear armed missiles capable of at least striking
their neighbors, so who exactly would you use the RNEP on?

You're not going to find all of their launch locations before you strike
and afterwards they have nothing to lose by launching.

-HJC

I am alone in being concerned that the US is spending substantial resources
to develop war fighting nuclear weapons (not deterence) to use specifically
against non-nuclear states? Is this the modern moral US?

In terms of effectiveness I would ask if they could be used against deep
installations. By this I would consider the deep mines at depths of 400m to
4000m which would be a logical place to store such WMD if one was threatened
by such deep penetrating nuclear weapons.

David Nicholls

"David Nicholls" wrote in message
...
"Henry J Cobb" wrote in message
...
http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/...0406020904.asp
Gen. Richard Myers, in a May 2003 briefing, explained that a nuclear
bunker buster could minimize the threat from biological or chemical
weapons at an enemy site.

By the time the nuclear bunker buster is fielded, both Iran and North
Korea will have nuclear armed missiles capable of at least striking
their neighbors, so who exactly would you use the RNEP on?

You're not going to find all of their launch locations before you strike
and afterwards they have nothing to lose by launching.

-HJC

I am alone in being concerned that the US is spending substantial
resources
to develop war fighting nuclear weapons (not deterence) to use
specifically
against non-nuclear states? Is this the modern moral US?


Please explain the intrinsic moral difference between destroying deep
bunkers
with an explosion caused by fissioning atoms as compared with
doing so with chemical explosives ?

There may well be practical reasons for the choice of one
versus the other but dead is dead.

Keith

"David Nicholls" wrote in
:

"Henry J Cobb" wrote in message
...
http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/...0406020904.asp
Gen. Richard Myers, in a May 2003 briefing, explained that a
nuclear bunker buster could minimize the threat from biological or
chemical weapons at an enemy site.

By the time the nuclear bunker buster is fielded, both Iran and North
Korea will have nuclear armed missiles capable of at least striking
their neighbors, so who exactly would you use the RNEP on?

You're not going to find all of their launch locations before you
strike and afterwards they have nothing to lose by launching.

-HJC

I am alone in being concerned that the US is spending substantial
resources to develop war fighting nuclear weapons (not deterence) to
use specifically against non-nuclear states? Is this the modern moral
US?

In terms of effectiveness I would ask if they could be used against
deep installations. By this I would consider the deep mines at depths
of 400m to 4000m which would be a logical place to store such WMD if
one was threatened by such deep penetrating nuclear weapons.

David Nicholls



Any deep mine that had a nuclear explosion nearby deep underground would
have it's shafts collapse,or become inaccessible,just as effective as
destroying the WMD itself. They might even flood.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net

In article , Jim Yanik
writes
"David Nicholls" wrote in
:

"Henry J Cobb" wrote in message
...
http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/...0406020904.asp
Gen. Richard Myers, in a May 2003 briefing, explained that a
nuclear bunker buster could minimize the threat from biological or
chemical weapons at an enemy site.

By the time the nuclear bunker buster is fielded, both Iran and North
Korea will have nuclear armed missiles capable of at least striking
their neighbors, so who exactly would you use the RNEP on?

You're not going to find all of their launch locations before you
strike and afterwards they have nothing to lose by launching.

-HJC

I am alone in being concerned that the US is spending substantial
resources to develop war fighting nuclear weapons (not deterence) to
use specifically against non-nuclear states? Is this the modern moral
US?

In terms of effectiveness I would ask if they could be used against
deep installations. By this I would consider the deep mines at depths
of 400m to 4000m which would be a logical place to store such WMD if
one was threatened by such deep penetrating nuclear weapons.

David Nicholls



Any deep mine that had a nuclear explosion nearby deep underground would
have it's shafts collapse,or become inaccessible,just as effective as
destroying the WMD itself. They might even flood.

At one point, it was feared that an exploding nuke could send a stream
of VERY hot gasses along tunnels, thus spoiling everyone's day.
However, later modelling (and maybe even testing) revealed that an
underground nuclear explosion in an area containing shafts and tunnels
tends to crush them flat, thus sealing them and saving the rest of the
complex further damage. So, the lesson appeared to be; don't build
caverns, stick to tunnels and shafts.

Of course, finding your way out after a strike might have been a
problem...cue for even more SF stories about people trapped underground
for generations...

Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth

David Nicholls wrote:
I am alone in being concerned that the US is spending substantial resources
to develop war fighting nuclear weapons (not deterence) to use specifically
against non-nuclear states? Is this the modern moral US?

The United States has never used nuclear weapons against a nuclear armed
country.

-HJC

"Dave Eadsforth" wrote ...
Jim Yanik wrote
Any deep mine that had a nuclear explosion nearby deep underground would
have it's shafts collapse,or become inaccessible,just as effective as
destroying the WMD itself. They might even flood.

At one point, it was feared that an exploding nuke could send a stream
of VERY hot gasses along tunnels, thus spoiling everyone's day.
However, later modelling (and maybe even testing) revealed that an
underground nuclear explosion in an area containing shafts and tunnels
tends to crush them flat, thus sealing them and saving the rest of the
complex further damage. So, the lesson appeared to be; don't build
caverns, stick to tunnels and shafts.

That's interesting. Do you have a cite for that? During the underground test
era, in one test the blast doors failed. During a UGT, explosive-powered
doors located a short distance from the bomb chamber close after the prompt
radiation pulse drops off (a few hundred nanoseconds) and before the blast
wave arrives, to preserve the down-hole equipment. In one test, the doors
failed and the VERY hot gasses (and lots of fission fragments) both melted
and contaminated the equipment in the test galleries quite far back from the
bomb chamber.

I still think that earth penetrating nuclear weapons is the triumph of "Wow,
a NUKE" thinking over the realistic limits of what a nuclear weapon can do.