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US to build new nuclear gravity bomb (www.defensenews.com)

submitted 8 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] Colorcodedresistor@lemm.ee 78 points 8 months ago

"The physics package contained within the B83 has been studied for use in asteroid impact avoidance strategies against any seriously threatening near earth asteroids. Six such warheads, configured for the maximum 1.2 megatonnes of TNT (5.0 PJ), would be deployed by maneuvering space vehicles to "knock" an asteroid off course, should it pose a risk to the Earth.[10]"

...If you have even half the comprehension to understand that amount of force. fuck...that's a lot of damage.

[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 27 points 8 months ago

The crazy bit is that the energies involved in a meteorite large enough to cause serious problems striking earth are like an order of magnitude larger than that. No radiation, sure, but that doesn’t help you much when you’re getting broiled by a ball of plasma.

[-] Kayel@aussie.zone 75 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I got real excited to learn the physics of a nuclear gravity bomb.

We have gotten to the point in modernity where so many bombs are technologically guided we must define bombs which fall, and are guided by, the force of gravity.

[-] SuperJetShoes@lemmy.world 54 points 8 months ago

Yeah I also wondered if "nuclear gravity" was some fascinating new branch of physics.

Got real disappointed when I realised that it meant dropping 'em.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb

[-] GONADS125@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Had something more along these lines in mind?

[-] SuperJetShoes@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah man, that scratches the itch!

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[-] Siegfried@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Oh... thats why i couldnt find any cool youtube video describing it... cool name though

[-] Etterra@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Yeah it's just a fancy way of saying "dumb bomb."

You don't need guided accuracy with a megaton nuke pooped out by a plane.

[-] Xanthrax@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It should've been "nuclear powered, gravity operated bomb", but that doesn't have the same ring to it. /s

My question is:

This has to he dropped from a drone right? The explosion would kill the pilot if they were that close.

[-] Furbag@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

Wouldn't even technically be nuclear powered, it just has a nuclear payload. I feel like the use of "gravity" in this article was an unnecessary addition.

When most people think "bomb", they don't think immediately think of "guided missile", they thing something that is either planted or dropped from above, and in this case the latter describes exactly what kind of bomb this is.

[-] Xanthrax@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Fair

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[-] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

『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』

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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.

[-] abhibeckert@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The explosion would kill the pilot if they were that close.

Nah they'll be fine. The initial blast radius of a nuclear bomb isn't that big at all. It's the radiation that's terrible and a lot of that comes from the fallout/dust downwind of the blast.

As high up as they would be air, it'd just be a momentary bright light and not a direct one since they will be flying away from the blast.

... if the enemy has fighter jets though ... you're probably going to try and shoot down the bomber. Which might encourage using a drone.

[-] ours@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

I don't know if they still do this but during the Cold War, they would practice tossing nukes.

The plane flies low and fast, at the right time it climbs hard, belly up and at the top of the loop releases the bomb. While the plane continues its loop downward, the bomb continues in a ballistic trajectory. By the time it hits the target, the plane spends a minimum of time at altitude and a good distance from its target and can GTFO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toss_bombing

[-] Strykker@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

The Russians dropped a 50 megaton bomb from a manned plane without killing the pilots, unless the us is going for the record of largest bomb ever it's not much of a concern beyond ensuring a high enough drop altitude fast enough plane or slowing the bomb with a parachute.

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[-] MycoBro@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

I thought to myself “well. We did it again. This time with gravity” I was both disappointed and relieved.

[-] Dasnap@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Time bombs have always been a disappointment also.

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[-] danc4498@lemmy.world 42 points 8 months ago

Maybe do a nuclear gravity power plant first? Provide the tax players cheap clean energy instead of more threats of war.

[-] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 30 points 8 months ago

Why would you drop a power plant?

Gravity bomb

[-] danc4498@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

You wouldn't download a power plant

[-] kmartburrito@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Don't copy that floppy

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[-] Hotdogman@lemmy.world 29 points 8 months ago

But how are we going to protect the power plant without the bomb? /s

[-] danc4498@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

💀

[-] BaronVonBort@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Honestly… this is kind of how that might happen? Defense spending and research has always been the vanguard of technological development and then it’s waylaid to private sector development and R&D.

Once it’s proven effective they can then reverse engineer it to do something constructive.

Because the US can’t be bothered to find non blow-uppy projects until later.

[-] Strykker@programming.dev 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

A nuclear gravity bomb is a standard nuclear bomb that is dropped from a plane, instead of launched on a rocket.

This isn't some kind of new nuclear technology

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[-] Drbreen@sh.itjust.works 27 points 8 months ago

Just in time for the latest conflict in the Middle East.

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[-] Gazumi@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

Holy crap! We have been here before and it leads to the brink of extinction due to fecking ego's.

[-] RedWeasel@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Yeah, but this time we can all talk about it in realtime with the rest of the world.

[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago

Wouldn't be in realtime for very long

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[-] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

In a follow-up statement, a Pentagon spokesperson said that will include the B-21 Raider stealth bomber the Air Force now has in development with Northrop Grumman. But the U.S. now does not plan to deploy it on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon said.

This feels so out of date to me. We have guided ballistic missiles, drones, etc. Why are we still thinking about dropping an unguided bomb like this from an aircraft with a human in it? It's >1 megaton ffs - close should be "good enough"?

[-] Joker@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 8 months ago

Because they can glide a long way and are stealthier without propellant. It’s still a standoff weapon. The B21 is a stone cold killer. It can get in fairly close undetected and drop from high altitude in still relatively safe airspace. The bombs are away without anyone ever knowing it was there. Then you’ve got a stealthy bomb gliding in silently. It probably shows up on radar like a raindrop.

[-] Jumpinship@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Randrops are falling on my head

Soon we will all be dead

[-] grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago

What happens when someone takes control of the guidance? A bomb dropped from the sky is going to obey the laws of physics and that's it.

[-] vale@sh.itjust.works 7 points 8 months ago

Laws of physics? What are you, a narc?

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[-] thelastknowngod@lemm.ee 8 points 8 months ago

Dispersal of liability if something goes wrong?

It's not the ground-based targeting system so that company can't be sued. It's not the onboard nav so that company can't be sued. It's not the software so that company can't be sued. It's not communication latency or interference so we can't blame it on a bad command decision to push forward without more reliable data points.

The only thing that will ultimately result in a nuclear weapon being dropped is if the guy with human eyes is looking at the target, makes a judgement call, and pushes the button.

All that being said, we should not be building more nukes regardless. This is dumb.

[-] bonus_crab@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

You can probably fit more bomb in the same package if you odnt have to worry about propellant

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[-] 0x0@programming.dev 11 points 8 months ago

Of course, just what the world needs, more weapons.

[+] goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org 9 points 8 months ago

[deleted]

[-] RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago

The US is so fucking stupid:

this weapon was made to reflect the changing security environment in line with the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review. That study said the military needed to modernize its nuclear forces to properly deter its two main nuclear-armed competitors, China and Russia.

There's really no reason to have "better" bombs. It's MAD either way. This is just the industrial military complex going full steam in 2023. And only the US can, or else that would of course mean war...

[-] Vqhm@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Nuclear weapons are expensive and complicated to maintain. The military has been bitching for many years that the price to maintain old nuclear munitions is rapidly increasing.

Instead of seeing this as working as intended, and trying to get everyone to agree not to develop new nuclear weapons... The military strategists decided that since China was making 500 new nuclear weapons we needed to make new ones too and pulled out of the agreement with Russia not to develop new nukes.

I would have thought that if it was hard for us to maintain the nuclear weapons with a massive budget that Russia might fail at that task. Which would be good for everyone.

But there's always been more money in star wars and missile defense then diplomacy.

[-] jasory@programming.dev 5 points 8 months ago

China has absolutely zero interest in negotiating arms treaties, they aren't quite in a full arms race with the US. The way arms limitations treaties work is if there is a rival state that will always match or exceed your armament, then you actually have an incentive to stop. If you don't have such a rival then you can always ensure that you are on the top and ignore any treaties.

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[-] imgprojts@lemmy.ml 9 points 8 months ago

No gravity waves generated or anything. But if they dropped one on you, you won't complain about the name. Why not call it the Barbie warhead and Ken missile? Again, no one would come back " excuse me but I did not get any Barbies or Kens when this thing was dropped on my house yesterday and I would like to complain to management"

[-] Grass@sh.itjust.works 6 points 8 months ago

Will they come up with a better name than aeromorph?

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this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023

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