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US to build new nuclear gravity bomb
(www.defensenews.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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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.
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.
Fair
These "bombs" likely fall dozens of miles through the air travelling at about a thousand feet per second. They absolutely have a guidance system to keep them on course, basically exactly the same as a missile except without the rocket.
The only real difference between a missile and a "gravity bomb" is they have to be closer to the target when they are "fired". Oh, and gravity bombs are cheaper. A lot cheaper.
Even if you never fire a missile they still have to be maintained. See Russia vs Ukraine war... It's estimated 60% of Russian missiles don't even explode at all. And the ones that do are often nowhere near the target due to a guidance system failures. If they were properly maintained they'd work better than that.
『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.
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.
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
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.
Well the US military could invent the Nova Bomb from Halo. But being in a plane or not wont effect much.
Is it a drone at that point or a guided missile? The lines seem thin
The drone drops the payload (I assume, unless the pilot is going to die) . That's what makes it gravity operated. A guided missile wouldn't need a drone, and would be exactly as you described. That's a big thing with the "loitering munitions," right now.
My point was just if the pilot was going to die you said use a drone. If the pilot were going to die it would imply whatever delivers the gravity falling weapon is destroyed from being to close. So it is a one time delivery sustem much like a missile cassing instead of a drone which flies away and is re-usable.
That's called a "loitering munition". If there's a payload that's embedded into the craft, and you're not going to retrieve it, but you can still fly it remotely, that's when it's loitering munition, if that makes sense. It's a small bomb you fly in a circle until you have a good angle basically.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering_munition