US accused of using neutron bombs in Iraq

Seems to me that if a weapon system is retired then a new system must exist to replace it. I suspose there have been exceptions but that seems to be the way the military operates, isn't it. They are not going to give up an advantage to the other side.

Originally posted by gottago
If not neutron bombs, which after all are rather old tech 30+ years on, what about the purported clean hydrogen pocket nukes we've all been hearing about?

Their claimed characteristics would fit the bill much more than a neutron bomb would.

I did a search and didn't find much about this. Do you have any information? I ha haven't heard of this before and am interested to read more about it.

An old ATS thread, very very interesting :

Nuclear Weapons - The 4th generation is coming soon

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
FWIW, there are all sorts of things going on at Redstone/MSFC that you don't read about in the paper; we were based out of Huntsville for years doing some non-mentionable contract stuff.

Thanks Tom. although it has been 16 years since that happened I have always wondered, "How does Huntsville, Alabama tie in here?" When I think of Alabama I think of Redstone Arsenal and Jupiter not nuclear bombs. (I admit to being very uninformed in that area.)

You have tied it in perfectly. Thanks again.

What I was getting is something dealing with Plasma Rays.Ionized gas, made up of ions and electrons that is found in the Sun, Stars, and fusions reactors.A Neuron bomb.

[edit on 10-4-2007 by menguard]

Originally posted by gottago
If not neutron bombs, which after all are rather old tech 30+ years on, what about the purported clean hydrogen pocket nukes we've all been hearing about?

Their claimed characteristics would fit the bill much more than a neutron bomb would.

Well, there's a couple of problems with the article that gets linked to on ATS about that.

If you ignore the problems with getting a sufficient amount of positrons, and keeping them trapped in a near perfect vacuum while you're moving it around (very nasty!), then you're back to the fusion part of the physics package.

When the physics package guys say "clean" they don't mean "radiation free", they mean [(yield from primary)/(total yield)]*100. If only 1% of the bang is from the primary, the bomb is 99% "clean" but that doesn't mean "radiation less" which is the way most people misinterpret it.

The secondary has plutonium in it, which is compressed until it goes supercritical. So even the secondary has a very small fission section inside it. And then you're left with "what do you do with the secondary output". In a neutron bomb, the answer is "as little as possible", because the primary output of a secondary is neutrons. Lots and lots of neutrons, and a small bang from the "sparkplug", although in this instance small is still maybe 500T.

So for neutron bombs, you pull tricks to reduce the neutron cross-section of the various bits as far as you can go, and to choose substances that don't activate for long lifetimes, as much as you can manage.

But that still puts out a huge stinking heap of neutrons. In fact, the vast majority of the energy of a fusion secondary is carried away by neutrons. Now, stuff near the bomb will activate in what they call the R-process, wherein the materials pick up neutrons faster than they can beta-decay them away. So you can get really oddball isotopes formed in the area near the weapon.

Further away where the neutron flux density isn't so bad, you still get activation of susceptible isotopes, but you don't get as nasty a set as you get up close where the neutrons are really thick.

You just don't get a lot of bang. So a "clean" fusion weapon would be very like a neutron bomb.

To get the bang, you wrap the secondary in U238 (usually) in the form of a thick heavy bomb casing. This stops most of the neutrons, but you then get a really hefty bang from the fissioning of the U238. It's not fissile, but it's fissionable, and it's a dandy amplifier for the secondary. And it turns the neutrons into heat, to be crude and inexact, so you get the big yields, fireballs etc.

Unfortunately, you get a lot of radioactive contamination too. So it's either 'bang' or neutrons, for the most part. I'm not sure you could call either "clean" in the sense I think you may be interpreting it.

Originally posted by johnlear

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
FWIW, there are all sorts of things going on at Redstone/MSFC that you don't read about in the paper; we were based out of Huntsville for years doing some non-mentionable contract stuff.

Thanks Tom. although it has been 16 years since that happened I have always wondered, "How does Huntsville, Alabama tie in here?" When I think of Alabama I think of Redstone Arsenal and Jupiter not nuclear bombs. (I admit to being very uninformed in that area.)

You have tied it in perfectly. Thanks again.

YW. I never knew why they were there, although with that sort of thing you really don't ask.

You should suspect Huntsville more. Remember, Madison County has the highest per-capita PhD rate in the US. And there are a lot of "fringy" groups, Space Command, DIA, NASA Advanced Propulsion for starters, and you got maybe 6 - 10 of the freakiest contractors I know in the area. When I left there was combat lasers, veiling glare lasers, anti-gravity, undetectable comms, no-probability-of-intercept radar projects, two or three quantum physics projects, Project Sheriff segments, Tom Bearden's lab, Ning Li's lab, and a host of things you knew something was going on but couldn't get into to find out without being overly nosy. Half the office space in town comes with a SCIF.

You got UFO's, you got chemtrails, you got planes you can't identify. You got mystery booms, you got two CAG USAPs a nice afternoon's motorcycle ride away in two directions, there's enough EM flux you can hang popcorn on the fence for a snack, only some of which you can identify. It's a gold mine.

You know, if you're going to invoke Penning traps and 1kT of anti-matter to be a primary for a fusion weapon, you really don't need the fusion weapon part.

Just shut down a Penning trap with a few micrograms of positrons in it.

I'd need to whup out Mathcad to half-ass model it, but I would bet you that the gamma flux alone would kill just about as many people if they're in conventional construction. And gamma doesn't induce secondary activation in materials. No nasty fallout, no Pu fission products, no double flash. Well, not the same sort of double flash signature. You'd get a bang, bright flash, lots o' 511keV gammas, some x-rays and that would be it.

If the airport's powered down, you might not even lose all the electronics like you would with a neutron weapon.

If the airport's the usual poured concrete slab sort of thing, you could probably fry up everyone in it unless they're in some sort of underground parking garage or something. I'd have to get a set of figures on the gamma penetration of concrete.

Grant you, you're still left with the problems associated with getting the antimatter, building a good enough trap and moving it around while it's on, none of which are trivial. But you don't need to compound the problems by using it as a primary for a fusion weapon.

Heck, as far as that goes, if you had one of Sam Cohen's X-Files nuclear isomer topology bombs you would get about the same effect, only with x-rays instead of gammas.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam


Thanks Tom.

When you have time and/or the inclination could you elaborate on what exactly is:

veiling glare lasers
undetectable comms
no-probability-of-intercept radar projects
Project Sheriff segments
Ning Li's lab
SCIF
CAG USAPs
EM flux you can hang popcorn on the fence for a snack


thanks

Originally posted by johnlear
Originally posted by Tom Bedlam


Thanks Tom.

When you have time and/or the inclination could you elaborate on what exactly is:

veiling glare lasers
undetectable comms
no-probability-of-intercept radar projects
Project Sheriff segments
Ning Li's lab
SCIF
CAG USAPs
EM flux you can hang popcorn on the fence for a snack


thanks

Wow, ok, here goes. Generally this is where I end up saying "oh, you mean that's not out yet? Whoops!"

Veiling glare laser:

There are wavelengths of UV light that make your corneas, lens and the aqueous humor of your eye fluoresce bright yellow green. This has the not-too-unexpected side effect of making you blind while the beam is on you. The general term for any effect that keeps optic systems from working due to extraneous light sources in the optical path is "veiling glare". That's why telescopes have tubes, your eye is opaque except for the cornea, etc.

So, you can tune up a dye laser (or, now, some semiconductor ones) that puts out just that color. Voila! An anti-pilot weapon. When it's on you, it's like your head's in a big green plastic bucket with a bright light shining on the outside. It's hard to explain if you haven't been hit with it. Very disconcerting.

It's been euphemistically called the "pilot error beam", although technically it's a veiling glare laser.

Undetectable comms/ZPI radar:

Uh...you haven't heard about this yet? Kirtland is running tests on the effects of ZPI on people now, unless they completed it already. No one knows quite how it affects people at high power. Can't deploy it on the flightline if you don't know what it does to the ground crew.

It's UWB taken to the end result. Basically, you take the outgoing signal and smear it from "DC to sunlight", which is the technical euphemism for a perfectly done non-interceptable comms implementation. In a perfect engineering model, the energy in the signal at any one frequency approximates to zero. So it "vanishes" beneath the background noise. You have to have the time domain characteristic of the signal to recorrelate it out of the background noise. It's the end result of the Army's "sneaky wave" projects. There's a long long tale about that which I'm not privy to pass on.

Anyway, done with handheld comms it's not only not able to be intercepted if you don't have the key, it's incredibly transmit power efficient due to a weird quirk in the math that makes the antenna look like it has spectacular gains.

There's other neat side effects, the receivers always know where the transmitter is relative to them. So you can get a fix on your buddy without triangulating.

Done with radars, the power is lower, the efficiency trick works there too, and again, there is effectively no power at any one frequency. You have to integrate a range of frequencies to see it, and you have to have the "key" to do that. There are a lot of advantages that I bet they'd rather I didn't go into details on, but just not being able to intercept the emissions is great enough.

I've seen some real-world military devices already out that use the general trick that they have down in Tampa. The new visibuilding project will probably use it for imaging inside the building. There's a lot you can do with the basic concept.

Project Sheriff:

Oh, you ought to be able to find a lot about that. Just look for Project Sheriff on google. Bits and pieces of it were done in the Huntsville area. Or at least passed through for analysis.

Ning Li:

She is the queen of anti-gravity. Did some paid-for projects for NASA, got half a million bucks, used it to fund some basic studies on her device and no one knows where she went. Or at least I don't. Used to be AC Gravity. Dr Li took off suddenly for parts unknown around 2004, I tried to track her down several times, no luck.

SCIF:

Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (I've also heard "secure"), it's the gubmint's name for the TEMPEST rated bank vault sort of room you work in when you're doing classified stuff. We had one in Huntsville and one here now.

EM flux/popcorn:

It's legend that you can pop popcorn if you hang the bag on the Arsenal fence over by the officer's row, when they're doing a missile test, due to the missile tracking radar. It's acknowledged that if the guys that work there are going to all get cancer from it, at least the officer's kids will have three eyes, a very rare concession in the military. Usually the NCO housing would be there so that the sergeant's kids had tentacles. The view's nice though, can't have that.

If you want to track a small very fast moving object accurately, you have to throw a lot of radio power downrange. And there's all sorts of radar going on all the time there.

It is true that you can't do an open field test very easily anywhere near the base. Wyle Labs can do one but they use magic. And there's times the background EM level is really too high even then.

CAG USAPs:

Combat Application Group Unacknowledged Special Access Projects. There's two biggies not too far away. It's fun to go watch them get antsy when you drive by to look at it. As long as they don't get TOO antsy.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam

Wow! Thanks Tom. That is the most interesting post I have ever read on ATS.

I like this the best:

EM flux/popcorn:

It's legend that you can pop popcorn if you hang the bag on the Arsenal fence over by the officer's row, when they're doing a missile test, due to the missile tracking radar. It's acknowledged that if the guys that work there are going to all get cancer from it, at least the officer's kids will have three eyes, a very rare concession in the military. Usually the NCO housing would be there so that the sergeant's kids had tentacles. The view's nice though, can't have that.



Thanks again Tom.

Hello, been lurking these forums for a while, seem kinda cool. I noticed this thread. Remembered that I researched this, I thought I'd give anyone interested my two cents from what I gathered. I hope you don't mind me bumping an old topic. Some things are still sketchy, I may have hours/dates wrong. I'm not certain about the 82nd Airborne, but I am of 3ID's presence.

Basically, Baghdad Airport was possibly 'the' key objective of the war. If you take the airport, you have a launch field for the airforce to take Baghdad. Obviously, having an airforce close to Baghdad will help you lock the city down quicker.

Anyway, on Friday 4th April, the US 3/7th Cavalry along with the 82nd Airborne were tasked with taking the airport. They entered the airport and met no resistance. Before I go on, it has to be pointed out that beneath the airport there is an entire subterenean city/fortress built by West Germans. Its over 100 feet below ground and can't be penetrated from the air. While the American forces were entering the airport, the Republican Guard, Fedayeen and SRG were laying in wait.

3ID had settled in the Airport terminals and VIP lounges. During the night, Iraqi forces flooded the ground floor with water and electrified it with an industrial cable. They then pumped kerosene into the upper floors/VIP terminal and set it alight. The forces not burned fled into electrified water. A massive battle erupted throughout the airport between outnumbered US forces and Republican Guard/paramilitaries. The Iraqis butchered/committed atrocities. What remained US forces were forced to retreat.

At this point, you may remember a man called 'Baghdad Bob', who made what the media called ludacris claims. Before this, he promised an 'unusual' counterattack at the airport. That was laughed at. Then, he made an even more outrageous claim that US forces had been slaughtered at the airport. The media presented him as a deranged clown. Meanwhile you may remember the capture of the young female private. This aired repeatedly in front of what was really happening (Hell on Earth in Baghdad and especially the airport). The media really needed to sell a clean, easy victory. You may also remember the toppling of the statue, that was staged.

Meanwhile at the airport, the Republican Guard had retreated underground, literally. The Americans ordered a Counter attack. The second battle which was occuring on the 5th, forced the American to fight the Republican Guard/SRG underground. Now this complex was so large and advanced that you could drive trucks up its main roads (linking it with other complexes). This placed the Americans in an awkward position, fighting in an area that was well known to the enemy and prepared for defence. Again, they suffered heavily and were outnumbered. Two entrances to the complex were found. One was sealed up, a neutron bomb was sent down the other. This was a conventional blast detonated over 90ft below surface. It killed, according to Paul William Roberts (Who by the way claims something was used, but doesn't believe it was a neutron bomb), 20,000 RG and SRG along with Fedayeen.

The weapon wasn't detonated above ground and wasn't an atomic blast. Nonetheless, it still managed to upset topsoil above ground. For Months a 'cleanup' operation was carried out. The radiated earth was dumped beside Abu Ghraib and in the desert. Research US soldiers with 'mysterious illnesses' who were working military dozers. Iraqis AND US soldiers around the areas began taking ill. The airport was off-limits I believe untill October.

With the RG defeated, Baghdad and Iraq were doomed. You may remember that it was decided to disband the Iraqi army, a decision most agreed was lunacy. The fact is, they had no choice. If the Iraqi army wasn't disbanded, the outright dissappearance of the Republican Guard/SRG would've eventually been raised. This would've led to questions, to the airport....

reply to post by Togetic


My batalion was in support that day the Airport was taken at Bagdad.

No neutron bombs, just old fashioned fire and manuever. Its getting silly....

WP is bad, the depleted Uranium is bad... Tungsten tipped rounds is bad... WTF... focus on this stuff....

aLSO i DID not smell any microvaed flesh there..... no crispy critterts... like we saw at the "O" club in Bagdad!



crispy!

Continuing the post:

Thus questions about the airport had to be silenced. Additionally, reports were going out live from Baghdad news outlets about what was taking place. Many news buildings were bombed. Those that weren't shutup through fear.

It is also my belief the Russians were aware of all of this. They used to have these 'Ramzaj' reports, detailing everything that was happening on the internet about the invasion. These reports suddenly stopped that weekend. Apparently Russian diplomats also fled Iraq under fire that weekend in something resembling a Hollywood chase. Now the question is - why wouldn't Russia blow the whistle? Personally, I wonder why would they? It could possibly have placed Russia, who was on her first post-Cold war rebound, in an awkward position. Would they World have expected Russia to have done something? For Russia, they knew that Iraq was going to be a quagmire that would ruin their biggest enemy either way. Maybe the Americans also had a few things on the Russians? Who knows.

I've patched this altogether from Iraq-War.ru, Cpt Eric May (Who now is terminally ill since reporting), Paul William Roberts, Author of 'A war against truth', who is now blind, and general internet trawling.

Of course, it could all be nonsense.