Isomer Weapons an alternative to Nuclear Weapons ?

I did a search and didn't come up with any results, but I can't beleive this hasn't already been posted somewhere. If the US can develop this type of explosive it would eliminate the need for a nuclear bunker buster. One of the new US Air force's Small Diameter Bombs would have the same explosive power as kiloton nuke and a B-1 will be able to carry 216 of them. Imagine the destruction of the bombload of just one B-1


An exotic kind of nuclear explosive being developed by the US Department of Defense could blur the critical distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons. The work has also raised fears that weapons based on this technology could trigger the next arms race.

The explosive works by stimulating the release of energy from the nuclei of certain elements but does not involve nuclear fission or fusion. The energy, emitted as gamma radiation, is thousands of times greater than that from conventional chemical explosives.

The technology has already been included in the Department of Defense's Militarily Critical Technologies List, which says: "Such extraordinary energy density has the potential to revolutionise all aspects of warfare."

www.newscientist.com...






Per gram, the energy stored in the Hf isomer is intermediate between those of chemical high explosives and fissile materials. In a presentation last year to DARPA's Hafnium Isomer Production Panel (HIPP), whose assignment is to consider large-scale production schemes for 178Hfm2, Collins pointed out that "a golf ball filled with the isomer would have the energy content of 10 tons of explosive."

Because isomer weapons would not involve transmutation of nuclear species, they don't come under the rubric of existing nonproliferation treaties. Although William Herrmannsfeldt (Stanford University), a dissident member of HIPP, is convinced that Hf weapons cannot work, he expresses concern about the possible effects that widely publicized Pentagon plans for isomer weapons might have on countries that don't yet have conventional nuclear weapons. The Defense Technologies Information Center, for example, proclaims that Hf weapons have "the potential to revolutionize all aspects of warfare."1


www.physicstoday.org...



[edit on 15-10-2004 by mad scientist]

[edit on 19-10-2004 by mad scientist]

There was a post in the past about the posibility using the same thing (hafnium nucleonic reactor) for nuclear powered aircraft. But I don't see much use for bombs - they still produce radiation so it is politically unacceptable to use them. What is needed is the bomb powerfull like a nuke but WITHOUT RADIATION.

Originally posted by longbow
There was a post in the past about the posibility using the same thing (hafnium nucleonic reactor) for nuclear powered aircraft. But I don't see much use for bombs - they still produce radiation so it is politically unacceptable to use them. What is needed is the bomb powerfull like a nuke but WITHOUT RADIATION.

like the nuetron bomb. its the perfect weapon.
still these things sound pretty nasty.

Originally posted by devilwasp

Originally posted by longbow
There was a post in the past about the posibility using the same thing (hafnium nucleonic reactor) for nuclear powered aircraft. But I don't see much use for bombs - they still produce radiation so it is politically unacceptable to use them. What is needed is the bomb powerfull like a nuke but WITHOUT RADIATION.

like the nuetron bomb. its the perfect weapon.
still these things sound pretty nasty.

No, neutron bomb is the exact oposite, it produces MUCH radiation and has low explosive effect.

Oh man, as I read that I caught my hands rubbing together and a smile on my face. Don;t kno why, maybe the Strangelove inside is excited over the next arms race that could end the world.

On a serious note, this technology does seem credible, but scarey at the same time. Current nuclear weaponary can be detected by the radiation emitted from the device. Will a chemical sniffer be needed now? Just imagine if terrorists get their hands on this stuff.

NYC already has teams of NBC (Nulcear Biological Chemical) agents sniffing out for any potential trouble. Things are goign to get bad of the Wookies get their hands on this tech.

Originally posted by longbow
What is needed is the bomb powerfull like a nuke but WITHOUT RADIATION.

Well that's what the 4th Generation of nuclear weapons are suposed to be capable of.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Actually,

As an Empire, the U.S. and her First Tier allies _do not_ want these kinds of weapons to be developed because they leverage smaller/terror forces (with less to lose and more desire to prove their ruthlessness in doing so) more than they do larger ones which are incredibly easy to hit due to the spread of their assets.

If there is a utility for these weapons, I would say that it would have to be as select, high altitude, HPM or equivalent devices to 'charge' the bronze lens casing in some kinds of explosive deformation electronics kill weapons (we knew that we could detonate the 1.5KT W-25 in the AIR-2 over populated areas and not have the fallout reach earth).

I frankly don't remember at the moment whether Gamma is ionizing or non ionizing as a particle but if it is the operating destruct mechanism of an isomer weapon and 'resident' in the environment for any length of time, it is in fact less usable than a conventional nuke for anything which creates surface uplift.

MYSELF, I prefer a weapon which hits, using differential EDGE or WAGE techniques, within about 20cm of aimpoint over one which has just huge yields. Because if I can kill a man by hitting him in the forehead with a hammer that breaks with every use, I can carry a lot more ball peens than I can sledges to take out area or decoy protected target sets.

If you add AMSTE moving target track and a seeker (GBU-40 vice 39), you typically have all the 'better the temple than the tongue' offsetting intra-target aimpoint accuracy required to make life miserable for a range of threats (tanks or clustered men both would die when hit with 90 odd pounds of explosive ammunition mass. The one to direct impact on select vulnerable points on a turret. The other to airburst fragmentation).

Even as increased loiter time (/smaller size/ means easier to carry in multiple at low drag or low internal volumetric penalty) to hit them, as they whack-a-mole come rather than chasing them into a collaterals rich area based on 'intel' which frequently misinfo'd wrong or dated.

As a deep/hard target kill mechanization, the B-61-11 itself is not a real replacement for the W/B-53 so much as simply a device which bombers other than the B-52 can carry. SIOP being what it is, I am sure there are 'limiters in place' (sub ceilings within the over nuclear floor breach threshold) which would prevent us from detonating 10MT worth of yield over a mountain side simply to crush a DPRK weapons cache buried underneath.

Not least because Bejing is only 250nm across the Yellow Sea.

But the fact remains that strata-coupling only takes you so far underground with a so-called 'seismic kill' effect and there are also problems with current steel alloys vs. impact energy when it comes to using kinetic overpenetration with boosted weapons or RVs to get more than the 6m which I think is as far as the dash-11 has ever achieved.

This puts you right back at sealing the exits of depots or finding pre-distributed (empty sack) warheads in the field which is a _targeting_ not munition problem.

And as soon as they become surface targets, the only reason for having atomic or atomic-like yields for Counter Force use goes away and you are _right back_ at hostaging (Counter Value) civillian target sets on the basis of who is willing to kill the nation they rule to prove a point about politics.

The sadness being that I don't think UBL and Company /or/ the Norks really believe we will remove the entire Arab/Islamic or (North) Korean populace from the annals of humankind if they try something dumb. And I'm not sure they would care, ultimately, (losing another Peninsular War) even if they did believe.

There being nothing dumber, IMO, than putting radiologics of /any/ kind into smaller and smaller packages for 'ease of terrorist use'


KPl.

Originally posted by longbow
There was a post in the past about the posibility using the same thing (hafnium nucleonic reactor) for nuclear powered aircraft. But I don't see much use for bombs - they still produce radiation so it is politically unacceptable to use them. What is needed is the bomb powerfull like a nuke but WITHOUT RADIATION.

Actually you've got it all wrong, if Hafnium Nucleonic weapons were perfected they would actually emit their radiation in one short burst, then they would be completely drained. The reason radiation lingers from conventional atomic weapons is because they spew tons of radiation producing elements into the air (thats fallout) but Nucleonic bombs would spend all of their radiation in one go, the radiation dissapating after the blast.