Inside the B-2 Flight Deck

3 feet or 10 feet, whats the point
The seismic shock of a ground burst would destroy the interior of any underground structure in the immediate vicinity.
Also the radioactive fallout would be catastrophic, rendering the area useless in any case.

a reply to: Zaphod58

that's why i said using a drone for the laser designator, if it's up around 50-60K feet and has the ability to get out of the area in a quick manner it would be fine or even if it got knocked out of the air as long as it wasn't one of our best secret type drones it would be disposable

it would be mostly an underground detonation where most of the energy is coupled to the earth so it shouldn't really matter


granted INS is pretty robust but if i were dropping nukes i would want to make sure it hit exactly where i want it to, the whole selling point of the upgrade is the JDAM like tail system.

you would need GPS or laser to be able to send one down an air shaft or cave entrance

a reply to: penroc3

You're going to need it to be one of our high end platforms to be able to get close enough to almost all of the targets we'd be using one against.

As for INS, most of the point of a nuclear weapon is that you DON'T have to drop it down an air shaft, or into a cave mouth. The lowest yield on a B61 is 0.3 KT. Drop that 10 feet underground and detonate it and a structure is going to be hammered even if you don't put it down an air shaft.

a reply to: mightmight

A ground burst or shallow burst is not as efficient at propagating through the ground. There's a big difference in modeling between a ground burst, one at 2-3 feet, and one at 10 feet when it comes to hardened bunkers.

a reply to: Zaphod58

i would try and collapse the races and then drop the B61 down the shaft(it has been demonstrated that it is very doable) and it would keep most of the nasty now radioactive dust in the cave. or even set it for laydown and fly it into the entrance(with wings like the jdam-er) then use a normal smaller bomb to close the entrances and then detonate it to make sure all major exit points are closed.


i think one of the real reasons these very low yield weapons aren't used as normal dodcotin is the fall out, if you could close the cave up and then detonate the .3kt bomb essentially inside a mountain there would be almost no fall out.

also it would do way more damage if you could get the bomb into the bunker before detonation(obviously) as opposed to a surface or very shallow ground penetration, also the TONS of fall out it would throw into the air.

a reply to: penroc3

If we're dropping B61s, then tons of fallout from a single detonation is the least of our concerns.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Of course its not as 'efficient' but the point is the facility is dead either way.
And the effect doesnt scale lineary anyway:

[..] The explosion creates a strong seismic shock wave that propagates and can crush or damage an underground bunker. Even a short penetration distance accomplishes this goal of "coupling" the energy of the explosion to the ground: penetration of a few meters increases the underground destructive effects by more than a factor of twenty for a wide range of warhead yields.

For example, exploding a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon at a depth of one meter would increase the effective yield by a factor of 20, resulting in underground damage equivalent to that of a 200-kiloton weapon exploded at the surface of the ground. But increasing the penetration depth to five meters would only increase the effective yield by an additional 60%, to 320 kilotons. [..]

www.ucsusa.org...

Nuclear Bunker Busters are a waste of time, money and political capital.

a reply to: mightmight

Yeah, just another stupid Pentagon program to waste money.

a reply to: Zaphod58

lol true to an extent i feel the creep towards tactical weapons with small yields coming in to more and more acceptance even with the public.



i think if we could promise China that no fallout would cross their borders(more than just radioactive that is) and we had the opportunity to take out kim and his few cores with a handful of bunker busters and low yield warheads(esp for their chemical and bio weapons) they would take it.

i don't think there would be a huge conflict if that happened, most NK's just want to live their lives and let their kids live and aren't ready to sacrifice them and their family for a leader that's already dead and a country that is obviously willing to go all the way.

yes there would be die hards but they would be very very few and i bet would be jockeying for power in the new system.