Comment on US to build new nuclear gravity bomb

• Furbag@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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.

  source

  • Xanthrax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Fair

    source
  • abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    These “bombs” are probably going to “fall” several miles through the air and they absolutely will have a guidance system to keep them on course, basically exactly the same as a missile except without the rocket. They’ll be travelling almost as fast as a rocket too.

    source
• uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 potant 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』

  source

  • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Basically it’s 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.

    source
• abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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

  No - if you’re indoors you can generally survive a massive nuclear bomb form as close as 2 miles and they’re probably close to 4 miles up in the air when they drop the bomb, and travelling at very high speed so they’ll be a lot further than 4 miles from the explosion when it goes off.

  source

  • ours@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toss_bombing

    source
• Strykker@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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.

  source

  • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Well the US military could invent the Nova Bomb from Halo. But being in a plane or not wont effect much.

    source
• LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Is it a drone at that point or a guided missle? The lines seem thin

  source

  • Xanthrax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The drone dropped the payload. That’s what makes it gravity operated.

    source

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      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.

      source

      • Xanthrax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        That’s called a loitering munition.

        source