Optimal Size of Strategic Warheads

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Subject: Optimal Size of Strategic Warheads
Roman 5/31/2007 9:42:03 AM

What do you think is the optimal size, in terms of explosive power, for strategic nuclear warheads? Large warheads are prone to disadvantages such as large size and weight and increased fallout reaching friendly zones. Indeed, warheads above approximately 1Mt tend to have global atmospheric effects. Small warheads, on the other hand tend to be less stable and less durable and, of course, more of them are needed for large countervalue targets such as large cities. If a country was to have only one type of strategic warhead and this was not to be a variable-yield warhead; what size of warheads should it procure and why?

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mithradates some thoughts 5/31/2007 9:50:53 AM

A 50 kiloton yield if only 1 option is available. The warhead can be made dimensionally small and light in weight, so can be used on a variety of platforms(TBMs, LACMs, Bombers, MRBMs, ICBMs, SLBMs, Spaceborne) quickly. The destructive power is more than enough to take out most small to medium cities, several hits can take out a large city. Moreover, at 50 kilotons, certain limited tactical usage of the weapons can also be considered. But this is just my opinion.

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french stratege 5/31/2007 11:06:12 AM

If a country was to have only one type of strategic warhead and this was not to be a variable-yield warhead; what size of warheads should it procure and why?

I agree that it would be a 30 to 50 kt allowing both tactical and srategic use (on MIRV missiles).

Under it would be uneconomical for startegic use.ABove it would be too powerfull for tactical use.

But it would be stupid to do not have warhead taylored for use.

From the same warhead basis you can easily derivate different powers like a 300 kt, a 80 kt and a 20 kt.

You use less lithium deuteride fuel or less tritum in the case of a boosted fission warhead (according of course to well known public information)

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Roman 5/31/2007 11:18:35 AM

Good points about the 50kt warhead being a decent strategic warhead and retaining a potential tactical use. I did, however, try to specify that I am talking about a strategic warhead, not a tactical one. I am assuming the country does have a separate tactical warhead, but I did not explicitly state this. Let me therefore change the question a little:

Assume that the country in question will procure 2 types of nuclear warheads with a fixed yield:

1) Tactical warheads

2) Strategic warheads

What should be its choice of yield for each of these two types of warheads?

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french stratege 5/31/2007 1:05:55 PM

Title

Assume that the country in question will procure 2 types of nuclear warheads with a fixed yield:

1) Tactical warheads

2) Strategic warheads

What should be its choice of yield for each of these two types of warheads?

Now choice is easy:

300 to 500 kt for strategic as it is good for targeting also hardened targets.

A 500 kt warhead would crush a 10 000 PSI hardened target at 200 m so inside CEP of a modern ICBM.

5 to 10 kt for tactical use as it lead to an armored bataillon deploiement area size damage or an airfield without hardened shelters, or also well suited for tactical use agaisnt SSN or ships..Radius of destruction is only 1400+ meters on ground.for a 5 kt.

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Roman 5/31/2007 2:28:38 PM

Title

Assume that the country in question will procure 2 types of nuclear warheads with a fixed yield:

1) Tactical warheads

2) Strategic warheads

What should be its choice of yield for each of these two types of warheads?

Now choice is easy:

300 to 500 kt for strategic as it is good for targeting also hardened targets.

A 500 kt warhead would crush a 10 000 PSI hardened target at 200 m so inside CEP of a modern ICBM.

I think these are reasonable numbers. I guess the actual choice would depend on how easy (and therefore cheap) each type of weapon is to manufacture and maintain. Apparently, the easiest nuclear devices to make are those with 20kt-50kt range (elsewhere I read 10kt to 50kt), since these are essentially 'natural' nuclear devices, where you need not do any special things to them to increase or decrease their yield. I suppose lower yields are achievable simply by intentionally having the warheads partially fizzle, but this is very inefficient in the expensive to procur enriched uranium and causes a lot of contamination, which is something one would not want in case of a tactical warhead.
Increasing yield can be done by boosting dission with tritium (and this is almost universally done). This also increases the efficiency of the warhead, but it has the major disadvantage of the fact that tritium is unstable and needs to be periodically replaced, thus imposing a maintenance burden and a requirement to maintain constant and expensive tritium production in perpetuity. Adding more stages increases yield even further and is often combined with a tritium boosted primary. I am not sure what the sweet spot is in this case, though.

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Herald1234 Use Z pinch mixed with an explosive driven magnetic flux capacitor driver and lithium deuteride and tailor to taste. 6/1/2007 11:54:51 PM

Get it to work, and yield is no longer a design problem. Its a perfect dial a yield bomb and incredibly lightweight.

You want to overburden a 7.5@10^3 N/cm^2 shelter defense; then a 2.5@10e15 joule burst load should do the work just fine. Just burst at about 2000 meters altitude and overlap the blast effect zone radii at least 1/4 arc to ensure that you leave glass and pebbles. Beijing for example would take about 15-25 such warheads.

Herald

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Roman 6/6/2007 12:29:46 PM

Get it to work, and yield is no longer a design problem. Its a perfect dial a yield bomb and incredibly lightweight.

Herald

I don't know what a "Z pinch" is, but what you are describing sounds like a fission-free fusion device. Whereas that has been a holy-grail of nuclear explosive device makers for many years now, there is little evidence that there has been any significant success with regards to making such. Perhaps it might not even be possible (or at least not at the required level of miniaturization to have a deliverable nuclear weapon). In any case, 2.5 x 10e15 joules is how many kt equivalent? I forgot the conversion ratio... Also, why calibrate it to overpowering 7.5 x 10^3 N/cm^2 defense shelters? Are they the standard, or are they the maximum hardness that can practically be built?

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Herald1234 6/6/2007 6:15:46 PM

Get it to work, and yield is no longer a design problem. Its a perfect dial a yield bomb and incredibly lightweight.

Herald

Z pinch is using electromagnetic means to generate the soft X rays and ridiculous kinetic conditions that incite fusion that we currently use atomic bombs to accomplish. The mirror effect is almost identical. The only difference is that we use pure electromagnetic field charge coupling phenomenon to set up the mirror condition instead of using heat.

The Z-pinch as described;

"http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/ZP/"

Z pinch effect.

It works. It only has to last long enough to initiate thermonuclear burst conditions. Explosive driven magnetic flux current generators are perfect Z pinch initiators as they already are the cores of working EMP bombs.

As for the size of the warhead, depending on the fadeout time of the fireball, we look at a warhead that yields about a peak workload measured in 200-300 kilotons TNT blast measured at the peak of the interval and about 500 kilotons total across the interval.

You want to smash 10,000 PSI shelters to ensure population kills. This you do so that you can convince a PRC bandit that no matter how deep he digs or how much he rebars and force cures his concrete he cannot save his bandit nation or himself from extermination. And that is how you guarantee the good behavior of a PRC bandit or for that matter any superstition crazed middle east despot. You guarantee death.

Hence the size of both Russian and American strategic warheads, as the designs matured, tend to resemble the sufficient yield criteria to missile throwmass limits.

British and French warheads tend to fall in the same limits and logics.

Herald

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Roman 6/7/2007 1:25:56 PM

Formatting quotations on these boards is hell, but I will give it a try:

"Z pinch is using electromagnetic means to generate the soft X rays and ridiculous kinetic conditions that incite fusion that we currently use atomic bombs to accomplish. The mirror effect is almost identical. The only difference is that we use pure electromagnetic field charge coupling phenomenon to set up the mirror condition instead of using heat.

The Z-pinch as described;

"http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/ZP/"

Z pinch effect."

This is very interesting indeed, but the question is whether enough energy in X-ray flux and kinetic conditions could actually be derived from the process to initiate a fusion reaction (which can then initiate further stages) and even if the answer is yes, whether it could be done with a small enough conventional explosive charge and associated equipment to be fittable into a useable nuclear device. I am not a physicist, so I cannot even guess at the answer with any degree of accuracy, but given the enormous energies involved, as a best case scenario it seems very difficult indeed to accomplish. Still, although I have slacked off lately, I have been an avid follower of nuclear technologies, so the geek in me would like to see this function. The non-proliferationist in me, however, would fear the impact that removing the enrichment bottleneck would have on the proliferation of nuclear weapons, once the technology would become more widespread - and that would be inevitable - we all suspect that at least China has the U.S. labs penetrated...

"It works. It only has to last long enough to initiate thermonuclear burst conditions. Explosive driven magnetic flux current generators are perfect Z pinch initiators as they already are the cores of working EMP bombs."

Hmm, yes, it is only necessary to maintain the requisite conditions briefly, the severity/strength of these conditions required for EMP bombs and that required for initiating nuclear fusion is different by several orders of magnitude.

"As for the size of the warhead, depending on the fadeout time of the fireball, we look at a warhead that yields about a peak workload measured in 200-300 kilotons TNT blast measured at the peak of the interval and about 500 kilotons total across the interval."

Interesting, but how do you define the peak of the interval? The interval is not infinitesimal on the time-scales we are looking at, so how do you bound it?

"You want to smash 10,000 PSI shelters to ensure population kills. "

Ok, but why is it 10,000 PSI that you need to be able to smash? Why not 5,000 PSI, or 20,000 PSI?

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Herald1234 6/7/2007 6:51:11 PM

Formatting quotations on these boards is hell, but I will give it a try:

Right now the only nations who have a clue as to how to make a microwave pulse fusion trigger work are the nations which have the computing power and mathematical skills. Seeing the mess the PRCs made of the US technology they stole, I don't see the PRCs making the breakthroughs necessary. By the way, when I said Z pinch works I MEAN IT. Z pinch overview.

See PDF coversheet at the above link as to the energy limits. That is what we pump out with our microwave vircator bombs.

Not so. The limiter is solving the magnetic field geometry through the wire cage.

That is almost too simple. In four seconds to fireball fade it is about one second in when the soft x-rays are most energetic and the fireball reaches its average radius. That is also about when the ground shock from the surface reflects and rebounds.

Interesting, but how do you define the peak of the interval? The interval is not infinitesimal on the time-scales we are looking at, so how do you bound it?

See above.

"You want to smash 10,000 PSI shelters to ensure population kills. "

Maximum practical concrete hardening limit. Most granite isn't that hard.

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