Posted on 02/26/2016 9:32:52 PM PST by MtnClimber
Does anyone remember that Obama stopped all R&D on updating our Nuclear Arsenal when he came into Office?
"Roi No Score (we got wimminz now!)"
“I mean, I don’t remember constant test firing of Minutemen missiles under Reagan to send a message... “
Just about every quarter we did. I was a telemetry site chief on Roi.
If we wanted to stress our strength a few underground nuclear tests would better make the point. (Bombs need to be tested periodically because their radioactive nature causes them to degrade so that they may not function. We haven’t tested one in well past the old degradation period. A test would signal we are getting ready to use them.)
Does anyone remember that Obama stopped all R&D on updating our Nuclear Arsenal when he came into Office?
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And that due to some agreement (I don’t recall the name) both the US and Russia were required to reduce their nuclear weapon stockpiles. Obama reduced those in the US far below those in Russia.
@CodeToad, @OldMissileer — You have both corrected me as to the launches. But...I don’t remember this amount of “fanfare”.
"That's exactly why we do this," Work told reporters before the launch.
Yeah, lets shoot off a billion dollar bottle rocket to show the neighbors we have them and can shoot them.
I wonder if when we launch one, we build another to replace it ... or are we merely depleting our inventory.
ICBMS are what they always were. It’s PRESIDENTS that ain’t what they used to be. The Russians would be as aware of the latter as of the former.
The hell you say ????? Really ?
They went co-ed! If you’re name is Ed you got to co-habitat with a softer rat of the female kind!
(I think they even went married couples!)
Squantos, as they say on the street, “You da MAN!”
Thanks for that very enlightening comment!
Wow..... might be a nice place to visit before I give all this up in December if the Parrot is still open . Will see if I can get on the list to do it on uncle sugars dime before I retire.
Back in the late 1950s I worked on inertial guidance systems at Wright Field. Part of my job was to look for alternatives to mechanical gyros. One of the alternatives I looked at was the Sagnac gyro, named after its French inventor. It involved an interferometer. When rotated about an axis normal to the plane of the interferometer, the interference fringes would shift in a direction related to the direction of rotation, and by an amount related to the speed of rotation.
I did the calculations to see whether we could get one to fit into a missile: both longer path length and shorter wavelength would increase sensitivity. My calculations showed that to get a device small enough to fit into a missile, while having the same sensitivity as the mechanical gyros we were using, would require that the "illumination" be at gamma ray wavelengths. That was impossible, since there are no mirrors for gamma rays, to cause them to follow a closed path. Scratch that idea.
Many years later I was reading an article in Aviation Week about laser gyros. That intrigued me. How do you make a gyro out of a laser? As I read the article, I had a head-slapping moment. You make a Sagnac gyro with a spool of optical fiber to get a long path length. With that, you can do it at optical wavelengths instead of with gamma rays. Obvious, once you see it.
There’s only room for 450 missiles—150 each at Malmstrom, Minot and FE Warren AFBs. The other 550 were removed, stored, and have some use with the defensive system at Hawaii. Plenty of missiles around to backfill those that are pulled for FOT&E.
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