Posted on 04/27/2006 12:20:35 PM PDT by Bob J
-no-
Don't you have to have a suitcase to have a suitcase nuke? This guy's napsack won't do it--even if his donkey carries it.
Drudge? Is that you?
You sound like my evening newscasters at 10 in the mornging. Usually they are hoping like hell that something breaks before they have to go on the air so they don't look like idiots.
I understand that the suitcase nukes, it he got them from the russians, would probably be so/so functional due to the tritium degradation for the triggering mechanism.
Yes, but buying military hardware in Russia is like a 7-11. If they can get the suitcases, they may be bale to get new triggering systems.
Tritium costs $50,000 a gram--it gets locked up SUPER tight as a result.
Ya, just like the tritium triggers on those suitcase nukes.
Getting new tritium means paying $50,000 a gram, and you have to but the tritium every three months to keep the weapon operational.
short answer:
Not a chance in Hades
IF you have a bomb that uses tritium -- a big "if", according to some reports I read a while back -- then the answer is, "No, you don't need to keep buying it every three months."
You only need to buy it once -- right before you plan on using it.
These things, if deployed as reported, are not a mini-strategic-nuclear-force, always maintained in a state of readiness. They are terror weapons.
Tell me -- prior to 911, did al qaida have to buy and maintain a fleet of jet airliners, doing regular engine and airframe maintenance, up until the moment of the attack?
A tactical nuke that needs a fresh dose of Tritium prior to detonation (and it can only be detonated once!) is an example of a "JIT-4-Terror" application.
Okay, so it may not use a deuterium-tritium "zipper" as a neutron source (also known as an initiator). It may use polonium--and polonium-based initiators are only good for three weeks, which is an infeasibly tight timeline for an operation that requires covert smuggling of the initiator component.
Additionally, "suitcase nukes" are "fractional-crit" designs--i.e., they do not have a supercritical mass, even at maximum compression of the special nuclear material. (This is particularly true if the device uses a non-spherical shape for the critical mass, which raises its surface area relative to its volume. An example of a non-spherical critical mass would be some of the nuclear artillery shells made during the latter part of the Cold War--they used a cylinder of plutonium that was crushed in a linear implosion.) This means that neutrons generated from the fission of the special nuclear material are likely to escape from the critical mass Fractional-crit weapons require a lot of extra neutrons in the pit in order to work. This in turn means that the weapon needs boosting--direct injection of deuterium and tritium into the pit at the instant of detonation to generate a small fusion reaction.
You only need to buy it once -- right before you plan on using it.
Which, in turn, raises a whole new set of problems.
Al-Qaeda would have to obtain a lot of tritium--much more than the weapon itself requires (because tritium exfiltrates through almost any container wall--it's hydrogen, after all--and because some would decay to helium during a covert transit. They would need to be able to separate out any helium that accumulated during transit. They would have to have operatives in place who could service the weapon (i.e., place the tritium in the "zipper" and replace the tritium gas reservoir--and those aren't exactly the sorts of skills that are readily available out there).
One way or another, the weapon has to have some maintenance done on it--and that requires an infrastructure to do so (even if it's only once).
Tell me -- prior to 911, did al qaida have to buy and maintain a fleet of jet airliners, doing regular engine and airframe maintenance, up until the moment of the attack?
No, which is an excellent argument for al-Qaeda not actually having possession of nukes at this time.
A far more likely scenario involves the theft or other acquisition of a ready-for-issue nuclear weapon from a repair/maintenance facility on a short timeline prior to the intended detonation (much as al-Qaeda acquired their aircraft for 9/11 immediately after fueling and maintenance, and immediately prior to the attack).
I was thinking of a different substance, actually, but I didn't mention it because I did not feel like getting the kind of snotty replies that its mention inevitably evokes from the legions of armchair Einsteins who love to demonstrate the scope of their knowledge (and generally succeed). Sorry about that, I've a hard time resisting the urge to damn with faint praise when it avails itself.
Anyway, I realize that scads of Internet "experts" insist that there's less than nothing to it, but frankly -- and, call me what you will -- I find that I have more confidence in someone like Sam Cohen, "father of the neutron bomb", who most definitely does take this stuff seriously.
So, in short, no, I don't think that the issues with tritium are necessarily a show-stopper.
[skipping over a bunch of "conventional wisdom"]
Al-Qaeda would have to obtain a lot of tritium--much more than the weapon itself requires (because tritium exfiltrates through almost any container wall--it's hydrogen, after all
Sorry, I just don't buy that. I don't buy it, because I can buy it -- for maybe fifty bucks or so, for a set of Trijicon pistol sights. Seems like plain ol' glass will contain it for years.
Oops!
--and because some would decay to helium during a covert transit. They would need to be able to separate out any helium that accumulated during transit. They would have to have operatives in place who could service the weapon (i.e., place the tritium in the "zipper" and replace the tritium gas reservoir--and those aren't exactly the sorts of skills that are readily available out there).
You will pardon me for mentioning that this sounds like a pile of ridiculous tripe. You make it sound like a nuclear weapon is something as volatile as an ounce of dry ice, which must be used before you blink and it's gone.
There is plenty of time for an al-q POS to take a bit of Tritium -- properly contained and sealed by his friendly rogue ex-sov scumbag -- and then transport it through our sieve-like "border" to his waiting compadres.
There's a time and a place for "whistling past the graveyard", but... OK, sorry, I lied. There isn't a time or a place for it -- thus, this isn't the time or the place for it. So please don't insult our collective intelligence by painting a rube-goldberg picture of a situation so bloody impractical that it'd be a stretch to even consider our military being able to deal with such funky materials. I mean, a nuclear missile sub, spending months at sea -- and yet, having to return home to make a "run for the border" to load up on another five minutes worth of Tritium? LMAO! Puh-LEEZE! Go peddle that crap somewhere else, OK? No offense, nothing personal, but LOL! (When I read such desperate script-reading, I have to wonder if I've engaged one of those folks who "posts for a living", or, if it's merely someone on a personal quest, fixated on imposing his wishes for how he'd like it to be, by pushing his stuff on the forum via use of the typewritten counterpart to the "command voice." LOL on wheels!)
One way or another, the weapon has to have some maintenance done on it--and that requires an infrastructure to do so (even if it's only once).
Anything that a KGB operative can be trained to do, an al-q operative can be trained to do -- especially if he's got a former KGB operative in tow.
The rest of your stuff is such a poorly attempted effort at reframing the topic via a flop of a non sequitur that I won't embarrass you further by deconstructing it.
LMAO, Good one.
No, it's a precision instrument containing volatile and radioactive components of varying life spans. A lot of effort was expended during the Cold War to to make nuclear weapons less reliant on ongoing maintenance--with only partial success. They were stored in controlled environments (something else terrorists would be unlikely to have), and they still required ongoing maintenance to be ready for use. To bring one back from unusability to usability will require a fair amount of equipment.
What I am saying is that, once the terrorists have a nuclear weapon, the clock is running, and goes to zero in a few months unless they can take it to a maintenance depot for some IRAN work.
Three months may seem like a long time to us, but for someone trying to move around the globe undetected, it's a normal timeline.
There is plenty of time for an al-q POS to take a bit of Tritium -- properly contained and sealed by his friendly rogue ex-sov scumbag -- and then transport it through our sieve-like "border" to his waiting compadres.
The tritium is still decaying the entire time. Very minute amounts of helium will absorb a lot of neutrons (we had devices that failed to generate any nuclear yield in testing due to helium contamination). This isn't an issue in pistol sights, so I can understand your unfamiliarity with the subject.
Like I said, every three months or so, the zipper and the tritium reservoirs needed replacement. Now, you can hypothetically have Team A with the nuke, and Team B with the tritium, but with two teams on the road for one nuke, you're doubling your risk of getting caught, betrayed, in an accident, found out by Echelon or the next "Able Danger," or pulled over for speeding through some podunk burg and the sheriff asking "what's that thingamajig in the trunk," and so on--to deliver one nuke. Better to just get a nuke brand new from the depot right before you need it and issue it to one team.
I mean, a nuclear missile sub, spending months at sea -- and yet, having to return home to make a "run for the border" to load up on another five minutes worth of Tritium?
First, those warheads are stored in a controlled environment for the duration of the patrol. Second, the maximum patrol time is about 90 days (in other words, about three months--remember the tritium?). Third, the warheads go right back to the maintenance facility as soon as the submarine docks. Fourth, they aren't fractional-crit suitcase weapons that absolutely depend on boosting to generate enough neutrons. Fifth, supposedly reliable operational warheads gave us some nasty surprises throughout the Cold War in terms of reliability (one Poseidon warhead zero-yielded after it was taken off of a submarine following a two-month patrol). I am worried about whether the Stockpile Stewardship Program can really maintain our current weapons as advertised, given that we were still learning things about warhead aging right up to the end of nuclear testing.
Anything that a KGB operative can be trained to do, an al-q operative can be trained to do -- especially if he's got a former KGB operative in tow.
KGB operatives didn't pull maintenance on nukes.
BTW, I do have worries--I don't think that nuclear weapons (even our own) are nearly as secure as advertised. I think a small team of dedicated, resourceful people could steal an operational nuclear weapon--and do it so well that they make it look easy.
LOL!
Or, should I say (putting on uber-serious face), BFD?
The guy flying the 7x7 from Podunk to E. Overshoe doesn't "pull maintentance" on jet engines either.
OK, OK, so Vanya the Vapid KGBchik didn't "pull maintenance on nukes." BFD (there, I got it right this time). He did "pull nukes" themselves, though (in the singular with the plural implied for the aggreate collection of Vanya and his Friends).
As to the rest of your pantload, OK, OK, you convinced me. I'm a fool. An utter fool to worry about this stuff, since YOU, Mr. Anonymous Bits on the Internet assure me, with all the authority your "voice" can muster, that it just cannot, and just will not happen!
OK, I confess! I'm a fool!
Me, and all the real experts, including the many in our government who stay up nights sweating out the probability that this will happen... and, spend our tax money by the wheelbarrow-full in their efforts to try to detect and prevent "the impossible" from happening.
I suggested earlier that you reminded me of what I politely term an "Item Number 2" character (see my Profile Page if you seek further clarification, I shan't clutter the thread with too much off-topic'ry) -- or, a typical example of a "poster on a mission" to persuade the readers of your particular fallacy of choice. Your dedication to your cause, however, makes me lean strongly toward the first belief. I've seen a lot of stuff in my near-60 years on this ball o' woe, but I've seen few individuals so "driven" that they push their load with such dedication... for free.
If you "pull a" ... ahem, a "stealth ping" to one of the other "usual suspects" who can be relied on to appear from the shadows any time "the topic" arises, to screech like goat-bitten banshees that it CANNOT be done, it WILL NOT happen, and... and the same damn thing over and over, with prodigious quantities of Erwin Coreyesque "proofs" of their equally prodigious assertions. The goal, I guess, is that if you can't reason your way out of a discussion, the next best solution is to swamp it in spam. Anything to cause the readers' eys to glaze over, and push 'em to leave, lest they read the inconvenient facts that run counter to whatever ad hoc policy drives these guys when they show up and start "power-posting."
I wait wif bated eyes. I certainly haven't pinged any of 'em, and this is an obsure enough post that it'll make an interesting "single data point" if any of 'em do "just happen" to show up to join your chorus.
BTW, I'm also reminded of something Thomas Sowell once said:
Bogus arguments are a tip-off that you wouldn't buy the real reasons for what someone is doing.--Thomas Sowell
I'll wrap up by suggesting that any other folk who are reading this thread take a gander at Christopher Hitchens' short column titled, "The Night of the Weak Knees."
As a courtesy, I've enclosed the pertinent excerpt on my Profile Page. Click my name, then scroll down to read it.
If that gives you pause, then you might want to check out what Sam Cohen, the "father of the neutron bomb" has to say on various topics here: The Nuclear Threat That Doesn't Exist – or Does It?
And if that leaves you a bit shaken, then why not check out Scary Things Come in Small Packages too? (Caveat: this article concerns some very leading-edge stuff -- however, there is nothing to suggest that the Soviets were not "already there", nor is there anything to suggest that they didn't achieve other nightmares, the likes of which Cohen addresses. To succumb to a regimen of coerced inside-the-box thinking, is tantamount to "proving" that travel to the Moon is a scientifically proven impossibility, because it has been conclusively demonstrated that a large Mack truck -- the smallest vehicle capable of containing the necesary life support and other required equipment -- cannot even lift one inch off the launchpad, let alone all the way to the Moon.)
If, after that, you find that you do accept the fact that this is a credible threat, then I'd suggest doing some "independent study" on your own. A few simple queries, which you should be able to ration out on your own, submitted to the Google search page, will return plenty of salient links for you to dig through.
In summary, certain facts are known:
And, to balance things out:
So, as the saying goes, "we report, you decide"! :)
PS: at the risk of backtracking somewhat into the "meat" of this post, I'll mention one intriguing statement -- consonant with Sowell's observation -- from Cohen's article, which may have some bearing on the intensity with which some entities push you to reject the topic under discussion:
That is, the pure-fusion device renders the unthinkable thinkable. This is why officials do not want to discuss the possibility of pure-fusion warheads and, as will be seen, will do their best to deny their possible existence.
Between racing to and fro across the house at the behest of the sounds on the baby monitor, I slipped a gear, and neglected to complete a sentence.
The sentenced that ended with, "with prodigious quantities of Erwin Coreyesque "proofs" of their equally prodigious assertions" should have gone on to say that I would therefore have the concerns (voiced prior) reinforced to a nontrivial degree.
Yes, it's sloppy editing, but not nearly as sloppy as the time my editor, while nitpicking on every jot and tittle of my grammar, somehow did a "forest and trees error", missing the fact that I somehow managed to leave an entire paragraph chopped off in the middle, hanging mid-sentence, without even a misplaced period for cosmetics' sake.
I was given a new editor after I called that to their attention (at a decibel level I shall not mention). :)
Generally, governments do very few things well. One of those few things they do well is to spend large amounts of taxpayer's money (certainly not in piddling wheelbarrow-sized lots--think more along the lines of coal unit trainloads) by proclaiming some sort of "crisis" or "emergency." The more money that is spent on RDT&E or "studies" in lieu of real-world concrete actions to cope with a "crisis," the more the "crisis" is a product of hype.
If there were a real crisis or emergency of the sort you postulate, you'd see significantly different actions on the part of the government, such as "crisis relocation" of all persons in the presidential line of succession so that even a large strike against multiple targets would not render the country leaderless. We're not seeing that. You'd see significant efforts being made to improve security of our own nuclear stockpile (both operational weapons and disassembled weapon components). We're not seeing that.
If you "pull a" ... ahem, a "stealth ping" to one of the other "usual suspects" who can be relied on to appear from the shadows any time "the topic" arises
That's a very nasty case of projection you've developed.
If that gives you pause, then you might want to check out what Sam Cohen, the "father of the neutron bomb" has to say on various topics...
Anyone who links to J.R. Nyquist's website (who has predicted about a dozen of the past zero nuclear wars) is not to be taken seriously.
And if that leaves you a bit shaken, then why not check out Scary Things Come in Small Packages too?
I did. Amazing how Collins always had another excuse ready for why his experiment could not be reproduced. Reproducibility is key. Without it, you don't have science. Even supporters of isomer research said that efforts at weaponeering are premature and that Collins' paper was flawed and should not have passed peer review.
And at a megabuck a gram, this stuff would cost over 40,000 times as much as gold does. (Don't tell SwissAmerica and Blanchard--we'll get annoying radio ads for "Buy Hafnium today!")
Very notable bona fide authorities on the topic do take it very seriously.
"Appeal to authority" is a logical fallacy.
The government believes the threat of terrorists with nukes is not only possible, but credible, and is expending massive sums of money in an effort to try to counter it.
Yes, "terrorists with nukes" makes for a good excuse to spend massive sums of money on everything except (for example) actually improving security of existing nuclear weapons and survivability of the chain of command--in other words, they're not actually trying to reduce the likelihood of the "terrorists with nukes" scenario or in mitigating the consequences thereof.
Another thing they do well is deploy agent's provocateur and/or their "mild-mannered counterparts", which I term "hush-puppies", scripted with miles of "now don't you worry 'bout that chicken-little stuff."
If there were a real crisis or emergency of the sort you postulate, you'd see significantly different actions on the part of the government, such as "crisis relocation" of all persons in the presidential line of succession so that even a large strike against multiple targets would not render the country leaderless. We're not seeing that. You'd see significant efforts being made to improve security of our own nuclear stockpile (both operational weapons and disassembled weapon components). We're not seeing that. Oh please, spare us the all-knowing dicta, will you? Good grief.
By the way, they have of late gone into overdrive vis-a-vis ramping up activities at Mount Weather and other "shadow government" operations located across the country. But then, you knew it already.
That's a very nasty case of projection you've developed.
That makes about as much sense as anyhthing else you've said here, i.e., approximately none. Just one more vain effort to reframe the discussion by putting your better on the defensive via "shoot-from-the-lip" non sequitur. Predictable, if nothing else.
If that gives you pause, then you might want to check out what Sam Cohen, the "father of the neutron bomb" has to say on various topics...
Anyone who links to J.R. Nyquist's website (who has predicted about a dozen of the past zero nuclear wars) is not to be taken seriously.
See what I mean? There you go again, trying to derail the discussion. You do NOT like the fact that I cited Sam Cohen, "father of the neutron bomb", as qualified and respected a bona fide expert as there is, so, what do you do? Do you argue with anything Cohen said? Of course not. You can't. You're so far out of your league that it's hilarious.
Yet, you do remain compelled to challenge everything that is counter to your agenda, so what do you do? You insult the website where I found Cohen's writings! Gee, silly me, to have grabbed the first instance of Cohen's work that Goggle returned.
I guess if I'd pulled his site from a different web server you'd then engage in HONEST debate over what HE said, rather than try to disrupt the train of discussion as you just did?
Yeah, right. LOL! Like I said, you are if nothing else, predictable!
Very notable bona fide authorities on the topic do take it very seriously.
"Appeal to authority" is a logical fallacy.
So is "Shooting the messenger", which, as you will recall, you just engaged in while dismissing Sam Cohen solely on the basis of the web server that carried his writings.
So too, is miscasting the citation of factual data as an "appeal to authority" simply because it comes from an authority. By your present "logic", any time someone provides a citation, he's automatically disqualified it. Of course, if he doesn't provide a citation, you can then go, "Ahah! NO citation available to support your assertion?"
A nice "damned if he does, damned if he doesn't" set-up -- for someone with a double-digit IQ. Sorry to disappoint you by not walking into that lame trap.
The irony of course is that the sole basis of your endless screeds is YOUR implied authority. You issue one ex cathedra statement after another, from the anonymity of your desk, while accusing those who present actual citations from real principals of engaging in precisely that which you have raised to an artform.
Keep it up. You're good at it. So good, in fact, that I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that the "poster on a mission" profile just doesn't seem to fit.
The closing paragraph of your diatribe can stand on its own merit, as a display of your shameless tactics. Hey, what's one more ex-cathedra declaration left unanswered? LMAO!
At this point, I am thinking that I'm probably through with you. It irritates me to consider the proability of MY tax money going into your pocket, increased with each opportunity I provide you to type your scripted replies to the thread.
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