Posted on 10/25/2011 7:48:27 AM PDT by penelopesire
"The last of the nation's most powerful nuclear bombs — a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War. The final components of the B53 bomb will be broken down Tuesday at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility. The completion of the dismantling program is a year ahead of schedule, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, and aligns with President Barack Obama's goal of reducing the number of nuclear weapons. Thomas D'Agostino, the nuclear administration's chief, called the bomb's elimination a "significant milestone."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Yep Dog and Pony going on now.......... I took day off to avoid the back slappin .
My first experience with that was Kincheloe AFB in early 70’s where we put em on BUFF’s. Bad event was Damascus Arkansas Titan site when the W53 variant of that beast blew out of a silo there after a fueling accident. Now they are DONE. GPS accuracy and the Mod 11 lawn dart B61 makes em archaic yet everybody loves a big bomb !.....:o) I will miss it. Only hazard on that pig now is DDOT....dont drop on toes !
Warm and fuzzy deterrent did it’s job.......!!!!!
Snow predicted Thursday morning for poohville so mount that snow blade on yer truck ! Gotta pass ya on the way here most of the time !
Stay safe !
...China, no doubt, continues to develop EMP bombs, neutron bombs and killer satellites, using technology stolen from the US.
***
No need to give it to them when you have a Clinton or an Obama to give it to them.
Remember the Wen Ho Lee affair at Los Alamos? I have absolutely no proof of this; it’s just a hunch. Clinton sent Richardson there to investigate alleged data management problems. Wen was subsequently charged.
I suspect that Clinton sold secrets to China and then had Wen framed in order to account for China’s sudden acquisition of our nuclear secrets.
The BUFF might not make it, but the B-2 would.
So Hussein is doing this to FOOL his handlers (our enemies) into THINKING we’ve dismantled one of our most powerful weapons?
I’m not going to be convinced he doesn’t know this is happening. His “team” controls all that is reported by Big Media.
Nosir, he will do anything he can to weaken America, despite the knee jerk “What are you, stupid?” posts by some alleged conservatives here.
Why do some insist on ASSUMING that SOME of what Hussein does is BENEFICIAL to America?
I say, ask who is doing the dismantling, where are the materials going, and who or what cause is he benefiting?
Leftist freaks had no difficulty in telling us EVERYTHING GW did was BAD. Why do some like to assume Hussein means well about ANYTHING?
Sadly many Americans will be taken in by this nonsense.
Same warhead (Mk-6) that armed the Titan II ICBM.
(Worked that system as a 46350)
Later, as a civilian, I worked the last operational test flight of the Titan II ICBM in 1976, installing a new guidance harness for the new guidance system.
During tech school in 1971, there was a B53 training unit that had the parachute removed from the rear area.
One of my buddies found that a good spot to stretch out and take a nap.....
That bomb actually had a plane designed just to carry it.
The lumbering old B-36.
How is this headline
“US’s most powerful nuclear bomb being dismantled”
anything but good news to Hussein’s friends our enemies?
Mind your knot bro.
We had 25 degrees here this morning. Cloudy last night nut no precip.
That’s cool info! Interesting...I saw a big lumbering old bomber plane flying low out of a Fort Worth base yesterday. Wonder if this old bomb was being transported in that plane to Pantex in Amarillo yesterday? We don’t usually have old bombers around here...just fighter jets and those big cargo planes.
Uh...no....That would be truck transport only!
Be interesting to know which plane that was though?
Well...the article did say that we were a year ahead of schedule. Maybe Zero thought he would speed up the whole thing by ordering them to fly the thing to FW and then trucking it to Amarillo. He does need a bump in the polls...he is sinking like a stone. His commie and islamist supporters will love this news....lol
Why dismante it? Why not put it to good use and drop it on Nancy Pelosis head?
This is the W-53.
A B-53 without the tail, parachute package, and nose. It sat on top of this:
The Titan II ICBM. The last of these were on Alert until 1988.
They were more than "bunker busters."
Folks should understand that nukes need maintenance. They’re not like a conventional bomb, where if you keep it in a cool, dry area, the explosive material within the bomb will last for decades (or more) without any attention. Nukes are bombs with a shelf life. The fissile materials within them decay, and after a number of years, need to be refreshed or replaced with fresh material. An example of such a material is tritium - many of you might use night-sights on your handguns or such you’d use in home defense or on-duty carry for LEO’s. Well, those little glowing inserts fade in a few years, and that’s a result of the 12.7 year half-life of the tritium. Other components become poisoned by the decay of the fissile material and need to be changed out.
If this isn’t done, the result could be what nuke physics jocks call a “fizzle” - the nuke reaction starts, then peters out well short of potential yields as the nuclear chain reaction fails to take off properly.
Given that there’s only so much of this materials to go around, it behooves us to update/refresh the weapons we’re most likely to use. A bomb intended to be lugged around the world in 1950’s doctrine manned bombers obviously isn’t high on the priority list of weapons and delivery systems to be used in first strikes today.
I’m hardly an Obama supporter, but I think that the disassembly of weapons that are obsolete to current strategic doctrine shouldn’t be seen as some sort of conspiracy by Obama’s buddies. The fiscal and engineering issues have been talked about in engineering journals for years - how are we going to maintain the thousands of warheads we have in inventory? It is a problem that was first discussed in the mid-90’s.
This resulted in something called the “Science Based Stockpile Stewardship” idea within the LBL and LANL weapons groups, which then tied in with the Bush administration’s “Nuclear Posture Review” in 2002, both of which call for reductions in the US weapons stockpile over the 10 years following 2002. Basically, if you want to complain about the reduction or decommissioning of nukes at this point, we have to look back at the Bush Administration as the source of the policy.
Supposed to get close to 80 here today. I went for a walk at noon. The trees are beautiful this time of year. The part of Ft Knox where the Human Resources Commmand is located is near some Korean War era barracks that are surrounded with maple and oak trees. What a great place to stroll at noon. Lots of memories there now.
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