We started disassembling these in the 1980s. So it’s Reagan’s fault.
Seriously? This is in breaking? Giant iron-bomb nukes are pretty useless. I doubt a BUFF would make it close enough to a real target to drop it.
Why do I suddenly feel sick?
In the meantime we have Chinese scientist throughout our nuclear programs and China, no doubt, continues to develop EMP bombs, neutron bombs and killer satellites, using technology stolen from the US.
‘Cause, y’know, if we do it, everybody else will...
Freakin’ Pollyanna.
The original intent of this weapon was as a bunker buster. We now have much more effective deep penetrating and very accurate weapons to do the job. It’s obsolete. Like the Sherman tank, a good piece of engineering in its day,
Well if there is a work accident it would happen in amarillo where you couldnt tell the difference in the landscape.
Too bad it wasn’t dismantled as originally intended: instantaneously in a 10 million degrees F, 4-mile wide fireball above Iran’s nuclear development facility, or even better, on Amahdi-jihad himself.
LLS
The B-53 is an early to mid-60’s era device, 9000 lbs, 12-1/2 feet long. It is a complete pig. The first ones to be dismantled were dismantled in 1968. That’s how old it is. If ever we became engaged in a nuclear exchange, this is the absolute last thing we would use on anything or anybody. It’s a museum piece, at best. Not that it wouldn’t ruin your day if it went off, but it’s better to dismantle it, from any conceivable standpoint, war OR peace.
We’ll just have to reassemble it in 16 months.
Did Perry and Obama get together and plan this terrorists temptation?
Now they can build a bunch of small ones for home defense!
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.
Why dismante it? Why not put it to good use and drop it on Nancy Pelosis head?
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.
We’ve been dismantling these old 60’s era nukes since the 90s when we came off SAC alert.
These B-63s have been off the line since 1996.
Must have been a slow news day.
Fortunately, nucular bombs remain in the arsenal.
Yeah, a YEAR ahead of schedule.
There must be a way to keep this idiot and his handlers from making us setting targets.