Lessay I was a country that had just developed a nuke: Know what I’d want?
A DELIVERY SYSTEM.
And not just any delivery system —it would have to be one that could not only life a pretty heavy, non-miniaturized bomb but also somehow be STEALTHY:
Something my enemy would see as normal and innocuous and not an attacking plane.
Most people think the most expensive US weapon in WW2 was the atomic bomb, but that’s wrong:
It was the B-29 that delivered it.
Someone was celebrating the unanimous election of a despot in NK and shot off a missile.
Have you looked at the history of the Manhattan Project?
How would you cost that effort into those 2 bombs.
The project was scattered all over the US. The largest research/engineering project ever undertaken by man.
What was the actual cost of the Plutonium in the Fat Man and the Uranium in Little Boy? None existed in pure enough form before the project.
Amazing stuff.
Fair enough, but if you were a country that had just spent the huge $$$ to develop a nuke, you could just buy a commercial airliner.
Virtually every country in the world has commercial airlines of some variety or another. It’s not that difficult to buy a Boeing 777. And if your country has the billions required to develop a nuke, you can afford a commercial airliner. Why steal one and bring unwarranted attention?
Even a terrorist group that’s reasonably well-financed could afford an airliner. And if it’s a terrorist group that can afford to develop a nuke, or even buy one “off the shelf”, they can afford a 737 or an A330.
Yes, a commercial airliner would indeed make a good delivery system. But so would a freighter and a cargo container.
Or a U-Haul.
That airplane almost broke Boeing.The gubmint kept the contract going till 46 so the company wouldn’t go out of business.
UPS doesn’t work well enough?