Airborne Combat Engineer

China's moment of choice

Austin Bay calls for China to step up.

[Austin Bay, Strategy Page, 10/11/2006]

A toast

Woody has a photo you should see.

See also the campaign ad the GOP decided not to run.

World's largest and smallest nuclear weapons

It appears the Russians built the world's largest and smallest nuclear weapons, ranging from a 152mm artillery shell to a 100 megaton monster.

See a photo of the two here.

National Atomic Museum

The 155mm nuclear artillery shell

The W48 was an American Nuclear artillery shell, fired from a standard 155 mm (6.1 inch) howitzer. It was manufactured starting in 1963, and all units were retired in 1992.

The W48 is 6.1 inches (155 mm) in diameter and 33.3 inches long. It came in two models, Mod 0 and Mod 1, which are reported to have weighed 118 and 128 pounds respectively. It had an explosive yield equal to 72 tons of TNT (0.072 kiloton).

Answers.com

Conclusions:

1. Relatively small nukes (which yields under 1KT) are possible.

2. It would take TONS of conventional explosives to "fake" one.

ACE was taught how to simulate the mushroom cloud of a nuke with conventional explosives while in the Army (out in the west boonies of Ft. Bragg -- which might have turned a few heads back at the base), but has long since forgotten the "recipe."

Speaking of small nukes, remember the Davy Crockett?

The "Davy Crockett" was the epitome of a small nuclear weapon. It was only 30 inches long, 11 inches wide and weighed 76 pounds. It took years of development and testing to deploy a weapon this small which was reliable and safe, yet packed the power of many tons of TNT. During the Cold War, the East Germans were no doubt deterred from attacking West Germany by the knowledge the American ground troops had this formidable weapon deployed in the field.

The M388 Projectile could carry either conventional explosives or a variable-yield W-54 atomic fission warhead - operator selectable explosive yield from 10 to 20 tons TNT -- .01KT to .02KT. (the .25KT version of the W54 was used for an air-to-air missile -- see W54 link below).

Dial a yield. Wonder how that worked?

The "Davy Crockett" used the W54 warhead.

Minimum detonation range was an astounding 1000 feet.

No, thank you!

Maximum range of the M28 'Light' Launcher was 1.24 miles, and the M29 'Heavy' Launcher's     maximum range was 2.5 miles.

Even that is too waay to close!

The XW-51/XW-54 design was test fired more times than any preceding US nuclear weapon prior to its successful introduction in service, indicating the difficulty of successfully making this small and low yield design work reliably and safely.

guntruck.com
Brookings Institute
Answers.com
National Atomic Museum

2100 of these babies were actually produced. (Hope they've been properly disposed of, and are not sitting in the back of some government warehouse, like the Arc of the Covenant.)

ACE ordered and has a DVD on this weapon, showing one being fired in an exercise with lots of troops within 2-3 miles.

In a CBR course in the early 70s, ACE received a handy-dandy circular plastic calculator by which a commander could calculate the number of hours for which troops could still function effectively after being at different ranges from nuclear blasts of different magnitudes. Very sobering!

Here are images of the whole set of nuclear slide rules (circular and linear).

The blame for NorK nukes starts with Clinton

During the early Clinton years, hard-liners and so-called conservative hawks advocated a pre-emptive strike to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons development before it could field an atomic bomb. Instead of taking the hard line, President Clinton elected to rely on former President Jimmy Carter and decided to appease the Marxist-Stalinist dictatorship.

Carter met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang and returned to America waving a piece of paper and declaring peace in our time. Kim, according to Carter, had agreed to stop his nuclear weapons development.

The Clinton appeasement program for North Korea included hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, food, oil and even a nuclear reactor. However, the agreement was flawed and lacked even the most informal means of verification.

In return, Kim elected to starve his people while using the American aid to build uranium bombs. The lowest estimate is that Kim starved to death over 1 million of his own people, even with the U.S. aid program.

[NewsMax, 8 JAN 2003]

There's plenty of blame to spread around, but the Dems can't hang this one on Bush alone. In fact, once Clinton let things get so far out of hand, Bush's viable options were far more limited.

The important thing, looking ahead, is to put a heavy price on North Korea for going against the wishes of the world community, so Iran will not be emboldened.

The Chinese need to step up and take care of this one.

Speculation about the NorK nuke test

The North Korean test appears to have been a nuclear detonation but was fairly small by traditional standards, and possibly a failure or a partial success, federal and private analysts said yesterday.

NY Times, 10/10/2006

David Axe at Defense Tech, among numerous other bloggers, is also trying to think out the truth, but the fact is we just don't know for sure, yet.

Defense Tech, 10/9/2006

Rumors are more tests are coming. They might be bigger.

North Korea claims successful nuclear test

North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test, which would confirm that the country has a working atomic bomb as it has long claimed.

South Korea's presidential Blue House said a tremor had been detected in North Korea on Monday. It said South Korea's Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources had detected a tremor of a magnitude 3.58 to 3.7 at 0135 GMT.

[China Daily, 9 OCT 2006]
Chronology

Oh, well. Guess our threats didn't persuade them.  Let's see what sanctions are imposed.

Conservative narrowly leads in Mexico recount

[LINK] Washington Post

The two front-runners in Mexico's closest presidential race in history watched anxiously Thursday as an overnight vote tally recount saw the conservative candidate Felipe Calderon catch up to his leftist rival and pass him by a razor-thin margin.

Obrador is threatening to "pull a Gore."

On Wednesday, Lopez Obrador threatened to ignore the final tally because of "serious evidence of fraud." Leonel Cota, president of the Democratic Revolution Party, accused election officials of deliberately mishandling the preliminary vote count Sunday to confirm a win for Calderon. He said Lopez Obrador won Sunday's vote.

North Korea talking tough

[LINK] Reuters

"The army and people of the DPRK are now in full preparedness to answer a pre-emptive attack with a relentless annihilating strike and a nuclear war with a mighty nuclear deterrent."

Sounds like somebody's getting a little nervous. Good!