Several Nuclear Tests | Bombs That Will Be Used in the Third World War

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission ("atomic") bomb test released the same amount of energy as approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear ("hydrogen") bomb test released the same amount of energy as approximately 10,000,000 tons of TNT.

A modern thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2,400 pounds (1,100 kg) can produce an explosive force comparable to the detonation of more than 1.2 million tons (1.1 million tonnes) of TNT. Thus, even a small nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate an entire city by blast, fire and radiation. Nuclear weapons are considered weapons of mass destruction, and their use and control have been a major focus of international relations policy since their debut.

Only two nuclear weapons have been used in the course of warfare, both by the United States near the end of World War II. On 6 August 1945, a uranium gun-type fission bomb code-named "Little Boy" was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on 9 August, a plutonium implosion-type fission bomb code-named "Fat Man" was exploded over Nagasaki, Japan. These two bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 people—mostly civilians—from acute injuries sustained from the explosions. The role of the bombings in Japan's surrender, and their ethical status, remain the subject of scholarly and popular debate.

Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for testing purposes and demonstrations. Only a few nations possess such weapons or are suspected of seeking them. The only countries known to have detonated nuclear weapons—and that acknowledge possessing such weapons—are (chronologically by date of first test) the United States, the Soviet Union (succeeded as a nuclear power by Russia), the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China,India, Pakistan, and North Korea. In addition, Israel is also widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, though it does not acknowledge having them. One state, South Africa, fabricated nuclear weapons in the past, but as its apartheid regime was coming to an end it disassembled its arsenal, acceded to the NPT and accepted full-scope international safeguards.

The Federation of American Scientists estimates there are more than 17,000 nuclear warheads in the world as of 2012, with around 4,300 of them considered "operational", ready for use.

The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945 rose some 18 kilometers (11 mi) above the bomb's hypocenter.

Comments | | Read More...

USA Deploying Missile Interceptors

The U.S. is deploying 14 new ground-based missile interceptors in Alaska
to counter renewed nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran, Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel said Friday.

The new interceptors will be based at Fort Greely, an Army launch site about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska, and are projected to be fully deployed by 2017, Hagel said. The additions will bring the U.S.-based ground interceptor deployment from 30 to 44, including four that are
based in California.

That will boost U.S. missile defense capability by 50 percent and
"make clear to the world that the United States stands firm against aggression,"
he said in a briefing at the Pentagon.

The announcement comes as North Korea has been making bellicose threats to void the armistice that ended the Korean War and launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. The U.S. and South Korea began annual military drills this week despite the North Korean threats.

Hagel said the U.S. would also shift some "resources," which he didn't specify, from the delayed Aegis anti-missile program in Europe to U.S.-based defenses, saying the Aegis program was "lagging" because of reduced congressional funding. And he reiterated previously announced plans to add a second U.S. anti-ballistic missile radar installation in Japan.

Taking all of the moves together, "we will be able to add protection against missiles from Iran sooner while also proving protection against the threat from North Korea," he said.

Even before the announcement, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., a member of the Armed Services Committee, criticized the news, saying it was too little and too late.

"I applaud the Obama administration's decision, but it shouldn't have taken the predictable saber-rattling from North Korea to bring this about," Ayotte said in a statement Friday. 

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is trying to prove his strength, causing experts to worry that Pyongyang's threats could get out of control. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

Pointing to Iran's nuclear program, Ayotte called on the Obama administration to "move expeditiously to construct an East Coast missile defense site."

"Americans living in the Eastern United States should have the same level of missile defense protection as those in the West," she said.

Courtney Kube and Kelly O'Donnell of NBC News contributed to this report. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

By M. Alex Johnson, staff writer, NBC News

Comments | | Read More...

North Korea Ready For War

The US South Korean military exercises will continue until the end of this month, and the North Korean threats to do something terrible if they do not stop grow more hysterical by the day.

World View with Gwynne Dyer

Last week the Great Successor, Kim Jong-un, was shown signing a decree that ordered North Korea’s long-range missile forces to be ready to launch against the United States, while senior military officers looked on approvingly.

On the wall behind Kim was a map, helpfully labelled “US Mainland Strike Plan”, that showed the missile trajectories from North Korea to Hawaii, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Austin, Texas. (Why Austin? Doesn’t he like indie rock?) It was a scene straight out of the villain’s lair in an early James Bond movie, except that they’d forgotten to set it in a cave.

These threats are so palpably empty that the instinct of both the Pentagon and the US State Department is just to ignore them. North Korea has no operational missile that can reach even western Alaska, no miniaturised nuclear warhead to put on such a missile, and no long-range targeting capability.

But the politics of the situation demands that the US government respond seriously to every threat, however foolish.

So next year the US government will spend another billion dollars or so to place 14 more anti-ballistic missile sites in Alaska,
presumably to protect the Alaskan west coast and the Aleutian Islands from a North Korean nuclear strike.

And on March 29, it sent two B-2 bombers all the way from Missouri non-stop to drop bombs on some uninhabited islands near North Korea, just to remind Pyongyang that it can. It’s all still just a charade, a spring display of military capacities by two rival armed forces that could as well be rutting deer.

The US would not even play this game if the logic of both international and domestic politics did not oblige it to respond to the increasingly rabid North Korean threats. But it is playing nevertheless, and the risk of miscalculation is quite serious.

Anybody who tells you he knows what is going on inside the North Korean regime is a liar, but there are a few safe assumptions. Real decision-making power on war and peace almost certainly lies with the senior ranks of the North Korean army, not with young Kim or the Communist Party.

It’s also clear that Kim, new to power and insecure, feels the need to look tough, just as his father did when he inherited the leadership from Kim’s grandfather.

And nobody in the North Korean regime knows how things work in the rest of the world. They may even be genuinely afraid that the US—South Korean military exercises, although they have been held annually for decades, are this time only a cover for a plan to attack North Korea.

After all, the regime’s founder, Kim Il-sung, concentrated his forces under cover of military exercises in just that way when he invaded South Korea in 1950.

The North Korean military doubtless understand that they must not get into a nuclear war with the US, but they may believe that their dozen or so nuclear weapons make it safe for them to use conventional force without facing American nuclear retaliation. And they do have rather a lot of conventional military force at their disposal.

Kim Jong-un’s threats are being exposed as bluffs almost daily— the US—South Korean military exercises go on as though he had said nothing— and he may ultimately feel obliged to do something to restore his credibility.

It would probably be just a limited local attack somewhere, but in the current atmosphere, with both Seoul and Washington determined not to submit to psychological blackmail, that could escalate rapidly to full-scale conventional war.

It would be a major war, for although North Korea’s weapons are mostly last-generation, that is not such a big handicap in ground warfare as it is in the air or at sea. North Korean troops are well-trained, and there are over a million of them. Moreover, South Korea is compelled to defend well forward because holding on to Seoul, only 50 kilometres from the frontier, is a political imperative. That makes it quite vulnerable to breakthroughs.

The North Koreans would attack south in a three-pronged thrust, accompanied by special forces operations deep in South Korean territory, just as they did in 1950. The geography gives them few alternatives.

US—South Korean strategy would also echo 1950-51: contain the North Korean attack as close to the border as possible, and then counter-attack up the west coast on an axis heading north through Kaesong to Pyongyang. That would once again be accompanied by a big amphibious landing well behind the North Korean front, this time probably at Wonsan on North Korea’s east coast.

Even if the North Korean air force were effectively destroyed in the first couple of days, as it probably would be, this would be a highly mobile, hard-fought land war in densely populated territory involving high casualties and massive destruction. The world has not seen such a war for more than 50 years now.

SCIENTIST X

Comments | | Read More...