There are two things that I have trouble comprehending.  In the grand scale of the universe they're small things, but for some reason they cause my mind to lock up.

A small warhead like the W88 W62 carried by the Trident Minuteman III that in a flash turns into a 475 170 kiloton thermonuclear blast.  E=MC² indeed.

This

Becomes this


The others are pics of nebulas that measure 150 lightyears across.  What was once a star about the size of our solar system is now a nebula whose diameter is nearly 50 times the distance from Earth to Proxima Centauri.

Something like this

Becomes something like this



We can't even begin to truly comprehend the size of the biggest things.

Those are W-78's before we de-mirved the minuteman

It was the best pic I could find that showed scale.

You're the last person here I want to argue with about this sort of thing, but...

According to Wiki they're actually Mark 12A re-entry vehicles containing W62 warheads, each with a nominal yield of 170 kT.



Most people (myself included) wouldn't know a W88 from a W76 from W62 from a snow cone maker.

The Spaghetti Nebula pic is actually 140-200 LY across.  I'll edit my original post.

Ah yes could be 62s. They both use Mk12A's.

I guess if you want to get specific the 78 is the A. I can't tell the difference from the outside. I can tell the difference between an 88 and a toaster thankfully.


Eta 2 and it's easy to tell the difference between and SLBM bus and an ICBM bus. SLBM's ran out of room for the RB's See 11th pic from the top here

The SAS pics are exceptionally cool. What an amazing memento!

Also, there are lock nuts that would pay a ton for those keys. Even if they were trainer keys.

You should seriously hook that panel up to get dial tone.



You think that's small? Go look at the W79!

If you can get past what they are for, the engineering that went into these systems are absolutely, completely fascinating. Dirt. Essentially dirt, molded and shaped and refined.



You.... certain of that?   lol



I'll do it!

W87's:



W78:



W62:



W88:






Technically....

If that's the exhibit I am thinking about, those are actually traffic cones painted black. lol seriously. Let me see if I can find a better picture...


Edit: I went back and counted. You picked out the Trident pic. Easy to tell because they decided to put a rocket motor IN BETWEEN all the wh's / penaids.

LOL.

Now I can't unsee it.

I was wrong. It wasn't MM, but their Trident display:




So, LX, what is that TS/Crypto device? I have never seen it before. Weird not to have a /TSEC on it

Either I overlooked it or it wasn't discussed, but do we have any MIRV warheads in our ICBM fleet or did they all go away because the communists cried?

Trainer SDU keying variable.  Used to encrypt/decrypt comms between LF and LCC.  

But since it's an MPT simulation, it's just a block of aluminum milled to the same dimensions and therefore unclass.  

I just like watching my friends who used to have clearances start to twitch when they read the first line.

ICBMs, no.  All single-bangers.

SLBMs, all are party packs.

Shows how much I know, I thought both were the same, i.e. ICBM. Thank you for the answer.

Your average American  doesn't even know we have either, so you're already a step ahead.  In 2003 I had a conversation with an active duty USAF one
star who didn't know we still had ICBMs on alert.  He thought they went away with the end of the Cold War.  

Holy shit

Just think, that one star is probably a lobbyist making big $ helping drive defense policy.  It's not what you know, it's who you know.

Wtf

I knew we retired the Peacekeeper due to the MIRV capability but I thought our minutemen still had MIRVs

You are wrong! You are the target.

Sucks to be the only ones in the world that abide by our treaties.

An Ohio class will definitely fuck up somebody's day though

What our current ICBM looks like. W87 warhead, Blast yield: 300 kt (W87-0) 475 kt (W87-1)

I want to see a nuclear test documented with modern day camera equipment really bad.

Edit: Everything. 4k resolution, slow motion capture, infrared, etc etc

87-1 FPU isn't till about 2030 and that's optimistic See here

currently we field both W78's (LANL) and W87's (LLNL) on minuteman III's.

I’m curious if the US gov is going to re-eval force structure given that China is working on deploying 3,000 strategic warheads, and Russia actively deploying new delivery systems and violating existing treaty commitments.

MM3 flight including reentry, but no big boom at the end.  The upside down black ice cream cones do make a big splash at the end.  Can't wait to see comment's from the SME's on this one.

This one is interesting too, never seen it before.  

Me too.  And the Columbia class SSBN starting construction has less tubes than Ohio, carries less warheads.  I don't get it, seems like we need more missiles and warheads not less given that China is not party to any of the treaties, let alone the Russians violating them.  You know, peace through strength.

The silo-based version of Atlas had to be raised to the surface for launch.  Same with Titan I.

With the current crop of leftists in all 4 branches of government, the 4th being the massive bureaucracy branch? Not fucking likely. In fact they are more than likely helping China and even Russia expand and better their arsenals.

Some people in congress are starting to wake up to the fact that the arms race of the Cold War didn't really stop, we just stopped playing. It's time to stop kicking the can down the road. There will be no can left at some point. It will depend on whether congress funds replacement delivery systems appropriately and whether NNSA successfully re-establishes pit production.

What's the X37 doing up there? Those scientific experiments sure take a long time. It sometimes just flies around up there for two years, just doing experiments.

What if we didn't stop playing?

Then I want to live in that time line cuz this one sucks

We tend to see the advances in military tech during or after the conflict

Actually a mix of 12As and 21s.  Good solution to the "all the eggs in one basket" problem of having only one for the entire force, and after all, we had all these  Peacekeeper RVs just laying around....

I'm really curious what our arsenal would like with no treaties.

Probably something crazy like a mix of tactical nukes and just country destroying 900kt warheads on a missile with like 24 MIRVs

Hardtack Teak outer space detonation

Scientists scramble from the detonation of Hardtack TEAK.  Teak was a 3.8 Megaton nuclear test detonated on August 1, 1958 nearly 50 miles above the earth and launched from Johnston Island aboard a Redstone rocket.




Attached File

We also desperately need to resume nuclear testing (especially of Livermore designed warheads...)

I can't comment on that but I'd love to hear why you say that about the LLNL designs

1946 atomic bomb test operation crossroads




Attached File

I always enjoy these threads. I didn't get the chance to work on the big missiles, only bombs and small missiles, thus staying out of it. Truly amazing science, engineering and technology.

A WIP or two a year, and some masturbation time on the Big Machine doesn't really count, though. There needs to be a real world test program.




That doesn't scale to nukes. It's like being tied down by ant using a thousand tiny threads all while they advance their own science. Disgusting.



I think a mix is smart. I hope it extends to the innards, so that a common failure doesn't red tag the entire triad, which has been very alarming considering the discussion of the common warhead concept.



yes it does! It's like leaving a game of tetris playing only to come back and realize how badly you've fucked yourself.



Fuck yes we (they, not me. I would, but they don't let stupids near the interesting things) do.

I actually wrote President Trump about this.

I said that if he did an AGT on a single system, it would zero out our National debt. (Just the PPV rights alone.) Everyone would be happy. People like me could witness it. People that need to be reminded what they can do could witness it. People that hate them would finally have something real and tangible to go protest over, and not imagined or long-ago wrongs. Branding, merchandising, gambling? yuuuuuge



Why can't you?

You didn't ask me, but my reading tends to make me believe that LANL is the cult of 'round is beautiful' to the point that oranges could not be left out on desks, while all the risky, edge-of-the-margin stuff came out of LLNL. I believe LANL invested more time in perfecting the wheel than re-inventing it. I think neither shop would fare well in a real shootoff if a new design was authorized. It's been too long, and I have trouble believing there's anybody left with that 50's spark of genius, just a generation raised in the safety and conservative design culture.

I would love to see some new designs. Look at all the advances in materials science and computer guessery. The body of knowledge on shock physics alone, much less energy transfer for inertial confinement fusion... it's been around 30 years since the current designs were finalized. What could the sharpest tools in the kitchen come up with? What designs are languishing in a VTR somewhere that could be more robust and safer for the people that have to work with them but still meet criteria for their delivery vehicles?

Plus they could finally clear the air on some of the pit processing techniques. I still believe the Rocky Flats use of old-world wrought techniques were superior to casting to near-net shapes, but looking at how current aerospace products are created, I wonder what's possible now.



Thank you for your efforts, just the same! I hate how those career fields got folded in due to politics.



Ah, ok.





I share your enthusiasm!

Because I like my clearance and would like to keep it. The W93 has been authorized and consumes a lot of our time. I expect that funding will likely continue and if the R's take congress might get appropriate funding. A lot of the old guys say the guards at Rocky should have followed the verbiage on the signs when the FBI rolled up. Probably also not a great idea to leave rad waste in cardboard boxes outside for a few years.

Fair enough.




I didn't think this one made it out of Phase I?




I've read a lot of the books written by the people there on all the sides. I wouldn't have wanted to be on either side of that exchange.

Far as RW, I've read about stupider things. A lot of shit blew across the fence at Mound before they figured it out, too. K25 had its' issues, too. Y12 had days where a river of mercury would flow out the south doors.

Then, there's Burlington, where they assembled weapons for years, but no one seems to know it.

Probably should have been more specific. The 93 is the program of record and has funding for pre-phase 1 scoping (which is still quite a bit of money). I think it's pretty likely it gets funded and proceeds because the military is driving that home with congress.

How is it going to get past that without changing a lot of legal stuff?

Can't develop a novel NEP, so it will have to be a warmed-over previous design, with newer components.

(Needs to be a new design from the inside out)

The old verbiage about being prohibited from new design went away several years ago.

Recipe storage.

Just because Ohio class has 24 tubes doesn't mean they're all loaded with war shots. Treaty limitations and target packages determine the loadout. Some of those tubes probably have ballast cans in them. Someone determined that Columbia can do the mission with 8 less tubes per hull. That saves on maintenance and logistics for unneeded tubes. The 41 for Freedom boats only had 16 tubes.

I'm assuming that's a trainer. Otherwise their adherence to the Two Man Rule sucks.