NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Type 08

[The Soodean Imperium]

2. The weight of the engine is somewhat offset by having all the armament in the nose. The wings are moved a bit further back and the tail wings are larger to help align the center of lift properly with the center of mass. Having the center of mass in the center of the aircraft would probably actually increase the maneuverability over the P-47, as would the larger tail plane, though it may not dive quite as well.

Combat flight experience with the P-39 found that the rear-engine center-of-gravity created some... unusual stability issues, including unexpected somersaults during high-G maneuvers. Flight tests found that these were even more likely after all 37mm ammunition had been fired, reducing the weight in the nose.

So here's an idea for a nuclear pulse propulsion powered ICBM that i just quickly modeled.

Normally, I would find a way to model multiple explosions on the map to show that a barrage of ICBMs each carrying MIRVed warheads would inflict far more damage, but instead I'll just keep it simple:

Why?

[The Teutonic Republic]

Normally, I would find a way to model multiple explosions on the map to show that a barrage of ICBMs each carrying MIRVed warheads would inflict far more damage, but instead I'll just keep it simple:

Why?

Orion drives are exponentially better for putting payload into orbit compared to chemical rockets. An Orion craft can easily have a payload fraction in excess of 50% in comparison to less than 1% for most chemical rockets. Not to mention its also orders of magnitude cheaper in terms of cost per kg to orbit. Also the bigger you make a nuke the more efficient you can make it. I used the RE factor of the mk. 41 bomb to get the 8.25 GT yield which would be an extremely conservative estimate.

So a barrage of ICBMs with the same total weight or same total cost as the orion ICBM would inflict orders of magnitude less damage.

[Spirit of Hope]

I'm just wondering if it is even physically possible to make a nuclear weapon with that yield. Nuclear weapons aren't like regular explosives where you just add more explosives or fissionable material to get a larger explosion. I'm not sure you could make a nuclear weapon that size, and even if you could there is no way you could test it to seeif it would actually work.

[The Teutonic Republic]

I'm just wondering if it is even physically possible to make a nuclear weapon with that yield. Nuclear weapons aren't like regular explosives where you just add more explosives or fissionable material to get a larger explosion. I'm not sure you could make a nuclear weapon that size, and even if you could there is no way you could test it to seeif it would actually work.

The USAF had plans for a multi gigaton warhead to be carried on an orion battleship in the 60's so someone had to have thought it was possible.

http://up-ship.com/blog/wp-content/uplo ... omsday.png

[Spirit of Hope]

So a barrage of ICBMs with the same total weight or same total cost as the orion ICBM would inflict orders of magnitude less damage.

But you don't need the same throw weight to get a better effect.

1). A huge amount of the energy from this weapon is being wasted. It is going up into the air or down into the ground where it doesn't help you.

2). Even more of it is wasted on things you don't need to hit. You are blowing away all of New York State, but you don't need to kill the huge amount of forests and farms out there. They aren't contributing to the enemies fighting effort in any meaningful way.

Even destroying all of New York city is rather wasteful, there are only a small number of targets worthy of a nuclear strike there.

3). As I already noted there is no way for you to test this system. You have to hope no one messes up and that things work the way you need them to at that energy level.

4). Yes Orion drives are more efficent, so you would probably better use that part to lift more smaller warheads.

5). The cost of 1 of these is huge, so you couldn't make that many of them. If someone could counter a couple of them (ABM systems, sabotage,effective first strike, etc) you would be left with no response.

[The Soodean Imperium]

Normally, I would find a way to model multiple explosions on the map to show that a barrage of ICBMs each carrying MIRVed warheads would inflict far more damage, but instead I'll just keep it simple:

Why?

Orion drives are exponentially better for putting payload into orbit compared to chemical rockets. An Orion craft can easily have a payload fraction in excess of 50% in comparison to less than 1% for most chemical rockets. Not to mention its also orders of magnitude cheaper in terms of cost per kg to orbit. Also the bigger you make a nuke the more efficient you can make it. I used the RE factor of the mk. 41 bomb to get the 8.25 GT yield which would be an extremely conservative estimate.

So a barrage of ICBMs with the same total weight or same total cost as the orion ICBM would inflict orders of magnitude less damage.

No, I don't mean the Orion part (that's another matter entirely). I mean the massive single-piece warhead. What do you intend to do with it? Are you launching one Orion missile at each airbase, silo, port, and hardened bunker in the enemy's nation? Or are you planning to launch a single one of these massive, fragile weapons at their country and hope they don't have a single mid-range or terminal ABM in service?

As far as I can tell, the only motivation for this weapon, like the conventional ones you posted earlier, is "I like big booms." As a White Elephant project it's fine, and you could probably get away with saying that back in the '60s your scientists seriously considered it for a while before moving on to saner ideas. But it's not the sort of thing you want to actually put into production.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Orion drives are exponentially better for putting payload into orbit compared to chemical rockets. An Orion craft can easily have a payload fraction in excess of 50% in comparison to less than 1% for most chemical rockets. Not to mention its also orders of magnitude cheaper in terms of cost per kg to orbit. Also the bigger you make a nuke the more efficient you can make it. I used the RE factor of the mk. 41 bomb to get the 8.25 GT yield which would be an extremely conservative estimate.

So a barrage of ICBMs with the same total weight or same total cost as the orion ICBM would inflict orders of magnitude less damage.

No, I don't mean the Orion part (that's another matter entirely). I mean the massive single-piece warhead. What do you intend to do with it? Are you launching one Orion missile at each airbase, silo, port, and hardened bunker in the enemy's nation? Or are you planning to launch a single one of these massive, fragile weapons at their country and hope they don't have a single mid-range or terminal ABM in service?

As far as I can tell, the only motivation for this weapon, like the conventional ones you posted earlier, is "I like big booms." As a White Elephant project it's fine, and you could probably get away with saying that back in the '60s your scientists seriously considered it for a while before moving on to saner ideas. But it's not the sort of thing you want to actually put into production.

It also ignores the fact that the yearly world production of weapons grade fissible material is nowhere near enough to build a 1,600 ton warhead.

[The Akasha Colony]

Orion drives are exponentially better for putting payload into orbit compared to chemical rockets. An Orion craft can easily have a payload fraction in excess of 50% in comparison to less than 1% for most chemical rockets. Not to mention its also orders of magnitude cheaper in terms of cost per kg to orbit. Also the bigger you make a nuke the more efficient you can make it. I used the RE factor of the mk. 41 bomb to get the 8.25 GT yield which would be an extremely conservative estimate.

So a barrage of ICBMs with the same total weight or same total cost as the orion ICBM would inflict orders of magnitude less damage.

This is irrelevant.

For the price of this massive missile, if launched against New York City you'd end up destroying two of America's most populous cities (New York and Philadelphia). At best, if you threw this thing at Texas, you'd get three of them (Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio). While the Boston-Washington conurbation does happen to fall within the blast radius if centered on New York, again, much of this energy would be wasted scorching low-density areas and nearly half of it would be exhausted burning the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Use an ICBM with ten MIRV warheads and you could destroy all ten of America's largest cities with a single missile. Even taking into account the inefficiencies of chemical propulsion, it'd be far cheaper. Put several hundred MIRVs on an Orion capsule and you can functionally destroy the entire United States (or any other country), rather than just the mid-Atlantic.

This thing would be great if you're trying to destroy Mega-City One or something like that, but there are very good reasons why, as discussed in the Air Force thread, lots of smaller booms are more effective and flexible than one really big one.

[Imperializt Russia]

Primarily, there is no need to destroy MegaCity One when you can destroy all forty key government sites that will bring the city to its knees with warheads each under 100kt.

[Gallia-]

Orion drives are exponentially better for putting payload into orbit compared to chemical rockets. An Orion craft can easily have a payload fraction in excess of 50% in comparison to less than 1% for most chemical rockets. Not to mention its also orders of magnitude cheaper in terms of cost per kg to orbit. Also the bigger you make a nuke the more efficient you can make it. I used the RE factor of the mk. 41 bomb to get the 8.25 GT yield which would be an extremely conservative estimate.

So a barrage of ICBMs with the same total weight or same total cost as the orion ICBM would inflict orders of magnitude less damage.

This is irrelevant.

For the price of this massive missile, if launched against New York City you'd end up destroying two of America's most populous cities (New York and Philadelphia). At best, if you threw this thing at Texas, you'd get three of them (Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio). While the Boston-Washington conurbation does happen to fall within the blast radius if centered on New York, again, much of this energy would be wasted scorching low-density areas and nearly half of it would be exhausted burning the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Use an ICBM with ten MIRV warheads and you could destroy all ten of America's largest cities with a single missile. Even taking into account the inefficiencies of chemical propulsion, it'd be far cheaper. Put several hundred MIRVs on an Orion capsule and you can functionally destroy the entire United States (or any other country), rather than just the mid-Atlantic.

This thing would be great if you're trying to destroy Mega-City One or something like that, but there are very good reasons why, as discussed in the Air Force thread, lots of smaller booms are more effective and flexible than one really big one.

What do you think a firestorm the size of Bos-Wash would do? Ignore the rest of North America?

You would probably finish off a fairly good portion of the US and Canadian population with one bomb.

A better use would be a high altitude burst to destroy the entire continent though.

[The Teutonic Republic]

I was thinking a high altitude burst with a multi gigaton warhead would be sufficient to completely raze a decent sized nation and/or cover an entire continent with EMP and other radioactive fallout.

The other option is to use the orion vehicle to launch a few hundred multi megaton or a few thousand multi kiloton MaRVs into orbit and have them then de-orbit over targets like a fractional orbital bombardment system.

The latter seems more practical and deadly but the former is still enticing for razing a few of the "megacities" that would be/are present in nations with populations in the double digit billions.

[Spirit of Hope]

I was thinking a high altitude burst with a multi gigaton warhead would be sufficient to completely raze a decent sized nation and/or cover an entire continent with EMP and other radioactive fallout.

The other option is to use the orion vehicle to launch a few hundred multi megaton or a few thousand multi kiloton MaRVs into orbit and have them then de-orbit over targets like a fractional orbital bombardment system.

The latter seems more practical and deadly but the former is still enticing for razing a few of the "megacities" that would be/are present in nations with populations in the double digit billions.

I'm just curious, why do you feel the need to raze these cities? A couple of multi kiloton warheads placed strategically will destroy everything You need to worry about in the city.

[Allanea]

Surprisingly, nuclear warfare does not in fact revolve around genociding as many people as possible.

DEFCON has lied.

[The Teutonic Republic]

I was thinking a high altitude burst with a multi gigaton warhead would be sufficient to completely raze a decent sized nation and/or cover an entire continent with EMP and other radioactive fallout.

The other option is to use the orion vehicle to launch a few hundred multi megaton or a few thousand multi kiloton MaRVs into orbit and have them then de-orbit over targets like a fractional orbital bombardment system.

The latter seems more practical and deadly but the former is still enticing for razing a few of the "megacities" that would be/are present in nations with populations in the double digit billions.

I'm just curious, why do you feel the need to raze these cities? A couple of multi kiloton warheads placed strategically will destroy everything You need to worry about in the city.

Honestly I'm just looking for an excuse for developing a multi-gigaton warhead. I was originally thinking on using orion vehicles to deploy thousands of MaRVs into orbit (amongst other things) but then I thought it would be funny to make one that just had one massive warhead.

[Palakistan]

I'm just curious, why do you feel the need to raze these cities? A couple of multi kiloton warheads placed strategically will destroy everything You need to worry about in the city.

Honestly I'm just looking for an excuse for developing a multi-gigaton warhead. I was originally thinking on using orion vehicles todeploy thousands of MaRVs into orbit (amongst other things) but then I thought it would be funny to make one that just had one massive warhead.

The only use for a bigger nuke is 1. More destruction. 2. A good way to strike fear.

Give it a cool name and put into space. *{evil laugh}*

[Allanea]

There's not really a meaningful excuse to have a multigigaton warhead.

Possibly however you could hide one on a cargo ship and sneak it up to the enemy's nation, as Sakharov once suggested?

[Schwere Panzer Abieltung 502]

According to the boom table, 3 gigatonnes is the equivalent of a magnitude 9.5 earthquake. Such a device would have enough destructive power to reshape entire continents. An airburst would probably put enough soot in the air to make climate change far, far worse, and an underwater detonation - even if it was deep enough not make much of a blast - would probably count as a weather weapon as a hurricane would most likely form above all that now much warmer water. If there's not a large hole in the crust.

A gigatonne nuke would be ridiculous to deploy because whatever happens, most of the planet is probably going to experience it's effects. It's also a lot easier to kill. The Hiroshima blast was a mouse compared to what would come later, but modern nukes have gotten far more accurate, and even a few dozen kilotonnes is more than enough to devastate NYC, Moscow, Paris, etc.

[The Teutonic Republic]

I'm looking into perhaps launching an orion type ICBM out of a submarine. The smallest Orion vehicle I could find was reference to an "orbital test" version which was to weigh 200 tons, use 0.03kt pulse units, and would be able to put some 80-100 tons of payload into LEO. Size would be on the order of 10-12 meter diameter and 18-24 meter height which would enable it to fit within a large SSBN. Since each orion ICBM would be able to carry some 200-300 MIRVs it's not like you would need that many of them to devastate an entire country or continent.

I'm not sure however if the orion drive would work underwater or if it would just destroy the submarine. Perhaps after being ejected with a hydraulic ram from the launch tube a set of rocket boosters would launch the Orion ICBM out from the water and a few dozen meters into the air before the orion drive kicks in.

[Siegom]

I think this is the write thread to ask this so here goes;

My country is very heavily based off the Peoples Republic of China and from what I've read the PLA (the PRC's military) has a whole host of issues preventing it from being as effective a fighting force as it could be so I'm wondering if the changes that I'm going to be making IC'ly would be effective. For all intents and purposes my military is a clone of the PLA until the 1990s when I had a new minister of defense come in who wanted to fix allot of the problems that my military (and the PLA which it is based on) had at that time.

(because I suck at writing stuff that makes sense,basically I'm asking if the problems listed below were ones also majorly effecting the PLA in the 1990s-2000s and if my solutions would be reasonable)

The main areas the minister of defense identified as needing addressing:

• Low troop moral
• Systemic Corruption
• Poor and unrealistic training
• Lack of a joint central command
• Promotion based on political loyalty and bribery
• To much time being spent of political indoctrination compared to actual military training and affairs
• Lack of a standardized system of organization for units
• Lack of communications equipment
• Lack of motorization

The minister of defense's 'solutions' to the problems:

• New basic training program and higher standards for basic enlisted personnel
• Reorganization of the military's political officers to give them more power to deal with corruption and more oversight to make sure they do, while also reducing their role in political indoctrination and increasing their presence in unit staff units to counter the thread of coups
• Major reorganization of the military's units into standardized formations
• Introduction of monthly and semi-monthly large scale military exercises where different units and military regions train with and against each other
• Reduction in the amount of time spent on political education
• Acquisition of large amounts of trucks and other motorized vehicles, done along side the unit reorganization
• Acquisition of modern communications equipment and training in operating without it through the use of messengers and other forms of non-digital communications

[Auroya]

I'm looking into perhaps launching an orion type ICBM out of a submarine. The smallest Orion vehicle I could find was reference to an "orbital test" version which was to weigh 200 tons, use 0.03kt pulse units, and would be able to put some 80-100 tons of payload into LEO. Size would be on the order of 10-12 meter diameter and 18-24 meter height which would enable it to fit within a large SSBN. Since each orion ICBM would be able to carry some 200-300 MIRVs it's not like you would need that many of them to devastate an entire country or continent.

I'm not sure however if the orion drive would work underwater or if it would just destroy the submarine. Perhaps after being ejected with a hydraulic ram from the launch tube a set of rocket boosters would launch the Orion ICBM out from the water and a few dozen meters into the air before the orion drive kicks in.

Everyone is telling you that this is a supremely terrible idea, you do realize that, right?

If you're going to disregard the advice of the posters on this thread, why post is in this thread?

[The Teutonic Republic]

I'm looking into perhaps launching an orion type ICBM out of a submarine. The smallest Orion vehicle I could find was reference to an "orbital test" version which was to weigh 200 tons, use 0.03kt pulse units, and would be able to put some 80-100 tons of payload into LEO. Size would be on the order of 10-12 meter diameter and 18-24 meter height which would enable it to fit within a large SSBN. Since each orion ICBM would be able to carry some 200-300 MIRVs it's not like you would need that many of them to devastate an entire country or continent.

I'm not sure however if the orion drive would work underwater or if it would just destroy the submarine. Perhaps after being ejected with a hydraulic ram from the launch tube a set of rocket boosters would launch the Orion ICBM out from the water and a few dozen meters into the air before the orion drive kicks in.

Everyone is telling you that this is a supremely terrible idea, you do realize that, right?

If you're going to disregard the advice of the posters on this thread, why post is in this thread?

Not really. People were criticizing the idea of a massive multi-gigaton warhead as being excessive and unnecessary which is why I've decided to abandon it.

[Auroya]

Everyone is telling you that this is a supremely terrible idea, you do realize that, right?

If you're going to disregard the advice of the posters on this thread, why post is in this thread?

Not really. People were criticizing the idea of a massive multi-gigaton warhead as being excessive and unnecessary which is why I've decided to abandon it.

Why an Orion-ICBM if you're not lifting heavy payloads in that case, then?

[Velkanika]

I'm just wondering if it is even physically possible to make a nuclear weapon with that yield. Nuclear weapons aren't like regular explosives where you just add more explosives or fissionable material to get a larger explosion. I'm not sure you could make a nuclear weapon that size, and even if you could there is no way you could test it to seeif it would actually work.

Thermonuclear weapons have no maximum yield limit due to the use of lithium-6 enrichment to fuel the fusion reaction. They have a theoretical maximum efficiency of 6 megatons of TNT per metric ton, but other then those mass constraints there are no limits.


That said, the whole concept of a nuclear weapon with this kind of yield is incredibly stupid. It's so powerful it's literally useless as a credible deterrence.

Oh, and the standard calculation for an optimum burst height for this yield gives me 44,454 meters. The fireball has a radius of 16,000 meters at minimum which will penetrate the stratopause into the mesosphere and last approximately four minutes. I'm also getting a fallout-free minimum burst altitude of 150,000 meters, so no matter what this bomb will cause a nuclear winter by itself.


I see no reason to not nuke the commie bastards before they wipe out all life on the plant. Worst case, everyone dies when they set that thing off. Best case, we loose a third of our civilian population and wipe them out entirely.

[EsToVnIa]

Careful, advocating nuclear genocide is a bannable offense :S

[Korva]

Careful, advocating nuclear genocide is a bannable offense :S

Even discussing it is rightly a big no-no, lest the feelings of those on the wrong side of history get hurt '~'