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Re: Neutron bombs...

I am a physicist. I was in SAC (Strategic Air Command) years ago. I am NOT a weapons scientist of any stripe. I do NOT know anything classified, but I do know common-sense physics and engineering.

That being said, once upon a time, I did look into the "neutron bomb", I believe weapons scientists call them "enhanced radiation weapons", situation. I made an attempt to figure out from the non-classified data and my own expertise the radiation vs. damage situation. I'm gonna use ERW for "neutron bomb"...

My "best guess" is that the much talked about ERW does about the same amount of physical damage that a non-ERW about a quarter as powerful does. Even for small nuclear weapons (<5kTon), that is quite a wallop in physical damage, ERW or non-ERW. My guess is that the most likely range for ERWs is in the 20-100kT range, and that much smaller than that they are very difficult to construct. We're still talking Hiroshima-type physical damage here. The US appears to have technology to build non-ERWs in the range of about 0.3kT to over 10MT, so we have quite a choice of what to stock in our arsenal. Most of our strategic weapons appear to be about 300kT since larger weapons simply pound dirt deeper into the ground or blow the air higher rather than doing damage to the enemy. It is much more effective to use three 300kTs than one 10Mt weapon. I've no guess on how big our tactical weapons are better than "under 10kT".

I found NO evidence or science that suggests there is even close to the technology of a "little physical damage" ERW; only dreams and idle speculation that such could exist. Real ERWs do a great deal of physical damage.

I suspect that the "fallout" is much more dependent on the casings and mechanical components of the weapon, and on how much it sucks up into the atmosphere, than on whether or not it is ERW. There are many components of fallout which have various radiation half-lifes. It is not possible for me to guess the duration an area is dangerous, and in what way it is dangerous (fatal on brief protected excursions vs. living there permanently vs. using the land for agriculture, etc.) because there are just too many considerations. I do not believe that the "fatal on brief" is more than a year duration in any case regardless of how "big and dirty" a bomb is (unless you're talking including components specifically placed in that bomb to render the earth incompatible with life, and then I have no guess). Much US research has concentrated on how to reduce the long-lived radiation component of our using nukes.

(as an aside, the "nuclear winter" garbage is just that, and no real scientist has ever accepted such ridiculous scenerios that my peacenik friend and good astronomer Sagan dreamed up)

Neutron radiation would indeed penetrate tanks and such, and over a period of days kill the enemy inside. The US has apparently war-gamed this and decided that having a bunch of guys who were hit by ERWs driving around in their tanks knowing they were "walking dead men" is a bad situation. I guess we have decided to deploy weapons that kill and destroy with blast damage ASAP to minimize this factor. We have therefore (apparently) decided that we will not deploy such tactical weapons, even if we could build small ERWs.

All this appears to me to reduce the question as to whether you really care about the difference when you are talking about using a Hiroshima-type damage ERW. Yes, your 80kT ERW will only damage the area as much as Hiroshima and kill more people outside the blast area, but how big a consideration is that really?