US to test 700-tonne explosive(will send mushroom cloud over Las Vegas)

Breitbart.com ^

[MARKUSPRIME]

The US military plans to detonate a 700 tonne explosive charge in a test called "Divine Strake" that will send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a senior defense official said.

"I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons," said James Tegnelia, head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Tegnelia said the test was part of a US effort to develop weapons capable of destroying deeply buried bunkers housing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

"We have several very large penetrators we're developing," he told defense reporters.

[Aeronaut]

Why test it? Never be used. No ba!!s in Government anymore. Can't even stop illegals much more than bomb a bunker.

How about testing it ON the border -- regularly.

[FastCoyote]

"Wow, I bet that involved documenting a lot of lies about Yucca and the technologies involved, from the protest groups."

Oh yeah, it all goes back to Nader and "decentralist anarchism". Also to the Martin Sheen groups and Nevada Desert Experience. A group of commie social scientists from Clark University (who did Three Mile Island) knocked down $15 million in grants. Then there are just the loony hippies. A big party of crazies.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Uh... how do you deliver 700 tons? Strikes me as rather a lot to carry?

It will have to go by train, a long one.

That is ton equivelant rather than real tons. They speak of explosives in relationship to tons of TNT but they don't use TNT.

If you knew that and were being sarcastic forgive me for missing it.

[FreedomPoster]

Just damn. Did you document where all the money came from?

I love Horowitz's discoverthenetwork.org, for its usefulness in helping ferret out those sorts of links.

[Kozak]

So, in other words they are simulating the effect of what will probably be a small (relatively!) nuke bunker buster.....

[Kuehn12]

I think the obvious reason, we know about this bomb, is the audience the message was intend for namely the Iranians. However, the this super bomb was constructed to penetrate and destroy large and deeply buried bunkers. My question is, Iran is a earthquake prone country what would be the effect of such a large under ground denotation? I was in the army form six years and I hear tale of the Mechlic, I am sure I am misspelling this, which shoot out about 1400 to 1600 pounds of C4 daisey chained. Someone told me that you could see the dust cloud for at least 10 miles in every direction and feel the shock wave miles from the point of denotation. Multiple this effect by 1000 or so and place it under ground near a series of tectonic fault lines and you now have a weapons of mass destruction. I think the series of 2000 pound thermobaric bombs dropped from a sufficient distance could do the job without killing possible thousands of civilians. Every bunker has to have some kind of air shaft possible more than one. So, we don't have to kill a mosquito with grenade launcher.

[EQAndyBuzz]

"I pity the fools!"

I am interested in knowing how this explosive will be transported to Iran.

[Ditto]

Uh... how do you deliver 700 tons?

Don't know. 350 tons in each hand? ;~))

I wonder if the 700 ton refers to explosive force in TNT equivalent like the do with nuclear weapons --- i.e. 20k tons of TNT? Maybe they have a new explosive compound.

[ol painless]

I am sure the whole idea is to test the effectiveness of a small tactical nuke, without actually detonating a nuke. Trying do deliver 700 tons of conventional explosives to a target deep in enemy territory is not possible.

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

I am interested in knowing how this explosive will be transported to Iran.

Mexican infiltrators.

[El Gato]

If we're gonna use something that powerful, why not use a danged nuke in the first place?

That would be a very small nuke, 0.7 kilotons, as compared to the relatively small 10 KT or so of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Even the smallest battlefield nukes were only approaching that size.

No nuke means no radioactive fallout. Thing would be awfully big though. I suspect they are doing an "effects" test, where they need the explosion to be in the atmosphere, but they can't do a real nuke there.

[El Gato]

Who says we arent making nuclear penetrators? My bet is we are

We are, or at least were, but since it represents a "new" nuke, the anti-nuke forces are all in a tizzy and oppossing for all they are worth, (OTOH, that's not much).

[El Gato]

I think 700 tonnes is the yield of the weapon -- equivalent to 700 tonnes of TNT.

It is, but whatever the explosive is, as long as it's conventional, it's not going weigh significantly less than the explosive equivalent of TNT, maybe a factor of 2 or 3 at the most. Thus the thing would still weigh at least 233 tonnes, with 350 to 700 being more likely.

Still quite a package for aircraft carriage. The max takeoff weight of a 747-400 freighter is 910,000 pounds, or about 414 tonnes, which includes airplane, fuel, and payload.

[El Gato]

A 0.0007 Kiloton bomb in the Nevada Desert

700 tons is 0.7 Kilotons, it is however 0.0007 Megatons.

[Lekker 1]

700 tons is 0.7 Kilotons, it is however 0.0007 Megatons.

Ahh...but what is it in hogsheads per picoliters-slugs? and I want that converted to seconds

[FastCoyote]

"Just damn. Did you document where all the money came from?"

Here's the big laugh, the nuclear industry itself was forced to fund much of the opposition. And yes I documented to the hilt.

[ElkGroveDan]

that wasn't my question.

[Colorado Doug]

Such wampum would also make spaceship go big fast

Excuse me Kemosabe, but I think you mean "heap fast" or "heap big fast"

[Colorado Doug]

It's not quite as much, but a C-5 can carry 130 tons. But it would be a hell of a thing to get it to airdrop that.

Not half as hard as assembling it into a single bomb while it is free falling from six seperate 130 ton air drops.

[Colorado Doug]

Pack it into an stripped out 747 and steer it by remote control.

Pack it and tell a mooslimb pilot that the target is a Christian Church or a congregation of Joooows. Cheaper than remote and solves two problems at once.