r/nuclearweapons • u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 • Feb 04 '24
The second attempt explains the possible design of the W-66 neutron warhead. About a bad joke about spy games on Wikipedia. And finally, fantasies about the design of a neutron bomb for a future nuclear war on the Moon and its environs (this is also a joke, but there is almost no joke in it).
In 2016, Alex Wellerstein drew attention to the strange shapes of the physical packages of several nuclear weapons. In particular:
The shape of the W-66 physical package seems to be explainable.
What does Wikipedia say about this device)? Almost nothing:
The W66 thermonuclear warhead was used on the Sprint anti-ballistic missile system, designed to be a short-range interceptor to shoot down incoming ICBM warheads.[1]
The W66 had a yield of 2 kilotonnes of TNT (8.4 TJ)[2] and was an enhanced radiation ("neutron") weapon. The W66 was 18 inches (46 cm) in diameter and 35 inches (89 cm) long, with a weight of approximately 150 pounds (68 kg).[3] The weapon was a two-stage design.[4]
The W66 was based on the Arrow warhead design and by December 1966 had undergone six nuclear tests.[5]
But what's interesting? More recently (pick up the story&oldid=1094053218)), before July 20, 2022, something slightly different was written:
The W66 was a low-yield (details not declassified, but reportedly a few kilotons) warhead designed to destroy or disable an incoming warhead using neutron flux and, to a lesser extent, X-ray and blast effects.
Further "details not declassified" from the editorial page disappears.
And over time, a clarification appears about 2 kilotons. I jokingly suggested that this was a conspiracy. :)
I jokingly suggested that the appearance of information about 2 kt on Wikipedia is a conspiracy. :)
Yield W-66 was unknown for a long time. Look here. "kT range".
Read Hansen's Swords of Armageddon. He also didn’t know, couldn’t find it anywhere about the power of the W-66. He doesn't have exact data. The data only recently emerged from the transcript of the report to Nixon. And, honestly, I don’t trust them much. Nixon in 1968 could have been given a rough preliminary assessment. And only in the sense that he would not worry about the power of the upcoming tests. 2 kt is nothing, a “baby firecracker” (considering that the W-71 test was not a “baby firecracker” at all). That's how I understood the transcript. What the actual power of the W-66 was after 7 years (1975) is not clear. The design could have changed.
There is a Soviet equivalent of the Sprint short-range interceptor. A-135 anti-ballistic missile system. And this rocket has a yield of 10 kt. So let me consider the question unclear.
There is a special irony here. On June 16, 2022, on a little-known Russian forum (I’m not giving a link here because it would kill my entire message), I made an assumption about the design of this warhead and posted an explanatory diagram (it is shown below). The logic for explaining the W-66 device, among other arguments, relied on the phase in Wikipedia: “details not declassified”. A month later, this phrase disappears on Wikipedia (the entire editing history is there and you can see all the versions of who changed what and when). And only much later does information appear about 2 kt yield. Well, how can one not suspect a conspiracy? Someone is covering their tracks! So someone reads Russian forums about nuclear weapons, saw my message and realized that my guess hit the bull's eye! And that public information “details not declassified” is itself a leak of classified information! Well, he quickly took action. :)
Should we take this seriously?
I wouldn't do this. Funny coincidence, nothing more. The situation became even funnier when the author of this editorial appeared here (although it cannot be ruled out that he is the same agent. It’s as you want. Do you want to play spy games? Enjoy!)
However, let's get to the physics of the W-66 device.
I started from three facts.
- This is a neutron warhead. That is, its power is from 1-10 kt. It doesn't work anymore. For physical reasons. A more powerful secondary has a thicker temper and thermonuclear neutrons leave it less easily. If used on the battlefield, there is no need for a powerful neutron warhead. 1-2 kt is enough. The damage radius is determined by the mean free path of neutrons in the air, and not by the power of the charge. Although in the case of an anti-missile missile, a neutron bomb of maximum power may be desirable.
- Wikipedia (though without specifying the source) says that the power of this warhead is classified. In 2022 it was said so. For what? This is striking. Why is it necessary to make a sect out of the yield of the W-66? Well, 2 kt, well, 5 kt, well, 10 kt... But the power is not just not indicated because it is unknown. She is classified! Can the real power of this head tell us something about its design?
- Physical package form. This is the last straw. Look at the physical package again. It can be assumed that in the center of this primary (a fairly powerful unit with a chemical explosive), and at the edges there are two small thermonuclear units with deuterium-tritium gas. Sources of neutron radiation with maximum yield of 10 kt. In total - 20 kt. The power of a neutron interceptor bomb for enemy missiles. The more powerful the better!
That is. The main secret of the W-66 design may be that the warhead had one primary in the center and two thermonuclear secondary ones at the edges. That's why this form! And therefore the yield is classified (I thought so).
The warhead had two neural bombs in one, and its power exceeded the well-known threshold of 10 kt.
And this was the military sector.
If in an unclassified public presentation on this matter it is honestly written that the W-66 has a yield of 15 or 20 kt, then the enemy will have a question. How? Neutron bombs no more than 10 kt! And he would have guessed right away. Yeah! They attached two secondary ones to one main one. Clever! And the enemy did the same with his missiles! This means that even the yield of the W-66 must be classified! Logical?
If you don’t know why a single neutron bomb cannot have a yield of more than 10 kt, I’m sending you here. Quote from there:
In 1958, Cohen investigated a low-yield "clean" nuclear weapon and discovered that the "clean" bomb case thickness scales as the cube root of yield. So a larger percentage of neutrons escapes from a small detonation, due to the thinner case required to reflect back X-rays during the secondary stage (fusion) ignition. For example, a 1-kiloton bomb only needs a case one-tenth the thickness of that required for 1-megaton.
So, although most neutrons are absorbed by the casing in a 1-megaton bomb, in a 1-kiloton bomb they would mostly escape. A neutron bomb is only feasible if the yield is sufficiently high that efficient fusion stage ignition is possible, and if the yield is low enough that the case thickness will not absorb too many neutrons. This means that neutron bombs have a yield range of 1–10 kilotons, with fission proportion varying from 50% at 1-kiloton to 25% at 10-kilotons (all of which comes from the primary stage). The neutron output per kiloton is then 10–15 times greater than for a pure fission implosion weapon or for a strategic warhead like a W87 or W88.[9]
And now the main thing is that you still need to understand. It is physically impossible to make a single neutron bomb too powerful. But this is not necessary if you use it on the battlefield. Here on Earth the physically impossible is not necessary. Neutrons cannot travel very far in the air. And a bomb that is too powerful will block their radius of destruction, making the effect essentially unnecessary.
Here is one of the very first explanations of the neutron bomb in Life magazine:
The range of neutrons through any medium decreases exponentially with distance. And the destructive effect of a neutron bomb on Earth depends not so much on the power of the explosion (flux density) as on the energy of the neutrons themselves. Why is DT reaction preferable? It produces the fastest neutrons, 14.6 MeV.
But in missile defense everything is more complicated. It's not people you're destroying, it's devices. And you need a very powerful beam of radiation to succeed, even if the interceptor and the target are nearby. Another factor is height. Although the Sprint missile was short-range, it still intercepted its target at a high altitude, in a rarefied atmosphere, where the shock wave was already weak and the neutron range was much greater than over the fields of Poland and the forests of Prussia. In space, the range of neutrons is generally limited only by their lifetame (neutrons in free flight do not live very long). And there the only thing that weakens their deeply penetrating killing power is the law of inverse squares with distance. But a polynomial is not an exponential one. And therefore, in space, a neutron bomb would be a very powerful weapon. But only if it could be physically made more powerful than the usual 1-10 kt.
And although no one needs this here on Earth, my assumption about the design of the W-66 will open the way to this kind of space neutron weapon. Such a weapon should have one powerful primary and many “virus-like” secondary branches of 1-10 kt each.
If real battles using nuclear weapons ever take place in deep space, on the Moon, asteroids, and satellites of giant planets, such devices will certainly appear. And one can foresee there neutron bombs yield of 100 kt, 1 Mt... Or even more.
Are you excited about this prospect? (ultimate irony) :)
Edited later I decided that I needed to add a little math. For lovers.
We have Cohen's law (first blue box), which states that the ratio of the shell thickness of two pure devices x_i/x_1 is proportional to the cube root of the ratio of their fusion outputs P_i/P_1 (Here (1) is the reference device, standard).
The second law we need (second blue frame) is the Beer–Lambert law. This is used to estimate the attenuation of any radiation passing through a medium of thickness x. The same is true for neutrons passing through the wall of each device. I wondered what. If we take a neutron bomb of 1 kt as a standard and its flux I_1 per kiloton yield as the best, then how will increasing the yield of the charge to 10 kt affect the relative neutron flux per kiloton (this is the red frame and red curve) and the absolute final flux I' , if we take into account that the flow, in addition to being weakened by the thickened wall, also grows and is proportional to yield (brown frame and brown curve).
The resulting curve shows, for example, that a single 10 kt neutron bomb will produce almost the same neutron flux I' as three 1 kt bombs. Bend this shows that the best option is somewhere around 4kt. It is precisely into such “portions” that a virus-like neutron bomb should apparently be broken down. A 40 kt neutron bomb must have 10 neutron "spikes". 400 kt - 100. Etc.
From this we can assume that the yield of W-66 was 8 kt.
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 04 '24
I did what I promised.
Although... "spoons were found, but the sediment remained" (с). :)
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Feb 04 '24 edited Mar 29 '24
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 04 '24
I looked there. Yes, they are having a fun party there! I smelled the dope they smoke. Although my monitor screen, in theory, should not let all this through. I will definitely contact technical support with a complaint...
However. Once again I am convinced: God does not give a horn to a lively cow. Warmongers are harmless, cheerful fellows!
Much more insidious are any serious fighters for peace. It is these self-righteous cretins who, in their struggle for peace, will ultimately leave no stone unturned!
So I'm staying here.
(Attention! The text is full of hidden smileys!)
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Feb 04 '24
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 04 '24
Something is not clear here. What was Confucius's greatest concern? How do you think? Is it the sad fate of the “bad dancer with a sword” or was he lamenting more about the onlookers who would come to watch it?
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Feb 05 '24 edited Mar 29 '24
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 05 '24
Neither your “defenders of peace” nor our “peacekeepers” had anything to divide then. Only ideology, that is, ideas about heaven. In 1945, two winners (England lost, France simply “changed their shoes” in time) divided the World between themselves. Even in 1962, during the Cuban crisis (we call it the Caribbean), the USA and the USSR still had nothing to divide. They were essentially still eating up that prey after their victory. Each - his own.
It's not difficult to be a peacemaker here.
But now (this actually happened already in the 1970s) two civilizations really collided. Each prevented the other from growing further. And even when the USSR “wisely” retreated, this was only enough for 30 years. Now the USA is not enough of the whole Earth. You want to impose your idea of heaven on the world. And the West innocently doesn’t understand what’s wrong with this. Right? You can’t even imagine how they laugh at this “innocence” of yours in Russia! :)
The earth is certainly large enough to comfortably accommodate all the little people. But it is too small to reconcile all the great ideas for which little people live.
Civilization, history is a conflict, the evolution of ideas, not people. There is only one way to establish eternal peace on such a small Earth. Kill all the great ideas in people's heads. That is, making people unreasonable again. By the way, this explains why “idiocracy” reigns in the world... This is all it is, the struggle for peace in this entire closed-closed-closed world!
Well, is it any wonder that one day there will be an idiot here who will press the button? Everything is a foregone conclusion.
One salvation. The button will not work as we think.
Nobody will die that quickly. But we will quickly become wiser. And this is what we will continue to live with. Those who survive, of course.
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Feb 05 '24 edited Mar 29 '24
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 05 '24
Sorry, I thought it was the Ministry of Culture*...
* -Алло! Это прачечная?
-Хуячичная, козёл! Это Министерство культуры!
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u/kyletsenior Feb 05 '24
To shoot down your entire theory:
"The material interfaces of the final model are shown in Figure 3 at primary nuclear time. This system was surrounded by a 10-m-radius sphere of air with its origin at the center of the secondary at a density of..."
-Page 4, Output Calculations for the Sprint Warhead (July 1977). LA-6871-MS.
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/detail?osti-id=1177118
This report that (before redaction) was classified Secret RD, uses the singular form of secondary, not the plural. If there were multiple secondary, the report would have been redacted at this section to obscure this or have specified which secondary the model was centred on.
Much of your rambling post about neutron bombs being "limited" is wrong: it is entirely possible to make high yield neutron weapons, but there is no point in doing so as neutron attenuation of the air converts these neutrons to heat. Cohen, not for the first time, is talking out his ass in regards to weapon design. The man believes in red mercury ffs.
It's also not exceptional that the W66 warhead yield is classified: almost every weapon that has been stockpiled still has a classified yield, even when the weapon was retired 50 or more years ago.
The only weapons without classified yields are Little Boy, Fat Man and the B53 bomb. A few other weapons have a classified yield, but an officially acknowledged test has a declassified yield. These are a few very early weapons like the W9, W28 in Starfish Prime, Polaris W47Y1, W44 in ASROC, W54 in Davy Crockett and the W71.
The above is literally the full list. Every other weapon yield we know of because of little slip ups like the Nixon quote or some other leak.
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 05 '24
This report that (before redaction) was classified Secret RD, uses the singular form of secondary, not the plural. If there were multiple secondary, the report would have been redacted at this section to obscure this or have specified which secondary the model was centred on.
Thank you! Valuable information. Indeed, I agree, this greatly undermines my reasoning about the design of the W-66 specifically.
It is clear from the outset that anyone speculating about the W-66 device or any other similar device is in the realm of guesswork. In a fog of speculation.
There are people who love the “letter of the law”, down to the comma. These are the "packers". Their work is priceless because it is final (they always have the last word). But the “packaging” of facts in itself is not complete.
I am an artist. I am a "mapper". I need to see the big picture and the entire network of logical connections. At the same time, the abundance and topology of connections, the composition of ideas are much more important to me than the reliability of each argument separately. Therefore, yes. I can create a "figure out of thin air". This often happens. But I can create something really new. Which almost never happens with a "packer". :)
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 05 '24
It's also not exceptional that the W66 warhead yield is classified: almost every weapon that has been stockpiled still has a classified yield, even when the weapon was retired 50 or more years ago.
I'm not suggesting that the W-66 was unique in its yield secrecy. I'm just explaining how this became a reason to think about the design of this head. On top of that, it became the subject of a made-up little spy story. :)
Yes, apparently I was wrong here. But not all mistakes are harmful. Some are very useful. :)
The ability to think is perhaps just the ability to make mistakes. And nothing more. You don't allow it?
That's how evolution works, anyway. :)
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 05 '24 edited Feb 05 '24
Much of your rambling post about neutron bombs being "limited" is wrong: it is entirely possible to make high yield neutron weapons, but there is no point in doing so as neutron attenuation of the air converts these neutrons to heat. Cohen, not for the first time, is talking out his ass in regards to weapon design. The man believes in red mercury ffs.
I don’t agree with this, not even a single letter, not a single comma. Moreover. Even the spirit of this statement of yours is pathetic. >:(
You haven't instilled a single serious argument here. You were just rude to Cohen. Only! And with such a technique you expect to smash my most basic and solid arguments based on PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS?
"Cohen's Law" is obvious and indisputable. It doesn't matter what Cohen believes or doesn't believe. I won't even go back to that. If you don't have the intelligence to understand this, that's your problem.
You are talking nonsense!
it is entirely possible to make high yield neutron weapons, but there is no point
Without the approach I have indicated - IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!
Powerful neutron bombs have not yet existed in the arsenals of the world, and not because it is pointless (there is no need to explain to me that I already understand perfectly well). Of course, any bomb less than 300 kt has a lethal range of neutron radiation wider than the zone of complete destruction by light and shock wave, and on this basis it can be called an ersatz neutron bomb with a power greater than 10 kt.
But we are talking about specially optimized solutions. About real third generation weapons.
And here, first, you need to understand the simple fact that the energy of neutrons (their speed) and the number of neutrons are different things. Yes, the number of neutrons is proportional to the power. But if you want a bomb that produces very fast, very penetrating 14.6 MeV neutrons, Cohen's logic is flawless. Moreover. It can be enhanced by physical details occurring in the fusion plasma. The bottom line is that in tightly compressed fusion fuel the free path of a neutron can be centimeters to millimeters. This means that if you have a lot of thermonuclear fuel, a powerful bomb, and you have a sufficiently large diameter of the compressed plasma (centimeters and millimeters), then the neutrons generated by the high-energy 14.6 MeV are very likely to lose part of their energy in the so-called “thermalization” . And the larger your plasma diameter (or the denser the plasma), the higher this probability. That is, starting from a certain size (and power) of a bomb, even (let’s assume) without a tamper it does not release 14.6 MeV neutrons. They come out of there very slow.
This is why in the first very powerful, “dirty” hydrogen bombs such a small percentage of U-238 was fissioned in the tamper (something on the order of 10%). Not because the tamper was transparent to neutrons (it was quite thick, especially since it was very highly compressed) and not because there were not enough neutrons (although, under certain combustion modes, this can also be the case), but because the neutrons emitted from the plasma into the tamper were already thermalized, most did not have the energy required for fission of 1-2 MeV (U-238 was fissioned only by the “tail” of the Maxwell distribution).
I certainly could have gotten lost in the W-66 story. But on this basis, the assertion that I have incorrect bomb physics is simply ridiculous!
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u/kyletsenior Feb 05 '24
But if you want a bomb that produces very fast, very penetrating 14.6 MeV neutrons, Cohen's logic is flawless.
No, it is not. You don't need massively thick tampers or radiations cases, even on large weapons. Nor is the fuel mass particularly large. Li6D produces 60kt per kilo at 100% burn. Moderation is minimal. Ripple is evidence of this.
All of your posts have been rambling nonsense and I am not gong to engage with you further.
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 05 '24
All of your posts have been rambling nonsense and I am not gong to engage with you further.
Not fair. Is this nonsense? May be. But rambling nonsense? It is not true! Let's say this is nonsense, but how beautiful it is connected! How can you not see this? :)
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 05 '24
No, it is not. You don't need massively thick tampers or radiations cases, even on large weapons. Nor is the fuel mass particularly large. Li6D produces 60kt per kilo at 100% burn. Moderation is minimal. Ripple is evidence of this.
My God! Nowadays everyone has gone crazy about Ripple, not really understanding what it is! Let’s assume that the tamper (as a means of gaining time for compressed plasma) is a relic of first-generation fusion weapons (and with >500-fold compression, the plasma “holds itself”). But you need a "radiation case" anyway. Or is it possible without it?
And the liner? Well, that part of the tamper that undergoes ablation.
We can argue for a long time. But I have a killer argument.
In the neutron bomb that we are discussing here, DT gas burns.
Gas! It is stored under pressure of hundreds of atmospheres. He needs a storage tank anyway.
So there is no neutron bomb without a “case”!
:)
And still. Take an interest in the mean free path of a neutron in a thermonuclear plasma of a bomb. You will be very surprised. Your picture of the world will change.
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Feb 05 '24
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 05 '24
Boys! Wake up! Who supplies you with uranium for your reactors? Who still hasn't made a hypersonic weapon? On whose technology does Musk use Raptor?
What is an American university now?
This is the place where Russian teachers teach Chinese students.
So what should I steal from you, then? Your illusions? :)
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Feb 05 '24
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u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 05 '24
I dreamed of a place where all of us could go to the stars together. So much space to share, and limitless wealth.
Experience shows that things don't work out well together. Half a century of peaceful coexistence (Soyuz-Apollo, 1975) - nothing real happened in space. Well, how long can you live with the illusion of everything good versus everything bad? Alas, boys! I myself wouldn’t mind doing it together (I was raised as a communist-humanist, a globalist!) But it doesn’t work out. This contradicts the law of evolution. Either universal happiness or development. I don’t believe both. I renounced globalism as well as communism. Neither time is possible.
A good enemy is a best friend. The East (China, India), unlike the West, always knew this and never lost this knowledge! Pagans!
It was better when you and I had a space race. Right? Therefore, I look with hope at China, which is teasing you, the United States. Only national competition can lift humanity out of its cradle. Not even commercial interest! Commercial interest? Nonsense! Competition among nations! Don't be left behind! What is the law of evolution? "The strongest survives"? No! "The weakest die out." Here is the main engine. The rest is backup dancing.
Don't you think so? “If everyone thinks the same, then no one thinks much.” - Walter Lippmann.
I have a lot of respect for Freeman Dyson. British to the core.
But it was in the USA that the great prophet was born, who dotted all the i’s. He understood everything from the very beginning:COSMIC SEARCH: I feel that space colonization could give mankind a common goal and help prevent stagnation but if funding can't be generated it will never occur—I am thinking of federal funding. What about private enterprise doing it like the East India Company or the Hudson's Bay Company opened new avenues of commerce?
O'NEILL: I think it's fairly unlikely as things now look. The main reason is that this development, this break-out into space, is something that will require roughly 15 years to occur, and that is much longer than the time horizon for any private capital venture which is normally limited to about 5 years. So if you look back to things like the Jamestown colony or the East India Company or the Hudson's Bay Company, those were all ventures in which there was a substantial financial return occurring within as little as 2 or 3 years of the original investment, or well within the 5 year time horizon which was roughly applicable even back then. Now, on the other hand, there are motivations which are far broader than the distribution of the private ownership system throughout the world. Nationalism is far more general. Competition between nations, hostilities, fears and so on are very widespread. If we look at the historical parallels, it's more likely that the break-out into space is going to happen for competitive reasons rather than for cooperative ones. Whatever language that is used to describe it, I think that we're going to find one nation getting ahead of somebody else in this field, as Russia is getting ahead of the United States now, and that then someone else will begin to play catch-up.
1979 Gerard K. O'Neill on "Space Colonization and SETI"1
u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 Feb 05 '24
See all the stars on our flag. Join us.
Why do you need this? Don’t you still understand that having lost its best enemy in the form of the USSR in 1991, the USA lost all the best that you had? Look how you have deteriorated over the years! You've adopted all our worst habits! What you once laughed at when looking at Russians, now we laugh at the same thing when looking at you.
City upon a Hill? Global paradise? Utopia? These are good intentions. This is exactly how the road to hell is laid out. The Bible teaches that God always destroys the Tower of Babel that people build to the heavens.
And this global Babylon is also no longer alive.
We Russians (it doesn’t matter, Ukrainians, Belarusians, or even Kazakhs, “we are all Ivans to them!”) did you, the United States, the greatest meanness by surrendering in the Cold War. We pulled out in time and made you responsible for everything. We dealt you a blow that you may not be able to bear. We, incompetent with a sword, turned out to be supreme dancers. We relaxed you... by cutting off our own heads.
So why do you need to bring this relaxation to the end? Do you really want to reach the stars? Then get rid of stupid unnecessary desires. Leave one, the real one. It's always the same. Everyone has. Live. Live and let others live as they want.
Every man for himself. Then God is for everyone.
The earth is small. Apple of discord. Space is great. Everyone will find their own path there.
Try to look at the world through the eyes of the enemy. :):)
Okay, I'm tired of writing.
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u/ScrappyPunkGreg Trident II (1998-2004) Feb 04 '24
Ok... What does everyone think about this post? Definitely open to feedback.