A generation of secret weapons exist, some deployed, some in varying stages of development. Remember the 1964 film, Fail Safe? From the book, co-authored by Eugene Burdick (The Ugly American), Fail Safe described the real SAC or Strategic Air Command and its policy of maintaining a fleet of nuclear armed B 52 aircraft on the borders of the Soviet Union, 24/7/365.
After all, what could possibly go wrong, an issue addressed not only in Fail Safe but in Kubrick’s infamous Dr. Strangelove.
Thank goodness those days are gone, but are they?
We will touch on a couple of projects that duplicate the Fail Safe scenario.
Did you know the US developed a version of the Boeing 747 airliner than has been built to resemble a commercial airliner but secretly carries 50 or more nuclear tipped cruise missiles in rotary launchers?
Of course, we are making this up, the project was scrapped, publicly but such projects are never scrapped, they only “go dark.”
Another teaser, the infamous Global Hawk, the giant airliner sized drone, a version of which Iran shot down over their territory on June 20, 2019.
At one point, the US was going to build a Global Hawk that carried nuclear cruise missiles, but that program was cancelled also in favor of arming the Reaper drone with similar weapons.
A Global Hawk with sensors packages removed might well carry as many as four nuclear cruise missiles or newly developed hypersonic weapons, which may well already be deployed, we have no way of knowing.
Assuming these giant “surveillance drones” aren’t armed is the height of folly. Assuming cancelled projects are really “cancelled” is insanity.
On February 20, 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a number of new weapons including a torpedo capable of carrying a 50 plus megaton thermonuclear weapon and waiting years on the bottom of the ocean for activation.
Similarly, a nuclear-powered cruise missile that can circumnavigate the planet, avoiding all defenses, hitting any target was added to the list which included hypersonic weapons and ballistic missiles that could avoid any interceptor.
The public reason reported in the West falsely stated that Putin was retaliating against US deployment of anti-missile systems on Russia’s border.
The secondary lie, one fed the public instead of a far more sinister truth was that the US had prepared ground launched cruise missiles for deployment with the land-based AEGIS-Patriot systems intended for Poland, Latvia, Romania along with Georgia and other states as well, after scheduled “regime change” operations made such deployments possible.
Let us begin with new assumptions, reality based, then move forward into dangerous areas that show the real nature of the threat Putin was responding to.
We all know the US maintains research facilities funded at unimaginable levels. IAEA sources, from the UN organization that tracks nuclear weapons developments, tell us that nukes the size of golf balls have been around for years.
During the 1950s, the US developed nuclear artillery and the Davey Crockett, a nuclear weapon launched from, essentially, as an RPG.
The technical issues involved new reflectors and pit designs that allowed not only small weapons but “fizzler” or “sub-critical” weapons to achieve significant explosive capability. From Veterans Today:
“In the original first-generation solid core fission device, developed during World War 2 and known as ‘Fatman’; a solid core plutonium pit was compressed to less than 75% of its original size in order to create a critical mass. In this 70-year-old design, the fission process was bound by the use of high yield explosive compression.
This first atomic weapon used about 5,000 lbs. of explosives and 32 shaped charges to shock compress about 10 KG of plutonium from its molecular delta state into its alpha state, massively increasing its density per cubic centimetre.
By doing so it created a neutron means free path of about 35 centimetres or less in length and it was able to just hold it all together long enough in time to produce about 80 to 100 generations of neutron multiplications. Thus forming a super critical mass that produced an estimated yield of about 15 to 20 KT of TNT.
35 centimetres or about 14 inches is the average distance traveled by a free neutron before it strikes another atom of plutonium and splits it, causing a nuclear chain reaction to occur. The distance traveled by a neutron, along with the time required to travel this distance (also called the assembly time) is the key to forming a critical mass in any fissile material.
If the assembly time is to slow or not enough neutrons are generated in time, the weapon will fizzle producing a much lower yield. Usually at about 5 KT. Verified by testing during the 1950’s.
However, if it gets past the first 56 neutron generations it will still go bang, and if it reaches about 80 neutron generations it will explode at full yield. Any new neutron generations added above the first 80 generations, (that occur before final disassemble of the core occurs), will simply add to the efficiency and yield of the device. All of this activity takes place in less than a few microseconds and the neutron chain reaction producing the explosion is over before you see the first flash of light.”
There is a reason we are going back in history, and the answer is simple, history didn’t stop in 1945. The same paper by Jeff Smith, particle physicist, IAEA inspector and nuclear weapons designer, moves us forward two dozen years or more only paragraphs down in the same paper:
“In the newest 5th generation devices the uranium or plutonium fissile content has been drastically reduced by as much as 90% only leaving enough fissile material needed to ignite and trigger the internal fission-fusion-fission reaction of the deuterium boost gas. In this process, almost all of the fissile material is totally consumed, producing almost no detectable traces of fallout, as compared to the older designs from the WW2 era.
Due to this advantage in “nuclear stealth technology”, almost any large-scale explosion greater than 10 tons or more in TNT explosive power can now very easy be passed off as a conventional explosion. Remember, any explosion that leaves a crater greater than 6-feet wide or deep requires a molecular mass explosion of TNT that is greater than 4,000 lbs in weight or two tons of explosives. Most cars, small trucks or jet fighters cannot carry a weapon any larger than this in explosive power.
So unless you have a B-52 or a B-1 or a B-2, forget it. It has to be a mini-nuke until proven otherwise. Just because there is no fallout doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a mini or a micro nuke. Look at the blast photos. A picture is worth a thousand words. Was there a bright instantaneous flash? (referencing IAEA photos from both Yemen and Syria, which they list as nuclear attacks, a fact censored from the media)
Was it a single point or multipoint blast? Was there hydrocarbon residue left behind? Were secondary explosions involved? Was there evidence of very high temperatures and massive thermal damage involved? Was there incinerated or missing bodies involved? Was there an earthquake with a rapid unnatural spike registered on the seismometers?
The list just goes on and on as to what to look for if you know what to look for. Glasstone’s 1958 book “The effects of nuclear weapons” is a start for those who really want to know, but it is over 55 years old and it has not been updated to cover anything new since solid core weapons designs were invented 70 years ago. There is no new “bible” on the newer weapons designs that is still not classified for a reason. They don’t want you to really know.
So, the “Nay-Sayers” base their arguments on outdated 70 year old information as to how nuclear weapons use to work back in 1945. “
It is generally assumed that the 40-year-old cruise missiles the US uses that deploy 2nd generation nuclear weapons are all that is available for deployment from high-loiter time drone platforms like the Global Hawk or fake commercial aircraft.
Note that Russia has a version of the 3m-54 Kalibr cruise missile that deploys using a vertical launch system inside a standard commercial shipping container.
Any container ship can carry a dozen such systems and be anywhere, off any shore.
To be clear, deployment of “best possible” systems positioned in order to minimize interception is the reality of today as weapon’s limitations agreements are in “free fall” under current American policy.
America depends far too much on its ability to outspend Russia but forgets Russia’s economy of scale in weapon’s development. Russia lacks America’s “piggy bank” system where 90% of development costs, such as with the F 35, end up lining the pockets of politicians and profiteers.
Where the issue becomes dangerous is simple. At some point, capability dictates policy.
In fact, we have a clear issue here, America is developing “first strike” weapons that enable a deranged political leader, and America has had more than one of these in recent decades, to feel confident about initiating a nuclear war.
Secondly, with MRR (Minimum Residual Radiation) weapons available, though none may well be deployed, the chances of irradiating the planet would be minimal.
One of the key aspects of the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) as the use of inefficient nukes that spread unused fuel in the form of fallout.
Thus, we see Putin’s policy, of building retaliatory weapons. Let’s look at the nuclear torpedo, the Poseidon. From Popular Mechanics:
“Poseidon is Putin’s showpiece. First revealed in 2015, this nuclear-powered underwater drone—one of Russia’s next-generation nuclear weapons—is nicknamed the “tsunami apocalypse torpedo” for its multi-megaton warhead that could create city-smashing waves.
A succession of news reports have carried wildly disparate accounts of Poseidon’s capabilities. So is this another example of overblown Russian military vaporware or is there something more to it?
Here’s what we can say: At more than six feet in diameter and 65 feet long, weighing perhaps a hundred tons, Poseidon is the largest torpedo ever developed, coming in at thirty times the size of a heavy torpedo. In fact, the torpedo is so big it can be carried only by specially modified submarines.
Powered by a miniature nuclear reactor, the apocalypse torpedo also has effectively unlimited range. Unlike an ICBM or one of Putin’s new hypersonic missiles, it would take Poseidon hours to reach its target. On the other hand, it would bypass current missile defenses. Because of this, Poseidon—at least according to the Russians— is unstoppable.”
The reality isn’t the tsunami, that’s simply disinformation and Popular Mechanics exists for little else. We saw that in their analysis of the events of 9/11.
No, the awful truth is this, were the US to attack Russia from ground based “defensive” systems or high-loiter-time or similar platforms, the Poseidon would be used against a key port or shoreline.
The Poseidon was designed to return the MAD balance, a weapon that would throw a million tons of irradiated mud and soil into the air leaving up to 2000 square miles uninhabitable for decades.
No super-clean air burst here, incinerating populations with relative impunity, weapons so very attractive to the unbalanced despot.
What is, in the end, key to understand is that weapons capability creates a form of drug addiction for political leaders who so often demonstrate varying personality disorders and I assure you, more than a few American leaders, political and military, have been profiled as falling into these categories.
What haven’t we touched on? Space weapons? Weather modification? Biological and chemical weapons? Should we assume research, development and even deployment of such systems is curtailed based on a non-existent sense of right or wrong?
There is evidence in each of these categories that spending heads this direction also.
In fact, there is no evidence that there is any limit, any “moral” limitation on the development of destructive technologies intended to depopulate much if not all of Planet Earth, under the guise of “defense of America’s democratic ideals.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”