Nuclear Weapons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk_zpjK3cTo
Watching this right now.

 

I liked that video. Follow it up with this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ4vtUzG6sQ

 

Your forgetting about the Ivy King shot days after Ivy Mike. It was an air-dropped prototype of the Mk 18 Super Oralloy bomb that had a 500kt yield. All though this was a strictly fission bomb, it exceeded the yield of the boosted Soviet one, was immediately usable, and roughly a year earlier.

Ivy Mike was 10.4mt not 1.2mt.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Ivy.html

 

Yes, good point. I made a veiled reference to the Mk18, but I had neglected to mention the significance of Ivy King explicitly since the Mk18 was not a true fusion bomb. However, this should be brought as RDS-6s was not a true fusion weapon either. Both were field deploy-able (serial production of the Mk18 began in March 1953 and by February 1955 90 had been produced). In short: the US had a comparable bomb to RDS-6s, tested 9 months prior to RDS-6s, and in-inventory 5 months before RDS-6s was tested.

 

"Nobody" is everyone except the Soviet physicists and the Soviet leaders.
They knew what they had and they largely knew what the Americans had - because it wasn't secret, and because the Soviets spies in the US and in Britain were first rate anyway.

About Soviets achievements, how many bombs, planes, how powerful the bombs were the others, the Free World knew nothing. Not to mention any of the details you so meticulously shown.
The only and approximate source of information was the mass isotopic composition of global fallout and that was it.
The Soviet didn't even bother with announcing/confirming any of their atomic tests. It was all secret.

You can write about RDS-6s as much as you will, the fact is in the West the name wasn't known, its very existence wasn't known, even the date of its first detonation wasn't known.

What they knew was that the Soviets pre-announced their first atomic bomb and kept their word, despite claims of American experts it would take them a decade or two.
So their knew the Soviets were good, and they knew their top scientists like Pyotr Kapitsa were the best in the world.

So when the Soviets announced they had the fusion bombs, and were as good at their production as the Americans were it was reasonable to listen and to plan for the worst. Because the victory in the eventual WW3 depended on this.

Anyway the subject discussed here is: it wasn't true that "Washington upset the balance of atomic power by detonating the first hydrogen bomb in 1952", not the unknown at that time details.
And the point is, from the political point of view, both sides equally contributed to the upsetting, and because it was both sides we can say balance wasn't upset at all.

 

Source? The Soviets concentrated on a boosted fission design because the majority of the information they had was on this design (provided to them by Klaus Fuchs). How was the Teller-Ulam design "not secret"? Who were these spies that leaked details of the Teller-Ulam design and the technical details of American hydrogen weapons?

Tests were easily determined by both seismic and "sniffer" flights. It was hardly a secret that any country (USSR or otherwise) was conducting/had conducted a nuclear test -- these means provided ample information otherwise. Yes, it is also obvious that the West did not know Soviet capacity nor any of the details that I've provided. However, this is totally irrelevant to your original thesis (which was, paraphrasing, the Soviets were just as or more advanced as the Americans in the H-bomb race [wrong] and the Americans had a "POS" design [wrong]). My "meticulous details" are directed at your thesis -- nothing else. Please note that the phrase "mass isotopic composition" is misleading. The isotopic composition of the sampled air was determined via mass spectroscopy -- there is no such thing as a mass isotope. This phrase has turned up in a few papers and I disagree with its use.

And how is it relevant that the West did not know the official name RDS-6s? As per above, it is very difficult to hide a nuclear test -- its existence was known (the Soviets trumpeted their first hydrogen bomb -- see your quote from Malenkov), as was the date of detonation. A cursory search will corroborate this.

You just said that the Soviets did not announce/confirm nuclear tests and the West had no way of knowing details or even the date of these tests? Isn't this slightly contradictory? Not all "experts" claimed that a weapon was decades away (those that did were showing pro-US narcissism and a marked lack of grasp on the situation). A pre mid-1953 date was projected by many in US intelligence as being unlikely but it was admitted that a date as early as mid-1950 was possible. In the aftermath of the test, CIA director Roscoe Hillenkoetter somewhat controversially claimed that the US was not taken by surprise as the test was only a "few months" earlier than the projected dates.

No one is implying the Soviets scientists we subpar. Even if I were, I fail to see how this is relevant. Regardless of how good the Soviets scientists were it does not change the fact that they were markedly behind in the hydrogen bomb race. The Americans simply had a head start -- it has nothing to do with who was "best".

Production figures please? Look at plots of the nuclear arsenals of the US and USSR as a function of year. The tonnage of the American arsenal was significantly higher than the Soviet arsenal until the 1970s. I commented on the significant gap in hydrogen weapons stockpiles previously. As for assuming the worst -- that is what one does in an arms race (which both the USSR and US were in), so I'm not sure how this is relevant to the original discussion.

The US jumped ahead in the arms race at the time and gained a technological edge over the USSR. Note that it says "atomic power", not "world power". I would - of course - not agree with the statement had it said "world power". For a period of several years the US had the edge in nuclear weapons. You can argue that the Soviets caught up in the late 50s/60s and onwards, but the evidence is quite clear that there was a technological deficit from 1952 - c.1957 and hence the US jumped ahead in the "balance of atomic power" over this time. For the sake of arguement, if the balance wasn't upset as you claim who had the "edge"? Soviets? US?

This was only one part of your thesis. The other points were that, paraphrasing, the Soviets were just as or more advanced as the Americans in the H-bomb race [wrong] and the Americans had a "POS" design [wrong]. The majority of my previous comments were based on those.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/nine-nations-have-nukes--heres-how-many-each-country-has-2014-6?IR=T sourced 02nd of August 2016

... I hadn't realised.

I assumed more countries had them.


As a matter a fact, here; here's what 'the history books' are showing - also found on that link provided;

 

United States, UK, France and Israel have 7, 905, and let's say India has 90 - 110, that's llike 8, 000 to Putin's 8, 000.
but then what about North Korea? and their 6 to 8?

Who's 'friends' with who?
I think Washington and Delhi are friends (Washington D.C and New Delhi). Both have democracies...

 

This why I wrote "largely". The American project; the reasons behind it, the money needed, the possibility of success, its physics were discussed in the U.S. Congress, and then announced on the first pages of newspapers.
They didn't discuss the Teller-Ulam design. It wasn't known at that time.

Are you sure about it?
I thought the seismic method was developed at the end of the sixties thanks to the Vela Uniform Project.

Atmospheric tests can't be detected by both seismic and "sniffer" flights. This is why Vela Hotel was needed. But it was available from the beginning of the sixties.
Underground tests can't be detected by "sniffer" flights, There is no fallout.

No, I've said their bomb, a bomb, was better because it could be used right away.
I've said American bomb, an 82-ton monstrosity, wasn't good because obviously it couldn't be used, at all.
It's the same argument the Soviet were using months later to prove their technological superiority.
I skipped all the details because it was all about politics, perception, and mostly he said, she said.

No, the Soviets didn't announced their fist hydrogen test, they announced their capabilities to produce hydrogen bombs.
And I've checked actual communist newspapers from that time to be sure.

Similarly they didn't announce or even admit their first nuclear test. When caught red-handed by the "sniffer" flights they said it was an industrial accident. But they announced their capabilities.

The claim advanced by that article was the mere existence of hydrogen weapons upset the balance and put Britain at disadvantage. But only the US was mention as the guilty party.

 

Yes.

Seismic detection had been around since before Vela Uniform. From July 1, 1951.
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB7/docs/doc02.pdf
Acoustic/Sonic methods were also developed to detect nuclear blasts.

Seismic and acoustic methods, were how the US detected Joe-4 when it was detonated, and was confirmed thereafter by radiation sampling aircraft.

Vela Uniform was to further refine the systems then in place to discriminate between underground nuclear detonations and earthquakes.

I would recommend " Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea" by Jeffrey Richelson.

Atmospheric tests are detected with acoustic sensors. Vela Hotel was to detect nuclear detonations in space, it was only the later six Advanced Vela satellites that could also detect atmospheric detonations.

The Soviet "bomb" was no better than the "best" bomb the Americans were already producing.

So how does this make the "best" Soviet bomb better than the "best" American one?

If the Soviets were indeed "superior" than there "bomb" should have a higher yield than the "best" American one...Yet, it didn't.

 

Like that which crashed at Roswell? I thought the acoustic program was a big failure and didn't detect anything.
They say there they detected an explosion from 2,400 miles. Semipalatinsk was much more further away.

About seismic detection they say there its reliability was to be established yet, and its scaling factors are questionable. It seems they didn't put much faith in it at that time.

Confirmed as in, they didn't know what it was, but the sampling aircraft revealed the truth - not merely confirmed it?

It was better because it used novel ideas, at that time of largely unknown future potential. And because as they say; a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

This created concern within the U.S. government and military, because, unlike Mike, the Soviet device was a deliverable weapon, which the U.S. did not yet have. This first device though was arguably not a true hydrogen bomb, and could only reach explosive yields in the hundreds of kilotons (never reaching the megaton range of a staged weapon). Still, it was a powerful propaganda tool for the Soviet Union, and the technical differences were fairly oblique to the American public and politicians.

 

You did note that this was a good 2 years before Joe-4 didn't you? You also realize that Joe-4 was far more powerful than previous Soviet tests don't you?

Confirmed...As in they suspected what it was from the information gathered. The sampling aircraft confirmed they were correct.

It was better than previous Soviet nuclear weapons. It was not better than the best atomic weapon then in inventory.

The "novel ideas" were understood and known, which is why the Americans never took to it, and the Soviets abandoned it.

That's funny. It has been pointed out that the Americans already had a weapon of equal power.

What caused concern was that, up until that time, the Americans had based all their atomic scenarios on the soviets having low-yield weapons. The detonation of a Soviet weapon of hundreds of kilotons leveled the playing field, and new American projections with the Soviets having more powerful weaponry were far less "rosy" than the low-yield ones.

 

Are you sure? Because according to Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb the chain of events was:

- it was detected by a WB-29 flying east of the Kamchatka Peninsula on September 3, 1949,
- next week measurements were done constantly as the radioactive air mass moved across the US,
- on September 9 a British Halifax bomber and British Mosquitoes detected radioactivity along the Norwegian coast,
- at the same time the US Navy detected radioactivity by flocculating rainwater from the roof of its Washington laboratory.

That was all, seismic detection isn't even mentioned.

In November 1953 the chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy asked a number of scientists about the relative status of the US and Soviet thermonuclear programs.
John von Neumann, a man of impeccable scientific credentials, a consultant to the CIA, the Atomic Energy Commission, the United States Air Force, Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Secretary of Defense, the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group answered:
"I ... no longer think that the time lag ... is as much as two years in our favor. Actually, I would think that is more probable that it is about a year, and it may very well be zero. Indeed, in some part of the field the Soviets may be ahead of us."

I.I. Rabi, chairman of the GAC: "no real time lag between the two nations' nuclear-weapons programs any longer",

John Wheeler: "I know of no evidence, that would exclude [the Soviets] being substantially ahead of us in production of thermonuclear weapons",

It wasn't that funny then it seems.

 

WTF are you talking about? We have been discussing Joe-4 detonated on August 12, 1953.

Your quoting passages concerning Joe-1...You should correct the year - 1949.

Why did you not quote the preceding sentence concerning von Neumann?

Why did you not quote the full passage concernig Rabi?

 

Concerning Joe-4, in the passages preceding wm.'s quotes, Rhodes writes

 

Sorry about those Joes, it was late at night and too many beers...

What you have quoted, and "the preceding sentence concerning von Neumann" are commentaries written a half of a century later, neatly describing events spread "over a considerable period" of time.

But this is about British concerns about "the balance of atomic power" and their fears they "would be left to bear the brunt of the weapon".

The fears weren't aroused by commentaries of Mr Rhodes but by statements of their contemporaries, top scientists and excellent experts on this subject. And they actually claimed that:
"in some part of the field the Soviets may be ahead of us", "no real time lag between the two nations' nuclear-weapons programs", "that the time lag ... may very well be zero".

They knew about Joe-4 and maybe they realized that a country capable of Joe-4s, with top scientists equal to them or even better, would have no problem with production of true thermonuclear weapons.
That they only needed a single eureka! moment, the thought that radiation implosion was needed, and the rest would be a routine project using well known and well mastered technology.

 

wrong topic