New more powerful bomb

"Little Boy" at 13kt is tiny by todays standards. What required a 10,000lb bomb back then could fit into something the size of a briefcase today

A relatively modern B/Mk-83 (designed in late 70's, largest gravity bomb still in current arsenal), weighs a mere 2,400lbs with a max yield of 1.2Mt (over 1000 times more powerful than hiroshima bomb)

A single Trident II D5 (sub launched SLBM) can carry 8-12 mirv warheads, each of which 30+ times more powerful than hiroshima bomb. A ballistic sub can carry 20-24 missiles, and we have 14+ ballistic subs currently carrying them; you do the math...

Single warhead unguided nukes are obsolete; precision guided multiple warheads in a single missile are far more practical.

It's easy to defend against a big lumbering bomber carrying one massive bomb; not so much against a dozen small warheads falling from space at 20+ times the speed of sound

@SDavis Seems it is replacing something called the B61 nuclear gravity bomb, which is a variable yield thermonuclear (aka H-bomb) of up to about 400 kilotons yield according to wikipedia.

Fox News sez:

Sounds like a drop-in replacement for aging warheads in the strategic bomber portion of our nuclear triad, with similar yields and probably similar weight.

I believe H-bombs contain duterium & tritium as part of the fuel. Tritium has a half-life of 12.33 years, which is rather short. Maybe they now have designs less dependent on tritium and thus less susceptible to aging out.

Same government that has a shit hemmorage over gun ownership, says nothing say about the two guys shot dead in Brooklyn within the last 24 hours, but runs it rhetoric after a very tragic shooting leaving 18 dead with no intent to do anything but score points for their agendas.
To me, this announcement is a mere veiled threat to our “enemies”. Probably have had this weapon for some time, and in light of rising world tensions, wheeled it out into the world stage and said,”if you ..…well here you go!”

That bomb, if approved by Congress, could obliterate an area of approximately 15,360 square miles, completely. The Hiroshima bomb would have wiped out all of Houston, if used on a comparable population in the United States.

The proposed bomb would destroy the United States, Canada, and the Mexican Peninsula. The resultant radiation and fallout would poison both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. The Nuclear Winter would kill all plant life on earth.

I hope you've got your survival greenhouses set up in the deepest caves on earth.

Hydrogen bombs are already a 1000 times more powerful though. Oh, it’s a newer model. Gotcha.

Um .. the Hiroshima bomb was 50Kton. So 24 times more powerful would be 1.2 megaton, which is kind of small amongst current ICBM delivered bombs, at least (I'm less conversant with aeroplane-delivered)

Is this the Daily Mail beating up a nothing story, or just being egregiously stupid? (or both, of course, with the Daily Snail thats always a strong possibility).

We produced a bomb 700 times more powerful than Hiroshima, more than 70 years ago.

That would seem rather old news by the Pentagon.

The larger of the two atomic bombs used was the second, over Nagasaki, though hills limited the destruction compared to that wreaked on Hiroshima where a secondary effect was a massive fire-storm creating a mushroom cloud higher than that from the bomb itself..

Its "yield" was measured, partly by instruments carried in an aeroplane accompanying the bomber itself, was approximately that of 20 kilotonnes of TNT.

That dropped on Hiroshima was about 16kt, but the American scientists studying its effects thought not all of the fuel underwent fission, reducing its power.

If both were of the same design then, 24 times the energy release of the Nagasaki bomb would be 480 kt; <0.5Mt.

Weapons far more powerful - of Mt or tens of Mt magnitudes - have long been known. I think these are mainly so-called "Hydrogen Bombs", which use nuclear fusion rather than fission, releasing vastly more energy.

Either way they are dreadful weapons, and we can only be grateful the remaining third bomb made, and three others in production, were never used. They did hasten Japan's surrender, though that was also helped by the Soviet Union unilaterally breaking the two countries' mutual neutrality pact and starting to invade Japan.*

.....

The immediate fatalities, and of those who died of their injuries or radiation sickness, were not the only victims of US nuclear weapons. In the 1950s, when NATO and the Soviet bloc were at the height of the 'Cold War', both sides were regularly testing nuclear bombs.

The energy released by one US weapon tested at Bikini Atoll was much larger then predicted; and fall-out drifted down across a Japanese fishing-boat at least a hundred miles down-wind. All four crew, who did not know at the time what the strange dust was, suffered from radiation sickness; one later died from cancer. The child of another, conceived later, was born deformed possibly as a result of the father's irradiation.**

''''''

We must never forget.....

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Sources:

* Wikipedia - a comprehensive account of the politics, strategy, effects and aftermath.

** MacDowall, Julia; ATTACK WARNING RED! - How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War; Bodley Head (London) 2023.

[The capitals are as on the book title itself.] Basically the preparations were vague, frequently changed, based on WW2 "Blitz" experience, and so not really very helpful to the population at large; but this was so in other countries too, even the USA. Of the examples, among the countries seeming to have the best civilian-protection precautions were Sweden and Russia.

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PS. I tried to follow the link but the Daily Mail wanted me either to purchase a subscription to avoid the advertising or accept all its advertising, in a quite aggressive manner. So I turned it off.

How many does it take to destroy humanity. It’s insane.

Too bad they hate serious stuff like politics and have no civic imagination.

Wish I could read this. My ad blocker won't go away...pinned to start up.

Hurray for the USA! /s.

So who do we get to 'test' it on this time?