A-bomb legacy

[Plane]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/aging-nuclear-arsenal-grows-ever-more-costly/ar-AA7eeQg

.....elements of the systems are virtual museum pieces. An example is the B-52. One of the massive gray bombers recently sitting on a tarmac at the Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana rolled off Boeing Co.'s assembly line in 1960 - during the Eisenhower administration.


............ B-52s will probably fly another 26 years. By the time the bomber retires, it will be 80 years old - older than any strike aircraft ever flown in military service.

The other legs of the nuclear triad are 450 1960s-era Minuteman III missiles based in silos in Wyoming, Montana and Nebraska, and 14 Ohio-class submarines from the 1980s that are also nearing the end of the design life of their nuclear propulsion systems.

The nuclear warheads that these vehicles carry are maintained at the legacy sites of the Manhattan Project. Although it is significantly smaller than in its Cold War heyday, the Energy Department industrial complex stretches from South Carolina to California with more than 40,000 employees.
..............The nation's nuclear weapons stockpile has shrunk by 85% since its Cold War peak half a century ago, but the Energy Department is spending nine times more on each weapon that remains. The nuclear arsenal will cost $8.3 billion this fiscal year, up 30% over the last decade........ modernization could reach $1 trillion over the next 30 years.

..............."Simply stated, there is no plan for success with available resources," said Norman Augustine, a former Pentagon and defense industry official who is leading a review of the Energy Department's bomb program.
...........................

Lets thank God that it is useless, and replace it with a system that is scarier, more deadly and cheaper.

Hoping it will be just as useless, for less money.

[Plane]

Whoops......

[kimba1]

not quite relate, I was at st. Thomas the place oppenhimer lived and took his own life. the guide who took us there understood the massive guilt he live with by making the bomb but somehow did not understand that living the rest of his life in the carribean will not be enough to ease it. the experience made me think about creativity. does the focus of making weapons hinder creativity. look at the gun ,only in the resent decades has some radical changes been applied.

[Xavier_Onassis]

There is little chance it will be cheaper.

Drones and unmanned smart missiles are the most likely substitutes.

So long as the B-52 fly and serve their purpose, why not simply add technical innovations to them and keep on using them?

[Plane]

not quite relate, I was at st. Thomas the place oppenhimer lived and took his own life. the guide who took us there understood the massive guilt he live with by making the bomb but somehow did not understand that living the rest of his life in the carribean will not be enough to ease it. the experience made me think about creativity. does the focus of making weapons hinder creativity. look at the gun ,only in the resent decades has some radical changes been applied.

  My impression of progress with firearms is that they have always been a driver of progress, pretty much the opposite of your impression.

   I wonder how we got that way?

    Because my father was slated to be on a front line ship for the invasion of Japan, he credited the A-bomb with saving his life.

    I feel sorry for Oppenheimer if he was so riddled with guilt, he must have done as he felt his duty in spite of this pain, but if he had survived for me to speak to I would have to thank him for the chance to exist.

[Plane]

There is little chance it will be cheaper.

Drones and unmanned smart missiles are the most likely substitutes.

So long as the B-52 fly and serve their purpose, why not simply add technical innovations to them and keep on using them?

Cruse missiles already do a part of the B-52's job. So you have that right.

The part of the job that only the B-52 can do is to haul massive loads and deliver lots of less precise destruction.

The age is an issue in spite of how well they are maintained, anyone who has a really large target that we could profitably destroy , knows to expect a flight of B-52 , and can tee up for them.

[kimba1]

I see weapons development the sameway I see medicine. It`s waits for technology to develop to finally ultilize it for it`s own gain. innovation is not a straight forward thing. you can`t just tell a guy to make a better gun. innovation can take lifetimes to happen. it took almost a century for the  matchlock to become a flintlock. not from lack of technology. somebody had to think it. that`s always the hardest thing to do. no medical innovation has ever develop by itself. to day with all the technology and easy access to data we should see some pretty impressive guns. I just learn of a sideways gun that was made a few years ago. more powerful guns was made decades ago so I think research will be done to handle high power guns without injuries.

not sure but plane I think you posted a vid to the limits on how powerful guns can be till it`ll simply be unsafe

[Plane]

  You can get a computerized gun sight that makes it hard to miss your target at great ranges, the next development would be making this device more cheaply.

   What would battle be like if all of the soldiers were capable of sniper like accuracy?

     The limits of a guns power are pretty high, if you are willing to count recoilless rifles and shoulder fired missiles , very high indeed, but then you have to carry the thing.

[kimba1]

that`s where the exo-skeleton comes into play. but I don`t know if it derived from research of paralyzed patients or the other way around. I believe the former since I recall Christopher reeves foundation making it public.

[Plane]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/hagel-to-order-nuke-force-overhaul-to-fix-failures/ar-BBdBrTS

What else in the world do you spend so much time effort and money on , hoping that it will remain useless?

[Plane]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-military-readiness-for-war-competitive-edge-worsening-officials/ar-BBdZiu9


It is like this.

   When Congressmen speak of "cuts" usually they mean that there will be a reduction in the planned or promised increase, as in the cuts that all social services have ever undergone while their budgets actually increase.


   When the Department of Defense gets a cut , it is actually a decrease in funding .

    I think the worst mistake is big reductions in R&D , getting better bang for your buck (literally!) depends on being smart.

     

[kimba1]

the thing is military design to rarely be question about a problem and due it`s nature it`s required but as time goes by it does need to be tweeked. . it`s quite common if a officer is asked a question about a problem the only answer will be 'that`s above my pay grade"