“The yield required of a nuclear weapon to destroy a hard and deeply buried target is reduced by a factor of 15 to 25 by enhanced ground-shock coupling if the weapon is detonated a few meters below the surface.” Two findings of the 2005 National Academies’ study Effects of Earth-Penetrator and other Weapons are key: A detonation above ground, in contrast, results in a larger fraction of the explosive energy bouncing off the surface. A nuclear weapon that detonates after penetrating the earth more efficiently transmits its explosive energy to the ground, thus is more effective at destroying deeply buried targets for a given nuclear yield. The evidence that the B61-12 can penetrate below the surface has significant implications for the types of targets that can be held at risk with the bomb. Implication of Earth-Penetration Capability ( A longer version of the video is available at the Los Alamos Study Group web site.) The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) previously published pictures of the drop test from October 2015 that showed the B61-12 hitting inside the target circle but without showing the bomb penetrating underground.īut a Sandia National Laboratories video made available by the New York Times shows the B61-12 penetrating completely underground.
guided nuclear gravity bomb, to a nuclear earth-penetrator with increased accuracy. The capability of the new B61-12 nuclear bomb seems to continue to expand, from a simple life-extension of an existing bomb, to the first U.S.
0 kommentar(er)
