Now what do they do with it?

OK so let's assume the Iranians have achieved a weapon like I mentioned in my earlier post. So now they want to deliver it to the Great Satan (that'd be us Americans for those of you not old enough to remember back to the Carter Administration). You can either use conventional methods, or non-conventional methods.

There are essentially two classic methods, aircraft in the form of long range bombers and missiles. Iran has no military aircraft of the right class unless the rumor of their purchase of Tu22-M Backfires is for real. Even that probably is pointless as it is ~ 10,000km (5495 NM) from Tehran to Washington DC which is half again the range of a one way mission in a Backfire. Then there's missiles. The Iranians have something on the lines of the Pakistani Shaheen 2 (itself derivative of North Korean Taepodong missile) called Shahab-5(b). Range on these (best case assuming 1000KG payload) is thought to be ~5500km. It can hit most of the EU from Tehran, in addition Jerusalem (and basically all of Israel) is easily in range. It is NOT clear to me if this is in service or predicted (and the FAS data is from 2002). There is also one on the drawing board (notional?) with 12000KM range and that puts the East Coast of the US in range.

Given these limitations conventional means to hit the U.S. are right out for the present (although Israel is well founded in their dislike for an Iranian Bomb). But even more important is that an ICBM or Aircraft is trackable to the attacker. Although you may think Allah is on your side, jumping the U.S. in a attributable fashion when you have say 1-5 weapons vs. the U.S. with 7000+ warheads (as of 1997, down to 5000 or so these days I believe) is folly. Those warheads represent over 2045 MT of deliverable destruction. That is a bit much even for folks with a death wish and a fairly far out eschatological world view to look at head on without having major qualms about whether those are 72 virgins (or figs) promised in the Quran are for real. Even they know the old saw that the Almighty favors the side with larger artillery and will think long and hard before lobbing something like that at U.S. soil in a fashion that leads directly back to them.

So that brings us to unconventional means. Here I've see three basic suggestions

1. Stuff it in a panel truck and get it into the US Via the borders.
2. Put it on a ship in a container and park it in a harbor (say Long Beach) and set it off
3. Put it on a large aircraft (cargo or alleged passenger) fly it over a US city and set it off

There is also a variant of 2 where you put that conventional missile on a ship and launch from said ship turning it into a really crude guided (well vaguely guided) missile cruiser.

The most obvious form of unconventional delivery method is the truck. Given the weight from my earlier post we're not talking anything bigger than an average UHAUL or Ryder Truck. This is nothing new, Terrorists have been doing this since Beirut. The big trick here is getting the bomb into a truck. Not the physical task, but getting the bomb or its unassembled parts into the US. It would probably be easier to bring it into Mexico or Canada, get the truck there and then deal with the issue of the border. There are places (especially on the US/Canada border in northern New England) where you wouldn't have to off road far (like across someones yard) or even at all to cross without being inspected. Doing it at a crossing is harder as there may (I hope) be monitoring for nuclear material. More critically if you're 2-4 guys with a rental truck and funny accents and maybe even looking a bit Middle Eastern you are going to get thoroughly eyeballed by the US customs agents. More concerning than the US would be Europe or Israel. There the truck can be loaded in Iran and go direct by road to its target. The Israelis would have the same issues our border guys would so that seems somewhat unlikely. Europe is another issue. A bunch of guys claiming to bring furniture to Paris or Munich for their uncle/cousin/brother are going to sound quite reasonable.

Your next choice is aircraft. Because we're assuming a large weapon and a 10000KM+ journey this probably has to be a devoted aircraft, perhaps one used for cargo. You could try to just ship it as cargo if its on the small side, but then you have the issue of timing the detonation in some fashion. Otherwise you end up blowing up Pease Trade Port or Newark Airport instead of New York or Washington. You then also have further run ins (a least I hope you do) with radiological monitoring. However, if you've got a plane and crew to waste (as well as a bomb technician or two) this shows some promise. The main issue is at present there are no direct flights from Iran to the US. However Iran has recently requested direct flights to the US (link). I think given the current state of the world allowing any Iranian flagged craft or Iranian originated craft into U.S. airspace is a probably a really bad idea.

Last of all there are ships. Cargo ships and containers seem a very easy way to get the weapon into a major port. Again there is the issue of detonating the weapon. I wonder if you couldn't put a couple folks in the container with sufficient food water etc. to get them to the US where then they act as a human fuze. The other option is the one I mentioned briefly the missile cruiser concept. Launch the missile from somewhere outside coastal waters of the US and now your under range IRBM's can reach much of the continental US. This does have some technical issues, in particular accuracy goes majorly south as the inertial navigation hardware probably presumes it is launched from a nice stable piece of ground. The pitching deck of a ship adds lots of uncertainty even in mild sea states. There is an old joke that close enough only counts in Horseshoes, Hand grenades and Nuclear weapons. However, you'd rather not shoot for New York N.Y. and get Bennington VT. or Buffalo or even Toronto (You wouldn't want those fierce Canadian retaliatory forces unleashed upon you).

One thought I've seen is to use the ship based weapon for an EMP shot (E.G at Barking Moonbat Early Warning Systems) This has some merit (for example the aiming problem is less severe). However it has some technical issues. The Skipper at BMEWS talks about a 50 Megaton explosion at 300 mi above the center of the US. However that's a ludicrous discussion for the Iranians (or the North Koreans). First of all a 50 Megaton weapon is not within Iran (Or North Korea's) capacity in even the near future. That's a weapon in the same class as the largest weapon ever the Tsar Bomb. They've got low kiloton range (10-20) WWII class weapons at best, and EMP depends directly on the gamma output of the weapon. A 20 KT weapon is going to be more than 3 orders of magnitude less powerful and induce 3 orders of magnitude less current than a 50 Megaton one. Add to that that although a missile may have a 5500 KM range it probably can't shoot 300 mi straight up . These missiles are like the early Redstones used for the suborbital Mercury shots. You're talking perhaps 60mi. of altitude at the top of the shot. So although I love BMEWS stuff this scenario of his is pure unadulterated hysteria for the present. One could use a weapon like I've describe to disable a region perhaps 300 mi. in radius. There's two reasons that it is unlikely to happen:

1. Taking out say the Northeast US via an EMP attack is a bit like an amateur sucker punching Mohammed Ali in his prime. Yeah, you may break his nose, but you are in for the beating of lifetime. This would be an attributable attack with weapons of mass destruction. U.S. Policy has always been that an attack on US soil with WMD will be retaliated to massively with WMD and the only WMD we have any more come in 300KT increments.
2. This doesn't fit their fantasy ideology . They want to kill someone, they want see that iconic mushroom cloud rise over the symbol of US power (NYC or Washington DC). Nothing short of blood sacrifice will bring back the twelfth Imam and start the rise to power of the world caliphate in their lunatic eschatology.

If we were facing a sane rational opponent (say the British or the Australians) one might expect a disabling EMP attack. Of course if it were the Brits or the Aussies the issue could probably be sorted out over a beer (or two, or six) and the only fights would break out over which brew to serve and what temperature to serve it at.

My own feeling is that terrorists are going to favor either the truck or shipping container options. A nation state is going to lean toward the commercial airliner or more likely the off shore kludged up guided missile container ship until they get the ICBM's in gear. Next time I'm going to think about how to defend against this kind of threat.

Tregonsee (L2) Signing out for now

What have the Iranians Got?

In a recent post Wretchard of the Belmont club talks about suitcase nukes and Iran. The good news is I think we can write suitcase nukes off the list of nightmare scenarios (see here for details why). So the question becomes what CAN the Iranians do. For examples we can look at others that have broken out of the treaties (or never were signatories) and see what they've got. The other place to look would be early US, UK and Soviet capabilities.

Our first candidate is the Pakistanis. We have two data points Chagai-1 at an estimated
9-12 KT yield and Chagai-2 at 4-6KT. Pakistani claims for these devices were in the 35KT
range (see here ). A.Q. Khan (The head of the Pakistani Nuclear program) claimed these were boosted weapons (Fission weapons with tritium injected to boost the yield). If they were they worked poorly as the originally quoted yields (from seismic data) are more in line with a much cruder U235 based gun bomb, and Chagai-2 hints at a less than successful test. The Pakistanis have set off no further tests so we're out of luck trying to estimate their current capabilities (the tests were in 1998).

The Indians are another example where some test data exists, as well as their statements
Their current repertoire is said to include:

* a pure fission plutonium bomb with a yield of 12 kt;
* a fusion boosted fission bomb with a yield of 15-20 kt, made with weapon-grade plutonium;
* a fusion boosted fission bomb design, made with reactor-grade plutonium;
* low yield pure fission plutonium bomb designs with yields from 0.1 kt to 1 kt;
* a thermonuclear bomb design with a yield of 200-300 kt.

This is a much more sophisticated set of options and looks more like a Late '50s to early '60s US or Soviet selection. The numbers are probably far reduced from the quantities the US and USSR had in that time period, but even if it's two orders of magnitude less we're talking tens to low hundreds of weapons.

Looking at the Soviet program its first weapon (Joe-1) was basically a clone of the US Fat Man weapon (the same as used at the Trinity test and in the attack on Nagasaki) and was tested in 1949. Their first boosted/fusion weapon shot was the Sakharov's "layer cake" design four years later in 1953. And their first true fusion weapon was tested in 1955.

If we look at the US program it starts with the MK 1 (Little Boy) and Mk 3 (Fat Man). Pretty much we used almost solely implosion based pure fission weapons until we get to fusion weapons testing in 1952 with deployment by 1954. Then we start creating boosted fission weapons. Our progression probably went that way because without a good understanding of fusion you can't model or predict the results of boosting. That is less of an issue today as much of that physics is well understood. However, the engineering details are probably tightly held secrets of the atomic powers so to do boosting well you're going to need some testing to get that critical data.

Given that the likely scenario is that Iran will go for a enriched uranium gun type weapon (say like the early US MK1 only less crude) as this is the easiest to make. It is also probably the plans they're most likely to have particularly given A.Q Khan's proclivities for selling the Pakistani atomic secrets. It will be a large weapon somewhere between the US MK 1 (8900 lbs) and some of our early IRBM warheads (The MK 7 at 1645-1700 lbs or the W-7 at 900-1100 pounds). Given the Pakistani weapon was intended as a warhead we're probably looking at the lighter end of that spectrum, the likely Pakistani delivery vehicle is the shaheen-1 (or shaheen-2) with quoted payloads of a metric ton (~2200 lbs for us geezers that still think in the English system). This is not a suitcase weapon but a panel truck or shipping container weapon. If they push hard they can have boosted or fusion weapons within 4-5 years. These don't necessarily get any smaller, they just are considerably more destructive. So next time I'll think aloud about the delivery methods for these nasty heavyweights.

Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now...

Who Am I and why am I here?

Well my feelings about the concept of this blog are a bit like those Dread Pirate Roberts for Westley in The Princess Bride: "Good Job Westley. I may kill you in the morning, Good night" I started this blog somewhat unintentionally, I wanted to comment on a post at the Belmont club and serendipitiously chose the path to set up a Blogger account. The account is named after Tregonsee a Rigellian Lensman in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman for details on the series). Tregonsee was not my first choice by a long shot, but many of my other ideas were already taken. And truth be told a blocky somewhat emotionless incorruptible superanuated Boy Scout is rather closer to home than I might admit. In actuality I'm a software engineer in Greater Boston region. I am in my mid 40's. I am married with two daughters and live with three cats (beware potential cat blogging), a Leopard Gecko and assorted freshwater fish. My blog is somwhat anonymous as who knows if my current employer would appreciate my blogging. I will NOT blog on specific work subjects (or my current employer), but still one can never be too careful. I am a Christian and currently a member of a Baptist (ABC) church. I am of orthodox and calvinistic tendencies in my beliefs. I am also an egalitarian in that I believe that it is appropriate for women to teach and be pastors. This particular belief makes me neither fish nor fowl as I am not liberal enough to deny Jesus' divinity and atoning sacrifice, nor so conservative to ban women from teaching men like the Southern Baptist position. I am of a Conservative/Libertarian bent in my politics. In general I'm of the view that the least government is the best. However I am pragmatic and do recognize that there are things the government does well (just not a lot of them). I have a variety of hobbies. I love to observe the stars and have an 8" schmidt cassegrain that I hardly have enough time to use. I enjoy computer and video games and spend time playing them with my daughters on our Gamecube and (my) PS2. I particularly enjoy participating with my daughters in a Korean form of Karate called Soo Bahk Do. (http://www.soobahkdo.com/). As for Blogs the first I read regularly was slashdot (http://slashdot.org/ which many claim isn't a blog per se). One day it had a pointer to an article at USS Clueless a blog by Steven Den Beste. It was absolutely fascinating and had pointers to many other blogs. I enjoyed his take on things even though I think we'd disagree on many points. These days I read a variety of blogs, but not as many as I did at my peak. If you pin me down to my five favorites they are 1) USS Clueless, brilliant commentary (appears to have come back SOME after a long hiatus) 2) Inoperable Terran (lots of links to ongoing information) 3) AMCGLTD.com Another collection of unrelated but fascinating pointers and commentary 4) Little Green Footballs, almost everything the left would rather not hear 5)Anti Idiotarian Rottweiler, everything else the left would rather not hear I read bunches of others, but these (short the until recently inactive USS Clueless) get daily perusal. Well, if your still here and I haven't bored you to death yet Show up every once and a while. I can't promise I'll rise to the levels of Den Beste or Bill Whittle but the length of the pieces may rival them. You know what they say "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance..." I'm almost certainly not going to be blogging daily (how do people do that AND have a job?) but I'll try for a couple times a week. And even that may be tenuous (see how this post starts). Tregonsee (L2) signing out for now...