Scramjets, mini-nukes, and nano-thermite shaped charges, oh my!

Hi there everyone. This is my 1st post.

I was wondering if anyone can answer a few calculus questions for me.

Right now we have the B-1B which is a long range heavy bomber, capable of carrying a large payload of missiles. Configure it to carry scramjet missiles tipped with nano-thermite shaped charges (for ground penetration) and mini nukes, and we have the capability to take out hardened targets, over long ranges, very quickly, with no possibility of interception.

My question is if we have vehicle material strong and heat resistant enough to remain intact after impacting the ground above a hardened target at Mach 10 while penetrating the 300 feet of earth that scientists say will contain the blast of a 5 kiloton nuclear explosion?

I guess what I'm really asking is how much ground penetration can we get out of an object constructed out of our best available material hitting the ground at Mach 10. Thanks in advance.

I would say Tungsten or some sort of depleted material. Long, thin, and very sharp for maximum kinetic force. Id say maybe 12" Diameter solid tipped rod 20 or so feet long would do.

I dont think it would be that hard to figure out just how deep it could go before detonation either. Some simple studies measuring how fast your housing material degrated while passing through the most likely target construction would do. You could ajust things like speed, housing thickness, distance between warhead and tip of housing, etc to detonate at a desired depth.

There was a related Popular Science story a few months back (dont have a link) that spoke of deep penetrating Tungsten rods being fired from space based platforms that could obliterate even the deepest well protected structures. WITH NO EXPLOSIVES AT ALL! Just kinetic energy.

The US government must have some data out there on deep penetrating bunker busters as its a priority and gets plenty of funding.

I think the deep penetrators will drive bunkerdesigners to switch away from the single high value target, the (previous) impregnable central deep bunker and go for a a very long but small in diameter tunneldesign, several connected small bunkers, wired with glasfibre comms and seprated by pressurehatches. With this small crosssection you need a very accurate and a bit lucky shot to get a direct hit, also a direct hit would only destryo part of the long tunnel. Your targetted Dr. Evil could be at the other end of the bunker....

Maybe, with a long circular tunnel you could access the other side of the bunker if part of the tunnel is collapsed. Dispersion and redundancy is the keyword.

As for indirect hits, or perhaps an underground nuclear penetrator, the Japanese in the past have designed underwater railroad tunnels on paper, for use in earthquake areas, consisting of a tube inside a tube, seperated with regular interval cushions, to protect the inner tube against heavy earthquakes, or in our case nuclear shockwave (the outer tube may crack, sacrificing itselve.)

Another option for bunkerdesigners would be to research kontakt 5 era used on some Russian tanks, maybe a hugely scaled version could protect bunkers by decapitating penetrating rods...

The biggest challenge of bunkerdesign is not engineering but keeping the location and the exact layout a secret, especially now that the millitary are increasingly employing ground penetrating radar, Therefore your should have large sheets of radar reflective and or absorbing foil buried to obscure the exact bunkerdesign. Also have lot of reflective foils buried at other sites as decoy bunkers...

I am really curious about the tunnelcomplexes in North korea, they have been digging for the past 40 years...You would have to start carpetbombing bunkerbusting nukes and or rods, looking at the multimillion pricetag of such weapons, I think that is going to be a bit too expensive ???

Naturally the North Koreans are put largely on the defensive by their turtoise stategy and would probably be taken out if they themselves started an offensive war above ground, but invading them seems like a tough cookie.

Well, maybe they are just bluffing

What worries me about North Koreans getting longer range ICBMS (Taepodong-2) and nukes is that they might have less fear for retaliation due to their (suspected) immense underground infrastructure.


[edit on 18-2-2005 by Countermeasures]