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Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 1:43 pm
by Mongrel
To follow up on the really poor cover-up angle, RedState has tentative report (basically unconfirmed rumours) that
the Syrian general who ordered the gas strike was just assassinated by car bomb
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 1:22 pm
by McDohl
The Giant Pissbaby in Chief drops a MOAB on Afghanistan.
Fuck all the things.
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 1:27 pm
by McDohl
It's okay, I would just love to experience a time of no war sometime in my adult life, when I can actually appreciate it.
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 3:28 pm
by Blossom
The MOAB is, for reference, an 11 kiloton bomb, to Little Boy's 15. Here's the fatal blast radius:
If anyone wants to talk Weapons of Mass Destruction? There can be no credible argument. Trump just used one.
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 3:54 pm
by Mongrel
Well, as one commentator remarked this morning "Trump craves praise. We praise him for bombings. What possibly could go wrong?"
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 4:12 pm
by Blossom
The bomb cost $16 million as part of a $314 million order for 20, and it was dropped on a district with more than 95,000 civilians in the fatal blast radius. Estimates for Nagasaki that include radiation-induced fatalities over the next two to four months generally cap out at around 80,000.
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 4:28 pm
by Mongrel
I'm not disputing that innocents were probably killed with a blast radius that large, but all major news outlets I've seen so far are reporting the bomb was dropped on a cave and bunker complex in the mountains.
While we can cynically question the established press in many ways, I suspect that had the US just obliterated nearly 100,000 people, "bad guys" or not, that would still be reported on as major, major news.
What sources are providing this information?
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 5:11 pm
by Cait
Isn't the MOAB almost useless against a bunker?
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 5:16 pm
by Mongrel
Regardless of in-practice effectiveness, I thought that was the whole on-paper purpose of these giant fuel-air bombs?
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 5:55 pm
by Yoji
I've been reading Wikipedia and some others about that. My takeaways so far:
1) Yeah, these things are nightmares for anyone in a cave, building, or even just a foxhole. Not only does the fuel get blasted into cavities and around structures, but they use oxygen in the air to propagate and intensify the blastwave.
2) The blastwave is actually slower-moving than conventional weapons. As they've pointed out on Mythbusters, that's the kind of explosive you use to blow apart mountainsides in mining, so it'd make sense to use that for collapsing a cave.
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 6:28 pm
by Mongrel
So, a correction to the above post from TA: the yield is 11
tons, not 11 KILOtons. Important difference!
A friend of mine also played with nukemap to compare the actual size to the earlier image posted above:
I plugged numbers into Nuke Map based on 10 tons rather than 10 kilotons:
Fireball radius: 4.8 m / 15.76 ft (72.46 m² / 780 ft²)
Maximum size of the nuclear fireball; relevance to lived effects depends on height of detonation.
Air blast radius: 0.06 km / 0.04 mi (0.01 km² / 126,892.52 ft²)
20 psi overpressure; heavily built concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished; fatalities approach 100%.
Thermal radiation radius: 0.1 km / 0.06 mi (0.03 km² / 0.01 mi²)
Third-degree burns to all exposed skin; starts fires in flammable materials, contributes to firestorm if large enough.
Air blast radius: 0.16 km / 0.1 mi (0.08 km² / 0.03 mi²)
4.6 psi overpressure; most buildings collapse; injuries universal, fatalities widespread.
E: CBF screendumping and hosting while phoneposting, but if you detonate on top of the Charging Bull then the 5psi overpressure area doesn't reach the NY Stock Exchange.
I don't know how much a conventional weapon would affect the larger area that's within a nuclear weapon's radiation radius? Even that area fits entirely within Central Park, as a comparison.
So, probably a bit of sensationalism that got out of hand.
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 8:47 pm
by Bal
First ever use in combat though. That's got to count for something. (The Vietnam era "Daisy Cutter" was a different device)
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:16 pm
by Brantly B.
I'd be more impressed if I could believe it had been used tactically and not because President Manchild called up the "the army guys" and said "I want to drop a bomb on ISIS. A brobdingnagian bomb. I want to take the brobdingnagiest and the best bomb, and go over there and... and blow the hell out of ISIS. Do it."
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:24 pm
by Mongrel
My suspicion is that "The Army Guys" have been itching to use these for ages, and after the recent missile launch some bright light figured "Hey! I bet President Manbaby would let us play with the toys that mean 'ol President Bummer wouldn't let us touch!"
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:33 pm
by François
I'm very much getting an impression of an 11 year old playing GTA with cheats on.
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 2:10 pm
by Mongrel
Meanwhile, China made a plea for a return to negotiations. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said tensions need to be eased on the Korean Peninsula to bring the escalating dispute there to a peaceful resolution.
*childish snickering*
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 6:34 pm
by Mongrel
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 10:54 pm
by Brantly B.
I'm hyped for somebody competent to do it.
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 12:18 am
by Yoji
I can't help but think that if our problems could be solved by bombing them enough, they wouldn't have stayed problems for so long. Even North Korea. ESPECIALLY North Korea.
Re: War. War never changes. (Except when it does)
Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2017 5:26 am
by Mongrel
Brentai wrote:I'm hyped for somebody competent to do it.
I thought about that for a while and wondered if that would even work?
I mean, they're really nuts over there and incredibly fragile under all the bluster and on-paper manpower. I'm pretty sure that almost anything could tip NK over into horrifying mass starvation or some other nightmare scenario, whether it's moderate bombing, an all-out assault, or surgical assassinations of the leadership.
I suspect that the only thing that would really work is for China to slowly co-opt them over time until they had complete control of the NK government. Not that China's leadership is the bees knees but god knows it'd be heaps better than what they've got now.
Of course In a perfect world SK would be allowed to peacefully take them over and slowly reintegrate. But the world has made a point of flaunting how imperfect it is lately, so.