The Gamma Ray Bomb...

According to New Scientist magazine, the gamma ray bombs are already included in the US department of defence's militarily critical technologies list - a wish list of possible weapons technology that America considers essential to maintaining its superior firepower.
"Such extraordinary energy density has the potential to revolutionise all aspects of warfare," the magazine quotes the defence department list as saying.


US military pioneers death ray bomb

Pentagon project brings fear of new arms race

David Adam and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday August 14, 2003
The Guardian

American military scientists are developing a weapon which kills by delivering an enormous burst of high-energy gamma rays, it is claimed today.
The bomb, which produces little fallout, blurs the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons, and experts have already warned it could spark a new arms race. The science behind the gamma ray bomb is still in its infancy, and technical problems mean it could be decades before the devices are developed. But the Pentagon is taking the project seriously.

The plans are getting under way at a time when the Bush administration is seeking ways to expand its arsenal of unconventional weapons, and could well fuel charges that Washington risks triggering a new arms race.

In May, Congress approved further research on a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons: bunker busters, designed to drill into underground shelters, buried beneath hundreds of feet of con crete, and so-called mini-nukes with explosive yields of less than five kilotons.

Critics say such research projects, though tiny by the standards of the Pentagon, risk igniting a new arms race. They also charge the administration with seeking to put in place the conditions to end a ban on nuclear testing.

According to New Scientist magazine, the gamma ray bombs are already included in the US department of defence's militarily critical technologies list - a wish list of possible weapons technology that America considers essential to maintaining its superior firepower.

They would not have the awesome destructive power of nuclear weapons, but the energy emitted from a gamma ray bomb would be thousands of times greater than from conventional chemical explosives.

"Such extraordinary energy density has the potential to revolutionise all aspects of warfare," the magazine quotes the defence department list as saying.

The device would not produce energy by triggering a nuclear fission or fusion reaction, like current nuclear weapons. Instead it would rely on the gamma rays produced when the high-energy nuclei of some radioactive elements decay.

Four years ago, scientists at the University of Texas in Dallas showed that it was possible to trigger this effect artificially. The possibility that this decay process, which usually takes place very slowly, could be accelerated and used in a weapon grabbed the attention of the Pentagon. Scientists at the Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico are studying whether this can be achieved.

Such weapons would allow military commanders to increase firepower without being forced to push the nuclear button. Experts have warned that if the US scientists succeed in building a gamma ray bomb, it could force other countries to start nuclear programmes, or worse, encourage those who already possess nuclear weapons to use them.

"Many countries which will not have access to these weapons will produce nuclear weapons as a deterrent," Andre Gsponer, director of the Independent Scientific Research Institute in Geneva, told New Scientist. Just one gram of the explosive would store more energy than 50kg of conventional TNT. It would be as expensive as enriched uranium, but less would be needed for a bomb. Unlike uranium, it does not need a critical mass of material to maintain the nuclear reaction.

It would produce little radioactive fallout compared with an atomic explosion, but could cause long-term health problems for anyone breathing the particles in.

 

Extremely energetic light, hence its destructive power. This is all we need Bush with his finger on the trigger of a mini-Gamma Ray Burster...

What are Gamma Rays?
Gamma rays are a form of light. All light travels in waves and is classified according to its wavelength, the distance between its waves. The universe produces a broad range of light, only a fraction of which is visible to our eyes. Other types of nonvisible light include x-rays, ultraviolet light, infrared radiation, and radio waves. Gamma rays are the most energetic.

Gamma rays occupy the short-wavelength end of the spectrum; they can have wavelengths smaller than the nucleus of an atom.
Visible light waves are one-thousandths the width of human hair--about a million times longer than gamma rays.
Radio waves, at the long-wavelength end of the spectrum, can be many meters long.

http://cossc.gsfc.nasa.gov/epo/vu/overview/whatare/whatare.html

 

Though Gamma Ray Bomb sounds really cool, I seriously doubt we actually need an arsenal of them. This article presents a "fair and balanced" (please don't sue me fox) view of why we really don't need any of the new breed of nuclear weapons currently being proposed. Thanks for the link Vik.

A Nuclear Option that America Does Not Need
Financial Times, August 15, 2003
Michael A. Levi, Science and Technology Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies

Earlier this month—between the anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs—the US Strategic Command hosted a conference on ways of enhancing America's nuclear capabilities. According to a leaked copy of the agenda, attendees were to debate "requirements for low-yield weapons, EPWs [earth-penetrating weapons], enhanced radiation weapons, [and] agent defeat weapons." Despite protestations to the contrary—proponents of the bombs insist they are strictly for deterrence, designed to prevent another Hiroshima—none has a credible deterrence rationale.

The first proposal, for "low-yield weapons," refers to bombs that would explode in the air with a power perhaps a hundred times smaller than that of the Hiroshima weapon. Deterrence theorists argue that these bombs—which would have a power equivalent to about 100 tons of TNT—would fill a critical gap between the least powerful nuclear weapons in the current arsenal (equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT) and the most powerful conventional bombs (equivalent to about 10 tons of TNT). Yet it is highly unlikely that an enemy who was undeterred by the prospect of a salvo of 10-ton conventional bombs would think again when confronted with a 100-ton nuclear weapon.

The second proposal, for "EPWs"—known colloquially as "bunker-busters"—makes little more sense. Much of the public debate on these weapons has centred on relatively small versions, and whether they could be made fallout-free (they could not). In fact the most compelling case for such bombs requires that they be made as powerful as possible. According to this line of argument, EPWs should be designed to threaten targets deeper underground than those that can be reached today. This is the best way to deter enemy leaders who might hide underground from attacking US interests.

The trouble is that the proposed designs would improve the reach of US nuclear weapons by a factor of two at best, and even then would produce vast amounts of fallout. An enemy could simply dig deeper underground—or site its facilities within a hundred miles of an urban center.

"Enhanced radiation weapons," the third option, are best known as "neutron bombs"—a technology debated and rejected during the 1980s. The purpose of such weapons is to kill enemies with radiation while preserving the physical infrastructure nearby.

During the cold war, proponents of the neutron bomb argued with some credibility that it would be effective against massed Soviet armour, at the time considered the greatest threat to western security. But even then, hawkish opponents of the proposed bombs countered that precision-guided conventional munitions could do the job better. Today, with precision-guided weaponry much more mature, and no potential enemy possessing a massive armored capability, there is no credible rationale deterrence-based or not for such a weapon.

The conference's last proposal, for "agent-defeat" weapons, is, from a military perspective, perhaps the most interesting. These weapons would be designed to penetrate facilities stockpiling chemical or biological weapons and to incinerate them, thus preventing the spread of the deadly agents. But recent studies—including one by Michael May, former director of the Livermore National Laboratory—have questioned these claimed capabilities. Moreover, conventional weapons—ranging from bleach-filled bombs to special incendiary weapons—show equal, if not greater, promise.

Besides, without precise intelligence, of the kind the US apparently lacked in Iraq, targeting such bombs would be impossible. On occasion, they might destroy isolated caches of illicit weapons. But they would never credibly threaten a large fraction of an enemy's stockpiles—and thus would be ineffective as a deterrent.

Advocates of these new weapons continue to insist that they would be only for deterrence. Yet all the technical evidence suggests that they would add nothing to the deterrent capabilities of America's existing arsenal. That means that, if they are ever built, these weapons will have primarily offensive roles.

America's lawmakers are presumably acting in good faith in supporting these developments. But they should think again before committing their country to costly programmes that will do little to protect it—and much to alienate its international friends.

© Copyright 2003 Financial Times