Nuclear Weapon UAVs
It isn't mentioned often, but there is another dimension to the nuclear threat that could become real within 10-20 years -- miniaturization of nuclear weapons continuing to the point where a nuclear weapon consists of several UAVs that converge on a location, assemble into a complete bomb, and detonate. You could use redundancy to ameliorate the risk of one of the UAVs getting shot down.
There are numerous strategic/military advantages which give this weapon a high probability of eventual development. Obviously, you would avoid using a missile, which shows up pretty definitively on a radar screen. For a first strike, this is tremendously important. Another advantage could be self-detonation in the event of discovery, something difficult to implement with conventional missiles.
Update: this technology would have a significant advantage over using UAVs alone because the warhead that could fit on a single UAV would have to be very small, and would have frustratingly low yield. A warhead built from converging components could have arbitrary yield, while retaining the stealth benefits of UAVs.
April 22nd, 2009 - 00:12
Nuclear weapons are small enough to be able to be delivered via aircraft. UAVs are big enough to carry such weaponry. Therefore the idea of a Voltron UAV nuke is already redundant.
This whole post cranks the unrealistic nuclear weapon paranoia you’ve got up to an entirely new level. If a country had the technology to make UAVs capable of coordinated landing and assembly I should hope that they would be more imaginative than to use them as some sort of homage to the Cold War/Transformers. Seriously, you’re like a General with a budget to spend, hell bent on creating the ultimate Rube Goldberg of death machines.
This sort of thinking is exactly why the US routinely gets its ass handed to it by peasants with AK47s and crappy roadside bombs. What’s wrong with killing people with bullets instead of wasting time trying to make some sort of thermonuclear power ranger to fly into their camp in the desert with 30 people in it and explode? It’s like killing a single mosquito with a pound of semtex – utter overkill and totally pointless when there are millions of other mosquitoes still to be dealt with. This mentality is so stupid I can’t believe it’s still SOP for some people.
April 22nd, 2009 - 02:27
Have to agree with Stuart. MAD keeps the world a little safer IMO.
April 22nd, 2009 - 05:04
It isn’t mentioned often, but there is another dimension to the nuclear threat that could become real within 10-20 years — miniaturization of nuclear weapons continuing to the point where a nuclear weapon consists of several UAVs that converge on a location, assemble into a complete bomb, and detonate. You could use redundancy to ameliorate the risk of one of the UAVs getting shot down.
– I partially agree with what Stuart said. Let me rephrase his comment in a less personal and more logical manner:
1. This technology is so advanced that it will probably only be available to the USA in 20 years time.
2. The USA has no use for it. It is no longer in US interest to first strike Russia, as Russia is not a peacetime threat to the USA – their economy is eternally fucked, and their population is shrinking. China, maybe, but think of the fallout – radioactive and political.
3. Therefore, who cares?
Now, fast forward to 2060 and we might get to the stage where this tech is in the hands of a rogue state such as Iran. Then Michael has a point.
April 22nd, 2009 - 06:36
At no time does Michael have a point, even if Iran were to get its hands on such a weapon. Because the whole point of a nuke is to use it as leverage, and then, it doesn’t matter what size it is. If you’re going to bother to make a weapon for actual use, proportionality between the amount of money and time you spend on it and what it’s going to achieve are in order.
April 22nd, 2009 - 11:03
> Because the whole point of a nuke is to use it as leverage,
hmmm. if this were true, we’d have much less to worry about from nuclear war.
I think there are sufficiently crazy actors in the world who would use nukes to kill, rather than to bargain with.
E.g. The 9/11 terrorists.
For such a group, a powerful, resilient, stealthy nuke would achieve their goal of killing tens of millions of (for example) US citizens.
Although, on the other hand, if there are still terrorists in the world by the time this level of technology is available to them, there will probably be far worse things that they can do.
So overall, I am not very worried about this development.
April 22nd, 2009 - 13:07
In a nano arms race, nukes are still likely the most powerful weapon, and improving the delivery mechanisms of nuclear warheads has been the #1 most strategically important R&D activity by the world’s superpowers over the last fifty years. So to say that that such research will no longer be important for military development is mistaken.
Tom D, if size isn’t important, then why have the United States and Russia spent many tens of billions of dollars and millions of researcher-hours over decades minimizing the size of nuclear weapons?
Any of you that assign negligible probability to general nuclear war over the next couple decades are also being overconfident. Even last year, there was a situation where it could have started — Israel and the US were considering striking Iranian nuclear facilities, and a Russian general issued a very harsh warning against doing so. My regular line: even if my commenters don’t believe that nuclear war is a significant risk, good thing there are many thousands of elder diplomats and policy analysts who do.
Some of the folks in this thread could benefit from reading just a little bit of the mainstream policy literature on the nuclear risk. Analysts are far less overconfident regarding the dangers of proliferating and miniaturizing nuclear weapons. For instance, see “The Gravest Danger: Nuclear Weapons”, released by the Hoover Institution and Military Nanotechnology by Jurgen Altmann.
April 22nd, 2009 - 13:10
Nthed that this has no apparent advantage over a complete nuke delivered by UAV. I doubt UAVs are much less visible to radar than missiles, anyway.
I don’t know how small you mean by “miniaturization”, but warheads are pretty damn small already:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W80
April 22nd, 2009 - 13:18
A complete nuclear warhead delivered by a UAV would have a very small yield, well under a megaton, as your links show. This is insufficient for doing major infrastructural damage to large, distributed military or industrial facilities. What would be much more strategically useful would be to have the stealth and sneak attack power of UAVs combined with the multi-megaton yield of a large nuclear warhead.
Also, Tom D, it’s hard to take your criticisms seriously, because, looking back at your comment history, pretty much every single comment is short and critical. If you predictably criticize every post I make, then it’s not very informative when you make a new criticism — it is nearly certain to appear, regardless of the quality of the idea at hand.
April 22nd, 2009 - 16:30
A complete nuclear warhead delivered by a UAV would have a very small yield, well under a megaton, as your links show. This is insufficient for doing major infrastructural damage to large, distributed military or industrial facilities.
- you’d send lots of them.
Modern nukes use MIRVs to do something like this anyway – lots of smaller nukes carpet a large area with destruction, whereas one large nuke wastes most of its energy, because it creates a spherical volume of destruction, rather than a flat and thin blanket shaped one.
Also, I don’t doubt the danger of nuclear war, but I don’t think that the major nuclear powers are stupid enough to start an offensive arms race. Would russia invest in UAV nukes in the hope of first-striking the US, for example? Would they seriously back themselves to take out all the US missile subs and avoid counterstrike? It seems that technology that can take out missile subs would be pivotal in changing the MAD balance, and that self-assembling UAV nukes are pretty much irrelevant.
Also, how does a whole fleet of micro UAVs get from Russia or China to the USA? Without a single detection event?
So, to summarize my position: nuclear war is a big risk, but this won’t add to that risk. Technology we should watch out for is anything that makes a retribution-free, low fallout first strike feasible, or anything that puts nukes in the hands of people who don’t care if they get counterattacked.
April 22nd, 2009 - 16:35
From the wikipedia article on MIRVs:
“Warhead (in USA usage only): nuclear MIRV. Up to eight W88 (475 kt) warheads (Mark 5) or eight W76 (100 kt) warheads (Mark 4).”
– modern MIRVed warheads are also sub 1 megaton. Lots of smaller nukes. More area-of-destruction for your money.
April 22nd, 2009 - 18:29
In addition to what Roko said, do you have a source for UAVs being significantly less visible to radar than missiles? (In fact, there’s not exactly a sharp distinction between UAVs and cruise missiles, is there?)
Agreed.
April 23rd, 2009 - 03:16
Stuart,
It’s not unrealistic, the people in power in Washington share the same paranoia. I will post more about nuclear weapons, nuclear war, etc., and you will just keep making disapproving comments because you have nothing better to do.
Roko, fewer nuclear weapons are easier to store and maintain, though there is certainly a place for multiple-delivery UAV nuclear warheads. The micro-UAVs would surely be deployed by a plane or submarine at a distance, as obviously they wouldn’t have enough fuel for a transcontinental flight.
Bush helped continue the nuclear arms race by developing bunker busters and more “strategic” nuclear weapons, so things that have already happened kinda prove you wrong on that claim. Seriously, did you miss all of that, or does this evidence not reject your claim in a way I didn’t notice?
Nick, no source, just an argument: they’re smaller and create less waste heat from exhaust. Yes, there’s not a sharp distinction, but we’re talking about UAVs that move more than 10 times slower than missiles.
April 23rd, 2009 - 05:09
ICBMs show up clearly, through the heat of re-entry, the long relatively straight path, and the fact that they are high above the ground.
There is no maximum size limit on a UAV. It would be quite possible to have a 747 size UAV. Remote control technology for heavy passenger aircraft has been proposed (and fortunately rejected so far) as a solution to 911 style hijackings.
Some of the UAVs known to be used by the US military right now are more than 3 meters long, in a similar size range to cruise missiles. Of course it’s also worth noting that a cruise missile is in essence a UAV.
Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that no stable state will launch a nuclear war other than as a last resort in retaliation. There is a chance of North Korea doing that (their leader is insane) but I don’t think that any other nuclear state is likely to do so (Pakistan only if it’s taken over by the Taliban – which is a possibility).
So we should consider a terrorist organisation as the most likely source for a preemptive nuclear strike. A terrorist organisation could have one of their people on a suicide mission to fly a small plane over the target zone. They could even have an approved flight plan that took the plane close to the target – after the bomb has gone off the attacker probably doesn’t care much for secrecy.
Now to the issue of constructing a nuclear weapon. A fusion bomb (hydrogen bomb) is really complex, you have a hollow plutonium sphere that needs to have tritium injected in it shortly before a perfect array of shaped charges compress it all. Assembling that in a government lab seems hardly trivial, doing it by robot in a hostile environment seems unreasonably difficult.
Even the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs which were of a very crude design (and therefore had a low yield) seemed fairly complex to build.
But really the best way of delivering a nuke seems to be a light truck. Even the biggest nukes are probably small and light enough to fit into a medium size van. But even if the bomb required a shipping container, that shouldn’t be an obstacle to getting close enough to destroy the target if it’s a big bomb.
Now the hardest task would be to deliver a tactical nuke to a military base in a desert. A radio-controlled car powered by batteries (to avoid the noise and heat of a combustion engine) would probably work well (the Germans did similar things during WW2).
But if you REALLY want to base an attack on multiple UAVs then you have to consider the fact that Plutonium is highly toxic and also highly reactive. Depleted Uranium is much easier to obtain, is also extremely toxic and is almost as reactive. Plutonium can burn freely in the air and has a low ignition point. Uranium needs a lot more heat to start it (thermite will do the job well). An attacker who had good quantities of DU and thermite and could deliver them to a target city could easily launch a devastating attack. Send in a small UAV with a little burning DU every day for a week and a city would be mostly evacuated (at great economic cost and significant loss of life).
April 23rd, 2009 - 05:34
Michael:
> Bush helped continue the nuclear arms race by developing bunker busters and more “strategic†nuclear weapons, so things that have already happened kinda prove you wrong on that claim. Seriously, did you miss all of that, or does this evidence not reject your claim in a way I didn’t notice?
The latter: I don’t think that this constitutes a serious effort to develop a viable first strike against Russia. Russia has a lot of nuclear subs that would strike America dead if America used any of these toys.
Also, bunker busters are designed to be used against rogue states and terrorists, not other superpowers.
And what do you mean by “strategic” nukes? Do you mean tactical nukes?
Again, tactical nukes are not for use in Superpower vs. Superpower combat.
There are two sources of nuclear threat as I see it: war between the superpowers, and terrorists/rogue states.
The former seems not to be really impacted by this technology.
April 23rd, 2009 - 05:36
Although, in support of Michael’s general argument that the superpowers are still trying to kill each other, the SDI program *is* a defence measure that breaks the MAD balance, i.e. makes it practical for the USA to first strike Russia. If the USA develops this to the point where it might work, I would really start to worry…
April 23rd, 2009 - 07:58
Roko, yeah I meant tactical. I thought that tactical nukes would be used for theater combat with other superpowers.
The stability of MAD is repeated frequently, like a mantra, but it isn’t actually very stable at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutually_assured_destruction#Criticism_and_challengable_assumptions
April 23rd, 2009 - 10:17
So if you think MAD isn’t stable, why haven’t we had a major nuclear war? Anthropic principle?
April 23rd, 2009 - 10:22
My personal view is that MAD is stable because the people with the ability to push the button are very self-interested. Let’s say that Russia could first strike the USA, and you’re the Russian president.
Your scientists say there is a 25% chance that the plan will go wrong, and a 75% chance that it will work.
Would you press the “go” button?
April 23rd, 2009 - 13:49
I assume a plausible scenario would be something akin to this; UAV Nuke is in parts A – G. Parts A – G are placed within cargo containers and shipped to a large consumerist country such as China or the United States. Upon arrival the cargo is not searched or checked in any way but opened (probably by the UAV affiliates) where upon the UAV parts A-G take flight and assemble in the air within the country’s own airspace. They combine as one and reach their destination whereupon they detonate. Having multiple UAV Nukes simply means multiple vectors on which to attack and divert the defenders’ attention/resources. You don’t necessarily need to make all of the UAV Nukes actual Nuclear Weapons. You just need one to completely assemble and reach it’s target destination. The majority of the others can just be decoys. Additionally, since this Nuke is in several parts scanning them with bomb detection methods may fail except when you get to the Uranium I suppose. A very creative and evasive way to try to set off a nuke and cause the deaths of millions. How human.
April 23rd, 2009 - 16:36
Isaac: It would be a lot easier to have a single nuke in a single cargo container which is detonated while the container is still sealed (before any inspection) and takes out a major port, shipping route or station. Most of the major ports and stations have important cities around them…
If a terrorist organisation arranged simultaneous detonations of nuclear devices in ports on the west and east costs of the US and at an important part of the Panama canal then the economic damage to the US would be immense.
October 7th, 2010 - 08:03
UAV is used for dangerous mission and at the disposal of the State. If a miniaturized nuclear weapons is being loaded, is it at the disposal???? What happen if it is being shot down but the nuclear stuff still intact, say in Gadaffi Libya? Will the US still treat it as a disposal stuff???
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