Bug...The Samson Option, i.e destruction of civilization...is an example of "national psychosis"....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nuke...arms experts may call subs like the dolphin class defensive, but realists know otherwise....Fact is launching nuclear weapons as close to the intended target is the name of the game for surpise (pre-emptive strikes) or to reduce or eliminate response options by your alleged enemy or terrorists...that's why the Russians have a problem with the American 'defensive' missle batteries in Poland and elsewhere...Jericho and mobile launch sytems are above ground, target distance and stealth not optimum. Subs optimize stealth and minmize launch airtimes....subs are first strike weapons...ideal for 'pre-emptive strike warfare'...which is a basic tenant of asymetrical warfare invented by the isrealis. Then again you don't even need a sub or missile to deliver a nuclear bomb in a pre-emptive strike scenario since many are compact...in fact, blaming such an attack on a third party would be key to getting off the hook.
.
My question is would a W80 class bomb (both Pu and U enriched) fit on Harpoon or Popeye, etc....a W80 is 32" x 12" and 300lb and 5 to 150 kiloton depending on configuration prior to launch.....??.....For reader fyi...Hiroshima bomb was 15 kiloton!
.
Second question as a sidebar...shouldn't all the nuclear experts on the planet be worrying about the Fukushima meltdowns and be sent to Japan to immediately sacrifice and tame that runaway conditon threatening the planet..? Pronto..yesterday?
.
TM7
I haven’t said the Dolphin subs are defensive weapons, they are superb offensive weapons for maritime interdiction and supremacy and they excel as ISR platforms and SOF delivery, but attack subs aren’t superb offensive nuclear weapons platforms. The larger torpedo tubes on the Dolphins are certainly designed to fit a cruise missile, and I think it’s likely that would have produced a very small number of nuclear cruise missiles, but that doesn’t mean they would be the preferred nuclear strike weapon for Israel.
To answer your question, no, the W80 series nuclear weapons won’t fit into a Harpoon/SLAM-ER and they won’t fit into a standard Popeye missile from what I’ve found on its dimensions. That doesn’t mean Israel couldn’t have produced a smaller warhead for them, but I don’t think either weapon makes sense as a nuke delivery system given their pretty limited range. The “Turbo Popeye” cruise missile looks more like a purpose built dual delivery system, right along the lines of the US Tomahawk missile. There isn’t much on the specifications of the Turbo Popeye, but it should be able to carry a warhead along the lines of the W80 series.
I also disagree with your assessment that sub launched cruise missiles make a great stealth weapon. They require a large rocket booster to get them to altitude and allow the engine to start, that rocket is easy to detect and the airspace in the Persian Gulf is heavily monitored by the US Navy with our presence, a rogue cruise missile would immediately become a target to everyone that detects it. The other problem with cruise missiles is flight time, they are stealthy to a large degree, but they accomplish that by subsonic flight at low altitudes. Even if the Israeli Navy drives a Dolphin sub almost onto the beach at the top of the Persian Gulf the distance to Tehran is about 300 miles, a cruise missile would take at least 40 minutes flight time, that’s a long time for an air defender to see it and shoot it down.
Estimates vary, but most assume the Israeli nuclear arsenal is about 200 weapons. If that number is good I’d assume the majority of their nukes are tied to the Jericho missiles, the majority of the rest to aircraft gravity bombs that would be dropped by their F-15Es and F-16s. The small amount left might be divided by smaller scale weapon systems such as a nuclear armed Turbo Popeye and perhaps special weapons such as ADMs. It’s also important to note that if the Turbo Popeye is a real weapon system it could be air launched, which would actually be a better way to deploy it for allot of reasons. My conclusion is that the backbone of the Israeli nuclear force are the Jericho missiles given their very fast time to target and that they are much harder to interdict than a cruise missile.
What is completely lost in the past discussions is the actual employment of nuclear weapons and what that means. Nukes aren’t just really big bombs, they are a very special weapon with special effects that must be deployed in certain ways and that’s making the huge assumption that you can reach the political threshold to actually employ them at all. Nukes are generally used for counter value and counter force targeting, employing them for counter force is the more likely scenario to meet that political threshold, but even that is a huge leap to make. Israel knows that if they use nuclear weapons, even if it’s on a remote counter force target with minimal loss of civilian lives, it’s going to have to be able to justify it to at least its allies and countries that at least aren’t adversaries. What’s that going to take? Either striking back after they are hit with WMDs or something like Ahmadinejad sitting on live TV saying he’s about to destroy Israel, while a fueled Iranian missile sits in the background and his finger is hovering over the launch button.
