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posted by martyb on Saturday April 11 2015, @09:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the US-Military--and/or--the-Military-Industrial-Complex? dept.

I guess we have all seen all those wonderful toys coming from China. Technologies unimaginable a few years ago, like quadricopters and microminiature concealed cameras. It looks like the US Military is taking notice.

Other countries (such as China) build our stuff, understand how it works, and have found out how to make it very inexpensively. A remote-controlled drone was once the exclusive domain of law enforcement... now just about anyone who wants one can buy one.

Yup, it looks like the-powers-that-be are realizing their cats are getting out of the bag...

 
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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:21PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:21PM (#169018) Homepage Journal

    that's why the US tested one Alamagordo, New Mexico - to make sure it would really detonate, and if it didn't to gain the insight required to make one that would.

    We didn't test the Uranium bomb as we were certain it would work: just shoot a uranium slug out of a cannon into the center of a uranium ring.

    That doesn't work with plutonium because its cascade reaction is far too fast, the slug and ring would vaporize before they went critical.

    If you put two pieces of either of them closer together they get more radioactive. However that increasing radioactivity is highly nonlinear. With plutonium it wasn't feasible to calculate numerically.

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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:55PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:55PM (#169033) Journal

    They have figured out the numerical simulation models by now I presume? and the current level of computing at 180 PFlops should make this possible?

    I'm kind of impressed how they figured out the implosion parameters.

    Anyway, your statements make it clear why spheric implosion was the method of choice.