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posted by
martyb
on Saturday April 11 2015, @09:42AM
from the US-Military--and/or--the-Military-Industrial-Complex? dept.
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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US Military Concerned About Losing Their High Tech Edge
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(Score: 2) by fnj on Saturday April 11 2015, @07:35PM
They didn't "almost" do any such thing. They weren't anywhere close to having the industrial capacity and the scientific and engineering commitment necessary to accomplish the collossal task. Werner Heisenberg grossly overestimated by orders of magnitude the critical mass of uranium necessary to assemble a fission weapon, and the German scientists were confused by the difference between a fission reactor and a fission bomb. They were not even aware of what element plutonium was.
In 1942 they decided that a fission bomb could not be achieved in time to affect WW2, and basically gave up.
On hearing about Hiroshima, Heisenberg exclaimed "Some dilettante in America who knows very little about it has bluffed them. I don’t believe it has anything to do with uranium."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2015, @10:26PM
In 1942 they decided that a fission bomb could not be achieved in time to affect WW2, and basically gave up.
No, they wanted a quick end to the war without using up too many resources, because it was straining their economy. It wasn't just for the fission bomb. If a new weapon was deemed to be more than 6 months away, the idea was dropped... until very late in the war.
Germans did, however, have a nuclear research facility in Norway, which was bombed by the Allies at some point, and their research was slowed down.