…Is what will almost, but apparently not quite, be seen on June 2. According to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency , the dust cloud from Divine Strake, a massive conventional explosion scheduled to take place at the Nevada Test Site this summer, “may reach an altitude of 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) [but] is not expected to be visible off the Nevada Test Site.”
The open-air test will ignite 700 tons of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil, good for 593 tons of high-explosives equivalent, according to the Washington Post . The Associated Press describes the test as the largest-ever open-air chemical explosion at the Nevada site by a factor of forty. Due to the size of the blast and its sensitive location at the home of the United States’ erstwhile nuclear test program DTRA has taken the trouble to warn the Russians ahead of time of the upcoming test.
The tests purpose, according to Defense News, is “to examine ground shock effects on deeply buried tunnel structures.” The WaPo describes the test as “a conventional alternative” to the politically ornery Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, or “nuclear bunker-buster.”
Heres my $64,000 question, though: is this (700-ton!) explosive really a conventional “alternative,” or is it a stand-in being used to simulate a low-yield nuke?
By the way a “strake is “a straightedge used for leveling a bed of sand .”
— Center for Defense Information science fellow Haninah Levine has been passing tips and comments to Defense Tech for months. This is his first post for the site.
(Big ups: Xeni, DS)
UPDATE 11:08 AM: “Ain’t nothing you can do when it’s Strakes on a motherfucking plain.“
UPDATE 04/03/06 12:15 PM: John Fleck, from the Albuquerque Journal, has the answer to whether Divine Strake is nuke-related. “A Pentagon budget request is explicit about its
purpose: to “improve the warfighter’s confidence in selecting the smallest nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage.“
Meanwhile, Globalsecurity.org decodes the media gobbledygook surrounding the Divine Strake test.
UPDATE 04/03/06 5:15 PM:“In response to an email earlier today, a DTRA spokesperson confirmed that Divine Strake is the same event that is described in DTRA budget documents as being a low-yield nuclear weapons shock simulation,” the FAS Strategic Security Blog notes.
It also turns out that Divine Strake is “an integral part” of STRATCOM’s new Global Strike mission, which is normally reported to develop mainly non-nuclear capabilities against time-urgent targets. Global Strike is one of the plillars of the Bush administrations so-called New Triad which is said to be reducing the role of nuclear weapons.
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
This last question is an interesting one that’s occurred to me also: can chemical explosives be used to simulate the effect of a nuclear blast? Nuclear weapons don’t actually “explode.” They give off enormous amounts of radiation that superheat the surrounding medium. It is the air around the weapon that is “exploding.”
A chemical weapon’s physical mass, on the other hand, IS the expanding medium. The whole mass does not explode simultaneously, but the explosion travels from the triggering mechanism outward, along with the shock wave. This tops out at around 8000 meters per second, I believe. But gamma radiation travels at the speed of light.
The effect of a chemical explosion is a “hammer blow” while that of a nuclear weapon is to superheat the surrounding rock and the trapped gases in the rock with radiation travelling at light speed. These are very different kill mechanisms from a physics standpoint, though they might look the same on TV. I don’t think they’re trying to simulate a nuclear blast with explosives. It don’t think it can be done.
The other 64k question is, if it was a genuine “mini” nuclear test, who would know?
How you you deliver a 700 ton bomb? You can’t. So it must be to simulate someting else. Or the 700 tons is a dissinformation cover story for smaller actual tonnage but will act like a 700 ton bang.
Veeerrryy interesting………
Soj,
Anyone with a Geiger counter would know the difference.
Adam
First off…I don’t think the bomb’s weight is 700 tons…I think it’s yield is equal to 700 tons of TNT. That means the bomb itself may actually be much smaller than you’d think. Newer nitrate based formulas have been developed in the past few years that dwarf traditional high explosives in destructive yield.
Also, I don’t think it’s a simulation of a nuke. A nuke reaction still dwarfs the best explosives that can be produced. The sheer destructive power of a nuclear reaction remains unmatched, besides an antimatter-matter reaction…which the USAF is working on supposedly. In any case, I think this is just what it’s reported as…a very powerful test of a conventional weapon. What I do find interesting is the description of the actual weapon in the budgetary report. It mentions that it’s an “explosively shaped charge”. My guess is that it’s a warhead designed with an explosive ‘lensing’ structure so as to focus the energy in increasingly powerful stages directly down into the tunnel structure that will be the site of the test.
Damn…I love Wikipedia.
:)
Or how ’bout this take–as of now, there is no military requirement for RNEP and Congress has also killed the program line. However, if the data from a 700-ton conventional test shows shortcomings vis-a-vis RNEP, wouldn’t that bolster the arguments of RNEP proponents?
Yet another take…this may not be about the explosives at all. I’m not sure if this is going to be an air dropped test or not, but if it is, it may actually be a test of an existing warhead with a newly hardened casing to enable deeper penetration. The conventional explosives within may just be to get an idea of how far down after penetration the destructive power will extend. It would be interesting to know how deeply buried this ‘tunnel complex’ is that will be the test site.
DS: read a little more carefully. The press release specifically says the device is “700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil,” approximating 593 tons of high explosive. No aircraft can lift 700 tons, therefore the device is being emplaced.
The reason for using ANFO is probably pretty pedestrian: the explosives are being manufactured on site so they can be poured into a shaped casing. Mining companies do this all the time.
As for using this as a cover for a nuke test, that’s just not really sensible. They are promising us a mushroom cloud. If it was a nuke test, that cloud would contain charged particles and remnants of fuel…a nuke test would be discernible by satellite, not to mention by Geiger counters downrange, as Adam noted.
The fact that the device is being emplaced rules out casing tests and any other delivery mechanism testing. The only real “conspiracy” theory I can see here is the possibility that they’re not actually testing the explosive device, they’re testing a structure by trying to blow it up.
Remember also that the military is engaged in combat against guerrillas in cave and tunnel complexes in Afghanistan. They may actually have a use for massive emplaced explosive charges.
The press release says “700 tons of ANFO.” A B1-B bomber can only lift a 37.5 ton bomb (75,000 lbs). Unless they are using a crane, they aren’t dropping this thing from anywhere.
This “improvised explosive device” will require two tanker trucks of fuel oil and 15-20 truckloads of ammonium nitrate. (Although you could fit it into 5-6 coverd hopper rail cars).
It seems to me that this could be test to see how small tactical nukes would perform against an enemy in caves. The US made a number of nuclear artillery shells that had yields of less than 500 tons of TNT.
I would definitely say this is being used as a proxy for small nuclear devices.
~600 tons of TNT equivalent means .6 kilotons which is well in range of devices we have:
The B61 nuclear gravity bomb can be “dialed in” to a yield of .3 kiloton. The W79 nuclear shell could yield from .1 to 1.1 kilotons (it is out of service now, but the warhears are sure to still be in storage). The Mk54 SADM (“Special Atomic Demolition Munition”, aka nuclear land mine) has a yield of .1 to 1 kiloton (I assume this warhead is also languishing in our stockpikes).
James:
Actually I did read quite carefully, but I don’t necessarily take everything our administration shoves out there for public consumption at face value.
(ex. “there are WMD’s, let’s invade Iraq”, “we do not torture prisoners”, “i did not have sex with that woman”….etc, etc)
However you do make a good point, that there are no aircraft capable of delivering a 700 ton (in weight) weapon. Sooooo…why perform the test at all? How do they plan to deliver such a weapon to a target? Are they going to drive up in a couple of big ass trucks, assemble the weapon in front of the target, and then say “ok Terrorists…stay right there…we’ll be right back” ???
There is an interesting 113 page PDF report on the upcoming bomb blast @ http://www.cryptome.org, under the “offsite” section on bottom section of the home page.
It covers a lot of subjects regarding this blast. Studies about the environmental impact, logistics, anticipated SPL’s, possible danger to animals, people, etc. Pretty in-depth article.
Or perhaps, they just thought it would be cool to let off 700 tons of ANFO in the desert. Hey! We’ll have a *mushroom cloud*! Over *Las Vegas*!
what about the problem of eatrhquakes. Las Vegas is near or on a fault.
“”a conventional alternative” to the politically ornery Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, or “nuclear bunker-buster.”"
So what do you drop a 700 ton bomb from? And why would you make it from ANFO instead of some nice hi-tech explosive?
Confuzzled
What will be in this mushroom cloud? Should we evacuate the area? They warned the Russians but how about the 2 million people who live here. No one is telling us anything.
Well, a 700 ton explosion may cause some windows to blast out depending on distance from the explosion. You will definitely hear it, though. If they’re warning the Russians, this means it might be detectable seismologically (the primary means of detecting nuclear tests, used to confirm when India/Pakistan entered the nuclear age) or perhaps visually in the form of a giant flash.
They are probably testing this giant 700 ton monster because they may have developed chemical explosives whose yield in a artillery or aircraft bomb is equal to 700 tons of ANFO, and need to test if the chemical does enough damage to projected target to be worth further development dollars.
It’s more probable that they want to see if a non-nuclear bunker buster would even do the job. If it doesn’t, they’ll try again to push the low-rad nuke through to completion.
The best shaped charge they have developed was ten meters wide I think, and I don’t recall it’s penetration…but it won’t be enough to punch through a ultra-deep cave.
Cant wait. Love to see things blow up.
——–> WE WHOULD MOVE THE TEST SITE TO
A.) WASHINGTON
B.) SAN FRANCISCO
C.) MEXICO
D.) 9TH CIRCUT COURT
E.) IT REALLY DOESNT MATTER THE USA IS HISTORY
Why when you type in “strake” into Google, do you get a Jesuit prepatory college site? Jesuits are historically pretty well known to be tied to conspiracies not of the tin hat variety. Any takes on this? Seems some obvious in-your-face NWO symbology is going around on this.
Did you know it would take 40 semi trucks to move that much amonium nitrate to the site? Why would they use fertilizer? The last time I remember them trying to sell us amonium nitrate was OKC bombing. And we all (should) know what came of that whole sham…
Anybody know what time (PST) they will detonate the Strake. Some of us might wanna go watch. Sounds like I’ll need earplugs (and sunshades?)
Does anyone know what time this things supposed to go off?
Im getting married there June 1st and flying out at 4pm on the 2nd- I really dont want to be in the air when it blows-
Thanks
We’re planning on celebrating our son’s 21st birthday June 2-3 in Las Vegas. Do you think we should cancel our plans? I’m feeling uneasy about all of this.
Even Senator Orrin Hatch is opposed to this because it will throw thousands of tons of previously made radioactive particles at the test site into the air. CANCEL ALL PLANS FOR VEGAS. THAT MIGHT STOP IT. THIS IS A CRIME and we must stop it. TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK.
The open-air test will ignite 700 tons of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil, good for 593 tons of high-explosives equivalent, JUST A PUN, BUT WHAT I WANT TO SEE IS THE AIRPLANE THAT DELIVERS THAT PAYLOAD TO IRAN.HA!HA! GOT TO BE SOME KIND OF A POLOCK JOKE IN THIS SOME WHERE.
should have scheduled it on the fourth of july…
it will be far from anyone we have sites for these tests, thay are non-nuke anyway no cancer safe
okay, for the last time (probably not), this has no nuclear element. The soil has already expired half-life AGES ago. The lead engineer’s family were down-winders, two of whom contracted cancer, so I think he may be a little serious about his work.
Also, I don’t know where people seem to think that we are dropping a 700 ton bomb from the air. Weaponisation is not the goal of this test- its a bunker penatration test. The 700 tons will likely be ammonium-nitrate powder poured into a big hole in the ground. It an entirely low-tech, low risk solution to a real-world combat problem of firma penetration.
why are there no images here? I guess i will go to google.