US officials believe Iran sanctions will fail, making mil...

[hongi]

It was actually suggested before this, before Trinity even, by the Franck Report. They suggested that nukes should be placed under international control immediately, and that the agency must not be a paper tiger, any sign of reneging on the treaty would be seen as a cause for immediate attack. They also proposed uranium rationing as a way to prevent new nukes: allow each nation to only etract/enrich a small amount of fissile material, and only for reactors.

The report is really fascinating reading.

So I'm assuming they knew how bad nuclear weapons could be before even testing it?

[Eternal_Freedom]

It was actually suggested before this, before Trinity even, by the Franck Report. They suggested that nukes should be placed under international control immediately, and that the agency must not be a paper tiger, any sign of reneging on the treaty would be seen as a cause for immediate attack. They also proposed uranium rationing as a way to prevent new nukes: allow each nation to only etract/enrich a small amount of fissile material, and only for reactors.

The report is really fascinating reading.

So I'm assuming they knew how bad nuclear weapons could be before even testing it?

The scientists who built it were concerned about the potential certainly/ And they strongly recommended not using it in an unannounced first strike. However, they didn't have the final say, it was only a recommendation. As far as I know, Truman and the other decision makers saw it as an easier option than an invasion. The politicians weren't thinking that far ahead.

Interestingly, one recommendation was to keep everything secret about the details of the bomb so that no one else could match the US' head start in nuclear arms.

The report does explore how nasty nuclear war is, including the idea of a surprise attack. At the time, the only defence was to massively decentralise the US government/military/industrial infrastructure so even if an enemy devoted all their weapons to an attack it would not be crippling. This was dreamt up before there wee methods of finding nuclear weapons before detonation.

[MKSheppard]

I also read in a paper, how some in Israel were talking about using Massive Explosive Drones to do in Iran....

This brought to mind Project WEARY WILLIE:

PROJECT WEARY WILLIE II
USING AN UMMANNED QB-47 DRONE WITH TV CAMERA IN NOSE AS GIANT BOMB; CAPBLE OF PICKING UP TARGETS AT 10 MILES, WITH DIRECTOR B-47 ABOUT 15 MILES BACK, BUT DISTANCES AS BIG AS 50 MILES WERE THOUGHT POSSIBLE. USAF THOUGHT OF FILLING SOME FUEL CELLS WITH ANFO TYPE SLURRY, 35,000 LBS OF IT COULD BE CARRIED WITHOUT COMPROMISING RANGE. USAF ESTIMATED TO HAVVE A 0.85 PROBABILITY OF BLOWING UP THANH HOA BRIDGE, 140 X 2,000 LB BOMBS AND 73 F-105 SORTIES WITH LOSS OF 3 THUDS AND PILOTS. QB-47 WOULD DESTROY IT IN A SINGLE SORTIE. THE COST WAS 9,610,280 FOR F-105 VERSUS 664,000 FOR QB-47.

Can you just imagine ex El-Al 707s slamming into Bushehr, or ex IAF F-4 Phantoms going supersonic in a 90 degree dive straight down on full afterburner?

[ChaserGrey]

Problem with that is the same problem that came up for Weary Willie. Namely, getting your high-tech kamikaze there. Iranian IADS isn't that great, but how good do you have to be to smack an ex-airliner that's probably flying straight and level?

Could be the SA-5's first combat kill.

[Sea Skimmer]

It'd worry a lot more about SA-15 then anything else for any possible attack plan, everything else Iran has is old, obsolete and often heavily physically exploited by the west. Though SA-15 is exploited too. Iran only obtained 29 vehicles, but that's still a really deadly serious threat to an air attack of any kind. Through the power of Google Earth a number have been found deployed around Natanz enrichment site, others are in garrison near the Parchin research complex, but these counts only cover about half of the vehicles. The rest are well... small enough that they could be anywhere.

SA-5 is so comically huge, merely the size and weight of a MiG-17, that one has to perpetually wounder if fighters couldn't shoot it down as it attacked a formation. Of course, a B-52 over Russia had no such protection.

[ChaserGrey]

Well, yeah, but if your target is a kamikaze 707 you don't exactly have to uncork the good stuff, now do ya?

[cosmicalstorm]

Does anyone know more about the "robotic snake bombs" mentioned near the end of this article? Sounds bizarre.

Smart concrete
Iran makes some of the world’s toughest concrete. It can cope with earthquakes and, perhaps, bunker-busting bombs

A DUAL-USE technology is one that has both civilian and military applications. Enriching uranium is a good example. A country may legitimately do so to fuel power stations. Or it may do so illegitimately to arm undeclared nuclear weapons. Few, however, would think of concrete as a dual-use technology. But it can be. And one country—as it happens, one that is very interested in enriching uranium—is also good at making what is known as “ultra-high performance concrete” (UHPC).

Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Such materials could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs.

To a man with a hammer…

Leon Panetta, America’s defence secretary, seems worried. He recently admitted that his own country’s new bunker-busting bomb, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP, pictured above being dropped from a B-52), needs an upgrade to take on the deepest Iranian bunkers. But even that may not be enough, thanks to Iran’s mastery of smart concrete.

UHPC is based—like its quotidian cousins—on sand and cement. In addition, though, it is doped with powdered quartz (the pure stuff, rather than the tainted variety that makes up most sand) and various reinforcing metals and fibres.

UHPC can withstand more compression than other forms of concrete. Ductal, a French version of the material which is commercially available, can withstand pressure many times higher than normal concrete can. UHPC is also more flexible and durable than conventional concrete. It can therefore be used to make lighter and more slender structures.

For this reason, Iranian civil engineers are interested in using it in structures as diverse as dams and sewage pipes and are working on improving it. Mahmoud Nili of Bu-Ali Sina University in Hamadan for example, is using polypropylene fibres and quartz flour, known as fume, in his mix. It has the flexibility to absorb far heavier blows than regular concrete. Rouhollah Alizadeh may do better still. Dr Alizadeh, a graduate of the University of Tehran, is currently working at Ottawa University in Canada on the molecular structure of cement. Once again, this research is for civilian purposes and could pave the way for a new generation of UHPC with precisely engineered properties and outstanding performance.

One way to tamper with the internal structure of concrete is to use nanoparticles. Ali Nazari and his colleagues at Islamic Azad University in Saveh have published several papers on how to do that with different types of metal-oxide nanoparticles. They have worked with oxides of iron, aluminium, zirconium, titanium and copper. At the nanoscale materials can take on extraordinary properties. Although it has been demonstrated only in small samples, it might be possible, using such nanoparticles, to produce concrete that is four times stronger than Ductal.

All of which is fine and dandy for safer dams and better sewers, which threaten no one. But UHPC’s potential military applications are more intriguing—and for many, more worrying. A study published by the University of Tehran in 2008 looked at the ability of UHPC to withstand the impact of steel projectiles. These are not normally a problem during earthquakes. This study found that concrete which contained a high proportion of long steel fibres in its structure worked best. Another study, published back in 1995, showed that although the compressive strength of concrete was enhanced only slightly by the addition of polymer fibres, its impact resistance improved sevenfold.

Western countries, too, have been looking at the military uses of UHPC. An Australian study carried out between 2004 and 2006 confirmed that UHPC resists blasts as well as direct hits. The tests, carried out at Woomera (once the British empire’s equivalent of Cape Canaveral), involved a charge equivalent to six tonnes of TNT. This fractured panels made of UHPC, but did not shatter them. Nor did it shake free and throw out fragments, as would have happened had the test been carried out on normal concrete. In a military context, such shards flying around inside a bunker are a definite plus from the attackers’ point of view, but obviously not from the defenders’.

Those people who design bunker-busters no doubt understand these points and have their own secret data to work with. Nevertheless, during the Gulf war in 1991 the American air force found that its 2,000lb (about a tonne) bunker-busters were incapable of piercing some Iraqi bunkers. The bomb designers went back to the drawing board and after two generations of development the result, all 13 tonnes of it, is the MOP. So heavy is it that the weapon bays of B-2 stealth bombers have had to be strengthened to carry it. It can, reportedly, break through over 60 metres of ordinary concrete. However, the bomb it is less effective against harder stuff, penetrating only eight metres into concrete that is just twice as strong. It is therefore anyone’s guess (at least, anyone without access to classified information) how the MOP might perform against one of Iran’s ultra-strong concretes.

America’s Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the organisation that developed the MOP, has been investigating UHPC since 2008. This investigation has involved computer modelling and penetration testing. The agency’s focus appears to be on the idea of chipping away at a target with multiple hits. However, this approach requires great precision; and the air force is ordering only 20 MOPs, so there is little room for error.

Deep bunkers can be tackled in other ways. The DTRA has looked at what is known in the jargon as functional defeat, in other words bombing their entrances shut or destroying their electrical systems with electromagnetic pulses. They are also working on active penetrators—bombs which can tunnel through hundreds of metres of earth, rock and concrete. Development work is also under way on esoteric devices such as robot snakes, carrying warheads, which can infiltrate via air ducts and cable runs.

In the meantime, though, the Pentagon is stuck with the “big hammer” approach. The question is how reliably that hammer would work if the order were given to attack Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. It would be embarrassing if the bunkers were still intact when the smoke cleared.

Clarification: The original version of this article might have been read as implying that the named Iranian concrete researchers were knowingly involved in non-civilian research. They are not. The text was changed to reflect this on March 3rd.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well, yeah, but if your target is a kamikaze 707 you don't exactly have to uncork the good stuff, now do ya?

Well, its not like they wouldn't cover it chaff dispensers and hang eight jammer pods under the wings.

Does anyone know more about the "robotic snake bombs" mentioned near the end of this article? Sounds bizarre.

DARPA project, and its exactly what it sounds like. Robot snake full of explosives, and possibly with a gun on the front. This way it could shoot the covers off of bunker air vents, then crawl down inside them to explode deep within the complex. Entry through drains is also possible besides the mentioned cable ducts; just about any underground complex needs storm drains.

As for the high strength concrete, nothing new, this was a topic back in the 1980s. Standard concrete is about 5000psi compressive strength and this is what most of those bunker buster depths are quoted against. Concrete up to 18,000psi however exists today with reliable properties, projects exist for stuff even greater then this. However the costs go up a lot, and such high strength material is far more relevant for smaller shallow or surface facilities like hardened aircraft shelters, when your physical ability to add thickness is limited like say on the door on the HAS which needs to move. Most of Irans hardened facilities are rock cut tunnels, making high strength concrete unimportant, the overhead cover is native rock. The big bunkers at Natanz are cut and cover, but not much suggests the Iranians poured a thick roof slab. They just piled a huge amount of earth and rock on top.

While the article seems to try to steer away from this, the high strength concrete really is excellent for civilian applications, particularly stuff which is precast and then transported to the job site making the weight of each specific piece vital. It also allows for a lot less labor consuming rebar work, Iran has plenty of labor but money still matters and they have limited domestic supplies of iron ore and steel. Construction across the mid east is very concrete focused because of limited steel supplies, and almost no wood at all. A major Iranian priority for years have been to limit imports, so focusing on high grades of concrete makes perfect sense.

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

O for the love of

Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday they stand together in their efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but Netanyahu warned that time for diplomacy was running short.

The two leaders met at the White House to discuss Iran's nuclear program and other Middle East issues amid talk speculation that Israel may attack nuclear sites in Iran. Speaking to the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee afterward, Netanyahu said Iranian research "continues to march forward" despite painful economic sanctions imposed on the Islamic republic.

"My friends, Israel has waited patiently waited for the international community to resolve this issue. We've waited for diplomacy to work," Netanyahu said.

"We've waited for sanctions to work," he said. "None of us can afford to wait much longer. As prime minister of Israel, I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation."

Shut the fuck up you dumb fuck. They are not going to nuke you to kingdom come. They won't do it if they have one bomb. They are holding YOU back. Why? Because you have been the idiot paranoid aggressor. Just shut the fuck up already.

[Rogue 9]

How is that in any way amusing?

Because Saudis are supposed to be incompetent rich loons who can't hit the broad side of a barn?

Wasn't there some incident in the first Gulf War where the U.S. Air Force was trying to let the Saudis shoot down some Iraqi planes and the Saudi pilots wouldn't/couldn't do it?

[Sea Skimmer]

No they shot down two Mirage F-1s, it just took so long that the were getting close to being engaged by Army Patriot sites defending the target area around Dhahran. This was after an AEGIS cruiser and F-14s it was controlling were told not to fire. The Saudis however also shot down at least one Iranian F-4 Phantom in the tanker war.

[ChaserGrey]

Before the first Gulf War, pretty much all the Gulf States militaries were notorious for being pretty much full-sized playgrounds for the rich and well-born, the Saudis in particular. They might be good at things that are fun to practice- for example, the Saudis supposedly had a very high level of marksmanship in their armored forces, because hey, shooting big guns!- but not so good at anything hard.

The Kuwatis made a big change after the war (losing your country does wonders to stimulate reform), but I don't think the Saudis have changed much. And while this is just an anecdote, a military flight instructor of my acquaintance waxed rather memorably at one point about how all his Saudi students had been pretty much wastes of perfectly good jet fuel.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Kuwaits were at least remotely competent beforehand and if they hadn't been demobilized they might have shot up Saddam's invasion, which was limited in scope, pretty well. It helped that Saddams invasion was also carried out on the basis that zero resistance would be encountered, leading to T-72 tanks on tank transporters driving directly into the fire of one of the few companies of Kuwait tanks manned for battle. The Saudi solution has long been to import Pakistani mercenaries, but they don't use them in the air force. The only part of the Saudi military that has any track record of competence is the National Guard, which had and has massive amounts of hands on foreign training, but even then in the Gulf War it could field less then one brigade of troops with only light armored vehicles. Apparently The Saudi air force cannot even store and fuse its bombs properly in the dry desert and had massive numbers of duds when it was bombing Yemen fairly heavily several years ago.

[Supreme_Warlord]

Iran 'seeking to build nuclear weapon', warns David Cameron

David Cameron has warned that Iran is seeking to build an "inter-continental nuclear weapon" that threatens the west, as he urged Israel to allow time for sanctions to force the Iranians to change their strategic stance.

He was speaking after the cabinet was briefed for an hour by the national security adviser, Sir Kim Darroch, on the imminence of the threat to the UK posed by Iran.

It is the first time Cameron has made such an explicit warning that Iran could endanger UK security, and has faint echoes of the warnings from Tony Blair's government that Iraq could fire weapons of mass destruction with 45 minutes' notice.

It is understood that the government's National Security Council is also looking at potential reprisals in the UK if Israel were to launch a pre-emptive strike against an Iranian nuclear weapons site. Cameron will be briefed by President Barack Obama next week on the US approach to any such strike when the two leaders meet in Washington.

Speaking to MPs on the Commons liaison committee, the prime minister said Tehran's ambitions were dangerous for the Middle East.

But Cameron also added that Iran "is a danger more broadly, not least because there are signs that the Iranians want to have some sort of inter-continental missile capability.

"We have to be clear this is a threat potentially much wider than just Israel and the region."

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told an American Jewish group in Washington on Monday that diplomacy and sanctions had failed and that "none of us can afford to wait much longer" to act against Tehran.

On Tuesday six global powers agreed to resume negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme, calling for "concrete and practical steps" to restore international trust in Tehran's stated intentions.

In a letter to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, the EU foreign policy chief, Lady Ashton, said the negotiations should restart as soon as possible, at a venue to be decided.

Writing on behalf of a negotiating group comprising the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany, Ashton said: "Our overall goal remains a comprehensive negotiated long-term solution which restores international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme, while respecting Iran's right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy consistent with the NPT [nuclear non-proliferation treaty]."

The last set of talks broke down in Istanbul in January last year. Western diplomats said Jalili refused at that meeting to negotiate over Iran's nuclear programme or any confidence-building measures previously discussed, such as an exchange of Iranian enriched uranium for foreign-made fuel rods for the Tehran research reactor.

At the meeting, the Iranian negotiator laid down preconditions for talks including the lifting of all sanctions and a guarantee that Iran could continue its nuclear programme, including the most controversial element, uranium enrichment.

Tehran says the programme is for purely peaceful purposes, but the west and Israel allege it is a front for an effort to build a nuclear arsenal, or at least establish the capacity to build a bomb at short notice.

Jalili's reply to Ashton was delivered in February, four months after her proposal, suggesting talks on "a spectrum of issues" including "Iran's nuclear issue".

French officials argued that in order to satisfy Israel that all was being done to resolve the nuclear crisis by peaceful means, the international response would have to make it absolutely clear that the talks would have to end with the "full implementation" of UN security council resolutions calling for the suspension of uranium enrichment. That language was spelt out in Ashton's latest letter.

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), presented to the agency's board this week, said Iran had tripled its rate of production of 20%-enriched uranium – seen by the west as a particular proliferation threat – and reported that Iran had not co-operated with an inspection visit last month, refusing access to a sensitive military site known as Parchin.

Iran is thought to have already developed a ballistic missile which can travel approximately 1,200 miles, but it is also working with the Koreans to turn this into a missile that can accommodate a nuclear warhead.

Cameron stressed that Iran should not be seen as "a mini superpower" but as "a disastrous country" with mass unemployment and a dysfunctional economy.

He said he still believed the track of sanctions should be pursued, arguing EU-wide sanctions were causing dislocation to the Iranian foreign exchange position and "should not be sniffed at".

He said the next step was to get the Indians and Chinese to also refuse to buy Iranian oil.

"The more pressure we pile on Iran through sanctions the more incentive they have to take a different path – it is the best option we have".

The prime minister said that no plans were being laid at this stage to increase the UK military presence in the region.

Somewhat surprised that with the prospect of intercontinental ballistic missiles being involved, there was no talk of a 4.5 minute WMD capability.

[cosmicalstorm]

Feels like time-travelling to early 2003. Didn't Iraq get invaded in march of that year too?

[Simon_Jester]

The real difference is the total lack of mobilization, or real interest in the war in the US, which is the only country even remotely capable of invading Iran.

I don't think this is the same thing. The invasion of Iraq was a very carefully drummed-up attempt to carry out a long term policy objective for the neocons. This isn't; it's something Obama doesn't really seem to be all that interested in making an issue of- there will be no "coalition of the willing" here, or at least not a US-led one that could actually hope to invade the country and defeat its land armies.

The Israelis are blowing a gasket about the whole thing, which is actually understandable since the nuclear missiles would be predictably pointed down their throats, and European nations are credibly in range of the missiles Iran has now or could soon acquire. So a certain amount of blowhard statements and threats was unavoidable, especially since developed nations have a vicious habit of not regarding a third world country's interests as legitimate. Which makes Iranian nuclear weapons something they can saber-rattle about much more readily than they could about nuclear weapons programs in, say, Germany.

[Lonestar]

No they shot down two Mirage F-1s, it just took so long that the were getting close to being engaged by Army Patriot sites defending the target area around Dhahran. This was after an AEGIS cruiser and F-14s it was controlling were told not to fire. The Saudis however also shot down at least one Iranian F-4 Phantom in the tanker war.

It was quite a bit more complicated than that. The Saudi government really wanted to shoot down an Iraqi, and coalition forces were effectively told to corral a Iraqi warplane and line it up for the Saudis to kill. It took so long for the Saudi to pull the trigger there was serious concern that the Iraqi warplane was going to run out of gas before then.

Source is a USAF Colonel who worked in the coalition air combat coordination center during the Gulf War. He always ends this story with "and then the King of Saudi Arabia gave this asshole a shitload of gold and he walked around the ops center like he had something to be proud of".