Originally Posted by
SINGAPURCANAC
How big atomic bomb could be? 3, 5, 10 meters long? One , two meters diametar? And wieght? Ton, two,three...?
From.my point of view, Iran, even it could produce something that belong to that class- has no capabilities, neither knowledge- to transport it from production line to target- especially if that target is 1000+km away....
For that they need air supeority over very big portion of airspace- not to mention pilots or artilery capable of hit target.
No case, but Iran will pay huge price to be non coperative and oposition to the rest of the World.
To the extent she can even be believed or trusted, along with the rest of the administration, Karoline Leavitt just made some very interesting comments.
The US assessment is Iran is at the point where it could relatively quickly field a nuclear weapon. Journalists pressed her on that point - if she meant they'd just enriched uranium to weapons grade, had built a bomb, or had the ability to build a complete weapon.
She repeated the assessment was they could relatively quickly field a weapon.
Iran can clearly build the delivery system - they've been using multiple stage, ex-atmospheric ballistic missiles with accurate guidance systems to hit Israel.
They can clearly enrich Uranium. From my limited knowledge - the trickiest bit is not getting a stationary device to explode (a la The Gadget at the Trinity test).
It's miniaturising that device into an operational warhead, which can be successfully mated to a bus attached to the top of a missile. Said warhead and bus needs to be able to withstand the shock of launch, flight and MaxQ/heat of re-entry (up to Mach 20 and 7,000 degrees Celsius), the re-entry vehicle having ablative coatings, and then reliably compress the pit with extreme precision to generate the x-rays and trigger the secondary fusion device.
If the Iranians have successfully demonstrated this last miniaturisation/ruggedization step - then we're talking a whole different ballgame.
Leavitt seemed to definitively allude that they had - noting again the caveat that she and her fellow travelers are quite happy to lie like flat fish when it suits them - and there is prior form in doing so on weapons of mass destruction.
Simplistic diagram below - which everyone will probably be very familiar with - noting the foam, FOGBANK, which the dear old US forgot the recipe for and had to reverse engineer...
