Third-Generation Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

Today a third generation of nuclear weapons is technologically feasible. By altering the shape of the nuclear explosive and manipulating other design features, weapons could be built that generate and direct beams of radiation or streams of metallic pellets or droplets at such targets as missile-launch facilities on the ground, missiles in the air and satellites in space. These weapons would be as removed from current nuclear weapons in terms of military effectiveness as a rifle is technologically distant from gunpowder. It would be logical for a weapon designer to build on the legacy of the first- and second-generation nuclear weapons, all of which transform mass into an abundance of energy that is then uniformly dissipated in a roughly spherical pattern. Such a new generation of nuclear weapons might selectively enhance or suppress certain types of energy from the vast energy source provided by a nuclear explosion. Moreover, the lethal effects of a selected energy carrier (such as electromagnetic radiation, subatomic particles or expelled material) might be increased by distorting its normal pattern of emission into a highly asymmetrical one - in essence concentrating the energy in a certain direction. Indeed, nuclear weapons that deliver 1000 or more times themore » energy per unit area on a target than does a conventional nuclear weapon are entirely plausible. 9 figures.« less