Which projects would have generated maximum controversy it produced?

[Aubi]

Orionblamblam: The US Army allegedly thought about projecting a giant hologram of Allah above Baghdad, urging the locals to rise against Saddam.

 

[Orionblamblam]

The same weapons are impacted by the fact that in general different races and ethnic groups are artificial human concepts/ divisions with little genetic underpinnings.

This popular line of reasoning is of course factually inaccurate, given that couples of any chosen race or ethnic group almost invariably produce offspring of the same race/ethnic group. Rarely do, say, a black couple produce a clearly Chinese child. When that happens, the man tends to look rather askance at the woman, and then they end up on the Maury Povich show.

The differences between races/ethnic groups *are* driven by genetics (you can, for example, get that Chinese kid from black parents if you genetically tinker, but you can't do it by having the parents wish real hard or study Chinese or eat a lot of Kung Pow chicken). But the genetics are often so vague and relatively minor in the grand scheme of the entire genome that a virus intended to attack a single race - or all races save one - is doomed to failure. Hell, even if you could nail it down with precision, on the same day that CNN announces the death of the very last person of Ethnicity X, a minor story scrolling by on the bottom of the screen will talk about how squirrels and badgers have also mysteriously gone extinct.

The groovy thing about genetic weaponry, though: it's coming to an edgy teen near you soon enough. Nuclear weapons are, at least until we enter a whole new realm of physics, always goign to be beyond the reach of the average schmoe. Simply obtaining a sufficient quantity of weapons grade uranium or plutonium is going to remain the province of industrial powers. But bioweapons? Shoot, soon enough an entire bioweapons lab will be compressible down to something the size of a desktop printer. And the dark web will doubtless be filled with the genomes of any biological nasty you might be interested in, and there'll be apps to adjust those weapons any way you like. Someone *will* crank out a flu bug designs to take out tall redheads with heterochromic eyes... not because of deep ideological reasons, but just because they can.

The lesson here: support space exploration. Because Earth will get reduced to a blasted wasteland, sooner or later.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Orionblamblam: The US Army allegedly thought about projecting a giant hologram of Allah above Baghdad, urging the locals to rise against Saddam.

I'd *love* to see the hardware that would be needed for such a thing. Because you'd not only need image projection technology of a *kind* that currently does not exist, but you'd also need to scale it up to a monumental degree... and marry it to sound projection technology of truly vast power.

 

[Fluff]

Orionblamblam: The US Army allegedly thought about projecting a giant hologram of Allah above Baghdad, urging the locals to rise against Saddam.

I'd *love* to see the hardware that would be needed for such a thing. Because you'd not only need image projection technology of a *kind* that currently does not exist, but you'd also need to scale it up to a monumental degree... and marry it to sound projection technology of truly vast power.

A thousand tons of TNT, inside one bomb, I’d love to see that son........

 

[kaiserd]

The same weapons are impacted by the fact that in general different races and ethnic groups are artificial human concepts/ divisions with little genetic underpinnings.

This popular line of reasoning is of course factually inaccurate, given that couples of any chosen race or ethnic group almost invariably produce offspring of the same race/ethnic group. Rarely do, say, a black couple produce a clearly Chinese child. When that happens, the man tends to look rather askance at the woman, and then they end up on the Maury Povich show.

The differences between races/ethnic groups *are* driven by genetics (you can, for example, get that Chinese kid from black parents if you genetically tinker, but you can't do it by having the parents wish real hard or study Chinese or eat a lot of Kung Pow chicken). But the genetics are often so vague and relatively minor in the grand scheme of the entire genome that a virus intended to attack a single race - or all races save one - is doomed to failure. Hell, even if you could nail it down with precision, on the same day that CNN announces the death of the very last person of Ethnicity X, a minor story scrolling by on the bottom of the screen will talk about how squirrels and badgers have also mysteriously gone extinct.

The groovy thing about genetic weaponry, though: it's coming to an edgy teen near you soon enough. Nuclear weapons are, at least until we enter a whole new realm of physics, always goign to be beyond the reach of the average schmoe. Simply obtaining a sufficient quantity of weapons grade uranium or plutonium is going to remain the province of industrial powers. But bioweapons? Shoot, soon enough an entire bioweapons lab will be compressible down to something the size of a desktop printer. And the dark web will doubtless be filled with the genomes of any biological nasty you might be interested in, and there'll be apps to adjust those weapons any way you like. Someone *will* crank out a flu bug designs to take out tall redheads with heterochromic eyes... not because of deep ideological reasons, but just because they can.

The lesson here: support space exploration. Because Earth will get reduced to a blasted wasteland, sooner or later.

Unfortunately most of that is quite incorrect from a scientific perspective - suggest other contributors go to better informed and more credible sources for information in this area.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Unfortunately most of that is quite incorrect from a scientific perspective -

I look forward with great interest to the sources you will doubtless post that will show how something *other* than genetics leads to an individuals physical characteristics.

 

[Justo Miranda]

All the secret projects

 

[pathology_doc]

It doesn't need to be a danger to the public to be controversial. It just needs to be expensive in money, resources and manpower only to prove totally useless as some brilliant new discovery makes it obsolete very soon after it comes out, leaving the development and procurement team with egg on their faces.

And what does that for the XB-70? SAMs? Please. The B-52 is still flying.

The XB-70 was rendered obsolete as a high-speed nuclear delivery system intended to be uninterceptable by the ballistic missile, which was even more unstoppable.

The B-52 is far more vulnerable, but has stayed around because it's proved to be adaptable to conventional bombing with VERY heavy loads of iron bombs, and the B-1B and B-2 also retain this capability. Could a developed B-70 have done that? Or would it have remained a one-trick pony whose trick some other pony eventually did better? Sometimes it DOESN'T pay to be optimized to do Mach 3 at 70,000 feet.

 

[sferrin]

It doesn't need to be a danger to the public to be controversial. It just needs to be expensive in money, resources and manpower only to prove totally useless as some brilliant new discovery makes it obsolete very soon after it comes out, leaving the development and procurement team with egg on their faces.

And what does that for the XB-70? SAMs? Please. The B-52 is still flying.

The XB-70 was rendered obsolete as a high-speed nuclear delivery system intended to be uninterceptable by the ballistic missile, which was even more unstoppable.

The B-52 is far more vulnerable, but has stayed around because it's proved to be adaptable to conventional bombing with VERY heavy loads of iron bombs, and the B-1B and B-2 also retain this capability. Could a developed B-70 have done that? Or would it have remained a one-trick pony whose trick some other pony eventually did better? Sometimes it DOESN'T pay to be optimized to do Mach 3 at 70,000 feet.

The XB-70 could have carried 25,000lbs of weapons internally as well as (supposedly) a pair of Skybolts on underwing hardpoints. Yes, yes, the Skybolts weren't purchased but those hardpoints (assuming they existed) would be useful for other weapons, as would the weapons bays. So no, "It just needs to be expensive in money, resources and manpower only to prove totally useless as some brilliant new discovery makes it obsolete very soon after it comes out, leaving the development and procurement team with egg on their faces." does not apply.

 

[pathology_doc]

It doesn't need to be a danger to the public to be controversial. It just needs to be expensive in money, resources and manpower only to prove totally useless as some brilliant new discovery makes it obsolete very soon after it comes out, leaving the development and procurement team with egg on their faces.

And what does that for the XB-70? SAMs? Please. The B-52 is still flying.

The XB-70 was rendered obsolete as a high-speed nuclear delivery system intended to be uninterceptable by the ballistic missile, which was even more unstoppable.

The B-52 is far more vulnerable, but has stayed around because it's proved to be adaptable to conventional bombing with VERY heavy loads of iron bombs, and the B-1B and B-2 also retain this capability. Could a developed B-70 have done that? Or would it have remained a one-trick pony whose trick some other pony eventually did better? Sometimes it DOESN'T pay to be optimized to do Mach 3 at 70,000 feet.

The XB-70 could have carried 25,000lbs of weapons internally as well as (supposedly) a pair of Skybolts on underwing hardpoints. Yes, yes, the Skybolts weren't purchased but those hardpoints (assuming they existed) would be useful for other weapons, as would the weapons bays. So no, "It just needs to be expensive in money, resources and manpower only to prove totally useless as some brilliant new discovery makes it obsolete very soon after it comes out, leaving the development and procurement team with egg on their faces." does not apply.

I can't help but think that sending a B-70 on a conventional bombing mission, especially with draggy iron bombs under its wings, is akin to adapting a YF-12 to fire Sidewinders against MiG-17s.

It's not just about carrying the weight; it's about fitting the volume of those weapons in and releasing them safely within an appropriate flight envelope and with acceptable accuracy. Yes, the plane was a work of technical beauty, but you might just end up with nothing more than an even bigger and more expensive version of a B-58 (which after all the effort that went into building it served for how many years?).

 

[sferrin]

I can't help but think that sending a B-70 on a conventional bombing mission, especially with draggy iron bombs under its wings, is akin to adapting a YF-12 to fire Sidewinders against MiG-17s.

It's not just about carrying the weight; it's about fitting the volume of those weapons in and releasing them safely within an appropriate flight envelope and with acceptable accuracy. Yes, the plane was a work of technical beauty, but you might just end up with nothing more than an even bigger and more expensive version of a B-58 (which after all the effort that went into building it served for how many years?).

You keep moving the goalposts. You claim it was "instantly" and "embarrassingly" made obsolete by ICBMs. That is not true.

 

[Mark Nankivil]

I can't help but think that sending a B-70 on a conventional bombing mission, especially with draggy iron bombs under its wings, is akin to adapting a YF-12 to fire Sidewinders against MiG-17s.

It's not just about carrying the weight; it's about fitting the volume of those weapons in and releasing them safely within an appropriate flight envelope and with acceptable accuracy. Yes, the plane was a work of technical beauty, but you might just end up with nothing more than an even bigger and more expensive version of a B-58 (which after all the effort that went into building it served for how many years?).

You keep moving the goalposts. You claim it was "instantly" and "embarrassingly" made obsolete by ICBMs. That is not true.

Agree with you sferrin, the stated reason was SAMs but the reality was costs and a budget that did not have room for it. ICBMs were one leg of the triad and would not have replaced the aircraft leg (aircraft, ICBMs and SLBMs (Polaris at that time)) of the triad.

Enjoy the Day! Mark

 

[pathology_doc]

You claim it was "instantly" and "embarrassingly" made obsolete by ICBMs. That is not true.

No, I originally claimed that a weapon which elicits maximum controversy if produced is one that is rendered obsolete soon after production. I stated a general guideline and then attempted to fit the XB-70 to that guideline.
The flipside of the coin is that we're dealing in what-iffery. What if you build a fleet of B-70 bombers for the nuclear deterrent, spend all that money, and then find you spent it to no end because the only certain retaliatory mechanism is ICBMs? THAT is the possibility I was discussing, not what actually happened IRL.

 

[CNH]

How about the sort of weapons that would destroy the planet, in one go.

blow up the moon, poison the oceans, Burn all the air.

weapons based upon sex?
Male/female sterilisation weapon?
Or indeed the opposite, every woman pregnant at the same time? Think of the resources burned up.

Blindness- ala mr Wyndham?

Would anyone count a device that stopped you dying from natural causes as a weapon?

There's not a great deal of use destroying your enemy if you destroy yourself in the process. Hence MAD.

 

[flateric]

T-15 torpedo...oh wait, it has been resurrected as Poseidon SUV
Myasishchev M-25

 

[sferrin]

Would the M-25 have even worked?

 

[marauder2048]

My personal favorite.

"dust defense": clean nuclear devices would be detonated on or under the ground near ICBMs to send up clouds of dust to disable attacking RVs.

Advantages:

• Highly effective
• No technical issues to implement.
• Cheap and quick to field.
• No known countermeasures

Disadvantages:

• Requires the President to detonate hundreds of megatons on US soil based on warning
• pre-use and post-use fallout

 

[sferrin]

Unfortunately most of that is quite incorrect from a scientific perspective -

I look forward with great interest to the sources you will doubtless post that will show how something *other* than genetics leads to an individuals physical characteristics.

I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

[Orionblamblam]

My personal favorite.

"dust defense": clean nuclear devices would be detonated on or under the ground near ICBMs to send up clouds of dust to disable attacking RVs.

How would a cloud of dust bother an RV???

 

[marauder2048]

My personal favorite.

"dust defense": clean nuclear devices would be detonated on or under the ground near ICBMs to send up clouds of dust to disable attacking RVs.

How would a cloud of dust bother an RV???

Either through direct collision of the lofted debris with the hypersonic RV or erosion of the heat shield

 

[riggerrob]

If the RV had a terminal guidance system based on visual or infrared cameras, dust would confuse it.

 

[Orionblamblam]

How would a cloud of dust bother an RV???

Either through direct collision of the lofted debris with the hypersonic RV or erosion of the heat shield

Given the very low bulk density of the dust cloud, this seems dubious. If the RV was targeting ICBMs, which seems to be the case, then it is designed for *at* *least* an impact detonation, if not a sub-surface detonation. This means it is meant to survive at least touching the ground. Which means it's tough enough that a dust cloud will hardly be noticable.

If the RV had a terminal guidance system based on visual or infrared cameras, dust would confuse it.

How many RV's have cameras?

 

[Michel Van]

Why would the XB-70 be particularly controversial?

Too expensive purchase, too expensive operation cost, Limit survival during mission...

 

[kaiserd]

Why would the XB-70 be particularly controversial?

Too expensive purchase, too expensive operation cost, Limit survival during mission...

...would eat into budget for Minutemen, other Airforce priorities (opportunity costs)

 

[Orionblamblam]

Why would the XB-70 be particularly controversial?

Too expensive purchase, too expensive operation cost, Limit survival during mission...

...would eat into budget for Minutemen, other Airforce priorities (opportunity costs)

Simple solution: don't eat into the Minuteman & etc. USAF budgets. Eat into the Great Society budgets instead. Not at all controversial!

 

[Michel Van]

Genetically engineered DNA targeted viruses are a concern, especially so-called 'Slatewipers' which are designed to wipe out entire ethnic groups and races.

in 1980s this story was publish in several german Magazin like P.M. or Der Spiegel and Stern.
i don't know if that story is true or just fake
the Story so far:

Once upon a time, 1960s they had Idea for a US bio-weapon that infected only Russians
After many trails, they manage to cultivate a version of Sickle cell disease that infected only Russians.
But during end phase came a question they had overlooked, how many US citizens are from Russian ancestry ?
The program was terminated very fast...

like i say, don't know if that story is true or just fake, i read it a long time ago...

 

[sferrin]

Why would the XB-70 be particularly controversial?

Too expensive purchase, too expensive operation cost, Limit survival during mission...

Expensive, yes? Too expensive? Debatable. Limited survival? How many Blackbirds got shot down? I'd wager an XB-70 would have been more survivable than a B-52.

 

[marauder2048]

Given the very low bulk density of the dust cloud, this seems dubious. If the RV was targeting ICBMs, which seems to be the case, then it is designed for *at* *least* an impact detonation, if not a sub-surface detonation. This means it is meant to survive at least touching the ground. Which means it's tough enough that a dust cloud will hardly be noticable.

You are talking about ~ .3 megatons of earth per megaton of buried weapon yield; I'm not sure that's low density.
And impact detonation of the RV stresses the instantaneous survivability of the fuze + other components given the setback
forces they would encounter. And those impact velocities would typically be in the high supersonic range not the
much higher velocities the RV encounters in the cloud.

 

[kaiserd]

Why would the XB-70 be particularly controversial?

Too expensive purchase, too expensive operation cost, Limit survival during mission...

...would eat into budget for Minutemen, other Airforce priorities (opportunity costs)

Simple solution: don't eat into the Minuteman & etc. USAF budgets. Eat into the Great Society budgets instead. Not at all controversial!

Advocating for fewer Americans with access to affordable healthcare (in general and right now in the middle of a Pandemic).
GREAT idea and REALLY relevant to the whole purpose and ethos of the forum.....

 

[Orionblamblam]

Advocating for fewer Americans with access to affordable healthcare (in general and right now in the middle of a Pandemic).
GREAT idea and REALLY relevant to the whole purpose and ethos of the forum.....

See? Merely *suggesting* it set *you* off, thus demonstrating the relevance to the topic at hand.

PS: The Great Society led to *less* affordable healthcare, just as government-funded "food insurance" would inevitably lead to more expensive groceries. So once again one terribly effective-yet-controvesial weapon system would be one that showed populations that their cherished beliefs are wrong. Perhaps one great and controversial weapon system would be a mass produced drone made to closely resemble a local common bird; it would fly into regular folks homes and tell them things that they don't want to hear. "Dear leader is an idiot," or "communism is for saps" or "Hitler only has one ball" or "increased spending leads to increased cost," so on. Manufacture these drones by the hundreds of millions and blanket enemy populations with a blizzard of non-stop chatter at relatively high volume. It will directly harm nobody, but it will result in the local equivalent of TDS on a massive scale.

 

[zen]

The best way to stop Soviet Army is large depots of food, alcohol and prostitutes.

 

[sferrin]

The best way to stop Soviet Army is large depots of food, alcohol and prostitutes.

Or just alcohol.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Off topic and totally pointless. Locked.