John Pike and I have a little tête à tête about the recent missile test over at the Gray Lady.
[Thursday morning update]
I should note that this wasn’t really a debate in any sense of the word. It was just two opinions, neither of which was informed in any way by the other. I didn’t see what John wrote until I had already submitted mine, and I suspect the same was true of his input.
Geez, did Pike spend one whole minute on his response or two? I could summarize all he said this way:
Sure, this missile didn’t work, and sure the Norks don’t have bombs to put on one anyway. But! You never know what the future could bring. Anything could happen, eventually. Be afraid!
Boy do I feel enlightened now. I never realized things could change in the future.
What do you expect? It’s John Pike?
Amusingly, the reason that I got this opportunity is that when I was talking to that particular editor a few weeks ago on a completely different subject, I pointed out to her how predictable the media is because they always rely on the usual subjects for sound bites, and I used Pike as the example of who is in everyone’s rolodex for space/defense issues, even though he generally doesn’t know what he’s talking about, doesn’t even have a college degree, but gives good sound bites, and is head of a leftist think tank. So I guess when she saw that they had given Pike a forum once again she decided to give me (more than) equal time. Yay to her.
Rand, congrats. As I started reading, I thought to myself “I hope (for the sake of clarity) he doesn’t use the word “fascist”, … and instead, you worked in a consciousness-raising reference to ITAR. Well done!
I’m surprised at your lack of alarm over North Korea’s unsuccessful nuclear test. My understanding from reading Ted Taylor’s writings is that a “fizzle” detonated in a densely populated area would be fairly horrific – you’d still get a lethal dosage of radiation over at least a few square kilometers. Do you disagree?
A ‘fizzle’ in a populated area would be bad.
The reason the missile test is irrelevant (except as a provocation) is that the missile couldn’t deliver the fizzle anywhere due to its lift mass, (likely) lack of accurate guidance and lack of entry system.
There’s an old saying about hearing hoofbeats and thinking horses, not zebras. Pike seems to be thinking he hears unicorns. It’s Reynolds Wrap chapeau time for sure.
Pike says the fizzle had a yield consistent with a thermonuclear trigger. That seems like a very odd point. Presumably triggers are designed to go off at a lower yield (as opposed to flying apart before a reaction can complete).
I seem to recall that there initially were two types of H-bomb designs: the layer cake which didn’t require an A-bomb trigger and the A-bomb triggered design (“Mike”). Wasn’t the Mike design about the size of a building initially. It would be an odd strategic choice to be going right for the Mike-type H-bomb without a mature bomber or missile capability.
Rand, I was also asked to write something for the forum but was wrapped up with other matters. Not to mention that I wasn’t exactly thrilled by the suggestion that I comment as to whether advances in private space meant that a ‘private company’ might build a missile.
Talk about non-sequiturs. Yeah right, New Space is all about John Carmack wanting to emulate the nutty evil businessman ‘Jonah Hodges’ on the current season of ’24.’
On that scale, hauling in Pike again is a minor expression of the decline of journalism.
Pike says the fizzle had a yield consistent with a thermonuclear trigger.
Yeah, that was a seriously weird statement. In the first place, a fair amount of the yield of early thermonuclear devices did come from the fission trigger. It’s only when you get good at designing the fusion secondary that you can user smaller fission triggers in an effort to weaponize (shrink) the overall device, or (neutron bombs) clean it up.
Obviously having a large primary with a crappy yield because the implosion or collision is poorly designed is evidence that you’re a long way indeed from being able to build a fission-fusion device. I wonder what in heck he meant, since he’s not stupid.
I seem to recall that there initially were two types of H-bomb designs:
Yes and no. The Sakharov “layer cake” design got the Soviets their first H-bomb fast, but it was not scaleable as the Ulam-Teller (“Mike”) design was. The Soviets needed to steal that design from the West.
the layer cake which didn’t require an A-bomb trigger and the A-bomb triggered design (”Mike”).
Both require a fission trigger. There’s no way to generate the pressures and temperatures requires for fusion otherwise.
The essential problem — the reason many doubted the Super was even possible — is that a fission explosion by nature goes out, and the necessity here is to compress the fusion fuel. How to turn outward momentum inward? The Sakharov design didn’t try, it just layered the fusion fuel into the fission fuel, so that when the fission explosion went off it compressed the fusion fuel on its way out.
The genius of the Ulam-Teller solution is that it did, in a sense, turn the outward explosion of the fission trigger into a compression — by using the fact that most of the initial energy of the fission explosion was in the form of X-rays. They just put a heavy metal “X-ray mirror” around the whole assembly, in the shape of a “whispering gallery” with the fission trigger at one focus and the fusion fuel at the other. The X-rays going out from the fission explosion were refocussed onto the fusion fuel, compressing it. As long as you had enough X-ray flux, and you designed your Hohlraum correctly, you could add as much fusion fuel as you wanted to boost the fusion yield.
Wasn’t the Mike design about the size of a building initially.
Yes.
Congratulations! Good show!
I remember when Pike spoke to Oasis some thousand years ago. I remember that I was not impressed.
Your position makes complete sense. If I may summarize, you’re saying the North Koreans aren’t an immediate threat, but they can be at some point, and we’d be morons to cut back on missile defense. That all makes sense.
I’m not as clear what Pike is trying to say. I do agree with him that missiles aren’t the only way to deliver a nuke, and may not even be the most likely. Still, if he had a specific point, he didn’t make it at all clearly.
Thanks!
TCS
Pike may be referring to the possibility that this was an unboosted test of a weapon that, when boosted, would have higher yield and be designed to be a thermonuclear primary.
Another possibility is that it was intended to boost, but the boosting failed for some reason.
If they’d just wanted to fire a demonstration shot, the off the shelf plans for the Fat Man device you can get on the web are nearly good enough to build one. And that’s fine for propaganda purposes. They’re pretty bulletproof, even if they are by current standards nigh-on undeliverable (4.5 tons, 5 feet diameter, almost 11 feet long – they could fit one inside a An-26 helicopter, or a jet freighter, but that’s about it).
Pakistan and India took their (relatively recent) propaganda tests as an opportunity to test more advanced weapons, including unboosted tests of boosted designs.
So it’s a decent assumption that whatever it was, it was intended to be a more advanced design than an old style huge spherical implosion weapon. How much more advanced, and whether it succeeded in its test technical goals or not, is reading too far into a bare spoonful of tea leaves.