4th Generation Nuclear Nanotech Weapons

The Military Impact of Nanotechnology Nanotechnology, i.e., the science of designing microscopic structures in which the materials and their relations are machined and controlled atom-by-atom, holds the promise of numerous applications.

Lying at the crossroads of engineering, physics, chemistry, and biology, nanotechnology may have considerable impact in all areas of science and technology. However, it is certain that the most significant near term applications of nanotechnology will be in the military domain. In fact, it is under the names of ‘micromechanical engineering’ and ‘microelectromechanical systems’ (MEMS) that the field of nanotechnology was born a few decades ago – in nuclear weapons laboratories.

A primary impetus for creating these systems was the need for extremely rugged and safe arming and triggering mechanisms for nuclear weapons such as atomic artillery shells. In such warheads, the nuclear explosive and its trigger undergo extreme acceleration (10,000 times greater than gravity when the munition is delivered by a heavy gun).

A general design technique is then to make the trigger’s crucial components as small as possible.5 For similar reasons of extreme safety, reliability, and resistance to external factors, the detonators and the various locking mechanisms of nuclear weapons were increasingly designed as more and more sophisticated microelectromechanical systems.

Consequently, nuclear weapons laboratories such as the Sandia National Laboratory in the US are leading the world in translating the most advanced concepts of MEMS engineering into practice.

A second historical impetus for MEMS and nanotechnology, one which is also over thirty years old, is the still ongoing drive towards miniaturisation of nuclear weapons and the related quest for very-low yield nuclear explosives which could also be used as a source of nuclear energy in the form of controlled microexplosions.

Such explosions (with yields in the range of a few kilograms to a few tons of high-explosive equivalent) would in principle be contained – but they could just as well be used in weapons if suitable compact triggers are developed.

In this line of research, it was soon discovered that it is easier to design a micro-fusion than a micro-fission explosive (which has the further advantage of producing much less radioactive fallout than a micro-fission device of the same yield). Since that time, enormous progress has been made, and the research on these micro-fusion bombs has now become the main advanced weapons research activity of the nuclear weapons laboratories, using gigantic tools such as the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) and France’s Laser Mégajoule. The tiny pellets used in these experiments, containing the thermonuclear fuel to be exploded, are certainly the most delicate and sophisticated nano-engineered devices in existence.

A third major impetus for nanotechnology is the growing demand for better materials (and parts made of them) with extremely well characterised specifications. These can be new materials such as improved insulators which will increase the storage capacity of capacitors used in detonators, nano-engineered high-explosives for advanced weaponry, etc. But they can also be conventional materials of extreme purity, or nano-engineered components of extreme precision.

The final major impetus for MEMS and nanotechnology, which has the greatest overlap with non-military needs, is their promise of new high-performance sensors, transducers, actuators, and electronic components. The development of this field of applications is expected to replicate that of the micro-electronic industry, which was also originally driven by military needs, and which provides the reference for forecasting a nano-industrial boom and a financial bonanza.

There are, however, two major differences.

First, electronic devices which can be manufactured in large quantities and at low cost are essentially planar, while MEMS are three-dimensional devices which may include moving parts.

Second, the need for MEMS outside professional circles (medical, scientific, police, military) is quite limited, so that the market might not be as wide as expected. For example, the detection and identification of chemical or biological weapon threats through specificity of molecular response may lead to all sorts of medical applications, but only to few consumer goods.

Near and Long-Term Applications and Implications of Nanotechnology

Considering that nanotechnology is already an integral part of the development of modern weapons, it is important to realise that its immediate potential to improve existing weapons (either conventional or nuclear), and its short-term potential to create new weapons (either conventional or nuclear), are more than sufficient to require the immediate attention of diplomats and arms controllers.

In this perspective, the potential long-term applications of nanotechnology (and their foreseeable social and political implications) should neither be downplayed nor overemphasised.

Indeed, there are potential applications such as self-replicating nano-robots (’nanobots’) which may never prove to be feasible because of fundamental physical or technical obstacles. But this impossibility would not mean that the somewhat larger micro-robots of the type that are seriously considered in military laboratories could never become a reality.

In light of these extant and potential dangers and risks, every effort should be made not to repeat the error of the arms-control community with regard to missile defence. For over thirty years, that community acted on the premise that a ballistic missile defense system will never be built because it will never be sufficiently effective – only to be faced with a concerted attempt to construct such a system! If some treaty is contemplated in order to control or prohibit the development of nanotechnology, it should be drafted in such a way that all reasonable long-term applications are covered.

Moreover, it should not be forgotten that while nanotechnology mostly emphasises the spatial extension of matter at the scale of the nanometer (the size of a few atoms), the time dimension of mechanical engineering has recently reached its ultimate limit at the scale of the femtosecond (the time taken by an electron to circle an atom)

It has thus become possible to generate bursts of energy in suitably packaged pulses in space and time that have critical applications in nanotechnology, and to focus pulses of particle or laser beams with extremely short durations on a few micrometer down to a few nanometer sized targets.

The invention of the ’superlaser’, which enabled such a feat and provided a factor of one million increase in the instantaneous power of tabletop lasers, is possibly the most significant recent advance in military technology. This increase is of the same magnitude as the factor of one million difference in energy density between chemical and nuclear energy.9

Nanotechnological Improvement of Existing Types of Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear weapon technology is characterised by two sharply contrasting demands. On the one hand, the nuclear package containing the fission and fusion materials is relatively simple and forgiving, i.e. rather more sophisticated than complicated.

On the other hand, the many ancillary components required for arming the weapon, triggering the high-explosives, and initiating the neutron chain-reaction, are much more complicated. Moreover, the problems related to maintaining political control over the use of nuclear weapons, i.e. the operation of permissive action links (PALs), necessitated the development of protection systems that are meant to remain active all the way to the target, meaning that all these ancillary components and systems are submitted to very stringent requirements for security, safety, and reliable performance under severe conditions.

The general solution to these problems is to favour the use of hybrid combinations of mechanical and electronic systems, which have the advantage of dramatically reducing the probability of common mode failures and decreasing sensitivity to external factors. It is this search for the maximisation of reliability and ruggedness which is driving the development and application of nanotechnology and MEMS engineering in nuclear weapons science.

To give an important example: modern nuclear weapons use insensitive high-explosives (IHE) which can only be detonated by means of a small charge of sensitive high-explosive that is held out of alignment from the main charge of IHE. Only once the warhead is armed does a MEMS bring the detonator into position with the main charge. Since the insensitive high-explosive in a nuclear weapon is usually broken down into many separate parts that are triggered by individual detonators, the use of MEMS-based detonators incorporating individual locking mechanisms are an important ingredient ensuring the use-control and one-point safety of such weapons.

Further improvements on existing nuclear weapons are stemming from the application of nanotechnology to materials engineering. New capacitors, new radiation-resistant integrated circuits, new composite materials capable to withstand high temperatures and accelerations, etc., will enable a further level of miniaturisation and a corresponding enhancement of safety and usability of nuclear weapons. Consequently, the military utility and the possibility of forward deployment, as well as the potentiality for new missions, will be increased.

Consider the concept of a “low-yield” earth penetrating warhead. The military appeal of such a weapon derives from the inherent difficulty of destroying underground targets.

Only about 15 % of the energy from a surface explosion is coupled (transferred) into the ground, while shock waves are quickly attenuated when travelling through the ground. Even a few megatons surface burst will not be able to destroy a buried target at a depth or distance more than 100-200 meters away from ground zero. A radical alternative, therefore, is to design a warhead which would detonate after penetrating the ground by a few tens of meters or more. Since a free-falling or rocket-driven missile will not penetrate the surface by more than about ten meters, some kind of active penetration mechanism is required. This implies that the nuclear package and its ancillary components will have to survive extreme conditions of stress until the warhead is detonated.

Fourth-Generation Nuclear Weapons

First- and second-generation nuclear weapons are atomic and hydrogen bombs developed during the 1940s and 1950s, while third-generation weapons comprise a number of concepts developed between the 1960s and 1980s, e.g. the neutron bomb, which never found a permanent place in the military arsenals.

Fourth-generation nuclear weapons are new types of nuclear explosives that can be developed in full compliance with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) using inertial confinement fusion (ICF) facilities such as the NIF in the US, and other advanced technologies which are under active development in all the major nuclear-weapon states – and in major industrial powers such as Germany and Japan.11

In a nutshell, the defining technical characteristic of fourth-generation nuclear weapons is the triggering – by some advanced technology such as a superlaser, magnetic compression, antimatter, etc. – of a relatively small thermonuclear explosion in which a deuterium-tritium mixture is burnt in a device whose weight and size are not much larger than a few kilograms and litres.

Since the yield of these warheads could go from a fraction of a ton to many tens of tons of high-explosive equivalent, their delivery by precision-guided munitions or other means will dramatically increase the fire-power of those who possess them – without crossing the threshold of using kiloton-to-megaton nuclear weapons, and therefore without breaking the taboo against the first-use of weapons of mass destruction.

Moreover, since these new weapons will use no (or very little) fissionable materials, they will produce virtually no radioactive fallout. Their proponents will define them as “clean” nuclear weapons – and possibly draw a parallel between their battlefield use and the consequences of the expenditure of depleted uranium ammunition.12

In practice, since the controlled release of thermonuclear energy in the form of laboratory scale explosions (i.e., equivalent to a few kilograms of high-explosives) at ICF facilities like NIF is likely to succeed in the next 10 to 15 years, the main arms control question is how to prevent this know-how being used to manufacture fourth-generation nuclear weapons.

As we have already seen, nanotechnology and micromechanical engineering are integral parts of ICF pellet construction. But this is also the case with ICF drivers and diagnostic devices, and even more so with all the hardware that will have to be miniaturised and ‘ruggedised’ to the extreme in order to produce a compact, robust, and cost-effective weapon.

A thorough discussion of the potential of nanotechnology and microelectromechanical engineering in relation to the emergence of fourth-generation nuclear weapons is therefore of the utmost importance. It is likely that this discussion will be difficult, not just because of secrecy and other restrictions, but mainly because the military usefulness and usability of these weapons is likely to remain very high as long as precision-guided delivery systems dominate the battlefield.

It is therefore important to realise that the technological hurdles that have to be overcome in order for laboratory scale thermonuclear explosions to be turned into weapons may be the only remaining significant barrier against the introduction and proliferation of fourth-generation nuclear weapons. For this reason alone – and there are many others, beyond the scope of this paper – very serious consideration should be given to the possibility of promoting an ‘Inner Space Treaty’ to prohibit the military development and application of nanotechnological devices and techniques.

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Laser weapon design hits 100-kilowatt target

From the week gone by on the directed-energy weapons front: defense contractor Northrop Grumman reported that it got a solid-state laser to fire a beam with a potency of 105.5 kilowatts.

For the ray-gun wing of the military-industrial complex, the 100-kilowatt threshold is a major milestone, marking the entry point to weapons-grade laser weapons. Adding to the appeal is that solid-state lasers are much more compact, and less noxious, than chemical laser systems such as the one in the works for the 747-centric Airborne Laser.

The technical details of Northrop’s achievement break down this way, starting with a modular, “building block” approach that bodes well for scalable systems, the company said: For building blocks, the company utilizes “laser amplifier chains,” each producing approximately 15kW of power in a high-quality beam. Seven laser chains were combined to produce a single beam of 105.5 kW. The seven-chain JHPSSL laser demonstrator ran for more than five minutes, achieved electro-optical efficiency of 19.3 percent, reaching full power in less than 0.6 seconds, all with beam quality of better than 3.0.

Adding an eighth chain that the system was designed for would increase laser power to 120 kilowatts, Northrop says.

Where this test saw five minutes of continuous operation for the laser, altogether the system has been operated at above 100 kilowatts for a total duration of more than 85 minutes.

The efforts are part of the Pentagon’s Joint High Power Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) program.

Even though 100 kilowatts has long been the “proof of principle” sought for weapons systems, Northrop says that “in fact, many militarily useful effects can be achieved by laser weapons of 25 kW or 50 kW, provided this energy is transmitted with good beam quality, as our system does.”

Of course, this is still a laboratory laser system and not a field-tested, ruggedized product. “It is still a little heavy and a little big,” Dan Wildt, vice president of Northrop’s directed energy systems program, told the LA Times.

That’s probably a significant understatement. Says Noah Schactman at Wired’s Danger Room blog of the news from Northrop: Does that mean energy weapons are a done deal? Hardly. There are still all sorts of technical issues–thermal management and miniaturization, to name two–that have to be handled first. Then, the ray gunners have to find the money. The National Academies figure it’ll take another $100 million to get battlefield lasers right.

In a separate post, Schachtman reports on what’s involved in getting specific laser systems ready to go over the next several years.

Earlier this year, Boeing said that it had used a “kilowatt-class” solid-state laser to shoot down a UAV from a ground-based system. The company hopes that the Airborne Laser, meanwhile, will do its first-ever aerial target shoot sometime in 2009.

Sumber: CNet.com

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Teknologi Robot Untuk Militer

Ada sebuah artikel menarik di Washington University di St Louis situs tentang peningkatan penggunaan robotics dalam operasi militer. Beberapa peneliti universitas dan Smart dicatat bahwa militer mengharapkan agar robot diimplementasikan sebagai kekuatan sampai 30% di tahun 2020 oleh militer. Dengan peningkatan penyebaran yang tak udara kendaraan (UAV), robot mencari IED dan perangkat pengawasan robot,  dengan ini tampaknya tujuan penciptaan robot akan segera tercapai. Dengan memperhatikan hal itu mungkin waktu untuk yang akan mempertanyakan militer robot dapat digunakan untuk fasilitas keamanan dari radiasi kimia?

Menurut artikel yang ini generasi robot perangkat disebarkan dengan militer AS memanfaatkan beberapa tingkat teleoperation; yang jauh manusia menggunakan perangkat komunikasi untuk mengontrol operasi dari robot. Dpt diramalkan untuk masa depan robot perangkat militer dan keamanan layanan mereka akan memiliki fungsi utama jauh oleh dengan pengendali manusia. Pada umumnya peningkatan penggunaannya diarahkan sebagai robot penolong atau kontrol dari perangkat dan layanan.

Security Roles for Robots

Most military robots currently deployed are being used as human-substitutes in high risk situations like explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) or IED detection. The defining exception to that generality is the use of UAV’s for long-linger time observation of remote areas. This is the most likely model for initial robotic security deployments.

Many large chemical facilities have lengthy perimeters that are difficult to secure. Irregular fence lines, natural and man-made obstructions, and lack of manpower make it difficult to detect and confirm perimeter incursions. Early detection is the key to allowing for adequate deployment times for active security measures.

Perimeter Surveillance

Larger UAV’s like the Predator would not be practical for any but the largest facilities. There are a number of smaller UAV’s that may be more appropriate for large high-risk chemical facilities. They could be used for both routine perimeter patrol and immediate response for checking out intrusion detection system alerts. Adding chemical sensors would allow for their use in monitoring dispersion of chemical clouds.

As the ability to employ semi-autonomous navigation (point-to-point route selection for example) for ground robots improves their utility for perimeter patrol and immediate response will increase. If the operator can navigate the robot by selecting a series of pre-programmed locations instead of driving the robot, a single operator will then be able to operate multiple observation robots. This will go a long way to overcoming the security manpower cost problem.

Armed Robots for Emergency Response

One of the most controversial uses of robotics in military service is the use of the robot as a weapons platform. Even with full teleoperational control of the weapon system, there are still concerns about inadvertent weapons discharge due to control system or communication system malfunction. These concerns may be substantially reduced by using non-lethal weapons.

Many of these concerns, and general concerns about weapons employment in a chemical facility, could be further reduced by adding a redundant safety-interlock to the weapon’s control system. This interlock could prevent the weapon from being discharged in a number of pre-defined situations. ‘No Fire Zones’ could be programmed into the interlock to prevent weapons discharge in unsafe areas of the facility. A flammability sensor could be added to the platform to prevent discharge of a ‘fired’ weapon in a flammable environment.

A Future for Robotic Security

As the military continues to improve the sophistication of their robotic systems it becomes more likely that security robots will be deployed in the defense of high-risk chemical facilities. Not only does the sophistication increase, but the unit cost of these robotic systems will come down. Additionally, the number of experienced robotic operators that are veterans of robotic combat operations will increase.

It is likely that it will be these veterans that will be behind the companies that develop and start the deployment of security robots. With their government supplied education, practical experience, and security training they will be the natural leaders of the robotic security businesses of the future.

The Israel Army is procuring more unmanned ground vehicles for combat missions in border areas. (Memang rencana busuk sudah dijalankan oleh Israel, seperti yang terjadi di Gaza sekarang ini).

The Ground Forces Command has purchased ast least four UGVs for combat missions along the Gaza Strip and Israeli border with Lebanon. The platforms were identified as G-Nius, developed and produced by Israel’s Elbit Systems.

“We don’t need manned patrols along the border,” Elbit Systems president Joseph Ackerman said. “We could use UGVs.” [On Aug. 5, the Israel Air Force announced the deployment of the Sniper electro-optic reconnaissance system. Sniper, developed in Israel by several defense contractors, was said to enable air defense operators to track fighter-jets at a distance of more than 70 kilometers.]

US army in 2020

U.S. technologists have revealed that the country’s military has plans to have about 30 per cent of the Army comprised of robotic forces by approximately 2020.

Doug Few and Bill Smart of Washington University in St. Louis say that robots are increasingly taking over more soldier duties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the U.

S. Army wants to make further additions to its robotic fleet.

They, however, also point out that the machines still need the human touch.

“When the military says ‘robot’ they mean everything from self-driving trucks up to what you would conventionally think of as a robot. You would more accurately call them autonomous systems rather than robots,” says Smart, assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

All of the Army’s robots are teleoperated, meaning there is someone operating the robot from a remote location, perhaps often with a joystick and a computer screen.

While this may seem like a caveat in plans to add robots to the military, it is actually very important to keep humans involved in the robotic operations.

“It’s a chain of command thing. You don’t want to give autonomy to a weapons delivery system. You want to have a human hit the button. You don’t want the robot to make the wrong decision. You want to have a human to make all of the important decisions,” says Smart.

The technologist duo says that researchers are not necessarily looking for intelligent decision-making in their robots. Instead, they are working to develop an improved, “intelligent” functioning of the robot.

“It’s oftentimes like the difference between the adverb and noun. You can act intelligently or you can be intelligent. I’m much more interested in the adverb for my robots,” says Few, a Ph.D. student who is interested in the delicate relationship between robot and human.

He says that there are many issues that may require “a graceful intervention” by humans, and these need to be thought of from the ground up.

“When I envision the future of robots, I always think of the Jetsons. George Jetson never sat down at a computer to task Rosie to clean the house. Somehow, they had this local exchange of information. So what we’ve been working on is how we can use the local environment rather than a computer as a tasking medium to the robot,” he says.

Few has incorporated a toy into robotic programming, and with the aid of a Wii controller, he capitalizes on natural human movements to communicate with the robot.

According to the researchers, focussing on a joystick and screen rather than carting around a heavy laptop would help soldiers in battle to stay alert, and engage in their surroundings while performing operations with the robot.

“We forget that when we’re controlling robots in the lab it’s really pretty safe and no one’s trying to kill us. But if you are in a war zone and you’re hunched over a laptop, that’s not a good place to be. You want to be able to use your eyes in one place and use your hand to control the robot without tying up all of your attention,” says Smart.

Devices like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground robots for explosives detection, and Packbots have already been inducted in the military.

“When I stood there and looked at that Packbot, I realized that if that robot hadn’t been there, it would have been some kid,” says Few. (ANI)

Bagaimana dunia di masa yang akan datang ? terutama teknologi militer menggunakan robot.

“”"Yang penting itu robot jangan menjadi mesin pembunuh manusia, seperti yang terjadi di GAZA saat ini”"” v**me

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Satu Sukhoi Kembali Tiba di Indonesia

JAKARTA, SABTU — Satu pesawat jet tempur Sukhoi TNI Angkatan Udara (AU) tiba di Pangkalan Udara (Lanud) Sultan Hasanuddin, Makassar, Sulawesi Selatan.

Satu pesawat diterbangkan dari Rusia menggunakan pesawat angkut Antonov AH-124-100 dan tiba di Lanud Sultan Hasanuddin, Makassar, Sabtu, sekitar pukul 11.10 WIB. Demikian dikatakan Komandan Wing 5 Lanud Kolonel Pnb Arif Mustofa di Jakarta, Sabtu (17/1).

Kedatangan satu Sukhoi jenis SU-30MK2 itu disaksikan oleh Kepala Proyek Sukhoi TNI AU Kolonel Mahandono, Komandan Lanud Sultan Hasanuddin Marsekal Pertama I Putu Dunia, Komandan Skuadron Udara 11 Letkol Pnb Iko Putra, dan Komandan Wing 5 Lanud Kolonel Pnb Arif Mustofa.

Perusahaan Rusia penghasil pesawat tempur Sukhoi pada 21 Agustus 2007 mengumumkan penjualan enam pesawat tempur tersebut kepada Indonesia senilai sekitar 300 juta dollar AS (Rp 2,85 triliun).

Enam pesawat Sukhoi itu terdiri atas tiga Sukhoi SU-30MK2 dan tiga SU-27SKM, yang akan melengkapi empat pesawat Sukhoi yang telah dimiliki TNI AU sejak September 2003.

Dengan kedatangan satu pesawat Sukhoi SU-30MK2 tersebut, maka TNI AU kini telah memiliki tiga SU-30MK2 (dua unit telah tiba pada 26 Desember 2008)  yang akan melengkapi empat Sukhoi yang sudah dimiliki TNI AU sejak September 2003.

Penandatanganan nota kesepahaman pengadaan enam pesawat Sukhoi itu dilaksanakan pada 21 Agustus 2007. Pesawat tempur Sukhoi tersebut menggantikan peran pesawat A-4 Skyhawk dan berbasis di Skuadron Udara 11 Pangkalan Udara Sultan Hassanuddin, Makassar, Sulawesi Selatan.

Rencananya tiga unit Sukhoi SU-30MK2 akan diserahkan Pemerintah Rusia kepada Indonesia pada akhir Januari 2009, setelah ketiga pesawat menjalani serangkaian uji terbang dan dinyatakan siap untuk digunakan.

ABD

Dikutip dari KOMPAS  http://www.kompas.com/read/xml/2009/01/17/11573721/Satu.Sukhoi.Kembali.Tiba.di.Indonesia

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