Black Ops

(Read the last post first; this one follows up on it.)

Okay. Lets put all reason and reality aside, and say - just for the sake of discussion - that you're a terrorist that has somehow managed to get a hold of a nuclear weapon. Since there's no possible way you've built it yourself (most countries can't manage that, much less your jihad focused ass), you've stolen from someone, or somehow managed to outbid the Americans (or their agents) on the black market, or else some other miracle. You have somehow manages to beg, buy, or steal of the most valuable, dangerous, and heavily guarded objects on the planet. There it is, sitting right in front of you on the table in your fortified bunker somewhere in the Hindu Kush.

Now what do you do?

You have come across the problem that all nuclear powers face: you have to get the bomb to the target area, so you can set it off. Otherwise, it's just a billion-dollar paperweight that will give you cancer if you stand too close. Does no good sitting in the bunker. How are you supposed to get it to the target?

Probably can't carry it. American nukes are very small, and even the Soviets managed man-portable backpack-bombs, but they had the benefit of plutonium. Critical mass (the amount needed to light up a nuclear chain-reaction) for plutonium is only about 22 lbs. But your bomb is almost certainly uranium, and even if it's made of pure U235, it's gotta have over 100 lbs of just uranium (52 kg.) for a critical mass, and that's not including the secondary materials that make your atomic weapon into a thermonuclear weapon. Incidentally, 52 kilos of uranium is only about the size of a softball; your nuke is really not all that big, but it's REALLY heavy.

You're not going to be able to get a missile system that can hit the US, so don't even think about it. Even among the nations that have built nukes, only the US, China, and Russia have a missile delivery system that can hit, say, New York from central asia. N. Korea is getting there, but their last ICBM test (July 5, 2006) failed just after launch, and landed in the ocean. Where it was probably visited by a ship like the Glomar Explorer (google it) within a matter of hours. But that's another story. Unlike the bombs, which require only exotic materials to build a fairly simple structure, missiles are built with the best computer guidance systems and engineered to the tightest mechanical tolerances you'll find on the planet earth. MUCH more difficult to build than the nukes. Besides, your nuke can be carted around in a pickup truck, but you need at least a train car to haul around an ICBM. Hardly practical, since you're necessarily operating in secret, lest you need to start dodging bombs and bullets from people who don't approve of you being a nuclear power.

All in all, your only realistic option is to somehow get your nuke onto a plane, and fly it to the target. But don't feel bad about this; air-mail has historically been the preferred method of delivery, even among the Superpowers. Quick history lesson. Delivery of nukes was the great military challenge of the late 20th century, and the technology never kept up with the fear and paranoia. There were historical fears that the soviets led the world in the "rocket race," but the truth is that the Americans have generally led the way. The soviets did make good rockets, but lacked the economy to build many of them; through the 1950s and early 1960s, a nuclear war would have seen most Soviet bombs being delivered by - get this - B-29 bombers. Four American B-29s landed in Soviet territory in 1944, and the Soviets not only never gave them back, but made thousands of exact copies, although with different engines. (Goolge "Tu-4.") Even after they retired the B-29/Tu-4, their main delivery system was still a propeller-driver bomber (Tu-95) through the 1980s. The reason that the Soviets tried to put nukes on Cuba was that they didn't have many missiles that could reach America from Russia. Technology has come along since then, but still: Despite all the missile development that's gone on, the cheapest way to deliver nukes remains loading them onto a plan and flying them to the target.

American nuclear defense knows this; the commonly perceived top American military base is the NORAD facility at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. NORAD stands for North American Air Defense. It is the nerve center of radar and satellite system that monitor every single object in the air surrounding the planet earth, from small planes taking off from dirt airstrips in Kamchaka to the tiniest bits of orbital trash in the near-earth skies. We know where the bombers are.

Still, it might work for you. Might be able to sneak a nuke in on a civilian flight. All you need to do it to get your nuke to an airport, find a plane, and take a ride. Should be simple, right?

The big problem you have now is doing it in secret, which is the biggest problem you'll face yet, even though you already have the nuke. The simple fact is that - although they can be taken by surprise - the Americans, spurred by the degree of threat, are REALLY good at finding nukes, and have spent truly staggering amounts of money on projects that don't exist to keep them appraised of the location of every single nuclear weapon on the face of the earth.

We'll put aside the political treaties and connections (reciprocal inspections, security agreements, and so forth) that probably informed the Americans that a nuke was missing from somebody's arsenal. We'll ignore that they were aware that a nuke was in unknown hands probably before your purchase check cleared. We'll focus on the practical, technological ends.

Stealth has always been a priority with nuclear weapons, even in wars between nations. A nuclear sneak-attack could knock out the Bad Guys, leaving them unable to retaliate. If the enemy's leadership disappear in a flash, you're well on the way to winning unscathed. So nations tried to develop that sneak-attack capability, at the expenditure of amounts that put the Manhattan project to shame, and even approached the amounts spent on ICBM projects. With all that expenditure, the best thing people could think of to hide nuclear weapons until delivered was missile submarines. Those subs are the consensus hardest-to-locate pieces of military technology on the planet. They hide in vast oceans, and with current technologies, the only times they come to the surface is when they're in port. They can, in fact, go months without air striking their acoustic-tile clad skins. As technologies continued to develop, the traditional way to find them - by the noise they make - has been complicated by the fact that the most recent models make less noise than the ambient ocean around them. Keeping track of them is like keeping track of holes in the water.

Doesn't matter. It is generally conceded that the United States knows the location of every single submarine in the world, at all times. As much money (or more) has been spent trying to defeat stealth technology as has been spent developing it, and between SOSUS networks, P-3 sonobouy drops, patrolling ships and submarines, and other things (like the fact that seawater is transparent to certain blue-green wavelengths that are visible from space to American spy satellites), nary a nuclear-armed submarine anywhere the world over gets into international waters without an American 688-class boat on its tail. We know where they are, and we can hit them in a matter of minutes or seconds, should the need arise. The stealthiest things on the planet cannot hide from the determined (and well-funded) efforts of clever Americans.

"Yeah but," you say: bombers and subs are military hardware that operate from fixed bases. Of course the Americans can track them coming and going. Radars (and other things) watch military flights. Sonars (and other things) watch the sea for military ships. But we can sneak in on a civilian flight! We can load the bomb onto a civilian ship (or even a boat) and sail into New York of San Francisco harbor! We can sail into Brazil and drive it up the pan-American highway! Only a handful of people will even know the plan, much less the exact location at any time! They'll never know, much less find us!

The problem is that American tracking of nuclear bombers and subs is exemplary of the sensory technology, not definitive. Really now. Uncle Sam has decades of experience working to defend itself from any possible means of nuclear attack, and routinely tracks the best technologies and methods that the world's developed nations are able to produce, despite their expenditures of billions trying to escape scrutiny. You really think he's going to get bamboozled by your AK-47 toting ass? Lets have a reality check, and take a look at some other, lesser known fields of sensory technology.

Signal intelligence is an American specialty, and has a long history. Intercepting the other guy's radio traffic can tell you all sorts of stuff, especially if you can break his cryptography, and listen to what he's actually saying. But even if you can't, his radio traffic can tell you things, like where his command staff is based: they spend a lot of time on radios giving orders. Track the signals, and you find him. Signal intelligence took off as an orbital technology in mid-1970, with the Cape Canaveral launch of the Rhylolite Program, which was designed to listen in on electromagnetic traffic the world over. It was a series of satellites with extremely large, extremely sensitive antennae pointed towards earth, listening 24 hours a day for electromagnetic radiation, primarily radio traffic. Even at that early stage, using 1970s technology, the Rhylolite birds were able to pick up the transmissions of Chinese hand-held radios during Chi-Com military exercises in Mongolia. The biggest problem with Rhyolite was that they could hear EVERYTHING, and there weren't enough resources to sift through the vast amounts of data being brought in for bits of information that was relevant. Given the vast volume of electromagnetic waves passing over the surface of the earth, how do you pick out what to listen to, and what can be ignored?

Now consider two things. First, America's ability to monitor traffic and transmission of electromagnetic radiation has improved, probably by several orders of magnitude over the last 35 years. Do some google searches on "very large array," "aperture synthesis," and "long baseline interferometry." Keeping those technological tidbits in mind, imagine America's ability - using a constellation of listening satellites working in concert - to listen to and locate anything on the face of the earth which is emitting any sort of measurable radiation. Even using widely known technology you can look up on wikipedia (and ignoring the cool stuff that hasn't yet reached the public eye) America is theoretically able to listen for electromagnetic signals using antenna that are SEVERAL MILES IN DIAMETER. It's not much of a stretch to assume that if ANY OBJECT is broadcasting ANYTHING, ANYWHERE, the United States can find it. If it's emitting, Uncle Sam is hearing it.

Second: consider that your nuke is - by very nature of being nuclear - continually broadcasting radiation on wavelengths that are precisely known to the United States.

If your bunker is deep enough, there is the possibility that Uncle Sam can't hear it broadcasting from where it sits on the table in front of you. The stone and earth over your head might be thick enough to stop all the rays before they reach open sky. But what about when it left the arsenal where it was supposed to be, and rode by plane, train, or automobile, to get where it sits now? Don't kid yourself about their abilities to track it, and - since they saw it arrive - they know where it is, and probably have a pretty good idea who you are, since they keep track of who is using what bunker in your part of the world. There are probably bombers on their way towards you now.

How are you going to move it away from where it sits without them see it, especially given the your fairly short life-expectancy with a rogue nuke in your possession? First, you might be able to shield it in enough lead and nickle for them to not be able to hear it. Probably not, and you don't even know how heavy the shielding needs to be, since the limits of American SIGINT capabilities are highly classified. But to be on the safe side, you probably need to stop every single bit of radiation from reaching air. This can be done. For example, crews of nuclear submarines spend all day around radioactive materials, but get less radiation exposure than people walking on the surface of the earth. The reactors are shielded, and being under water, crew members don't catch the harmful rays being thrown out by the sun. You can shield the emissions of your nuke. But then you have the same problems that non-American nuclear subs have: you have to transport a shielded nuclear source to withing striking distance without anyone noticing. How exactly do you plan to do that? People (reads: Americans and their agents) are going to notice several tons of shielding material being transported away from the site where a nuclear warhead suddenly disappeared from view. They're going to find you, and they're going to kill you.

Next option, and really the last option, it to take the nuke apart, in the hopes that you can break the nuclear components into pieces small enough that they can be shielded to the point where they're not emitting enough rads to be tracked. But then you have another problem: you don't have a nuclear weapon anymore, you have the parts to nuclear weapon. Which parts you have to transport from where they are to the detonation site by different means of transport, where they can then be re-assembled, all under the watchful eyes of people who know what you have, where you're coming from, and probably who you are. You have to move these parts (which are still emitting rads to one degree or another) right under the nose of people who are trying to kill you, and who will go to literally any ends to stop you. You're going to have to use several means of transport, and different routes for different parts. That means that more people are going to know about the operation, and it's that much more likely that someone will either slip up, or sell out to the millions that the Americans would pay either for the heads of you and you pals, or to simply buy the parts from you and your "trusted" minions.

All they have to do is catch one of your attempts at transportation of the components, since if they get any of your materials, you no longer have a critical mass of uranium. They're going to get you.

Once again, I've written myself out, and I'm boring of this subject. Hope fully this has been informative. Don't hesitate with any questions.