Did Israel Use a 'Nuke' On Hizbollah?

Sponge Bob

Israel did swamp south lebanon with 1m cluster bomblets and used white phosphorous in built up areas where there were civilians sheltering.

It could be that the Israelis developed their own bunker buster from material produced by their own uranium enrichment and they were not able to deplete this uranium as well as the yanks ( or any country with a large civil nuclear program) can.

The modern bunker buster was actually invented and assembled and tested in only 28 days in 1990 , its not complex to lash one together, for history see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunker_buster

and Israel could easily have done that but with not very depleted uranium .

secret_squirrel

Sponge Bob wrote:

and Israel could easily have done that but with not very depleted uranium .

And Hezbollah could have been sold some partially depleted or non-weapons grade uranium for use in a dirty bomb.

Or martian space monkeys could have done it with their Atomic Death Ray.

Until more evidence rolls in such speculation on the whos and hows of what happened is pretty pointless tbh.

Sponge Bob

This is getting murkier.

The sunday times yesterday ran an article about Israeli nuclear ( fission not penetrating) bunker busters which have been developed to take out Iranian Nuclear Plants .....theoretically without making too much of a mess as they are underground.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2535177.html

In an attack on Iran, its air force would be expected to use a low-yield nuclear device of 1 kiloton (equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT), loaded on a bunker-buster missile.

Which latter bit would explain why field testing a bunker busting missile could have been quite high on a list of military priorities last summer.

Manic Moran

No murkiness involved here. The article says they're considering the use of a 'conventional' nuke dropped into a hole, as opposed to some bizarre here-to-fore unheard of weapon which happens to use enriched uranium. It does not support the claim that Israel dropped anything quirky in Lebanon.

NTM

Capt'n Midnight

Yes I can seem them improving and stockpilling their nukes.

But no I can't see them being used unless they are being overrun. Just noticed that the most extreme use seems to now be called the Sampson Option rather than the Masada option.

I've no doubt they'd use Fuel air explosives which are like a mini nuke. you could get roughly an order of magnitude more bang out of a FAE then from an "Iron bomb", because you have less Iron encasing it and don't need to chemically bind oxygen in it and because they can be bigger too.

The over pressure could push into a bunker, but the removal of oxygen would kill by asphysation even those in bunkers or trenches.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/fae.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon

In 2003, United States Marines used a thermobaric version of their Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon, called a Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon - Novel Explosion (SMAW-NE), in the Invasion of Iraq. One team of Marines reported that they had destroyed a large one-story masonry type building with one round from 100 yards. [1] The thermobaric explosive used in this weapon, PBXIH-135 or a variant, was developed at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Indian Head Division and had previously been used in BLU-118/B air-dropped bombs against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan in early March, 2002.

that weapon seems to have been developed from an Isreali one so one can only assume they have others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoulder-Launched_Multipurpose_Assault_Weapon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-300

IIRC the isrealis have an implosion bomb too that removes some of the air ( metal burns, metal oxide power isn't a gas ) and causes buildings to implode, not sure if uranium would do this but that sort of bomb would not be fun if you were in bunker.

Manic Moran

Thermobarics aren't that new: The Russians are enthusiastic users.

NTM

Sponge Bob

Manic Moran wrote:

The article says they're considering the use of a 'conventional' nuke dropped into a hole, as opposed to some bizarre here-to-fore unheard of weapon which happens to use enriched uranium.

I read the article before I linked it. How exactly do they make this 70ft deep hole then ??? Would a wide(ish) hole not be better than a narrow one seeeing as you have flown 1000 miles to make it.

Manic Moran

GBU-28 or equivalent seems to be the best option.

NTM

Victor

Manic Moran wrote:

Thermobarics aren't that new: The Russians are enthusiastic users.

So were Dublin Gas.