Customer Reviews

The Bomb: A New History

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Stephen Younger's book on the bomb is a very good primer on nuclear weapons, but somewhat limited by its length. Mr. Younger who is a veteran weapons designer and defense official begins with a succinct history of nuclear weapons and then goes on to review the major weapons and delivery systems in the United States and other countries. He talks about the deterrence triad in the United States; bombers, ballistic missiles and especially submarine-based nuclear missiles that can pack the biggest punch most efficiently. Also included are short discussions of developing and already developed arsenals in other countries including Russia, China, Southeast Asia, France and Britain. Younger writes about the modern weaponization of Russia which is in progress and discusses the status of development in other countries. The discussion also includes a general overview of nuclear weapons effects including thermal, blast, radiation and electromagnetic effects and a chapter on `soft' and `hard' targets and their targeting. Younger contends that a weapon of about 10kT yield would be sufficient to destroy or seriously damage most major cities and installations in the world, except extremely hardened underground facilities. Compare this with the W series of warheads in the US arsenal, many of which pack an explosive force equivalent to several hundred kilotons of TNT.

Younger also discusses nuclear proliferation and the problems inherent in terrorists constructing a bomb. His list of measures for combating such terrorism include a discussion of not just technical measures like missile defense and more efficient border security, but an insightful paragraph on the valuable role of intelligence and especially human intelligence in thwarting terrorists' attempts to secure a weapon or material in the first place. He also narrates the efforts expended by the Cooperative Threat Reduction Initiative in securing nuclear weapons and reactors in the former Soviet Union. These efforts also involve the dismantling of conventional weapons. While people constantly warn that terrorists might end up constructing a crude nuclear device and while there is some merit in this suggestion, it's not as easy as it sounds. As Younger says, the devil is in the details, and while much of the general information on nuclear weapons is publicly available, it is far from trivial for any terrorist outfit to actually surmount the many intricate scientific and engineering problems encountered in actual weapons construction. The construction of a plutonium implosion weapon is especially daunting given the excessively exacting conditions that the weapon's core and outer explosives have to satisfy. A more detailed discussion of dirty bombs is missing from this narrative. Also, while Younger's analysis of anti-nuclear weapons measures is clear, what is missing is a crucial discussion of countermeasures that can be easily developed against missile defense. These countermeasures have been convincingly demonstrated time and time again to be able to thwart even sophisticated missile defenses. In addition, new missiles such as the Russian SS 27 have been apparently designed to manuever and baffle such defenses.

One of the most informative chapters in the book talks about replacing nuclear weapons with conventional weapons. With better targeting and accuracy, the need for megaton weapons is virtually non-existent. Pinpoint targeting can take out the most crucial command and control centers for nuclear weapons without causing high numbers of casualties. Many new conventional weapons can do the tasks previously reserved for nuclear weapons and and thus lower the spectre of the nuclear threat. In fact, some tasks like hitting biological weapons facilities can be safely accomplished only with conventional weapons, since nuclear weapons might well disperse dangerous biological or chemical material into the surroundings. Even hardened bunkers can be destroyed by especially hardened warheads. In addition, replacing nuclear weapons by conventional weapons can go a long way in nuclear disarmament.

Further on, Younger has a valuable analysis of the security of the US nuclear arsenal. This analysis made me realise that the problem is more complicated than it seems at first sight. The issue is simple. The US has declared a moratorium on nuclear testing in 1992. Congress cut funding for new nuclear weapons research. However, many of the weapons in the US arsenal have extended their shelf lives and it's not certain whether they would work as designed, an ability that is crucial for deterrence. Doubts have especially been raised about the plutonium `pits' at the center of implosion weapons. Computer simulations can aid in such predictions, but the only sure criterion for judging the workability of a design would be a test, an act that would have deep repurcussions for non-proliferation. In addition, many of the production and manufacturing units that built these weapons have been shut down since 1992. Perhaps most importantly, talented personnel who were competent in nuclear weapons design are gradually fading away with very few new recruits to replace them. Sometimes it is easy to forget that even if they are terribly destructive, nuclear weapons provide an immense and exciting scientific and engineering challenge for technical minds. To partly counter this, the US government has poured billions of dollars into the three national laboratories that still work on nuclear weapons- Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia. Massive basic science facilities have been developed at these three laboratories to retain personnel and attract new blood. Nonetheless, nobody really knows whether the nation would be able to gear up for producing new weapons if it becomes necessary, and nobody has been really able to say when and why it would become necessary in the first place. The problem is quite a pressing one and the solution is not clear.

Finally, Younger talks about the future of nuclear weapons. He examines the three positions that have been taken on nuclear weapons. The abolitionist position was recently made popular by a panel of four non-partisan experienced political leaders (Nunn, Perry, Kissinger and Schultz). While this position may be tenable in principle, in practice it would need constant and complete verification which may be difficult. Then there are the minimalist and moderate positions. Younger himself adopts the moderate position which calls for about 1000-2000 relatively low yield non-strategic weapons on missiles and submarines. It is not easy to decide what number is efficient for deterrence, partly because deterrence dictates that analyses of this number should not be publicly disclosed in the first place! But whatever the number, Younger does not see nuclear weapons disappearing from the face of the earth anytime soon. As he concludes in this primer, hopefully the world can enter a state of security in which rogue states don't have weapons, bombs and material are secured, and deterrence works as planned. While this succinct primer does not provide the answer to whether such a state will actually be achieved, it certainly provides a slim and good introduction to all basic nuclear issues to the layman that should make him or her think and decide for themselves.

What a disappointment! This was written by a high level bureaucrat based on the newspaper headlines of the last 30 years. The subtitle is "A New History", but it's a lie. The letdown starts at the Author's Note that "security regulations prohibit me from commenting on anything". The book is a rehash of common knowledge of world politics. The gun design picture on page 23 was done by a third grader. Anyone who has been alive the last twenty years will have no use for this book. This is a waste of time and money.

This book gives no new information to anyone minimally interested in nuclear weapons and policies...except for some stories from the author's life. Younger blindly trusts every gossip told him by his Russian counterparts including rubbish like "either you [a college graduate] go to work for nuclear labs and you will be executed" -- after graduation everyone in the USSR was simply sent to work without any choice or discussions, for a minimum of three years. This self-promoting book is simply a waste of time and money.

Humbug. The Introduction offered much, but the text was a let down. Younger trades on his 'name' or experience. But, hobbled by the 'neither confirm nor deny' caveat this book adds little to the body of knowledge already in the public domain and is infinitely less satisfying that work by others, for example, Rhodes and Hansen. The final two chapters on maintaining nuclear forces and their relevance in the 21st century gives the book a final, small lift.

If you are looking for the nuclear policy analysis, that's the book! If you are looking for principles of nuclear weapons making and/or physics, skip it, go to Richard Rhodes or others!

I feel ambivalent about this book. First, the good points.

In a concise 220 pages (and a complete index), Younger, an eminently qualified commentator on issues of nuclear weapons, presents a somewhat technical overview and historical summary of nuclear warfare. He makes many salient points.

For instance, this is one of the few nuclear histories that notes that Kennedy's "victory" over Khruschev in the Cuban crisis was actually a deal to trade the Cuban-deployed missiles for US Jupiter missiles in Turkey targetted on the USSR. In the popular American imagination (perpetuated by Kennedy after the fact), the self-congratulatory conclusion is that Kennedy forced Khruschev to unilaterally withdraw. Likewise, that Khruschev's installation of the Cuban missiles in the first place was a unilateral provocation. I was glad to see Younger correct these two misconceptions. (I recommend the 4-page summary of the Missile Crisis presented by Niall Ferguson in the epilogue to The War of the World which verifies this interpretation, and adds a few juicy details besides.)

Younger addresses a broad spectrum of nuclear issues including delivery vehicles, missile defense, arms control, the nuclear laboratories (in which he was a principal), testing, stockpile stewardship, and nuclear international politics.

Unfortunately, the book is excessively concise for its subject area. Its breadth of coverage is the book's Achilles Heel. Younger takes space to present only the barest of detail, and these topics are far too complex and important to be adequately addressed in the space available.

For example, when discussing the controversial topic of missile defense (pages 166-172), he carefully omits the existence of penetration aids -- decoys, chaff, and jammers -- that can stultify a midcourse-phase missile defense against a sophisticated attacker. He claims that "an imperfect system might be worth the investment" and it "might discourage them from developing nuclear weapons in the first place". However, the full menu of facts omitted suggests quite the opposite, the main such fact being that dissimulation decoys (or RV anti-simulation) make a midcourse defense entirely futile (see the Federation of American Scientists website for more).

Another of the book's conceits is that one need never worry about terrorist nuclear bombs. Between pages 144-146 he belabors his point that "nuclear weapons development still requires the resources of a nation-state. To think that a terrorist group...could accomplish such a feat is far-fetched at best." The reader would be well advised to consult the book The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor by McPhee, in which the concerns of renowned nuclear expert Ted Taylor in regards to the possibility of terrorist nukes stand in contradistinction.

To make the matter worse, the diagram of a gun-assembled device on page 23 is totally ludicrous. Younger presents a high-school-textbook-like drawing of a "slug of uranium fired at another in an artillery barrel". On page 144 he states that this is difficult to make work, since propellant gases can easily "leak around" the bullet and impede full assembly. Well, the problem here is that this is NOT how gun-assembled devices are constructed, and Younger certainly knows that this is the case. This diagram can only be a blatant attempt at deliberate disinformation.

I suggest the reader consult the FAQs at Carey Sublette's High Energy Weapons Archive. The true construction of a gun-assembled nuke is as follows: One of the subcritical masses is actually a hollow cylindrical ring of fissile uranium (the subcritical target) mounted AROUND the outside of one end of the barrel -- not IN the barrel as pictured. When the subcritical uranium bullet travels fully to the opposite end of the barrel, it mates with the hollow target ring to form a supercritical mass in the final form of a solid squat cylinder. Therefore it is simply impossible for any leaking propellant gas to come between the two subcritical masses, as Younger purports.

Yet another irksome feature of this book is its pro-Zionist slant as regards Israel's known nuclear arsenal. On page 96 Younger states only that Israel "is widely believed to have some capability". This is disingenuous. For a more balanced perspective on this I recommend the various books about the revelations of one Mordechai Vanunu (the one I have is Triple Cross: Israel the Atomic Bomb and the Man Who Spilled the Secrets). Additionally, there are reports of joint Israeli-South African nuclear tests having taken place in the Indian Ocean (the 1979 Vela Incident), also neglected in the book.

On page 135 Younger states "Israel is surrounded by Arab states bent on its elimination, countries with chemical warheads and ballistic missiles..." as if this is a justification for the possession of nuclear bombs. While this is/was true of the US/USSR relationship, these nations were and are committed to nuclear arms control and disarmament, which is most certainly untrue of the Zionist regime, which refuses even today to commit to the NPT, let alone any disarmament pact. As regards possession of 'ballistic missiles', Younger slyly sidesteps the fact that Israel has long possessed its Jericho ICBM and refuses also to submit to the strictures of the Missile Technology Control Regime. Furthermore, he fails to mention Israeli possession of its nuclear-armed Gabriel cruise missiles deployed on its German-supplied submarines that prowl the Arabian Sea.

I must agree that in a book of this short length (perhaps imposed by the publisher) an author cannot enumerate every fact that bears on every topic. However, on these topics of important and controversial nature, an author should avoid making statements in the first place if he is unable or unwilling to devote the necessary space to do those topics justice.

Therefore, my ambivalence concerning this book. It makes many salient points and is a brave attempt to present the nuclear dilemma to a non-expert audience, but I'm afraid it fails to adequately do justice to the subject because of its excessive brevity and subtle ideological slant.

This book is more about Younger than the history of the Bomb. There are far better and more accurate works on the same subject.

Science cat once again does a great synopsis of this book.

My point in this critique is to modify my position which I took in my critque of the book Twilight of the Bombs. There I said we should have only 250 nuclear warheads for our protection and should strive to eliminate them as well when other nations would agree to follow suit.

Here I agree with the author, Mr. Younger, given the mindset of world leaders and military officers, it will be unlikely for mankind to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the forseeable future. But I still think we can reduce the number of warheads to about 2,000 as Mr. Younger states is his preferred "moderate" position on that issue. I also agree we should resume underground testing of nuclear warheads and build and replace new ones for our current and future anticipated military needs. We cannot depend upon the reliability of our old nukes given their age and their deteriorating components.

terry

I learned more about nuclear weapons reading these 220 pages than I did as a member of the U.S. national security community for 25 years. Younger lucidly lays out the history of nuclear weapons, the technological issues involved in maintaining them and in verifying arms control agreements, and describes the rationale behind such strategies as MAD and counter-value plans. I originally checked this book out of my local library, but after reading it I bought it from Amazon because it is worth having a copy on hand for reference use.

First let me preface my review by stating I am not an engineer... and I do not have any background in physics... and because of my lack of education in the aforementioned subjects... I was a little worried about being able to understand the subject matter in this book. The author does a commendable job on keeping at least seventy-five-per-cent of this very important and informative book... totally understandable by a layman... like myself. And please believe me... this book covers an extremely important subject. The entire history of the atomic bomb is covered in these pages... from its development in the famed "Manhattan Project"... Russia's atomic program... the Cold War... and an entire overview of the "chess-game-like" evolution of the world's atomic balance of power.

When the reader is educated in the "true" destructive power of atomic bombs... it's very hard for me... as a reviewer... not to use terms like "I WAS BLOWN AWAY"... because that's the true reaction that came out of me... when the author clinically... and precisely... defined the measurable force of these atomic weapons. There was absolutely no attempt on my part... to create a pun... the subject matter is too dire. The first bombs were measured in kilotons. "A kiloton of yield is the equivalent of one-thousand-TONS of TNT, a conventional explosive. To put that in perspective, one-thousand-tons of TNT would be a stack of explosives the size of a small house. A megaton is equal to ONE-MILLION-TONS-OF TNT equivalent, more explosive power than was used in most wars." A further example is to explain that "the biggest piece of conventional weaponry - the Massive Ordnance Air Bomb- has "only" about ten tons of explosive energy. A "small" nuclear explosive with a yield of ten kilotons is thus ONE-THOUSAND-TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN THE LARGEST CONVENTIONAL BOMB.

In the mid 1950's Khrushchev wanted the Russians to test a one-hundred-megaton bomb... which was much larger than anything the Americans had achieved. He was warned by an aide "that it would cause lasting global environmental damage from radioactive fallout." Khrushchev relented and tested a sixty-megaton bomb... "AND THE BOMB WAS SO POWERFUL THAT IT BLEW THE TOP OFF THE **ATMOSPHERE**!" I would like to share one more example of the utter destructive power of nuclear weapons... before I discuss what the rest of book is about. There is a "triad" of nuclear attack capabilities: missiles from the ground... from bombers in the sky... and from nuclear submarines beneath the sea. And I believe describing the "might" of "one" American nuclear submarine will bewilder (aka "blow you away") you... "Each submarine carries twenty-four Trident D5 missiles, giving *A SINGLE SUBMARINE THE ABILITY TO PROJECT AN EXPLOSIVE FORCE GREATER THAN ALL THE WEAPONS USED IN ALL THE WARS OF HISTORY - THEY ARE THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE WEAPONS SYSTEMS EVER CREATED BY HUMANKIND."

Woooo! Once you have a true understanding of the capability available... to literally end the human race... the author then starts describing all the disarmament treaties... the non-proliferation agreements... the different proposals... to either have enough nuclear weapons to end the world... or just enough weapons to leave a few people behind... how many weapons are enough to scare people enough not to attack... how many weapons are too much... because... the enemy... DOESN'T BELIEVE AMERICA WOULD USE THEM...

And then there's the problem of the Test Ban Treaty... and in 1992 President George H. W. Bush "announced a moratorium on further nuclear tests by the United States, a temporary measure that has been honored ever since. The last U.S. nuclear detonation occurred on September 23, 1992." That sounds good... but now our nuclear weapons are getting so old... we can't tell if they'll still work... because we can't test them. What happens if we need them and they don't work? All the computer simulations in the world can be run... but as one nuclear scientist said: "I know of no way to be SURE that a calculation produces an exact rendition of what happens in nature." This book will make you sit up straight in your chair... when you understand the unleashed-deadly-power all around you... it will also make you scratch your head... as you try to comprehend... all the logical... and illogical... executed... and potential... real life chess moves... and... lastly...

"NUCLEAR WEAPONS CANNOT BE UNINVENTED. THEIR PERMANENCE CHALLENGES US TO HANDLE THEM IN A WAY THAT MAXIMIZES THEIR DETERRENT VALUE WHILE MINIMIZING THE PROBABILITY THAT THEY WILL EVER BE USED."