{"id":71707,"date":"2017-08-04T14:02:22","date_gmt":"2017-08-04T21:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/us-military-eyes-new-mini-nukes-for-21st-century-deterrence"},"modified":"2017-08-04T14:02:22","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T21:02:22","slug":"us-military-eyes-new-mini-nukes-for-21st-century-deterrence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/us-military-eyes-new-mini-nukes-for-21st-century-deterrence","title":{"rendered":"US Military Eyes New Mini-Nukes for 21st-Century Deterrence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/us-military-eyes-new-mini-nukes-for-21st-century-deterrence.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Joint Chiefs\u2019 vice chair says smaller-yield weapons are needed to deter the use of same.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The future of nuclear weapons might not <\/strong>be huge and mega destructive but smaller, tactical, and frighteningly, more common. The U.S. Air Force is investigating more options for \u201cvariable yield\u201d bombs \u2014 nukes that can be dialed down to blow up an area as small as a neighborhood, or dialed up for a much larger punch.<\/p>\n<p>The Air Force currently has gravity bombs that either have or can be set to low yields: less than 20 kilotons. Such a bomb dropped in the center of Washington, D.C., wouldn\u2019t even directly affect Georgetown or Foggy Bottom. But a Minuteman III missile tipped with a 300-kiloton warhead would destroy downtown Washington and cause third-degree burns into Virginia and Maryland.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.defenseone.com\/technology\/2017\/08\/us-military-eyes-new-mini-nukes-21st-century-deterrence\/139997\/?oref=DefenseOneFB&utm_content=buffer85881&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer\">http:\/\/www.defenseone.com\/technology\/2017\/08\/us-military-eye...ign=buffer<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Joint Chiefs\u2019 vice chair says smaller-yield weapons are needed to deter the use of same. The future of nuclear weapons might not be huge and mega destructive but smaller, tactical, and frighteningly, more common. The U.S. Air Force is investigating more options for \u201cvariable yield\u201d bombs \u2014 nukes that can be dialed down to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":440,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/440"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}