Obama administration releases 1987 assessment of Israel nuclear program

[Blademaster]

One has to wonder where they learned it. Also, if you were head of Israel what would you do, fight on your own turf without the strategic depth?

What gives Israelis the confidence to fight far from its shores and land knowing that there are bigger boys than them? What gives Israel the confidence to strike Iran without fearing retaliation? If Iran launches missiles against Israel, can Israel tell Iran that there won't be a tomorrow?

See this Nuclear weapons and Israel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and this Nuclear weapons and Israel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia to see what I am talking about.

[Officer of Engineers]

Ok, first of all, Israel never threatened anyone with nuclear weapons. It is their conventional superiority that they were touting and the two times, they were comptemplating of using them, the Soviets scared them down real fast with deployments of SSBNs.

[gunnut]

You said fission bombs were 30s and 40s technology. yes it is but they were huge and big and could not be fitted onto missiles, not with the g-forces and heat stresses that they will experience.

No no no, fission can be very small and modern. What you're thinking is a gun-type bomb. That's old technology and big, and doesn't really need to be tested.

Implosion bomb is more sophisticated. One would like to test it before using it. It can be big and it can be small. Davy Crocket used a W54 warhead, which was a fission device and quite small (23kg).

I recall you telling me that you need nuclear testing to validate the warhead design otherwise you got no confidence. The current poster and news articles indicate the high degree of confidence that Israeli authorities have in their nuke warheads. So what gives?

Oh yes, we have done our tests. Thousands of them. We know what we are doing. That's why we were eager to sign CTBT. We don't want others to figure out what we did.

[Parihaka]

I will admit I had always simply assumed that Israel had gleaned a lot of the US's early data through spying, without any collusion on the part of the US govt. There's nothing like a holocaust to make perfectly patriotic citizens nevertheless pass on data to their ethnic religious group after such an occasion.

[citanon]

I will admit I had always simply assumed that Israel had gleaned a lot of the US's early data through spying, without any collusion on the part of the US govt. There's nothing like a holocaust to make perfectly patriotic citizens nevertheless pass on data to their ethnic religious group after such an occasion.

Looks like they didn't send fish but fishing poles were, possibly, on fire sale.

[Officer of Engineers]

I will admit I had always simply assumed that Israel had gleaned a lot of the US's early data through spying, without any collusion on the part of the US govt. There's nothing like a holocaust to make perfectly patriotic citizens nevertheless pass on data to their ethnic religious group after such an occasion.

The only thing we can confirm is that gun type nukes work1

[Blademaster]

The only thing we can confirm is that gun type nukes work1

Why is that?

[Officer of Engineers]

Gun-type fission weapon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's guarranteed to work. Only, you don't know just how much a bang you get from it. Could be very, very large or very, very small.

[Gun Grape]

What gives Israelis the confidence to fight far from its shores and land knowing that there are bigger boys than them? What gives Israel the confidence to strike Iran without fearing retaliation? If Iran launches missiles against Israel, can Israel tell Iran that there won't be a tomorrow?

The backing of the United States

[Tin Man]

Somebody really wanted Israel to have Nuclear weapons, including the British and the French.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ht/4789832.stm