All the media talking about China I watch is not US related.
General military questions thread
- Thread starter Buba
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You don't seem to consider the possibility of hitting the dam with a cruise missile, from the back side. Use the water mass to amplify the blasts, the same way sappers use water tampers to create shaped charges.
There are sub-launched cruise missiles, so making a cruise missile water proof (even if it's not long-term water-proofing) could be enough to hit the dam. More likely it's take two or three hits on the backside to cause the dam to breach.
Or just sneak a few stealth drones that can also submerge into the dam, and it could have the same effect.
paulobrito
Well-known member
In WWII the Dam Buster Squadron needs bombs of 4100kg (with 3400kg of explosive) each to obtain the desired effect. You don't have cruise missiles - other than the massive soviet / Russian anti-ship ones - of that size/warhead. Note, not even these have such massive warhead.
Buba
A total creep
The demolition charges will be placed by ninjas infiltrating the Three Gorges dams complex using skills acquired and honed at the Shaolin Temple. The exact placement of explosives will be determined by geomancy and according to Feng-Shui principles. The operatives will leave a note saying "all your dams are belong to us".
It is known.
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You have a story idea here and need to run towards it
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
AGM-86 carries 1360 kg explosives. Dam Busters mission used multiple bouncing bombs with 3400 kg of explosives to bring down two much smaller dams. You need much larger cruise missiles, than those that are in use today if you want to bring Three Gorges Dam down.
Or you send actyvist stating that China do not like blacks/which,according to what i read,is partially true - african goverment take china money and specialists,but local people hate them/
Then wrote BLM on dam and it fall from shame over China racists.
paulobrito
Well-known member
I really need access to the wine/alcohol stock of some of the posters on the site. They really have top-grade beverages.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Home brewed schnapps, aged in oak barrel, 42% alcohol in my case.
paulobrito
Well-known member
Nice, want some. Just a question - the 42% alcohol - is the schnapps, or you?
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
I don't think even people in Styria can reach 42% of alcohol in their blood, despite trying their best.
Morphic Tide
Well-known member
There's a part of the question you're completely passing up of the per-kilogram yield. We're talking over half a century of development, here, we have some ludicrously more energetic materials. Now, whether we have one with nearly triple the yield that's stable enough for a cruise missile is up in the air since the militaries of the world are very touchy about how strong their best stuff is, but then I'd be surprised if there wasn't a thermobaric 10+ kiloton warhead sitting in somebody's basement.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
There wasn't much improvement in the yield of conventional explosives, the biggest improvement modern explosives have over WWII RDX is improved stability. Thermobarics on the other hand don't work well under water (if you are trying to burst dam with underwater explosion) or against concrete structures.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
If you were particularly crazy you could modify a cruise missile to drop a torpedo instead of say some submunitions. A few of those hitting the backside of the dam especially in the same area would do the trick
paulobrito
Well-known member
N ope - not enough whoomp by a wide margin. A dam, particularly one of that size, is not a ship.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Yeah, the US doesn't need special tricks to destroy a dam. As @PsihoKekec has pointed out, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator is specifically designed for this kind of task and will do fine. This does mean no cruise missiles, stealth bombers would have to be used to deliver them instead, but MoPs are both available and can do the job.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
The double flash and the fallout
Bassoe
Well-known member
Everyone's missing the point. The issue isn't 'would destroying the dam cripple the PRC, doing enough damage to cause it to lose stability/the Mandate of Heaven/what Liu Cixin described as 'the foundation of human civilization is to have things to eat'. Nor is it 'could the dam be destroyed'. It almost certainly would and there are almost certainly multiple plans of varying degrees of practicality and sanity in folders in the pentagon or some technothriller writer's drafts for how it could. Rather, the point is that the PRC would launch a retaliation strike and given that they've got nuclear ICBMs and very likely software backdoor killswitches in all our civilian infrastructure, they could also destroy us as well before they collapsed. This leaves the possibility of false-flagging the dam's destruction as a natural disaster or some kind of jihadist attacker upset by the uighur genocide for use of a standard Alphabet Agency proxy, but that doesn't take into account the possibility that the PRC might launch a nuclear retaliation strike anyway, given that they were already losing and couldn't prove it wasn't some CIA scheme, or that given their track record over the past few decades, I have minimal confidence that the Alphabet Agencies could pull it off at all and none that they could successfully hide their presence.