Mole-cruiser planned to attack Iranian nuke bunkers The US military is looking for help in building a robotic subterranean mole-craft, intended to deliver burrowing kamikaze strikes against underground bunker complexes and suchlike. Poster art for the 70s film of At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs This is a bloody strange nuke bunker. This news comes to us courtesy …
All conventional systems have big power systems have big drive systems to power them. making the whole lot self contained is unlikely to be trivial.
However in the 1960s & 70s one of the US National laboratories (IIRC Livermore or Sandia) proposed the subterren to melt its way through the earth, providing a smooth self supporting tnnel ideal for underground transportation systems.
However it did need either a nuclear reactor or a *very* big cable to power it.
If you read a little futher down you'll see they need a huge multi-purpose, container-based transporter with short take-off and vertical landing capabilities. Green paint and large number two on the side is optional.
Eyes are flashing in my photo- time to get my coat. FAB!
...don't mix well.
The only way to kill the Iranian Nuclear program is to have a full sea-blockade because that would kill their economy and bring them at the bargaining table with serious intent to negotiate.
But it would also drive up oil prices for heavy SUVs, so it will never happen....
If they used a small nuke, they could then use the explosion to "prove" the Iranians (or whoever) were building a bomb there. No radar tracks, no evidence of a bomb on the surface, and nobody could dig there for hundreds of years to recover any nuclear material. Looks like their new bomb wasn't quite as good as they thought. Added advantage, it would make your target wonder if the tech they bought isn't fundamentally flawed, so they're less likely to try again elsewhere.
How many weeks will it take to get to the target? Surely they'll hear it coming with plenty of time to clear the area ... Yes, I know, the mole will be able to destroy any gear too massive to be removed, but now they've built it once, no doubt rebuilding it won't take long. And at what cost to both sides?
Overall, it seems counterproductive ... but then war usually^Walways is.
Have you all forgotten the tunnelling Twister missile used by Judge Dredd in The Apocalypse War (Part 5) to take the war to the nasty East Meg? Dredd took the warhead out so he could sneak a team of Judges into the East Meg's bunkers and launch the East Meg's own missiles against them.
/Yeah, I've got an anorak, so what?
".....we are desparate for your massive 1.7 GH !!" Well, if you were reliant on Rock for your plans then you probably are desperate for a real enterprise CPU like Tukzilla.
How sad that you have to bring your petty vendetta into a forum which has nothing to do with CPUs. I mean, it's a pretty sad thread with the amount of geek Sci-Fi worship going on, but at least that's funny, self-deprecating geek stuff, whereas you're obviously just bitter. I suggest you take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if your Sunshiner life really is so empty that you have to drag it into every discussion.
I suggest a lot more time spent either getting out and meeting real people (no, Second Life "people" don't count), or at least more time watching the Sci-Fi Channel. The former would probably be better for you but probably a big shock to your system, but at least the latter would allow you to join discussions on these forums in an equally geeky, humourous and not quite so bitter fashion.
Acronym sorted, now all I need is a few millions lobbed my way to research using ley lines as power sources. But nothing may come of that, including receipts. Got accurate delivery sorted, not sure about 'soft landing'. Would an Airbus A380 landing you can walk away from count?
rpjs- I remember that movie, anyone know what it was called?
The film was called Battle Beneath The Earth http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061387/.
"In the opening scene in the police car the back projection is shown flipped so that all the store names read backwards. This is probably because the scenes were shot in Britain, who drive on the left, but set in the USA, who drive on the right."
PH because she knows all about things that bury themselves into tunnels.
... with biomemetic badger ears for guidance and dragging a bunker-buster would suffice.
I can see the movie now. Run Silent Run Deep II - Bunker-dwelling beef-cake nuc-boffin types w/obligatory sex-pot assistants (this isn't another macho sewer-pipe flick), hunched against the walls, all sweaty for lack of ventilation - secured for silence, listening to the sound of claws - getting louder and louder, closer and closer... Oh, the suspense, the horror, the lusty last-chance orgy, the climax ooOOoo.
I guess everyone is forgetting about the mole used in The Matrix III to penetrate "Zion." Of course, such a bunker-buster will probably be just as obvious and take just as long to bust through. Even using conventional drilling, it takes several hours to reach any reasonable depth. Post a requirement for human conveyance and they might as well hope for the mole machine from Core.
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