Talk:Chevaline

Revisions dated 10 July 2006

I failed to sign off with my name as is my usual custom, with the first revision of this date.

Apologies.

Esp since I dislike it when other contributors do not have the self-confidence to put their name to their work.

Further revisions can be expected; these two are in the nature of a holding operation to correct outdated material and sources. Much v.inaccurate hot air has been emitted about Chevaline. A significant contribution to global warming methinks. Brian.Burnell 19:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Article tags

The proper place to question points in the article is here. To merely place a tag in the article without a proper fuller explanation of your POV is disrespectful of the author to put it at its mildest.

The tags asks for a citation. He will find it in the external references listed, both in the Proceedings of the Royal Aeronautical Society ISBN 1-85768-109-6 and in the papers too numerous to list that are in the public domain at the Public Record Office, and in the peer-reviewed pages of the Journal of BROHP. He will also find in media archives references to Comrade Khuschev's threats to obliterate the UK that "Unsinkable US aircraft carrier moored in the Atlantic" made at the time of the Suez crisis of '56. But to find them Max rspct would need to do some work. It is not the job of other authors to do his research for him.

I'm not surprised that on Max rspct's user page he claims to be thinking about leaving Wikipedia because of the harrassment (he claims) to have been recieving. And where is the cited evidence from him that he has indeed been harrassed? And if there was any harrassment was it provoked by him?

This is not the place for silly and sad games by disaffected left-wingers who simply cannot or will not accept that old comrades in the Soviet Union are no more, and that they have lost the arguments for Communism. And furthermore, those who lack the confidence in the veracity of their case not uncommonly use a peudonym. Conversely, those who are confident of their work sign off their work with their real name. Other readers will make their own judgements as to the relative merits of attributable work and that which is anonymous. Brian.Burnell 13:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Again - STOP MAKING PERSONAL ATTACKS. My political persuasions should NOT be at issue here brian! --maxrspct in the mud 16:32, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

You just don't get it do you? You couldn't be bothered to check cited sources yourself and expected others to do it for you while vandalising their work. And now you have the brass cheek to paint yourself as a victim. How sad. How lacking in respect for others.

Those who contribute original work are the ones who add value to Wikipedia and they are usually the ones who are most respected by other contributors. Conversely, while naming no names, and pointing no fingers, those who vandalise earn no respect. As for playing silly party political games, I've been there, done that, got the Che Guervara Tee-shirt, worn it out several times from the anti-Vietnam war demos in London to date; but have moved on, and now find it boring, boring, boring, so passe, and a waste of my time. This correspondence is now closed. Brian.Burnell 19:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Just look what you are writing. Another political rant - it's YOU who has taken up political games not me. I'm sorry if you are in physical pain mate.. there's just no need to take it out on me. --maxrspct in the mud 19:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

This correspondence is now closed. Brian.Burnell 21:51, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Revert POV to non-POV

The reverted text was sourced as non-POV from Wiki articles at Suez Crisis and Krushchev. Precise quotes follow.

• From Krushchev "We will bury you." a recorded statement by Nikita Khrushchev at a Moscow event dated Nov 1956 at the height of the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Uprising.
• From Suez Crisis .... "after the Soviet Union threatened to intervene ....and launch attacks by all types of modern weapons of destruction on London and Paris."

Given that Wikipedia itself in other non-POV articles uses the term "threatened" in this context it seems appropriate to use it here too.

In a free society there will of course be dissenters, and I defend their absolute right to dissent and hold and promote a minority POV. But it is just that, ... a POV, and while suitable for many publications, not an encyclopaedia with the policies that Wiki has adopted. Brian.Burnell 15:39, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

My reply: A - Krushchev phrase is now considered to be refering to economics and productive competition between east and west. See We_will_bury_you for an overview. B - the Suez quote is unsourced .. i may actually take it out or at least tag it in the Suez article. C - you cannot self-reference wikipedia... u must pull up the SOURCE. Also.. cold war politicians speculating on the likelihood or outcome of a conflict are not considered threats unless made explicit as a threat to the opposing party. Bytheway.. if you want me to pull up a list of direct, explicit threats made by USA against USSR, China and Cuba.. I would be more than happy. --maxrspct in the mud 18:43, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Technical Solutions

Changes made here were suggested by Dr Richard Moore, who advises that the US did not physically make the Antelope system engineering data available to the British. Rather that the British (who knew of the US research) adopted the concept and developed the concept from their own scientific resources. I think I've understood that correctly. Brian.Burnell 08:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

How strange

How strange to see a person of Max rspct's self-confessed beliefs (see User page) defending the Tory administration of Ted Heath. The one of the poor language skills, the miners strike, the three-day week. And Max rspct says the phase was ridicule of a Labour administration! Perhaps I'm missing something here. But what strange bedfellows Heath and Max would make. The allegation of other POV is unfounded. There are numerous factual accounts of this occurance. One was cited, and one is enough. Brian.Burnell 16:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Primary hardening issues

So what exactly is the issue with the fission primaries? Or to put that another way, what exactly was an ABM warhead trying to do in an exoatmospheric engagement? I know the primary effect in these cases is a huge amount of X-Rays, which I thought simply attacked the target warhead through X-Ray induced heating (to the point of it being explosive). However there were several mentions in the article that seem to suggest this was not the case, that the target was the primary within the warhead. Anyone know the physics here? Maury 11:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

PRO declassified papers and the papers published at the 2004 RAe Soc symposium are explicit in identiying the boosted fission primary (named Jennie) as being the vulnerable part of the warhead. It was replaced with a new 'trigger device' named Harriet. The best info we have is that Harriet incorporated features of the U.S. W-58 warhead, said to be more resistant to exo-atmo nuclear detonations. The fusion element was retained 'as was'. Someone with a better understanding of the physics might offer a partial answer, but without access to detailed design data of the vulnerable Jennie primary that is unlikely. We will never get access to data of that kind, and may never know the answer to your question. Brian.Burnell 14:19, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Well if the upgraded system left the secondary as-is, that really does seem to imply that the x-rays don't do a sort of physical attack on the warhead, but something more subtle. I can't really imagine what that might be, however. Assuming the x-rays can't get into the casing, which I would suspect is pretty much a farraday cage at x-ray freqs, then the only thing off the top of my head is sudden acceleration of the warhead as a whole due to ablation on the side where the ABM went off. I guess with enough acceleration this could upset the physical geometry of the primary, but that seems like a WHOLE LOT of x-rays! Maury 19:28, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

A whole lot of X-Rays definitely. ABM warheads have always been optimised for X-Ray and neutron production. Blast is of no consequence in exo-atmo, and thermal heating only marginally useful. One reason stated for the excessive size of the air-dropped Blue Danube was that they feared that the bomb would be targetted, rather than the bomber, so it contained steel armour plate to protect the implosion sphere from fighters, and a whole lot of other measures to 'harden' the primitive radar fusing, firing circuits and electronics. R Aero Soc papers included a section on ABM lethality, said to be up to 50 MILES in some conditions from a Galosh warhead estimated at 3 to 5MT. R.Aero Soc papers state that Intelligence assessment was that a single well-placed Galosh burst could destroy all three RVs/warheads of a single original Polaris A3T, with the fission primary the most vulnerable part, but I'm not sufficiently competent to say why that was so, and its pretty certain that Non-Proliferation Treaty committments will ever permit the UK govt offering an explanation. Even if they wanted to. It would be too useful to aspirant states. That analysis is from Prof John Simpson at Southampton Univ Mountbatten Centre for International Studies. Full text is in the R Aero Soc papers. The Intel assessment above was the motivation for Polaris improvement. Brian.Burnell 08:18, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

It would be dangerous to assume that X-Rays couldn't penetrate the RV casing. Part of the Chevaline design was to substitute two new RVs that were stated to be super-hardened. A new high X-Ray resistant material used was known as 3DPQ (Three-Dimensional-Quartz-Phenolic). Pics and other on-line descriptions show 3DPQ it to be multiple thicknesses of a woven fabric encapsulated in a (thermosetting ?) phenolic resin. Rather like Tufnol or a glass-fibre. It may have incorporated some sorm of Faraday cage. The aerodynamic shape was identical to the A3T RVs to minimise flight-testing, but the blunt-nose slowed the RVs rapidly on entry to little more than Mach 1, which is why Chevaline would still be vulnerable to endo-atmo ABMs of the Sprint type. But thats a risk the developers took, and the USSR never deployed an endo-atmo ABM. As far as we know. Brian.Burnell 08:43, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

There seems to be a misconception here. The primary was not 'within' the warhead, but a part of it. The classical thermonuclear warhead layout (that doesn't actually work all that well) is of two golf balls side-by-side. A more usual layout is of an implosion sphere at the end of a cylinder or truncated cone. X-Rays from the primary travel much faster down a 'radiation channel' filled with polyurethane foam to compress and heat the fusion fuel of the secondary than the heat and shock waves, initiating fusion before the heat and shock waves can arrive to blow the assembly apart. See the warhead layouts at http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Library/Brown/B28cut.jpg and http://nuclearweaponsrchive.org/Library/Brown/B28bomb.gif

A significant breakthough in warhead/RV design was acheived with the W-47 warhead used with the Mk.1 ReB of Polaris A-1. It dispensed with a separate warhead casing by integrating the warhead design with the RV to reduce weight and volume. That design became the basis for most succeeding US (and probably UK) warheads. See Hansen: Swords of Armageddon Vol.7 page 386. The R Aero Soc papers might answer some of your questions better than I can. I'll send you a copy. Its in searchable MS Word format with some better quality illustrations than the original hard copy. Zipped up its under 0.5 Mb. It will come as an attachment as Wiki email. Brian.Burnell 13:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Replace the term "warhead" with "RV" and you end up in the same place. The question remains: if the secondary was left as-is during the hardening process, that means that something in the primary is the target. I can imagine several possibilities here: trigger circuits, shock-wave reflector material (tamper), or even triggering some sort of pre-critical "burn" to make the primary fizzle. But the fact that they replaced the heat shield material does seem to suggest that at least some of the effects were heating-induced.

Here's hoping the wiki-mail works, I've never actually tried it before! Maury 12:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't realize I have to turn that option on. You might need to try again. Maury 12:48, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll try it again shortly. As I understand it the heating effects were enormous. Lets just consider the RV for a moment. It was essentially a phenolic resin based composite, not dissimilar to Tufnol or Durestos (an asbestos-based woven material in a phenolic resin matrix). It was able to withstand the heat of re-entry because the blunt nose distanced the reentry plasma shockwave from the nose and limited the heatbuild-up on the RV and the resultant ablation. See Atmospheric reentry. Additionally, the RV was spun (as an artillery shell) to stabilise it and prevent tumbling. Spinning also distributed reentry heat evenly, so ablation was evenly distributed also. X-Ray induced heating ablated the RV severely, and on one side only, destroying its aerodynamic form, and weakening it prior to reentry, when the weakened RV was stressed severely. The RV was in essence a heat shield, and able to take severe punishment; but there are limits to what any RV will withstand. The internal components were less able to take that punishment or even punishment of a lesser order. How well they withstood the X-Ray heating is anybodies guess, and will vary in different designs. The prime reason for conducting nuclear effects tests underground on non-nuclear components was to assess individual parts by subjecting then to close-up nuclear detonations. The UK carried out numerous effects tests for Chevaline by piggybacking them onto other UGTs as available whenever the US tested a weapon. Similar facilities were allowed the French to improve their RV penetration performance. X-Ray heating is truly enormous when properly directed. For comparision with RV heating, its worth remembering that X-Ray heating and compression are the primary methods by which fusion fuel is ignited in a thermonuclear weapon. See the classic Teller-Ulam theory. Far more effective than the heating/compression achievable in a HE induced implosion of a fission device. A series of X-Ray induced heat/compression stages will permit weapon designers to ignite fusion fuel in progessively larger fusion stages, so that thermonuclear devices are theoretically unlimited in size. Brian.Burnell 20:28, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow, what a great article

I've only have a peripheral role in the creation and nurturing of this article, but I have to say it is one of the more pleasurable experiences I've had on the wiki. I think we all owe Brian a HUGE round of applause for creating what is arguably one of the finest, no, the finest, articles on the topic, as well as a perfect example of what collaborative editing can do. If you ever bump into anyone pooh-poohing the wiki, send them here and challenge them to find a better article anywhere. There's hope for this experiment yet! Maury 00:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

BBC

Mr impossible. Are you asserting that Khruschev was not making a threat during the shoe-banging episode linked to the BBC source? If so how about producing some evidence, because almost all politically neutral accounts assert that he was. And there were other threats made, as researchers on this topic could easily uncover if minded to. But since this is an article about the origins and development of a particular piece of equipment, and not a comprehensive account of the Cold War, it was felt that to point interested readers in the right general direction was sufficient. Although not considered acceptable in Wiki to use other Wiki articles as source material, readers could refer to the Nikita Khruschev page itself for a more in-depth coverage. Brian.Burnell 15:35, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Another useful wiki link as this one Suez Crisis Ceasefire and Withdrawal. Brian.Burnell 16:06, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

It was only (and this now appears to be a totally academic point since the relevant sections seems to have disappeared) that I was expecting on following the link to see Khruschev specifically threatening the UK not Khruschev "beating his shoe against his desk before shouting to the US representatives "We will bury you"." I just thought that if there was going to be a reference it could be a better one and indeed you've cited two yourself. I wasn't at all disputing the root assertion and I'd like to add to the praise on this page for a fabulous article on a subject that very few people (including, frankly, me) know very much about. --Mr impossible 12:02, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion

I suggest the Fed-Speak-y "UGT" be changed to "underground test" (which I presume it stands for) to make this article more accessable to non-cognescenti.

Basesurge (talk) 07:13, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

External links modified

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Bad references

Sgt101 (talk) 21:08, 1 August 2016 (UTC) I checked the BBC news article on the threats to the UK, I can't see any specific incidents or assertions that back up the reference.

Also some of the other links are now dead.

Merge of Chevaline Re-entry Body

Substantial topic overlap, no independent existence and a clearer article for the reader in one place. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:55, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• Completely agree. Great idea. --MarchOrDie (talk) 13:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Done. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:46, 19 December 2018 (UTC)