7 ms·

The Atomic Tank? (2018)

51 points by ZeljkoS 6y ago

throwanem 6y ago
Like something out of If This Goes On—
chiph 6y ago
All I can think is "top heavy" and "going to tip over" 10 tons for the chassis, 15 tons for the huge turret.
rangibaby 6y ago
There’s also the Object 279 tank, which wasn’t nuclear powered but was designed for the nuclear age
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Shivetya 6y ago
The good old days were probably better known as the crazy old days. Think about the technological jump that came from WW2, suddenly all aspects of society are impacted by what had been developed in relatively short order. So the next generation is presented with all these new concepts and technologies with no world war to get in the way of exploiting them. Yes a lot of the ideas were war related but so much also went into civilian use that transformed the world.
acidburnNSA 6y ago
I spent a month earlier this year writing up the history of nuclear power development in the USA [1]. If you like this it might be right up your alley. Things that actually were built include a truck-mounted nuclear reactor (ML-1), nuclear reactors in space (SNAP-10A), a nuclear-powered merchant ship (NS Savannah), an ice-base powered by a nuclear reactor under Greenland (Camp Century), dozens of highly exotic power reactor prototypes, and (of course) the modern nuclear power plants. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html I didn't cover tanks but did touch on nuclear-powered aircraft, which we spent about $1B (1950s) dollars on before ICBM progress obsoleted the concept (for urgent military needs at least). The work led to the molten salt reactor concept, which is much loved today in the internet nuclear circles with civilian power production in mind.
- krisoft 6y ago
  > "[...] before ICBM progress obsoleted the concept." I'm afraid that anti-ICBM defenses and the availability of reliable auto-pilot technology made the concept of a nuclear powered planes relevant again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik
  - imglorp 6y ago
    First of all that's a very important article people should be aware of: around the ABM treaty, nuclear _powered_ cruise missiles, and maybe some deaths developing that tech. This is just last year, Putin driven. Second of all, it's not clear why it needs to be nuclear powered. Our 1970's subsonic cruise missiles are terrain-following for 2500km at 30m AGL. You can throw them from trucks or ships or planes and go well into someone's territory. A fair assumption is that everyones' are better now in all axes. The point is you don't need the price/risk of unlimited range, unless your goal is to terrorize and poison everything on the way to your target.
    - acidburnNSA 6y ago
      We had some nuclear scramjets in the Project Pluto era. I think one nice thing about them in the military sense is that they can go REALLY fast for a pretty long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
      - sandworm101 6y ago
        They were doomed. The issue was heat. At supersonic speeds air friction heats the missile. Without fuel being burnt there is no way to dump the heat off the missile. Regardless of heat from the engine, after a few hours air friction would see the entire thing glowing red, the "thermal thicket".
  - Gravityloss 6y ago
    There's enough energy in kerosene though that regular cruise missiles are plenty dangerous...
dwighttk 6y ago
It talks about a V-8 engine and an electric generator. Is “electric generator” a different way of saying “nuclear reactor”? Edit: I missed the paragraph about later considerations for other systems to power the tank... The NB-36H was an interesting plane. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker#Experiments https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker#Expe...
jacobush 6y ago
“U.S. Army Gulf War Veteran, former Ford Autoworker and presently working in the aviation field as a Chemtrail Technician” Cracked me up
jabl 6y ago
I imagine if someone were to design a new tank today, the crew would be placed in the hull, with the turret remote controlled. And an array of sensors, including cameras, to provide visibility for the crew.
- nradov 6y ago
  That is exactly the design used in the Russian T-14 tank.
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  > the crew would be placed in the hull, with the turret remote controlled Already done: the T-14 mentioned by nradov, and also the Remote Weapon Station, used on lots of platforms [0]. Historically, the Swedish Stridsvagn 103 [1] was fully turretless. Conversely, if you like turrets, then how about the T-35, which has five [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_controlled_weapon_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_controlled_weapon_stati... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stridsvagn_103 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stridsvagn_103 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-35 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-35
nickthemagicman 6y ago
What's stopping remote controlled unmanned tanks? Tanks are a huge bullseye target on the battlefield and everyone inside seems pretty vulnerable from anything but small arms fire.
- ISL 6y ago
  Any jammer that thrashes the entire EM spectrum? When a modern war big-enough to involve opposing forces of main-battle tanks kicks off, most of one's intuition about what is fair or possible goes out the window. This is particularly the case if the other side knows you have remotely-operated hardware. Blinding oneself can be a great strategy if your opposition is rendered both blind and ineffective. Edit regarding armor: it is my impression that modern main-battle tanks are designed to survive attacks from everything up to, and sometimes including, weapons whose only purpose is to kill main-battle tanks.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    The amount of power that one would need to jam the electromagnetic spectrum would have to be massive though right? Seems like anything from a plane could take down a tank? I don't know how prevalent air forces are in countries though.
    - ISL 6y ago
      Jamming selective bands requires some care. Filling the RF environment with noise may only require a powerful generator and a suitably mis-configured spark-gap transmitter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-gap_transmitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-gap_transmitter
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        You would mess up all of your communication as well though. So its kind of a double edged sword. Additionally accompanying infantry can potentially use lasers to guide the tank. Or line of site drones that make full laser communications possible until the spark gap can be identified and destroyed.
jdkee 6y ago
Inspiration for http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/ http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/ ?
acvny 6y ago
A truly stupid idea. As if tanks need long range or long time autonomy. That's where nuclear energy is useful. A tank is a disposable unit. It can be easily destroyed and it doesn't carry lots of troops or vehicles.

51 points by ZeljkoS 6y ago

throwanem 6y ago

Like something out of If This Goes On—

chiph 6y ago

All I can think is "top heavy" and "going to tip over" 10 tons for the chassis, 15 tons for the huge turret.

rangibaby 6y ago

There’s also the Object 279 tank, which wasn’t nuclear powered but was designed for the nuclear age

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Shivetya 6y ago

The good old days were probably better known as the crazy old days. Think about the technological jump that came from WW2, suddenly all aspects of society are impacted by what had been developed in relatively short order. So the next generation is presented with all these new concepts and technologies with no world war to get in the way of exploiting them. Yes a lot of the ideas were war related but so much also went into civilian use that transformed the world.

acidburnNSA 6y ago

I spent a month earlier this year writing up the history of nuclear power development in the USA [1]. If you like this it might be right up your alley. Things that actually were built include a truck-mounted nuclear reactor (ML-1), nuclear reactors in space (SNAP-10A), a nuclear-powered merchant ship (NS Savannah), an ice-base powered by a nuclear reactor under Greenland (Camp Century), dozens of highly exotic power reactor prototypes, and (of course) the modern nuclear power plants. [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html I didn't cover tanks but did touch on nuclear-powered aircraft, which we spent about $1B (1950s) dollars on before ICBM progress obsoleted the concept (for urgent military needs at least). The work led to the molten salt reactor concept, which is much loved today in the internet nuclear circles with civilian power production in mind.

krisoft 6y ago
> "[...] before ICBM progress obsoleted the concept." I'm afraid that anti-ICBM defenses and the availability of reliable auto-pilot technology made the concept of a nuclear powered planes relevant again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik
- imglorp 6y ago
  First of all that's a very important article people should be aware of: around the ABM treaty, nuclear _powered_ cruise missiles, and maybe some deaths developing that tech. This is just last year, Putin driven. Second of all, it's not clear why it needs to be nuclear powered. Our 1970's subsonic cruise missiles are terrain-following for 2500km at 30m AGL. You can throw them from trucks or ships or planes and go well into someone's territory. A fair assumption is that everyones' are better now in all axes. The point is you don't need the price/risk of unlimited range, unless your goal is to terrorize and poison everything on the way to your target.
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    We had some nuclear scramjets in the Project Pluto era. I think one nice thing about them in the military sense is that they can go REALLY fast for a pretty long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      They were doomed. The issue was heat. At supersonic speeds air friction heats the missile. Without fuel being burnt there is no way to dump the heat off the missile. Regardless of heat from the engine, after a few hours air friction would see the entire thing glowing red, the "thermal thicket".
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  There's enough energy in kerosene though that regular cruise missiles are plenty dangerous...

dwighttk 6y ago

It talks about a V-8 engine and an electric generator. Is “electric generator” a different way of saying “nuclear reactor”? Edit: I missed the paragraph about later considerations for other systems to power the tank... The NB-36H was an interesting plane. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker#Experiments https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker#Expe...

jacobush 6y ago

“U.S. Army Gulf War Veteran, former Ford Autoworker and presently working in the aviation field as a Chemtrail Technician” Cracked me up

jabl 6y ago

I imagine if someone were to design a new tank today, the crew would be placed in the hull, with the turret remote controlled. And an array of sensors, including cameras, to provide visibility for the crew.

nradov 6y ago
That is exactly the design used in the Russian T-14 tank.
KineticLensman 6y ago
> the crew would be placed in the hull, with the turret remote controlled Already done: the T-14 mentioned by nradov, and also the Remote Weapon Station, used on lots of platforms [0]. Historically, the Swedish Stridsvagn 103 [1] was fully turretless. Conversely, if you like turrets, then how about the T-35, which has five [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_controlled_weapon_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_controlled_weapon_stati... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stridsvagn_103 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stridsvagn_103 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-35 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-35

nickthemagicman 6y ago

What's stopping remote controlled unmanned tanks? Tanks are a huge bullseye target on the battlefield and everyone inside seems pretty vulnerable from anything but small arms fire.

ISL 6y ago
Any jammer that thrashes the entire EM spectrum? When a modern war big-enough to involve opposing forces of main-battle tanks kicks off, most of one's intuition about what is fair or possible goes out the window. This is particularly the case if the other side knows you have remotely-operated hardware. Blinding oneself can be a great strategy if your opposition is rendered both blind and ineffective. Edit regarding armor: it is my impression that modern main-battle tanks are designed to survive attacks from everything up to, and sometimes including, weapons whose only purpose is to kill main-battle tanks.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  The amount of power that one would need to jam the electromagnetic spectrum would have to be massive though right? Seems like anything from a plane could take down a tank? I don't know how prevalent air forces are in countries though.
  - ISL 6y ago
    Jamming selective bands requires some care. Filling the RF environment with noise may only require a powerful generator and a suitably mis-configured spark-gap transmitter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-gap_transmitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-gap_transmitter
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      You would mess up all of your communication as well though. So its kind of a double edged sword. Additionally accompanying infantry can potentially use lasers to guide the tank. Or line of site drones that make full laser communications possible until the spark gap can be identified and destroyed.

jdkee 6y ago

Inspiration for http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/ http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/ ?

acvny 6y ago

A truly stupid idea. As if tanks need long range or long time autonomy. That's where nuclear energy is useful. A tank is a disposable unit. It can be easily destroyed and it doesn't carry lots of troops or vehicles.