Sharon-Weinberger-In.. - American Antigravity

More documents

Recommendations

Info

VAPORWAR Sharon Weinberger on the Pentagon's Imaginary Weapons By Tim Ventura and Sharon Weinberger, June 19th, 2006 It's called a “hafnium bomb”, and it uses a new type of stimulated nuclear isomer technology so deadly that the Pentagon doesn't want you to even know that it exists -- and according to Sharon Weinberger, it doesn't. We join the intrepid editor of Aviation Week's Defense Technology International as she takes us on a journey through the Pentagon's scientific underworld... AAG: Let's start out with a bit of background information: you're an experienced defenseindustry reporter and editor with lots of experience covering the latest trends in military technology. However, it appears that your new book, "Imaginary Weapons", goes in a radically new direction with a focus on overhyped vaporware defense technologies. I'm wondering if you could start us out with a bit about your personal background, and what really inspired you to begin writing this book? Weinberger: I have some background in national security studies, but I really stumbled into defense reporting when I moved to Washington after graduate school. I was looking, like all newcomers to DC, to find work that didn’t involve toting someone else’s briefcase. I eventually ended up working for a small Beltway company doing research and analysis for the Pentagon. I worked with some incredibly intelligent and thoughtful people, and went from there into defense journalism. One of the things I learned from that experience is that the defense industry is itself an “underworld” in many ways, and I try to give readers a feel for this is my book. I remember sitting in the office of the head of the defense company I was working at—the CEO started talking about the fallout shelter in his backyard, and lecturing me on how much dirt you need over your fallout shelter to protect against radiation, and what wind patterns mean for radioactive fallout. I suddenly realized how absolutely weird the conversation was, and yet not so weird for those in the defense industry. We were discussing fallout shelters the way other people discuss barbeques. When you reside in an “underworld,” it seems so normal, but if you step back and look at it as an outsider, then you’re struck by how perverse it all is. Imaginary Weapons: A journey through the Pentagon’s scientific underworld. American Antigravity.Com Page 2 of 11
It’s not the vaporware per se that makes this an underworld, but the very odd culture of technology and national security. I don’t draw a line between the perverse and the normal cultures of defense technology—the two are intertwined because we are all so insulated from the outside world. I was inspired to try to describe this underworld—and my experience being in it— to others. AAG: My understanding is that while you examine several technologies in "Imaginary Weapons", the core story really involves something called hafnium-bomb, which you first heard about in a defense-briefing on Capitol Hill in 1998. Can you give us a bit of detail about the scope of technologies that you focus on in the book, and what it was about the hafnium bomb in particular that made it so central to this story? Weinberger: The book talks about some of the more controversial areas of science that have attracted military interest, including remote viewing (psychics), cold fusion and antimatter weapons. I do not list these areas with the idea of lumping them together as bad science, but rather, to point out how each of these subjects tends to attract support from the underworld. At one point, I considered writing this book as a collection of stories about the scientific underworld, but the feedback I got was: “You need a narrative to carry the reader long.” In that sense, the hafnium bomb is a trope for a larger story I was trying to tell about technology and national security. AAG: Speaking of the hafnium-bomb, I thought the idea sounded reasonable until I saw your website, which featured a "hafnium grenade" claimed to deliver a 2-kiloton yield. Now from a layman's perspective, my first thought is that a nuclear hand-grenade has some immediately obvious drawbacks to deployment, so how’d this one make it that far up the chain of command? Hafnium Grenade: A hand-grenade claiming to deliver a 2-kiloton nuclear blast? Weinberger: Lots of ideas sound reasonable until you look at the practical implications. To be fair, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in its official briefings to Congress about hafnium, described the power of a 2,000 pound bomb in the package of a 50 pound bomb. But even that is impractical, and, according to the experts, simply not feasible. AAG: Now to turn the question around a bit, I've heard rumors that Los Alamos has been playing with laser-triggered nuclear isomers for years: at least in the context of a quasi-stable fuel-pellet for use in nuclear space propulsion. Is it possible that this particular idea made it past the screeners because of simple name-recognition and maybe just a lack of close-scrutiny on the proposed implementation, or is the entire nuclear-isomer thing just a fish-story? Weinberger: Yes, Los Alamos has been a “hot bed” for nuclear isomer enthusiasts, although some of them may have retired by now. But it’s important to differentiate between American Antigravity.Com Page 3 of 11
Page 1: VAPORWAR Sharon Weinberger on the P
Page 5 and 6: where they're pushing a dream towar
Page 7 and 8: Weinberger: I’m not sure intentio
Page 9 and 10: UFO's might not be an intentional w
Page 11: Weinberger: I hate to make predicti

Sharon-Weinberger-In.. - American Antigravity

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?