Yeah it's just a fancy way of saying "dumb bomb."

You don't need guided accuracy with a megaton nuke pooped out by a plane.

Had something more along these lines in mind?

Oh... thats why i couldnt find any cool youtube video describing it... cool name though

Wouldn't even technically be nuclear powered, it just has a nuclear payload. I feel like the use of "gravity" in this article was an unnecessary addition.

When most people think "bomb", they don't think immediately think of "guided missile", they thing something that is either planted or dropped from above, and in this case the latter describes exactly what kind of bomb this is.

『geekout about the cold war』

Nope. We have planes that fly really high and are shielded enough to withstand the effects at distance. Our air-dropped nukes are the most potent used by the US at 2.1 megatons (which is a sweet spot involving physics I don't understand.)

Soviet bombs were bigger and more plentiful to compensate for their inaccuracy (so they'd shotgun strategic targets to assure a likely hit). This turned into justification for the arms rwce in the 1960s to get ridiculous with General Electric pushing the missile gap. It's how we ended up with so many nukes we could wipe out humanity many times over, not just by carpeting all the continents but with nuclear winter and lingering radioactive fallout.

At that point, the doomsday device in Doctor Strangelove, a really huge cobalt bomb or salted bomb became the more cost-efficient deterrant. While there were actual designs, I don't think anyone actually built it.
『/geekout』

The explosion would kill the pilot if they were that close.

Nah they'll be fine. The initial blast radius of a nuclear bomb isn't that big at all. It's the radiation that's terrible and a lot of that comes from the fallout/dust downwind of the blast.

As high up as they would be air, it'd just be a momentary bright light and not a direct one since they will be flying away from the blast.

... if the enemy has fighter jets though ... you're probably going to try and shoot down the bomber. Which might encourage using a drone.

The Russians dropped a 50 megaton bomb from a manned plane without killing the pilots, unless the us is going for the record of largest bomb ever it's not much of a concern beyond ensuring a high enough drop altitude fast enough plane or slowing the bomb with a parachute.

Time bombs have always been a disappointment also.

You wouldn't download a power plant

💀

A nuclear gravity bomb is a standard nuclear bomb that is dropped from a plane, instead of launched on a rocket.

This isn't some kind of new nuclear technology

Wouldn't be in realtime for very long

Randrops are falling on my head

Soon we will all be dead

Laws of physics? What are you, a narc?

Nuclear weapons are expensive and complicated to maintain. The military has been bitching for many years that the price to maintain old nuclear munitions is rapidly increasing.

Instead of seeing this as working as intended, and trying to get everyone to agree not to develop new nuclear weapons... The military strategists decided that since China was making 500 new nuclear weapons we needed to make new ones too and pulled out of the agreement with Russia not to develop new nukes.

I would have thought that if it was hard for us to maintain the nuclear weapons with a massive budget that Russia might fail at that task. Which would be good for everyone.

But there's always been more money in star wars and missile defense then diplomacy.