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Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld

by Sharon Weinberger

Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld Cover

ISBN13: 9781560258490
ISBN10: 1560258497
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

How did a fluke experiment in 1998, involving a used dental X-ray machine and a dubious sample of radioactive material, become the Pentagon's pet weapons project? It had been rejected by one of the Pentagon's most important advisory groups, but the Pentagon found an eccentric scientist who believed that a super "isomer" bomb could be built, and deliver the punch of a two-kiloton nuke packaged in a hand grenade. Ideologues at the Pentagon claimed that the Russians were in the process of building one of their own, and that the weapon was essential to the Pentagon's arsenal. Imaginary Weapons tells the story of the battle that ensued, pitting the nation's leading nuclear physicists against the Pentagon's top brass, and the military against nuclear arms control advocates, as funds and experiments for the "isomer weapon" miraculously reappeared even after the project had been shelved numerous times, even by Congress. This book also illuminates the dangerous trend that the Bush administration continues to follow of putting politics before science. The bomb is imaginary, and the only explosion produced by the "isomer weapon" will leave a hole in the nation's budget and a fallout of the nation's best and brightest scientists.
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About the Author

Sharon Weinberger writes regularly for the Washington Post magazine and Slate. She has just been appointed the editor in chief of Defense Technology International, a new magazine that covers a full range of defense technologies. Previously she was a foreign service officer in the State Dept., a defense reporter for Aviation Week Group's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, and a defense research analyst for Systems Planning Corporation.
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isomer, August 4, 2006 (view all comments by isomer)
A review from the Village Voice:

Sharon Weinberger's Imaginary Weapons is another tale of military technology?one more disturbing than Halter's. It's a fascinating investigation into the investment in the hafnium bomb, a device that entranced the military because salesmen promised a weapon with the bang of an atomic bomb in the size of a golf ball. As with Halter's book, one defining feature of the story is the military's enthusiastic pursuit of the dubious. In Imaginary Weapons, this is tied to the philosophy that the U.S. cannot afford to be taken by "technological surprise" by any adversary. This idea has fostered blind unreason and a penchant for pursuing any and all weapons projects, no matter how irrational.

In any case, "hafnium isomer" is a radioactive material that barely exists. It is expensive and difficult to make in even microscopic amounts, yet scientists receiving Pentagon funding became convinced it could be a wonder weapon in the war on terror. The hafnium bomb would be useful for sterilizing biological terror weapons hidden in underground bunkers. Another motivation was the logic?straight out of Dr. Strangelove?that America must not fall behind in a hafnium bomb gap to terrorists or rival nations. That there was no proof of any of this did not matter.

Even though reputable and independent teams of the nation's top physicists declared repeatedly that the science of the hafnium bomb was rubbish and the project impossible, outside oversight and common sense failed. The culprits in this were the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under Tony Tether and the scientists from Texas who were the hafnium bomb's main adherents. Tether, like the self-confident boffins in Halter's book, is immune to poor reviews. It takes respected scientists chipping away at him for years to bring down the Pentagon's hafnium dreams, at which point he begins to flee from the reporter of Imaginary Weapons. In a better world, Tether would have been fired years ago.

The sense of outrage that Imaginary Weapons inspires isn't from the idea of a hafnium bomb, no matter how horrific it may have sounded. It could no more have been made than sand can be transformed into gasoline. But it suggests a systemic illness in the military, one in which people who deliver pipe dreams based on nonsense?gadgets that train rather than entertain, a golf ball than can demolish a city?are sought after as long as they can continue to make them.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781560258490
Subtitle:
A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld
Author:
Weinberger, Sharon
Publisher:
Nation Books
Subject:
Technological innovations
Subject:
Military art and science
Subject:
Experiments & Projects
Subject:
Political Freedom & Security - International Secur
Subject:
Political Freedom & Security - Intelligence
Subject:
SCIENCE / Experiments & Projects
Subject:
Government - U.S. Government
Subject:
Conspiracy & Scandal Investigations
Subject:
Military - United States
Subject:
Military - Weapons
Publication Date:
April 2006
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Pages:
276
Dimensions:
8.50x5.82x1.10 in. 1.02 lbs.
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