Fully understanding the guest poster hasn't had time to put up the first post, I do hope that we could agree on some background material, either as links or something we could put up, perhaps as a blog post. I'm not suggesting to reinvent Carey Sublette's extensive archives, and their level of detail is generally not appropriate here.

There are, however, some technical aspects that need to be background for the discussion here. Many nontechnical people assume more power than a first- or second-generation bomb really has, and underestimate the size: an improvised version by a non-national group will be a several tons and physically large, where an advanced modern one like the W88 warhead is the size of an office trash can, although much heavier.

A little background on development programs might help. If there is any attempt to mate a warhead to a missile, weight (and to a lesser extent dimensions) become critical. In general, a pure fission uranium device is going to be substantially larger than a pure fission plutonium device, which does put some of the Iranian work in better perspective: the uranium enrichment is less critical than the plutonium production.

Without going too deeply, I think we probably want to have a technical consensus that a multistage (i.e., thermonuclear or "hydrogen bomb") deliverable by missile is implausible early in a program. It might be interesting to touch on the plausibility of tritium-boosted fission early in a development program; there's some suggestion from India/Pakistan that making that work is harder than it appears. I'm not sure we should get into any of the miniaturization and power increasing methods other to note they exist, aren't easy, but do become important when trying for a missile-sized warhead. For the record, some of the things I have in mind, for single-stage devices, include levitated pits, beryllium and other neutron reflectors, tungsten-rhenium or other drivers to increase energy into the core, external neutron generators, slapper detonators, linear implosion.

Perhaps some commentary on delivery methods help: missile, tactical aircraft, ship, etc.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]