As a strategic weapon? Never. As a tactical weapon? Depends on the target.

Every weapon system needs to have an intended application to be practical. Thermobarics and FAE's are very good at detonating minefields and clearing out trenches. Beyond that they're not much better than conventional munitions. The underground bunker scenario looks attractive but you need the weapon to penetrate the bunker in order to disperse the explosive. That's really what MOAB was intended for.

The FOAB test may sound impressive, but when was the last time we needed to level a city block? It's not something the public generally approves of in anything less than a total war scenario. Even in 1943-45 it was somewhat controversial.

Assuming that is the intent, thermonuclear weapons are the last word. If those are undesirable incendiaries can do the job just as well in most cases (look at Tokyo and Dresden).

the simple answer to your question is no

there is however something you should be worried about: antimatter weapons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_weapon

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/10/04/MNGM393GPK1.DTL

that zsar bomb someone posted about? a single kilogram of antimatter has the same explosive force
antimatter is real, not just a made up plot device, and it is coming... i would give it only 50-100 years before we are able to effectively harness it... then we are all in for some fun times

a single milligram af anti matter is enough to power an average car for a thousand years...

Maybe, but there are some huge barriers standing in the way. First of all, there are some serious technical issues that must be overcome if antimatter is to be used for anything. The largest of these is probably storage. If antimatter comes in contact with normal matter, it pretty much is annihilated instantly. Right now, the only way we have to store antimatter is to suspend charged antiparticles in a really good vacuum. Unfortunately, all of the antiparticles must be of the same charge, which means that they are all pushing against one another, and therefore you can only store a small amount in any given place. There are also technical issues related to producing antimatter in the scale necessary for weapons use. I don't really enough to comment on it, so I'll skip it for now. There's also a fairly large safety issue. With nuclear weapons, a fairly complex set of reactions has to take place to spark off the initial chain reaction. With antimatter, however, an accidental explosion would occur if containment slipped for even a small fraction of a second.

In addition to these, there are all sorts of political and practical considerations. I don't really want to go too deeply into this, but a fair amount of it could be summed up as "why bother?". Any nation capable of researching these devices already has the ability to build enough nuclear weapons to wipe out any possible enemy, and antimatter weapons aren't really going to offer much benefit over nuclear weapons.

With that said, 100 years is a long, long time when it comes to technological development. Antimatter has plenty of other potential uses, and it may be that once these issues are solved in another field, then antimatter will look more attractive as a weapon. Until then, though, there just aren't enough benefits to these weapons to see the sort of research that made nuclear weapons so common and powerful.

Antimatter really is a made up plot device in the way of its possible uses as a weapon. Fermi Lab which has the largest particle collider currently (soon LHC) has maybe made a few micrograms of antimatter. Antimatter is extremely difficult to produce. Also the fact that once you have created antimatter the only current way to store it is to keep it in motion in a circular particle accelerator and you only can do that for so long (a few days at most I think). Antimatter is purely for scientific purposes and it will be for a long time. Military technology is leaning towards artificial intelligence and precise munitions. Why do you think a ICBM carries multiple smaller Nuclear Warheads (even for the most devastating weapons), it always more effective to be precise then to just blanket an area.

These weapons are also more commonly known as fuel air bombs and they actually have been around for a while. 2003 may have been the first time any were actually used, I'm not sure. But if you watch the movie 'Outbreak' the bomb they were about to drop on the town was a fuel air bomb, and I believe the one depicted was in fact a MOAB. Thats the earliest example, at least in popular culture, that I can think of.

Now I thought of a potentially scary concept for fuel air bombs. Imagine the devastation that a dirty fuel air bomb could leave. How far could its pressure wave spread radioactive isotopes? And please tell me someone has already thought of that before me, the last thing I want to do is place evil ideas in someone's head :NOTSURE:

umm short lesson in nuclear physics...

fission is splitting atoms by bombarding heavy metals with neutrons splitting the heavy atom into two smaller atoms... the reaction creates a small net loss in total mass which is converted to energy the explosion...

Fusion is taking two small atoms and squishing them together at extremely high tempureaturs and pressures to create one larger atom... again the reaction creates a slightly larger net loss in mass than fission creating a greater amount of energy...

currently the ONLY successuful method of creating the nessacary pressure and tempurature to initiate a fusion reaction is by using a fission reaction... the technology typically called a thermonuclear weapon... most of the current generation of nuclear weapons derive the bulk of thier explosive power from the fusion reaction not the fission reaction used to initate the fusion reaction therefore by any practical definition a thermonuclear devise or H-bomb is a Fusion weapon... the fission reaction is only the trigger.... a very powerful detonator or primer cap if you will.

CERN and a few others are trying to create a sustainable fusion reaction using intense EM fields but havn't managed it quite yet...

matter/antimater reaction results in the complete conversion of ALL mass into energy.. as stated only minute amounts of antimatter have been created so it and controlled fusion are still science fiction...

the equations describing all of the above reactions create energy several orders of magnitude greater than any chemical reaction ever could... Thermobaric weapons are not even in the same leauge as any nuclear based weapon.

One thing you might all find interesting is that there is actually a hobby of making real working fusion reactors. Take a look at Fusor.net. Believe it or not you can actually make real fusion reactors in your basement with a relatively cheap price tag as well. I stumbled across the hobby while researching an article about a high school kid who was actually able to make his own fissionable breeder reactor, much much much more dangerous than fusor hobbyists.

The way I understand fusors, is that people design devices that smash deuterium isotopes into each other using EM fields. The process is also very clean and harmless, with deuterium fusion there is no adverse radiation and the amount of energy actually produced by the fusors is less than the amount of energy put into the small amount of fusion reactions in the first place. But it is definitely very interesting to look into.



Wait a minute. The way I always understood nuclear warheads to work was that there were outer explosive panels that channel the necessary pressure waves to the inner fissionable core. Are you telling me that modern war heads work by detonating outer panels surrounding a fissionable mid layer, which then detonates a fusionable core? Im not saying your wrong, Im just saying this is definitely news to me.

the lab create 2,000 particles(right now) a day and has stored that for 10 years (production wasnt that high then tho) but that is a tiny amount...only a single milligram stored.
it can be kept indefinitly...as long as its in vacuum and doesnt come in contact with the container its in...
antimatter is EXACTLY the same as matter except with OPPOSIT charges

nope, can currently not be stored very long
when storing antimatter you need something called a Penning Trap (at least thats the only currently known storage device) which is basicly a toroidal electromagnet that keeps the antimatter inside
the problems with this method are as follows:
A: only charged particles can be stored, which means no anti-hydrogen atoms if i remember correctly, only antiprotons and positrons
B: as more and more are stored, the antimatter particles start to repel each other more than the Penning Trap can exert on them, thus the antimatter leaks out of the trap, and collides with the walls of the trap releasing a small amount of energy as the single particles anhillate; the more particles that are contained, the faster they leak out of the trap

in short, there are 2 main obstacles to widespread antimatter use:
1: creation is slow and very inefficient energy wise
2: trapping the particles in a large quantity is impossible until a more effective means of storage is created...
whoever creates a successful device for storage will become a millionaire if not a billionaire off it...
anyway, as i stated in my first post, i would give it 50-100 years, probably closer to the latter

No - there was at least one used during the first Gulf war - clearing a mine field if I recall correctly. Worked fine BTW (Whoever posted that they didn't work in the desert).

Jonnan