Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!henry@zoo.toronto.edu
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Cold fusion on the battlefield...
Message-ID: <5269@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 31 Mar 89 01:52:35 GMT
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>But think about the possibilities if you start dropping fusion plants
>   into destroyers and frigates...
>Anyway, I'd be curious to hear about other people's opinions on the
>   possible military applications of this technology.

There is an obvious big one:  diesel-electric submarines become totally
obsolete, even for the smallest nations.  Not only would such fusion
plants be easier to build and run, the lack of heat generation from
fission products would eliminate the nuclear sub's biggest silencing
problem:  the need to keep reactor cooling going at all times.  Now
nuclear subs too could sit on the bottom and shut down *everything*.

This won't necessarily make everyone equal underwater.  It still takes
technological sophistication to make subs really quiet while underway,
and quite a lot of sophistication to build really good passive sonars.
(One reason why diesel-electric boats are currently much cheaper than
nuclear ones is that they are designed for less ambitious missions and
don't generally have first-class sonar.)  But diesel-electric subs will
vanish completely, and it should also be possible to build really small
nuclear subs for the first time.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu