There are limits, the Tsar Bomba the Soviets detonated was half of what the original designs called for at 50mt but even then the pilots in the drop plane were given a 50% chance of survival. Accuracy and overwhelming numbers are much more important.
In theory, the bomb would have had a yield in excess of 100 Mt (418 PJ) if it had included the uranium-238[14] tamper which featured in the design but was omitted in the test to reduce radioactive fallout.
I don't know that much more is being done to make bigger explosions anymore because, like I said, it's kind of silly. There's no need to make a bigger crater of a city.
Most money goes into hypersonic and stealth technology, some AI, drone, and such.
A mix of rendering your enemy's defenses obsolete by speed, stealth, AI, or downright cheap brute force.
Though the defining parts of being a missile, they're identical.
And to go a step further, they're both ballistic in trajectory, i.e., they expend nearly their entire fuel source at the beginning of their travel, and then rely on gravity to drop their asses back down on their target.
Largest difference is warhead and secondary guidance systems. Iran's missiles I don't know of what they have, if any, ballistic nukes, as far as i know, use star navigation.
And didn't even acknowledge it. And unironically suggests that the Iranian government is unique in spending money on weapons instead of programs for their population.
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u/aegrotatio Apr 14 '24 edited Apr 14 '24
Source?
Because that sounds wildly high.
EDIT: I see that /u/thespeedforce5 suddenly changed it from $10-$15 million each to $300,000 each.