Well....

It's a little more complicated than that.

INRAD is a well-characterized topic.

It is a keyword that will perk up the intelligence community's ears up. That's because it is a double-edged sword.

on the good side, it is how politicians are hoping we can tell if they have denuclearized without needing critical foreign nuclear weapons design information.

on the bad side, it is how you can tell a great deal about how US systems are configured and composed.

There is some information on the topic available if one knows where to look:

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All that to say....

Some systems are fairly benign. Some, I have been told were so hot they baked the paint off of the outer shell.

This goes to the heart of weapons design.

• Do you even need a complete critical mass of material to get the output you desire?
• Can overdrive compression and inertial tamping make up for material?
• How about neutron reflection?
  
• Can overdrive through external neutron insertion? (sub question: can electrically varying the number of external neutron generators allow for varying the yield?)
  
• Can adding easily-fused material into the primary reaction? (sub question: instead of using a solid material for this purpose, could utilization of a gaseous mix allow for varying the yield?)
  
• Is it possible to have more than one critical mass of material in a nuclear explosive package?
• Why would this be advantageous?
• Would a stable reflected geometry and density that places the active material very, very close to critically configured allow for use of less conventional high explosives, lower insertion speeds, or unconventional shapes?
• What about the use of active material at a lower level of purity, or with a higher level of contaminants?
  

Would the result of these tweaks be more or less activity at the surface skin of the weapon?

These factors are what goes into what they call 'design margins'.

A weapon system with conservative design margins has a lot of very pure, active materials with a lot of compression and neutron generation. It also makes for a pig in footprint and weight and cost. But, it will probably work.

A system with slim margins results in compromising one attribute for another, and under the principle of stacking tolerances, reduces the propensity of the system to function as needed when one component or subsystem has marginal performance due to age or miscalculation.

For instance, perhaps you want a lightweight system. You would need to accentuate certain portions over others to get to the design yield.

Maybe you need one that can be shoehorned into a particular shape, such as a cone. That means a lot of things are going to have to suffer.

The biggest magic they do is creating a system that will fit into a small cone that has to be under a certain amount of weight.

That's what the difference between a system that can be made simply but delivered by conex versus one that is the size of a trash can and can pop up from the ocean, fly through space and then hit a location within a car-sized circle comes in.

Remember, they figured all that out essentially with slide rules and drafting boards and very, very simple computers relative to today.

Ok, last bump and I'll quit annoying everybody with this.

For those of you that grew up with CBT, these two things are what computer based training sprang from.

This film series came out in chunks over the years in various frame rates and resolutions. I have not bothered to collect all the pieces and stitch it together, but this one is pretty close:




Then, here is another. This is a more complete version (see how many systems you can pick out!), but it is at 240p.



I have some reverence for these; you'd have to sign some papers inside a room with windows that had curtains in metal tracks inside a building inside a couple of fences (!) to even be aware they existed at most points in nuclear weapons history.

Now they are on youtube with cat videos. I can only imagine what videos are molding inside a vtr in nevada right now that could be coaxed out if only someone would pick up the mantel and FOIA them...

You get out of here with that "I'll stop annoying you" nonsense. This is fascinating info even if I don't have the physics background to understand half of it.

Agreed.

Thanks to those of you who can share info.

I'm curious to here if the new Oppenheimer movie will release actual information, maybe even some new info, or if it will be primarily dumbed down to "Glowing material goes boom...I become death...how sad...the end."

Like what?

About 99% of LITTLE BOY has made it into the open. About 90% of FAT MAN is out there. While there is a TON of history that's being lost, most of the technical data has seeped out. Some by people who worked with it, some coming back around from the people that stole it from the USG, and mostly from Energy and Defense themselves. A lot of HC Paxtons' work on criticality for non-defense purposes came from utilizing pit materials, for instance.

On the FAT MAN, the only thing that isn't out with any surety is the geometry of the URCHIN component. We know the exact size, and there are very compelling data available to discuss the composition. For instance, the guy that pressed the initial pits for the FAT MAN test and combat units... then took some of the glassy sand, and some lucite, and

this is probably classified, don't look if you are holding:

Click To View Spoiler
anyway, LITTLE BOY got its pants pulled down pretty good by Energy thanks to Hazel O'Leary, and JCM with his toy borescope finished it off:

Click To View Spoiler
Anyway, I understand fully why nonproliferation wonks are scared about it; the early war reserve stuff was made with primitive tools and methods within easy reach of Khyber Pass gunsmithys.

Funny thing about wonks, they also gatekeep in that they feel they need to know everything in order to more accurately forecast doom and gloom, then they refuse to tell the whole story in their papers. lol

I personally would be more concerned about the 8" arty M422/W33 system. It is completely out in the wind, having been stolen at first, and then a trainer round walked over to the soviets by a disgruntled nco in germany according to legend.

That's a compact, proven-design gun-assembled conservative margin system. All you need is active material in quantity and some shop tools you can buy at harbor freight now^*

You definitely could make more systems with slimmer margins using the same amount of material, but for a 'look at what I can do' first strike, it would be hard to beat.

(*This by no means is a slight at the skill the Y12 machinists built up over the years, or to suggest trivially working with high hazard materials to precise dimensions, I am simply saying... go watch 'applied science' and 'tech ingredients' on youtube, and tell me that with a fatalistic 'middle east' attitude towards lifespan it's not in one's reach once you can source the fismat)

The wire falls on top of the items. the talcum powder/DM agent generator clogs your masks, blinds you, and causes immediately incapacitating vomiting if you remove your mask.  Halon systems in the later bunkers added another way to die.  Then you had the hassle of the real QRF coming after all the now dead blue canaries didn’t respond to the panic alarm challenge.   You also needed a forklift.

18Z50

I'm glad to see you're still tagging along.

Did you guys ever train for any other kinds of special mission? One that seems to pop up often is using very small clean systems to drop large buildings. It would be interesting to hear if that was ever in the target folder

We used to store 155 mm nuclear cannon rounds in our storage igloos in Alaska.  I wonder what happened to them ?  I know 155 cannon rounds can be on the heavy side but not all the weight is made up of explosive compound.  I assume the same with the nuclear rounds.  There would be the heavy outside steel case but the contents and the nuclear components couldn't be near as heavy as the outside solid steel portion of the round.  

kwg

...not relevant...

I was never a Green Light Cat.  I worked with the 59th Ord tower rats prior to getting my Tab and learned about WADS from those poor bastards.

95B10 aka 18Z50

I can personally attest that the center body section of the 155mm nuclear projectile was warm to the touch.  And it wasn't steel if I recall correctly.

Sweet. Layer upon layer of go fuck yourselves.

Am I understanding this right? Is that a lucite paperweight containing trinninite, molded in the Fat Man pit mold?

Thank you!
A new rabbit hole to pop down, but that guy's name sounds... familiar (in a good way)

Off the cuff assessment of his system model is it isn't credible, though. Just pretty.




Ah. I'm tracking now. Thank you



If it is the one I am thinking of, speculation based on some documents say it was an alloy called 'magthor', if that sounds familiar.

It apparently solved some problems regarding spin (I can never remember fugal or tripedal) forces, and it was favorable in neutronics, but the tradeoff was you had to put three feet between it and other rounds, and you needed to step back three feet when you weren't actively taking a positive action or monitoring the one that was.

I may be off on that, though



Dude, this was the 70's-80's. They weren't fucking around overseas. Not like how they are being forced to let turkey overrun parts of the bases; they were taking broomsticks and table legs to protestors back then.

That one cat's book talking about his time overseas goes into all that in more detail. You weren't even getting to the area around the magazines without getting some hate laid on you. Just going into the mechanical or electrical bays for assembly could make for a bad day if you forgot the word of the day, or weren't on the ACL. Apparently rank didn't matter, either.

One story that I bet gamma762 knows in detail is when the AEC (forerunner of the DOE) sent someone over to inspect the bases. He was a propeller head from Sandia, and... I'm mushing this story up. Forgive me. He saw a lone armed sentry off by himself on a hot flight line near a US nuc armed foreign aircraft. He got his escort to take him over there to see what it was about, and the kids' order was to shoot the pilot and then the nuc, in that order, if proper procedures weren't followed.
This greatly upset the guy, and that is part of where the kennedy locks came from. Allegedly.



Are you a nark? Energy order O475.1 states clearly that NNSA counterintel people have to tell if I ask, and then I get to wear their badge for not less than 36 hours from the time I ask.

(yes. that's exactly what it is.)
I almost bought a Mark 3 lens mold, too, from a grandkid of the guy that was cranking them out. He took one home and was using it as a birdbath, no shit.

Found a new book.

It's easily digestible, and apparently represents what the USG feels is ok to share about nuclear weapons. I found it also has an interesting take on some of the weaponeering history.

https://cgsr.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/CGSR_NW101_Policy_Wonks_11-04-21_WEB_v5.pdf

Tag for when I can get to my computer

EOD

https://www.reporterherald.com/2021/08/07/trivially-speaking-davy-crockett-became-a-relic-of-the-cold-war-frontier

Wrong…12E

Fun acronyms and phrases from my time in Germany from the mid 80s

Fog guard
PRP
2 man rule
1 meter rule
SMLM


I did my time in 59 Ord Brigade aka the bald gynecologist

No, EOD is Explosive Ordnance Disposal.

EOD in that era was trained to disarm atomic demolitions.

Quote History

Originally Posted By MedSquared:

EOD

View Quote View All Quotes

View All Quotes

Quote History

Originally Posted By MedSquared:

Originally Posted By PACU-Nurse:
My recruiter back in the day said that his mos was atomic demolitions munitions specialist

EOD

No. There was an actually MOS for this.

12E


covered.

What is 'fog guard'? The rest I get.

There were several nuc (atomic! SPECIAL!) related Army MOS's:

Attached File


12E, as mentioned, but also

Attached File


35 Foxtrot and

Attached File


55 Golf,

most of their training manuals are in the open if one knew which library to go get them off the shelves...

You could form 1 initiating devices and explosives that would do the shape changing, but sufficient nuclear material for a weapon will require a license with compliance requirements that are quite extensive.

2a is my permit.

You poor bastard…..I went to SFAS rather than be sent to 59th ORD.

I left active duty rather than end up at Miesau.

OP

Do you have anything related to the "starwars" years at Y12 and the national labs?

Ok
I'm still down. What's Japan doing with all the 49 they have to be pulling from their reactors? I bet they'd write me a license.



This is the way






I'm confused. I have met elderly gentlemen, sad, hunched over in their wheelchair, piss tube darkly dripping into the bag strapped to their legs, literally light the fuck up when I mentioned 1980's military service in Germany.

People even talked fondly of being jacked up by the local police, being frozen to death in some field, and causing international incidents.

Tell us more. (It's the 4th, have a few on behalf of the ones that can't today, then come back and let it rip)

THIS IS NOW (TEMPORARILY) A REFORGER THREAD!!

I'm not that dude, but I'll be presumptuous. Y12 has done a lot of wfo. they machined the Seawolf propellers, and helped with hull formulations. ORNL did a lot of LASER and related work.
In general though, I've never really delved into SDI. I know it exists, I believe they have stuff on station, today, from that period, but I have 0 clue what Oak Ridge Operations' role in any of it would be. You should ask in the MIRV thread, there are more rocket types in there.
But, do go over and share what you know, there is some overlap, no one has really discussed countermeasures yet, and that might be a fun hole to rabbit

@Meche_03 in case you’re not in the MIRV thread: https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/MIRV-reentry-question/5-2654677/&page=6&anc=104796698#i104796698

My understanding is that Coster-Mullen passed away.

Is there any plans for his estate to keep publishing?

The last time I talked to his wife years ago, I think she was finishing his orders with the last revision, but I can't speak to what happened with the printing business. His research materials went to a college, I am blanking on where now.

I am not sure if Hansen's wife is continuing to
 
I went and checked. The box.net account is still active, so I suppose the material is still there.

So were these bunkers where the weapons were stored in Europe,  or are they the actual detonation point?

He's talking about the storage magazines.

Copy. Maybe I missed it, but were there prestaged detonation points already set up in Europe?

Discussed in detail first 2-3 pages of the thread broheim

This was a good video I've put off watching, but I am taking 3-4 days as off as I can be presently lol

They have a mock up at the National Atomic Testing Mueseum in Las Vegas.

COOL!

I haven't seen that one. That's a terrible repro of the bag, though.  Gotta go look for more pics of it now!

Here’s the other one I took

Looks like they left out the foam padding.

I started on the Nuclear Weapons Program in 1958.  I was certified on the B54 in 1967.  At that time the mention of an ADM was Top Secret. Imagine my surprise to see all the info in this post.  I believe the information you are asking for would come under CNWDI and I sure won't be the one to give it up.  Probably available on the web but I don't know.  Our group, Navy Nuclear Weapons Association, is having our reunion in Branson, MO in Sept.
https://www.navynucweps.com/index.html

Attached File

This thread is fascinating!

Awesome thread with a lot of awesome posters. It is amazing what was out there and how much went into keeping it secret and unnoticed. Sure a big bad Army post was intimidating but understand all these hidden things were out and about is even scarier. All of you 12 series had one hell of a job and we are all indebted to your service.
I thought I was cool, a 19E. We had a big bad tank but damn, y'all were walking around with a nuke on your back. Makes our whole battalion look like a bunch of pu55ie5.

Just curious what you were looking for to find a year old thread?