That link to the tech manual was great!

Not really.  Not based on current designs and limits set by physics.  

The SADM and Davy Crockett used the same warhead design. The W54 aka B54, which is the smallest nuclear weapon design fielded by the USA.  You have to have a minimum mass quantity of plutonium and a minimum mass quantity of high explosives to make the device work.

I'm  not certain I can agree with you.
(edit - I see you said 'current designs'. Guess I can agree with you LOL)
Remember that every currently fielded nuc system was invented prior to 1990. They were still doing pen and ink on some of the drawings!

With 3d metal printing and materials science where it's at, also considering there are more isotopes on the board than they had in 1990, without the benefit of actually knowing, I would say the possibility of a smaller diameter system isn't 0.

Also, I'm not certain the 54 is the smallest, even though that's what everyone says. What is the primary in a 79? I think that's your winner, there. They went in the span of a few years from a multistory water tank liquid cooled gadget to something less than 8" and 200#...

if you can remove the terminal effects from the equation, that's some amazing science and technology right there.




You're welcome. There is a bunch more at that link on other systems and other things, if you are so inclined.

Seems like the state of the art was there for the 82 to eclipse the 79 if the wall hadn't come down?

Suffice to say that there are mechanisms in place to preclude that from happening….

That’s a cool picture;  young patriotic Americans in the field, in the prime of their lives and not a fat body amongst them.

National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque?  I used to go there a lot when it was still on Kirkland AFB.

For the latter, it would be conducting war by other means. PRC doesn't need nukes, or a nuke in this case, to destroy us. It's already happening.

There was some work done some years ago on a hafnium bomb. Which would theoretically have the power of a low yield nuclear weapon in a package about the size of a hand grenade.

I really don’t know why they thought that would work. The US Navy has been using hafnium control rods in most of their reactors for decades. Those rods would be soaking up neutrons for years on end. If there was any risk of the metal becoming explosive I think someone would have noticed by now.

One of my most treasured possessions is a hafnium cube from luciteria. It’s not a terribly expensive metal because there’s very little demand for it. But it is very rare. Besides control rods it’s also used in welding and to make orbital rocket engines.

We had nuke 155 artillery shells.

@Hesperus

The "hafnium bomb" is a weapons application of induced isomer decay (of Hf178m2) that would yield a shit-ton of x-ray photons and no fallout. Induced isomer decay is very different from fission (or fusion) and there would be no critical mass required. However, the core concept is not something we've been able to do (or it is top secret). The non-explody application of this would be a "nuclear battery" or "isomer battery" that would be like a super duper RTG that could be turned on and off based on demand, but nobody can figure out how to trigger isomer decay, much less in a net energy positive way, so oh well.

ETA: clarity

Ugh, this is giving me a headache.

Pu-linear implosion sounds like it'd be smaller (at least in one dimension) than Pu-spherical. Agree that CFD breakthroughs could likely lead to some amazing efficiencies.

The thing that surprised me about the W79 and 82 is that there were enhanced radiation mods.  I.e, neutron bombs.  I'd thought those were strictly a product of fast fusion neutrons, and that there wouldn't be appreciable fusion yield in a device that small.  TIL....

@Hesperus

I'm not a super good explainer and my classes were over 20 years ago...

First lets start with something you probably have a good concept of: fluorescence and phosphorescence...

Think of how an electron can occupy higher energy stats and when it transitions back to a lower state, energy is released... think fluorescence when it happens basically right away: I smash with high energy and get basically immediate lower energy photons back out by electron excitation and relaxation between states. That is how fluorescent highlighters and fluorescent bulbs work.

If instead of immediate reemission of photons, the energy releases over time, potential energy "stored" in excited electron states that are later released by photons by relaxation. This is phosphorescence and an excited phosphorescent material phosphoresces with an eve decreasing glow that follows a half-life equation. That is how glow in the dark paint works.

Now, instead of of storing energy in the electron states, what if we put the energy into nucleon states (exciting protons and neutrons). You cannot usually do that stably so we talk about metastable isomers because the isomer decays super fast by spitting out a gamma ray, the isomeric analog of fluorescence.

But what if the isomer is stable for a longer period of time? It still follows that halflife equation. These decaying isomers like Hf178m2 still undergo isomeric decay back to their ground state (Hf178 is stable). So it spits out a gamma ray, but it does not become another isotope or element. It transitions isomeric states back to the ground state after radiatiating a photon.

The goal of induced isomeric decay is to have these longer halflife isomers ("charged up") and instead of them following their halflife equation, induce them to decay releasing that energy on demand. It would be like finding a way to induce glow in the dark paint to release all its light in a flash via a controlled trigger.

Phosphorescence is a phenomena I find myself thinking about a lot as my screen name might hint. When I’m looking at a new wrist watch one of the first things I do is check if it has luminescent paint and how good it is.

It’s incredible how much of everyday life is dependent on molecular and/or chemical processes that most people just don’t care to understand. Just that if it works, it works.

Haha figures.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge here and there.

I was a history major, and one of my all time best classes was 'History of the Atomic Age' focussing on the development and subsequent history of atomic weapons and the cold war. Alas nothing was as detailed as what you're going into here.

I'm sure you've read it, but if you haven't this book is a really fun read:

https://www.amazon.com/Bomb-Life-Gerard-J-DeGroot/dp/0674022351

DeGroot traces the life of the Bomb from its birth in turn-of-the-century physics labs of Europe to a childhood in the New Mexico desert of the 1940s, from adolescence and early adulthood in Nagasaki and Bikini, Australia and Kazakhstan to maturity in test sites and missile silos around the globe. His book portrays the Bomb's short but significant existence in all its scope, providing us with a portrait of the times and the people--from Oppenheimer to Sakharov, Stalin to Reagan--whose legacy still shapes our world.

I also really enjoyed this book, from the designer of the Davy Crocket, about his concern that someone might build their own nuclear bomb some day / get ahold of a suitcase nuke and use it to knock down the twin towers...written in the 70's.

https://www.amazon.com/Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming-Theodore/dp/0374515980

Theodore B. Taylor was among the most ingenious engineers of the nuclear age. He created the most powerful and the smallest nuclear weapons of his time (his masterpiece, the Davy Crockett, weighed in at a svelte 50 pounds) and also spearheaded efforts to create a nuclear-powered spacecraft. But in his later years, Taylor became increasingly concerned that compact and powerful bombs could be easily built not just by nations employing experts such as himself, but by single individuals with modest technical ability and perseverance. McPhee tours American nuclear installations with Taylor, and we are treated to a grim, eye-opening account of just how close we are to witnessing terrorist attacks using homemade nuclear weaponry. The Curve of Binding Energy is compelling writing about an urgently important topic.

Not boring in the least man, please share.

And yes if that pic is what you suspect, that really does look like a tiny nuke.

Would the W82 155mm technically be 'smaller' then the SADM? Or is weight the technical spec. Yield quoted at 2kt which is big boom for small size.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W82

We (5th SFG Green Light ODAs) never used any of the crap in those pictures, though I've seen film of the early MFF tests where 7th SFG used the big canvas cylindrical carry bag.

Engineer units used them.

We just put the device (training ones except once) in a large ALCE ruck (it fit, barely) if you bent the cross brace on the ruck frame.

During the SADM course at Fort Belvoir we were taught that with proper employment, a SADM could be employed in such a manner as to be radiologically neutral.  In other words no fallout.

The early B54s had nylon clock work.  During routine inspections that was found to be a  suboptimal material to expose to radiation.  Timers were replaced.

I've armed an actual timer (no nuclear pit - it had been pulled).  It was accurate (to the second).

I too was surprised by that. Supposedly costly... it really did make me think about applicability to ABM and exoatmospheric combat. Neutrons are nice for that and nukes become more palatable at lower yields.

Of course if you want to kill manned craft in actual space combat, a large multimegaton nuke can kill the crew from dozens of miles away, even with good shielding, making intercept extremely difficult. A swarm of 6in diameter missiles can easily get within a mile of target.

Here is an unenhanced pure fission 20kt in space:

10th SFG gave up the mission before 1987.  

5th SFG was the last SF group to give it up.

7th SFG was the first to give it up.

We never had "hands on" with operational weapons.  They were kept in high security depots (10th SFG's were not in Germany - but the USAREUR engineer units were).  

Closest I came to a real one was a 1985 test where we did a full mission profile exercise with a "defanged" device (no nuclear pit).

We got a mission brief, did isolation (planning), briefbacked our plan, got approval, received the device, jumped, moved to the "target", emplaced and armed it, moved off to observe / prepare, did a BDA and moved to exfil.  We had a DOE nerd physicist weapons designer with us.

Still a nice BOOM with the explosive.

The really tippy top secret was the ogive (the curved side).  It was explained to me by the DOE Lawrence Livermore nerd we took walk about but I brain dumped it immediately.

Super cool.

Moments like these are why I love arfcom.

5th SFG Green Light ODAs used to say:

"A deployed Green Light ODA is like an artillery round: once fired, it cannot be recalled.  No brass, no Soldiers Sir!"

We were nihlist fucks.

A little research is a bit light.

5th SFG was formally briefed by DOE (I can't remember what lab) on a B54 follow on replacement in 1987.  Variable yield, "flexible" (that's what they said), and smaller.

I was told the program went on life support and then died due to the collapse of the USSR and eternal peace breaking out.

I last saw it in 2008 after it was moved off base.  Compared to when it was still on Kirkland, it was missing quite a few displays.  Hopefully that’s no longer the case.

One sold on gunbroker a few years back (the case/backpack….not the weapon obviously).

That's interesting.   Were you strapping it to some sort of balloon with >70lbs of lift?  Or emplacing it within some pre-positioned, tamped and blocked deep bore?

Because that's the only way I'm not imagining ground material getting mixed with bomb material from a man-portable, man-emplaced weapon.

Going out on a limb, but he didn't happen to be a tall, kinda balding guy with glasses, who was really into fencing, was he?

Tom was a neat dude.  Really into wine too.

I don't foresee 3d printing or additive manufacturing helping build a better nuclear weapon anytime soon.  It introduces too many impurities and physical voids to the nuclear fuel chain.  The uncontrolled density changes that occur at the current technology level would be detrimental to controlled HE driven implosion.  The impurities also introduce a significant quantity of elements that could lead to increased chemical interactions within the sealed subassembly.

Is there possibilities to create new materials that help control shockwaves to mitigate attenuation/reflections while possibly adding fusion fuel? Probably.  

Better materials and manufacturing methods for the delivery system to help manipulate the mass, strength, cg....to allow more nuclear material better safety and firing controls within the same defined outer envelope of the delivery system....yes, a big yes.

The new materials, elements and modern computers can help a lot.  But, in the 60s-80s, the weapons complex did not have to work with in the current limitations of the EPA, OSHA, understanding of long term effects and consequences of exposure to radiation, and a plethora of now banned materials and chemicals.  A lot was done based on the pure physics and science needed for a design to work.  

I don't know what the primary of the w79 looks like.  The w79 appears to be roughly the same size canned assembly as the 54 based on having the same delivery systems, but the w79 could have a maximum output  slightly higher than the 54 and the 79 is reported to have had a enhanced neutron option....so a small fision 2ndary?  Lots of websites state the 79 had a linear PU implosion primary....what ever that means....so assuming it went from spherical implosion to a different method requiring less volumetric space.  So again pointing to the possibility of a small secondary.  

I don't believe a briefcase nuke ever existed based on a pit needs to be baseball to softball size before any HE, detonators, firing controls, or shielding.   If you told me it was the size of a modern carryon luggage case and weighed #50+ I'd believe you.

What are the chances that we have infiltrated key locations and buried devices like this with the capability for remote detonation.  No time-of-flight like a missile.  Literally just press a button somewhere in Washington and blow up a major military target with a 30 year old buried device.  Could completely pre-empt any missile launches.

Same could be said about Russian assets burying devices on our turf.  Spooky.

I recall reading that at least with the more sophisticated nuclear designs, they have to be maintained every 10-15 years to have their tritium and other stuff swapped out as these 'secret herbs and spices' decay after that. Thats why some suspect a lot of Russias nukes have probably expired, as doing all that service work is monstrously expensive.

Not sure whether that means the bomb would fail / fizzle or whether it would just be less powerful.

But assuming thats true that would hopefully mean any hidden H-bombs would be expired by now unless they've been covertly serviced in the last 30 years.

However a simpler device may not expire. From the description of the 'gun type' Little Boy a-bomb used in Hiroshima, the ingredients there didn't seem like they'd expire any faster then normal HE shells? So theres a potential a cruder device could have a much longer shelf life.

Hiding small nukes on your enemies territory would be extraordinarily risky. The discovery of one could trigger a preemptive strike against you.

It doesn't have to be a "pre-positioned, tamped and blocked deep bore".   Yield has been discussed but it was, in thermonuclear weapons terms, an M-80.

The primary principle of emplacement (for 5th SFG Green Light ODAs at least) was to have tactical and operational deniability under our CONPLAN  (the force list in this briefing is not complete).  We'd be fighting the USSR, in Iran, while Iran is fighting the USSR, but not allied to or in partnership with Iran.  So no ODA wants to be 'nuclear terrorists" on the run from pissed off Soviets or pissed off Iranians.

Hunkered down, in a OP close enough to maintain 2 man overwatch (we're not talking miles away) and do a visual BDA: you don't want to exfiltrate through a rain of fallout.  You want all that to stay in the target area and for the first enemy troops that roll up not to immediately whip out their DP-66Ms or scream "Allah Ackbar!"  You want them dazed and confused as to WTF just happened while you didi mau as fast as possible (we would have been on foot).

There are, in Iran, operational (strategic for the Iranians) chokepoints where Soviet north-south LOCs could be semi-permanently cut.  That would hinder Soviet pass thru of 2nd and 3rd echelon forces as the 1st echelon was attrited into combat ineffectiveness.

All contemporary remote detonation systems had a finite range.  I suppose today you could use a satellite signal.  But imagine a remote detonation signal that used 1G or 2G cellular service...  Whoops!

And the maintenance.  And the cosmic cluster fuck if someone found it.

They aren't mine to share publicly; I was honored to be able to view and keep some of them, so I'll only add a couple more.
I have seldom, if ever, talked to a troop that had a bad time in Germany. It's actually fun watching their eyes glaze over remembering it.

... that and Korea up to about the mid 90's. lol


If only there were a way that the modern Soldier/Sailor/Airman could see how things were back then; I know a bunch of unhappy people serving now.
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Attached File


Everyone fit. Everyone getting the job done, and then partying as hard as they trained. All of them believing that they were on the razor's edge and that russia was coming for us, and they were going to fucking stop ivan dead in his tracks.

I am very glad they were all there, holding the line. Reading russian stuff on nuc history, apparently, they believed it, too.

They appear to have had several ideas. The B91 gravity system, too. I  think it was two things, not so much the fall of russia, I think the communist-led environmentalists and liberals broke it off in All Things Nuclear.

Throw in a couple of subject matter experts wringing their hands, and I think it was the death knell.

(I have no background here, policy is way out of my wheelhouse, but I think war should be short, meaningful, and so immediately painful to the other side they give up. No rebuilding, no pacification or police action bullshit. So, if it means making some glassy parking lots instead of sending more of my neighbors' kids overseas, I guess they shouldn't have asked for it. I'm not the least worried about counterforce or nuclear winter).




There is more on that topic, but it is in Mandarin and... uh, cyrillic? lol

Linear can mean a rod or tube of active material. It could also mean a truncated cone, like one of those old paper cups. Then there is the whole 'nonspherical implosion'. All are predicated on making the active material relatively non-critical until time of boom. You can actually put more than a single critical mass into a pit if you spread it out enough, and a tube geometry would absolutely allow for that.

The issue is 'efficient'.

Most small-volume designs are inefficient. (The most wasteful remain gun assembled devices). That's because, I think, they  prioritize a shape or volume over compression. There is a TON to compression, and ways to keep the mass assembled for slightly longer. None of these fit into small volumes.

I believe efficient designs rely on ultrapure thin levitated shells, graded compression, focused neutron drive, boosting, and ample energetics. Insensitive High Explosives are relatively safer, but at a penalty of less drive for the same volume of material. (there are legit weaponeers, EOD and Production Technicians on here that could correct me... but they won't. o well)



ERW is generally poorly understood. My limited understanding is that once they pretty much got the idea of fission and fusion for defense applications down, they realized they could modulate and prefer certain outputs at the expense of others. This came from the so-called 'clean' vs 'dirty' systems, and I suspect, culminated in using tiny nuc systems to pump LASERS or other devices for... reasons. lol

There are a lot of routes to creating neutrons. But there are also ways to make a system more opaque to other energies at the expense of losing neutrons. (Neutrons are the secret sauce to nuc systems. Just a handful of them are what kick off the reaction. Adding a handful more... I THINK increases efficiency logarithmically. (Don't quote me, I am math dumb).



As far as the chemical high explosion portion of the physics package, they have been doing additive since the late 50's. Without having any of my reference material in front of me, I could make a case that they essentially invented it. Using layering technology they were able to adjust the refractive index of explosives, causing chapman-jouguet wave shaping, which started with multi-piece lens casting techniques, where they did have a terrible time with voids, but learned a great deal about non-destructive testing in order to make things better. Although, sitting with a 40 pound piece of explosive in your lap, and using a dentists' drill to bore a hole in live HE to fill a void doesn't sound like something you'd really want to be doing... but they did it.

Figuring out how to layer different products during the pour I think is where 3d printing started, honestly. I'm probably wrong, but I know for a fact they did it, and I know that them figuring it out reduced the CHE burden from hundreds of pounds to under a hundred pounds, and in some cases, much less.

Also, it's not just in active materials and conventional explosives. They also invented foamed metals. Imagine a sponge, but of actual metal. And, they made it into something called graded impactors, where it starts out almost squishy, but as you progress through it, it gets harder and stiffer. Doping this metal with various items gives... other benefits as well.

The control of density may not have been invented at the Labs, but it is where it is now because of them, in my opinion.



Funny story.

I was not there for this, but I (as well as others) put this together independently before NNSA fessed up to it. There is a component in certain systems, that does a certain function. It was a pain in the balls to make from several standpoints, and eventually, they stopped making it because... they assumed something better was coming? Who knows.

They tried to restart production of this product, and failed. Not really failed, but they didn't have as-built and batch data, and some other things were lost to the sands of time. What they made was absolutely pure and perfect in the lens of modern materials science. Then (I think, they never said) they did some underground low-yield testing with it, and... it did not behave like the legacy material.

Turns out, they had to re-introduce certain impurities, and alter the process in a less-optimized way in order to maintain the legacy, benchmarked material.

... well, I think it's funny. Like, Nile Red trying to bake a cookie in his lab using ochem techniques funny.

anyway



Guarantee it. Submarines are quiet, and people run faster due to it.



Totally agree.

And, apparently, they've had a lot of pushback over the years. It's like you have a 1981 car, but you can't change the tires on it because, is that a new weapons system? That's a treaty violation. Ok, so we leave the frame alone, but we put electronic ignition in it and power door locks. Same motor, so has to be same weapon. Right? Maybe. Well, let's replace the cylindrical transmission with a spherical one. Well, now it goes faster in the same lift weight and cone volume, so treaty violation, right? Nope, we used that transmission on a truck before, so it's not new. (I suspect this is where the ATF got some of their policymaking guidance.)




I agree completely. What is the point of leaving a pristine countryside if it's going to be taken by Godless commies? I think a point came where they knew the jig was up, but by then there were so many contractors trying to squeeze the last pennies out of the programs that they could have started doing better and remediating, but they said fuck it and kicked that can down the road, which I believe was wrong, and yet another nail in defense production work.

Plus, they had the advantage of testing.

To this day, the computer models are not super accurate. They have to adjust them to fit the actual test data, and they still don't seem to know why. My favorite, the 54, needed a few shots before they got it dialed in, but that was during the Fun Era of weaponeering. Plenty of material, plenty of talent, what magic can we squeeze out of the atom next?




I don't either, and no one has ever told me. I do know there is a component inside codeword TONY, that was a problem. Eventually one of them came up with an elegant as fuck solution to it, and it's something that amazes them all to this day. I wish to know what it was. The Russians know. The Chinese know. Taiwan knows. A ton of contractors, servicemen, scientists, printers, secretaries, and others know. (shrugs)




There has been a TON of speculation in the few places I've ever wormed my way into. The craziest part is that when you look at a 79 shell, most of that isn't the physics package, at all. (There are cutaway pics on the net).

I think the 79 is thinner than the 54. The 54 is spherical with a hemispherical hemishell, and a so-called "shaped hemishell".
The 54 was fission only. The 79 was a true TN system, and I've never read why besides military characteristics planning why they arrived at the yields they chose.   As far as volumetric space, .... mmmm not too certain. You can take an orange-sized lump of clay and squish it into a hollow football shape. Same amount of material, but now you can adjust the volume to be more amenable to a cone, or a sphere-cone, or even a cylinder.

Adding fusion can come in two routes. The soviets are known to have layered fusion materials around a fission system. Another speculative version has a fusion fuel at the end of a fission primary. The fanciest version uses container geometry and a delayed, filtering barrier to briefly focus fission energies onto a co-located fusion fuel system. These can be linked like sausages, creating fission>fusion>fission chains. Dunno, a lot of that got declassified because people wanted badly for fusion power generation and the power and defense versions apparently have great overlap. I never really dug into it that much.

But, I know the 79 has a secondary. And gold the thickness of a beer can, and somehow ultra-pure carbon fashioned into sheets that can withstand tens of thousands of revolutions per second at a ton of G forces, and somehow the whole thing maintains geometry and distances internally.

Again, fascinating. I wish to know more.

(I don't really want to kill anybody; I also enjoy watching shows on the clever ways they run assembly lines, especially foods. I just am a huge fan of engineering, and there is a ton of it in ordnance. Also, I hate not being in on a secret.Even if it is a dumb secret).



As far as US systems, design released ones I don't know of one. AEC/ERDA test item? No telling. Threat nations, I've seen an image they told me was a russian one, but it wasn't a briefcase. It was much larger.

Having said that, and knowing that most US systems were designed in 2d and not 3d, if they had a way to flatten a football, the 54 would have fit in a briefcase. The smallest gun assembled device would have gone in a fat briefcase or potentially a doctor's satchel, if it didn't have to withstand being shot out of a cannon. (Shrugs) dunno

That is a GREAT explanation. Thank you!!



I can't say that I have. I may pick that one up.

... on the other hand...



Ted Taylor was amazing. He also made the largest fission only system. It's a very good book; I'm due to re-read it.

It was in multiple pieces. There were a set of rings, a barrel, and a combination control plug and I suspect another part of active material. Be cool to see some pics of it.




Not certain for me. Problem is they have to overbuild nuc arty to withstand being shot out of it. So, no telling what's in there when you peel it all away, and no longer have to account for materials that can withstand high stress with no deformation. Also... the shell may play an active role, no elaboration permitted. LOL



Sir, have you not seen the documentary with John Travolta? lol pick a terrain feature that lends itself to the problem. Especially in lower yield systems, there is a bunch of data out there, and I don't... think you need a ton of overburden. Dump it in a sub-sub basement or a sewerage feature, use a conventional munition to collapse that stuff in on itself, then let it work its magic.

They shot a TON of stuff underground near las vegas. Blows my mind thinking they would set off a nuc, then repair the main tunnel, and truck on past it.

Makes sense. Kind of like stripping field food




That is the story I was told, with the addition of the lubricant they used gummed up quickly due to neutron irradiation and temp swings.



That's awesome that you trusted them to believe it was a HE only trainer LOL!



Fischbach and a couple other places:

https://www.veteranauthor.com/64th-ordnance-company-2/

I recommend this guys' book, too 'last of the glow worms' if you can find it. (I collect a lot of the books the nuc guys have written. Do any of you know any? Thanks!)



That was probably ADAM. They were going to shoehorn the 82 guts (I think) into an ADM, which made perfect sense. Flexible is what the snake eaters was wanting lol



You are one of a handful I have ever heard that knew about that feature. I am about 80/20 that it is a single point detonating system, and I have the part numbers for the hemishell and the shaped shell you are talking about, and I have data on how it is assembled.
... and there may be a leaked photo of the DAVY CROCKETT physics package, but it doesn't really help lol. There's also a storage container for the mk.54 used in an air-to-air system that is sort of visually descriptive, as well.


My best friend is prior EOD.

He said he was the same way about 90% of the nuc portion of his schools, and I don't think he was politely shining me on (I never pressed). He said they all thought the odds of them running across anything like a US/threat system or an IND were so remote, they had pubs, and DTRA reachback anyway, so he concentrated on shit that might kill him immediately, like boobytrapped foreign munitions and whatever the local homegrown alcohol was in Korea...


EDIT:

anybody know what this is? lol

Attached File

They could have used HF, or the classified parts of TRANSIT or IDCSP.




It is very possible. Problem I see without benefit of knowledge, is that so many people have fucked us by telling the Bad Guys our secrets; and the last thing you'd want is a threat nation with one or more of your systems where it would be pretty simple to take swipe samples and trace it back to Hanford or one of the research reactors.

This is why I don't think the soviets brought many here.



There are a lot of issues with nuclear weapons that are publicly known.

Plutonium decays over time, and traps helium in tiny pockets. Pockets grow big enough, they can cause pieces of fissile material to pop off, called 'spalling'. Even plating the components isn't enough. It isn't clear if a 30 year-old pit is unusable though, I can understand why they would want to keep that close to the vest. (I've read several of their publications where they tested real and accelerated life tested coupons, that's not the same as crushing a complete pit; they are guessing.)

Plastics hate radiation. Explosives often have a plasticizer. Even basic electronics don't like being irradiated, that's why 'radhard' is still a fairly secretive topic. Offgassing is a HUGE problem. Stress cushions and even cable covers are in a sealed environment. A tiny amount of moisture coupled with chlorine coming from plastics can wreck them, I believe. Also, some stuff can offgas en masse and deposit itself in unwanted areas, this could interfere with radiation transport or make things... uh, out of round.

Modern systems use components that lose their pep on a fairly predictable timetable. So, they need their neutron generators, gas bottles, and a couple other items replaced on a regular basis. This doesn't require a trip back to Pantex. I would not trust a 30 year old 20 pound chunk of plastic explosives (plastic in this case more like the feel of a bowling ball than silly putty) that had been heated and irradiated constantly.

In the case of a theoretical slim margin-design staged system in certain environments, you would be going to the bottom of the guaranteed output over the range of yields pretty quickly. Unless your plan includes bracketing multiple systems to a given designated desired ground zero, there probably isn't a lot of wiggle room in the planners' estimates of needed yield for that target.


Failure of a one shot valve, a filter that clogs, or loss of a neutron generator might dud it entirely; but I do not have any direct knowledge of this, nor would I share it on a particular system if I did; that's SIGMA level shit, and they would mash my nuts, and I wouldn't blame them.

_{** Edited to change a term. I stand corrected. Thanks!}

Have you ever tried to male a long distance HF shot?

In my day we used HF (SATCOM was a toddler) for coms.  Making a long range HF shot was voodoo and black magic.  Our battalion commander was a former 18E (actually a 05BSW9) and it was a point of honor to make HF shots no matter where we were.  So we did HF from Amman Jordan.  Our battalion commo sergeant and the Group commo base station engineered the shot using SATCOM (in other words, they talked it in).

Remote detonating a device in Moscow with an HF signal from DC...  Right.  It might happen.

In the town I was station in were 5 small army bases the one up the road had a small airfield and a helicopter unit. According to protestors outside of our base there were underground bunkers and nukes hidden there. I have no idea actually. But did you know that the army has cases of pick axe handles and when you get riot duty you get a pick axe handle and no training. Just stand here.

Quoting for truth.

Excellent post, man.

Great thread with lots of fascinating info.  I thought you might like to see this piece that turned up at a militaria show a couple years ago.  Scratched my head for a while but ultimately figured it had to be the training timer for a MADM.  Unfortunately, someone else bought it before I had the chance.

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