Davy Crockett.

Most are, this is true, but I'm talking about the newer, smaller ones. The larger, more abundant bombs were needed during the cold war to deter a Soviet ground assault, and the smaller ones would not have sufficed. I'm not sure the technology even existed for small ones at the time. Although a neutron bomb the size of a baseball might blow up a small building and tip a few cars, the destruction would mainly be with the neutron radiation for several blocks around. I also doubt that terrorists would be using the larger ones, for detection problems as Simon666 mentioned.

Sorry to take it off topic Delta lol. Yes, Davy Crocket is beautiful. But 151,000 of these babies? I wonder if either nation could even be able to use 'em all before both were completely annihilated!

[edit on 20-6-2005 by zhangmaster]

Originally posted by zhangmaster
Thanks to the DNC/Chinagate scandal, however, China is now known to possess neutron devices, and several other countries are rumored to be actively pursuing this technology. Many global intelligence analysts believe that small neutron bombs may unfortunately become the weapon of choice for the discerning terrorist in the 21st century.

I thought that there was no evidence there had actually been nuclear leaks to China.

Originally posted by zhangmaster
I've heard this mentioned a lot actually, and there must be some way to get it into the country if people are getting worried about it. That is interesting information though Simon, I didn't know they were that detectable.

I made a stupid mistake, I thought tritium emitted positrons while it is actually 18 keV electrons which are easily blocked.

Yeah, about the Chinagate scandal, I had no idea myself until recently when I was researching the neutron bomb. Apparently it happened during the regan-Bush era. Something was leaked, because China advanced in its nuclear program much faster than should have been possible.

In the early years of the Clinton administration, U.S. intelligence experts began to suspect that the Chinese nuclear breakthrough most likely came from purloined U.S. secrets. “It’s like they were driving a Model T and went around the corner and suddenly had a Corvette,” said Robert M. Hanson, a Los Alamos intelligence analyst, in early 1995, the Times reported.

The spy, according to the article was named Wen Ho Lee

But the Chinese-espionage story didn’t gain national attention until March 1999 when the New York Times published several imprecise front-page stories fingering Lee as an espionage suspect. This “Chinagate” story broke just weeks after Clinton’s impeachment and Senate trial for lying about sex with Monica Lewinsky.

www.consortiumnews.com...

[edit on 21-6-2005 by zhangmaster]

They found not a single piece of evidence other than the guy being originally from China. It also makes you doubt how the US supposedly "knows" the Chinese have made such advances, I sincerely doubt they have access to Chinese nuclear secrets.

the davey crocketthe hight of military cold war dark humor......look at old mate just a standin there all out in the open a wonderin if that puppies 2000m MAXIMUM range was maybe a little short? INSANE.......and to think, real real smart people invented this thing

Originally posted by nubby
the davey crocket

the hight of military cold war dark humor......look at old mate just a standin there all out in the open a wonderin if that puppies 2000m MAXIMUM range was maybe a little short? INSANE.......and to think, real real smart people invented this thing

So you risk giving a 3 man launcher team mild sunburn to take out a hundred tanks in 5 seconds.

Doesn't sound so stupid to me.

The `davy crockett` won`t kill 100 tanks - the lethal area of effect just isn`t large enough - if it was then the short range of the weapon would put the launch crew in extreme danger (fatal)

Originally posted by Winchester Ranger T

Originally posted by nubby
the davey crocket

the hight of military cold war dark humor......look at old mate just a standin there all out in the open a wonderin if that puppies 2000m MAXIMUM range was maybe a little short? INSANE.......and to think, real real smart people invented this thing

So you risk giving a 3 man launcher team mild sunburn to take out a hundred tanks in 5 seconds.

Doesn't sound so stupid to me.

well ontop of the sunburned 3, and the hunderd tanks, your own frontlies woulda got crisped to, cause presumably, they woulda been between the tanners and the tanks.......still sound clever?......mate, the weapon nerds had a big fat woody fer anything nuclear back in the day, didnt matter who got fried, ours, thiers.....they just wanted a cookup! and didnt think much past that........youve only gotta look at ideas like nuclear powered bombersand that dr strangelove style nuclear powered cruise missle that woulda irradiated half of western europe on its way to moscow.......it was like baskin and radiations 31 flavors of death but they couldnt stop at 31

With the "dial a yield" feature, the W54 warhead that the Davy Crockett carried could be set to deliver a blast as low as just 10 tons, or as high as 250 tons.

A typical setting was in the 20 ton range, and the weapon could then be lauched to a minimum range of 1000 feet (not smart), or up to a maximum of 2.5 miles.

For a standard 20 ton blast, the launch crew only had to be greater than 500M (approx. 1600 feet) away from the point of detonation to be in the safe zone for both blast and radiation (dosage less than 200 Rem).

This obviously indicates that this is a weapon that would have been used by front line troops, and was less likely to be launched over their heads as with artillery.

With yields and kill zones as small as that, the biggest problem with the Davy Crockett was that it was more likely to be used against company sized units of infantry, or smaller groups of armored vehicles. So I agree that knocking out 100 tanks would be unlikely, I was mistaken there, even at the highest yield. But I still think that these pocket nukes would have been devastating if deployed correctly and employed in volley fire against massed ranks of approaching soviet armor.

Another big problem with these weapons was that they made "first use" of nuclear weapons much more likely, as the decision on when to use them was delegated to theater commanders - not clever.

Still a very cool little weapon system though. Question is, how small could they make it today.