I was wondering if anyone has any knowledge as to whether or not a suitcase nuke is an actual functioning weapon system or is it just a theoretical construction ?

W54- SADM But as of 1997 it says 145 of them were destroyed.

Life expectancy is 8-15 years and most of them on both sides were produced in the late '60's.

The Russians as far as I have read were a 1kiloton device were the US had a model MADM that was up to 15 kilotons.

They range from 100kilograms to 400 kilograms in weight.

And in addition to the radioactive material they required a "firing" box and most had anti-tamper controls that if you did not arm them the right way they would either instantly self destruct (GO BIG BOOM) or fizzle and shut down making them inop.

It seems to me that we should have little to worry about "lost" mini-nukes going BIG BOOM but more about their use as a "dirty bomb"

If anyone else has some credible data I would love to check it out

Yes, they exist. We called ours "backback nukes" as the SOC guys would carry them in ontheir backs, emplace them and then clear the area.

The Soviets had their equivalent, we called suitcase nukes. Whether or not theirs had PAL devices or codes, I am unknowledegeable. However, I imagine that is immaterial, as the people who sold them to third parties during the sudden downfall of the Soviet Empire would have certainly sold the code/PAL device along with them. The buyers would certainly have had the knowledge to demand it as well.

Im not sure if it's capable of being used in a suitcase, but you would be quite surprised how small the 'can of sunshine' is in a B-61 nuclear weapon.

No, unless you have a suitcase that'll hold several hundred pounds' worth of bomb, it is not applicable.

you could also concievably use the smallest of the Atomic Shells used for artillery as a back-pack nuke

By detonating them how?

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
By detonating them how?

I think he meant just using the warhead and jury-rigging a detonator.

Yes they exist, as well as MADM's, and yes, the DC was a very light round, but was not "suitcase", but a form of artillery. It was jeep-mounted, truck-mounted, fired from a platform on the ground, etc. But again, was not designed to be emplaced and set to detonate at a certain time by hand. The SADM's and MADM's were.

my point was that nuclear devices can be made to that required size, and would most likely have been manufactured or are a actual designed weapon that can be deployed, as im sure it would prove very effective in a war.

Ah, I see.
And I'm telling you that there is no need to surmize that they "most likely would have been manufactured" as I've left fingerprints on them. They are not a myth, or a possibility.
And SADM & MADM technology is decades old. I wonder what we have today that none of us here know about?

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
Ah, I see.
And I'm telling you that there is no need to surmize that they "most likely would have been manufactured" as I've left fingerprints on them. They are not a myth, or a possibility.

You too???

There is no better feeling than pulling a warhead from the nose of a Pershing II, doing the required maintenance, and putting it back in.

Almost just as good is pulling tritium tubes, neutron generators, and the thermal battery from a Lance missile system.

And just under those are nuke-loading a M423Ca1E1 with a breechblock fuse, loading the uranium rings and setting the dashpots.

Boy, was my momma proud!

Okay but is it concievable that units built back in the 60's would still be functioning ? It seems to be the decay time and the amount of secondary radiation they would give off would be enough that they would be inoperable by now ?

I agree that there are probably new variants of small demolision nukes out there. But I am wondering just how reliable they are.

LOL! You weren't in Heilbronn when that little incident occured, allegedly due inproper grounding?

I was stationed several clicks away when that happened. Man, did the Germans have an absolute cow over that.

About a week later, some CS got out of the chamber and floated into a neighborhood. Build magazine made it sound like it was a chemical attack! LOL!

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
LOL! You weren't in Heilbronn when that little incident occured, allegedly due inproper grounding?

I was stationed several clicks away when that happened. Man, did the Germans have an absolute cow over that.

About a week later, some CS got out of the chamber and floated into a neighborhood. Build magazine made it sound like it was a chemical attack! LOL!

No, I was at Fischbach Army Depot. The Germans thought we had poison gas there. They used to protest all the time.

I almost forgot about being ground! We had those little wrist straps, with velcro, and a wire leading with an alligator clip.

Talk about memories!

The lifetime of the small nuke depends essentially on whether it was designed to use tritium boosting.

Tritium boosting lets you have more bang for smaller mass.

Tritium though decays with a half life on the order of 10-15 years (forgot the number). The tritum will be contaminated with helium.

You can only manufacture tritium in a large nuclear reactor. Osama isn't doing this in a cave.

On the other hand if you have a fair amount of technology you might be able to take two or three warheads worth of tritum+helium, and extract the remaining tritium and stick it back into one warhead.

This is not simple though as it would be quite radioactive and it is very easy for the extremely valuable tritium gas to escape.

Most likely an artillery warhead, which has a strictly limited diameter, would be tritium boosted, and hence require maintenance.

However, it's not obvious that a demolition mine would be so designed. If they wanted reliability and low maintenance as opposed to maximum portability, then they might have designed some without boosting.

Note that a non-boosted warhead may stiill work but the yield might be significantly lower. If the warhead was designed "on the edge" of criticality (in order to use minimum fissile material) then without the tritium it would probably be a dud, just a radioactive dispersal device.

A somewhat more robust design migth still make a hell of a bang by conventional explosive standards even with decayed tritium, not to mention the contamination.