Mini nukes

I wanted to know if a nuclear weapon could be made on a very small scale? For instance could a nuclear wepaon be made small enough to be fired from a shoulder fired weapon lets say a Russian RPG-7. The rocket it fires is 85-mm and weighs 2.25kg could a nuclear weapon be made on this scale or could they be built even smaller? Also what would the blast radius be from nuke this small since the max range of a RPG-7 is 920 meters would this be to close too the blast or radation?

i really don't know much about this, but i'm going to say yes. i know there are nuclear weapons that can fit in a briefcase, backpack, or satchel. i don't see why one couldn't fit on an rpg. you'd probably be killed by the blast, heat, or radiation though, since rpgs have to be fired from relatively close.

Yeah the RPG might not have been the best example of a shoulder fired weapon for this application. I could see some uses for this type of weapon though say if your happen to find a network of caves in a mountian or a whole building of hostiles a mini nuke might save you a air strike call.

i know there are mortars that can be equiped with nuclear warheads. they can be fired at reletively close distances too. the users would just jump into a trench as soon as it would be launched. i think during the cold war there were some divisions of troops in europe that carried these.

actually i remember reading something about this and the smallest that a tactical warhead could be was 11 inches long so i guess you cold have it as a sort of shoulder fired missile.

Someone just watched Starship Troopers, I take it. The closest to this I know of is the M65 280-mm howitzer ("Atomic Annie"), which could fire a Mk-9 shell with a yield around 15kT. It was tested once in Operation Upshot-Knothole, test Grable.

www.globalsecurity.org...
nuclearweaponarchive.org...

BTW, the Mk-9 shell weighed 800 pounds, so forget about shoulder-firing.

Some friends and I have theorized on the possiblity of making a small-scale nuclear weapon. If a small ball of lithium deuteride could be compressed quickly enough with conventional explosives, you could create a mortar shell with the punch of a 2000-lb bomb, with negligible fallout, as it would be a pure fusion bomb. Large improvements in chemical explosives are needed for this to work, though.


[edit on 6/24/2004 by PurdueNuc]

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
I wanted to know if a nuclear weapon could be made on a very small scale? For instance could a nuclear wepaon be made small enough to be fired from a shoulder fired weapon lets say a Russian RPG-7. The rocket it fires is 85-mm and weighs 2.25kg could a nuclear weapon be made on this scale or could they be built even smaller? Also what would the blast radius be from nuke this small since the max range of a RPG-7 is 920 meters would this be to close too the blast or radation?

No, this is not physically possible. The smallest mass of fissile material that could produce an explosive reaction is about 10 kg (keep in mind uranium/plutonium is very dense, so that isn't that large) - but you also need some chemical explosives and special housings. The smallest you could conceivably make an atomic weapon (based on physics, not engineering limits) is the size of a large briefcase (minimum 10 cm in smallest dimension).

Originally posted by PurdueNuc
The closest to this I know of is the M65 280-mm howitzer ("Atomic Annie"), which could fire a Mk-9 shell with a yield around 15kT.

If anyone has server with space for files I could upload nice video of this cannon.
Or do you know sites offering free website space with 50MB or 100MB/something like that?
I would have also couple other videos about nuclear tests.

BTW If anyone knows pages with video clips from tests, could you post those?


And about smallest possible nuke:
nuclearweaponarchive.org...

There is also the Davy Crocket, which was a sort of rocket setup, and quite goofy looking. www.3ad.us...
More of a crew served weapon, but definately a unique piece of artillery, which was apparantly short-lived in its deployment.

Im not sure what its called but I watched a show that the us was going to have an artillery shell that would be able to be fired out of a cannon but maneuver like a cruise missile and change course in the air to avoid certain places any info?

Originally posted by alternateheaven
There is also the Davy Crocket

yeah, that's exactly what i was thinking of when i was talkinga bout a mortar nuke. i couldn't think of what it was called, and when i googled mortar nuke i couldn't find anything useful. thanks!

Originally posted by PurdueNuc
If a small ball of lithium deuteride could be compressed quickly enough with conventional explosives,

Problem is just that igniting fusion requires so huge temperature and pressure that no chemical explosive can provide those.

Also this multi-staged thermonuclear bombs use fission bomb to ignite fusion stage of bomb.

nuclearweaponarchive.org...
nuclearweaponarchive.org...
people.howstuffworks.com...

In the first link from E_T there is suggested a Design for a nuclear weapon that would require as little as 5 cm in size at the bottom of the link. It states that the only obvious application for such a device would be a briefcase bomb. Could this same design be used in a shoulder launched application? Atomic annie and davy crocket were designed more than 50 years ago could there be smaller devices now?

i think there might be smaller ones now

Westpoint is right about that shoulder mounted nuke. Check the guiness book of world records 2002 in the section on lethal weapons (duh). The thing was designed to do things like eliminate harbors and bridges during the cold war. Who knows what kind of secret weapons the superpowers developed.

Purchase some Uranium

When I was in the service we were trained on Atomic Demolition Munitions (ADM) backpack nuke's, these were around 0.25kt yield. The use was for destroying bridge heads, railroad yards, port facility's and refinery's. Because of the small yield there was minimal over pressure and thermal energy at 2 miles. At this same time we were shown tests of a nuclear warhead being shot out of a jeep mounted recoilless rifle. The yield of this warhead was less that 0.15kt the purpose of these units was to disable (apx 1000yards) of an enemy front allowing an armor unit to break out.

Shotgun

I saw a picture somewhere, might've been ATS, that was a mockup with a 105mm howitzer nuke warhead laid diagonally in a briefcase with the associated fire/trigger mechanisms nestled in the triangle voids on either side.

I don't think it would be portable enough however to serve as a RPG launched mini nuke. Probably a little bit to big and heavy for that purpose. That's not to say that it couldn't be done, just impractical.

Originally posted by E_T
If anyone has server with space for files I could upload nice video of this cannon.

I know of a free host with a 100 mb storage & 1 gig of transfer a month >>
www.100webspace.com...


[edit on 20-7-2004 by oconnection]

Originally posted by PurdueNucBTW, the Mk-9 shell weighed 800 pounds, so forget about shoulder-firing.

For an implosive device the plutonium core requires a lot of area to be compressed along to create a shock at the center which means it has to be a big piece of plutonium with a thick layer of explosives around it. However if you were to create a gun style detonator with enriched uranium it might work. In either case contact of the RPG tip would cause the detonation. And I would not want to be the one firing it or anywhere near it cause you would be directly exposed to the radiation if not the blast.

But I am more concerned with Tritium fueled large suitcase nukes cause they can take out chunks of continents. Goto my website for more on that: www.freeworldalliance.biz...