"The Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) was a family of man-portable nuclear weapons fielded by the US military in the 1960s, but never used in combat."
Posted on 10/07/2015 8:44:08 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Members of Congress have warned about the dangers of suitcase nuclear weapons. Hollywood has made television shows and movies about them. Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency has alerted Americans to a threat — information the White House includes on its website.
But government experts and intelligence officials say such a threat gets vastly more attention than it deserves. These officials said a true suitcase nuke would be highly complex to produce, require significant upkeep and cost a small fortune.
Counterproliferation authorities do not completely rule out the possibility that these portable devices once existed. But they do not think the threat remains.
"The suitcase nuke is an exciting topic that really lends itself to movies," said Vahid Majidi, the assistant director of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. "No one has been able to truly identify the existence of these devices."
Majidi and other government officials say the real threat is from a terrorist who does not care about the size of his nuclear detonation and is willing to improvise, using a less deadly and sophisticated device assembled from stolen or black-market nuclear material.
Yet Hollywood has seized on the threat. For example, the Fox thriller 24 devoted its entire last season to Jack Bauer's hunt for suitcase nukes in Los Angeles.
Government officials have played up the threat, too.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., once said at a hearing that he thought the least likely threat was from an intercontinental ballistic missile. "Perhaps the most likely threat is from a suitcase nuclear weapon in a rusty car on a dock in New York City," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
A more technical discussion of the technology needed to build a suitcase nuke can be found here:
http://www.gizmag.com/suitcase-nukes-fact-or-fiction/18506/
Are ‘suitcase nukes’ a genuine concern?
Truck nukes are far more likely and doable.
“Suitcase nukes closer to fiction than reality”
*YAWN*
Twelve years ago at FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/857060/posts
Someone might want to call the Pentagon about this. They are going to be very surprised to hear the W54 is an act of fiction.
The way I understand it, a “suitcase nuke” would weigh about 200 lbs. and require regular maintenance (replacing tritium, etc.) to keep it ready.
It is doable, though. We have nukes we can shoot from artillery pieces.
Google W-54 and SADM. 50 Kg was doable for a 2 man team.
“Majidi”?
Hmmmmm
With open borders you don’t need a suitcase. A semi would do nicely.
Nuclear handgrenade weighs in at 75 lbs.
It works but needs “development”, Scientists say.
What our government can produce is orders of magnitude different from what a few jihadi goat rapists could pull off in a garage. That doesn’t mean a nation like Iran won’t be able to supply something reasonably advanced in a few years.
And if you conceal one on a ship during a yard period unknown to the crew except for one, maybe two? Certainly a dockside crane could lift more than 200 lbs or 2,000 lbs.
The Soviets had their version of the small atomic demolition munition as well.
Is there really a nuclear hand grenade? How could you possibly throw one far enough to stay out of its blast radius?
"The Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) was a family of man-portable nuclear weapons fielded by the US military in the 1960s, but never used in combat."
That’s a design flaw, we can fix that with enough
funding.
This one's a 20 ton yield. The "device" version got up to 1 KT. Cute little bugger, ain't it?
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