[El Gato]

What is the likelihood of a nation doing its first nuclear test in combat? Of it working as expected by the designers?

The so called "Little Boy" atomic bomb the US dropped on Japan had never been tested. It worked fine. The "Fat Man" type was tested, once, the second bomb of that type was dropped on Japan. Both the test and the "live" drop, worked fine. So I"d say the odds were pretty good. Saddam's designers have access to computers that would have made the Manhatten Project designers shake their heads in disblief. So do you for that matter, but likely what Saddam has is step up from your average PC, maybe a couple of them. Would they get the best possible yield in the smallest possible package? Probably not, but they wouldn't be likely to get a fizzle either.

[El Gato]

I should have added that Saddamn's designers probably had the advantage of access to Pakistani and other designers, possibly even some hungry Russian ones. Maybe Chinese too. Also they may have had access to all sorts of information from the US program, via the Chinese or others.

The hard part is not making the bomb, the hard part is getting or producing the weapons grade uranium or the plutonium.

[Cobra64]

I live very close to West Point, and the school has an original in their museum (no it does not rave fissionable material inside). It really is an ugly looking bomb. Maybe steveegg (since he's an expert) or someone, can find a photo, and post it here.

[Travis McGee]

I agree. Even a high school shop class could assemble a working gun-barrel bomb in a chunk of an old artillery tube with two just sub critical chunks of weapons grade uranium.