[Travis McGee]

The problem with your scenario rebutting the ex-soviet tac nuke artillery shell being turned into a backpack nuke is that without a doubt part of the price of purchasing it would include detailed schematics and conversion instructions.

After all, the Russian is (hypothetically) being paid millions of dollars.

Not to mention, the jihadists have scads of MIT trained EE's to take on the task.

[Poohbah]

Don't be too sure about detailed schematics and conversion instructions--probably no one's ever seriously considered it. As for MIT-trained EEs, the problem is that nukes demand a certain amount of "hardness" in their electrical and electronic components (mostly against gamma and alpha emissions, but some neutron emissions are very bad news for solid-state devices as well). Hardened electrical and electronic components have an incredibly tiny market (measured in the tens to hundreds of units for a given item) and any purchase is noteworthy.

Our MIT EE may or may not have a detailed understanding of this issue (I came across it only because of concerns about Navy SATCOM systems being hard enough to withstand the latest solar flare peak), and may choose to ignore those nagging worries in order to not draw attention to his effort ("Ten rad-hard circuit cards, destination Peshawar, Pakistan--nothing suspicious about this order"). Maybe 8 times out of 10, he's OK. Allah be with him when he's working on backpack bomb number nine, because the odds won't be :o)

[Poohbah]

I guess my point is, ultimately, that while this may be a worry, I'm somewhat MORE worried about those backpack nukes--no need to worry if your MIT-trained EE is up to snuff or not (hey, warped thought--maybe he was an affirmative action graduate :o)

Suitcase nukes would have a much better "Oobie." (That's computer industry slang for OOBE, "Out of the Box Experience." A good Oobie lets you just plug the thing in the wall and fire it up, while a bad one requires you to have a PhD in electrical engineering and ANOTHER PhD in software engineering to get the infamous C:>_ on your screen :o)