The Myth of Suitcase Nukes--Perhaps Not So Mythical? (UPDATE)
Great WaPo profile of DoD's Michael Vickers, who heads up SOCOM. Sounds like a great guy and it's a good reminder that "the government" isn't all faceless bureaucrats (as we conservatives tend to dismiss them); there are brave and smart people working to keep the country safe and strong.
Now when you read it, note this detail:
In the 10th Special Forces Group, he trained year-round for a guerrilla war against the Soviet Union. One scenario he prepared for: to parachute into enemy territory with a small nuclear weapon strapped to his leg, and then position it to halt the Red Army.Vickers recalled that the nuclear devices did not seem that small, "particularly when you are in an aircraft with one of them or it is attached to your body." Was it a suicide mission? "I certainly hoped not," Vickers said.
That alarms me greatly. Because even if the device was a little heavier than Vickers liked, it was still leg-strappable. My previous fears about "suitcase nukes" had been pretty much laid to rest by Richard Miniter in 2005, who wrote a very thorough article on the subject and concluded:
For now, suitcase-sized nuclear bombs remain in the realm of James Bond movies. Given the limitations of physics and engineering, no nation seems to have invested the time and money to make them. Both U.S. and the USSR built nuclear mines (as well as artillery shells), which were small but hardly portable--and all were dismantled by treaty by 2000. Alexander Lebed's claims and those of defector Stanislev Lunev were not based on direct observation. The one U.S. official who saw a small nuclear device said it was the size of three footlockers--hardly a suitcase. The desire to obliterate cities is portable--inside the heads of believers--while, thankfully, the nuclear devices to bring that about are not.Vickers may be speaking of the SADM, an atomic demolition device described in Miniter's article as a 154-lb. backpack. (That still seems awfully large to strap to a parachutist.) In the event of Soviet armor pouring through the Fulda Gap, it would have made sense to send in spooks like Vickers to blow up some bridges and airfields and cut off access to Western Europe.
Frankly, I'm surprised that these things were given such a key role. It sounds like an extremely high-risk plan for slowing a Soviet advance. I hope we didn't have too many eggs in that basket.
Back to the point: portable nuclear weapons are useful, especially in asymmetric warfare (aka Unrestricted Warfare), and a modern nuclear power can probably develop them if it needs to. I'd like to know (but probably never will) if that was an SDAM Vickers was talking about or an even smaller device. While I'm still not concerned about scores of Cold War-surplus backpack bombs turning up in the hands of Al Qaeda, I've little doubt our current enemy and rival states are looking into them and it will be a threat to look for very soon.
After all, you don't need an expensive, obvious missile program to deliver these, and you don't need to get them through America's missile defense measures. You just need a paratrooper. Or a shaheed.
JYB Tailwag: Hot Air Headlines.
UPDATE: For perspective, here's some 1950's U.S. technology--the "Davy Crockett", eleven inches in diameter, sub-kiloton yield (but very dirty):
(From Wikimedia Commons)
This indicates that dangerous nuclear munitions are viable at approximately the size of Ted Kennedy's enormous freak-head:
