In the hottest periods of nuclear confrontation, the adversary countries wanted to learn how to make the most compact nuclear weapons, reducing them to the size of small bombs, artillery shells and even cartridges for firearms.
Portable nuclear weapons, which can fit in a small suitcase or backpack, have remained an extremely popular stamp of action-packed action films and political detectives for many years. The combination of compactness, stealth and immense destructive power could turn a single person into a walking bomb capable of bringing an entire state to its knees.
What came of it?
Attempts to create a "pocket nuclear bomb" on both sides of the ocean were doomed to failure from the outset. Almost immediately, physicists realized that such a weapon simply did not have enough critical mass. At the time, weapons were made from the 235 isotope of uranium. When using it, the charge must weigh at least 52 kg in order for a chain reaction to start at all. It was still possible to put half a centner of uranium in an artillery shell, but it was no longer possible to create an exploding nuclear bullet.
There are naturally lighter and richer metals in the world, but they turned out to be too rare, and their extraction was incredibly costly and difficult, which made it impossible to use all these materials in weapons.
Despite all of the above, an attempt was made to create nuclear bullets in the USSR. For the experimental ammunition, a rare and expensive radioactive metal from California was used. It was only on the very first tests that it became clear that the metal has one unpleasant property - the constant generation of heat. Because of her, the projectile could detonate at any time. They had to be stored in a special refrigeration capsule. Nuclear cartridges could be used in just 30 minutes after being removed from the freezer.
Finally, the California ammunition was dangerous for the shooter himself. In addition, this material is very fragile and does not always behave predictably. Sometimes such cartridges pierced tank armor and brick walls, and sometimes they exploded without reaching the target. All of the above made Soviet and American scientists put an end to such developments.
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However, in reality, although miniature nuclear weapons existed, they did not play a significant role. In the presence of ballistic missiles capable of throwing a combat load anywhere, "mini-bombs" were simply useless.
Suicide grenade launcher
One of the smallest and least powerful nuclear charges was the American M-388 munition for the M-29 Davy Crockett recoilless smoothbore gun, vaguely reminiscent of the Soviet and Russian LNG-9 mounted grenade launchers. Named after a 19th-century American traveler and politician, this weapon was created in the 1950s to combat Soviet armadas in West Germany or on the Korean Peninsula. Structurally, the ammunition consisted of a head fairing, a hull, four stabilizers and a warhead of sub-kiloton capacity - from 20 to 40 tons in TNT equivalent. The mass of the projectile was only 34.5 kilograms, the length was 787 millimeters.
The recoilless gun could fire ammunition at a distance of up to four kilometers. Installation calculation - three people. The fire was supposed to be conducted from a tripod or from a special turret in an army jeep. The main drawback of the weapon was the extreme vulnerability of the calculation to the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion - mainly ionizing radiation. The minimum distance from the epicenter to the gun should have been 700-800 meters. It is clear that the crew immediately after the shot loaded all the equipment onto the machines and tried to get away as far as possible from this extremely uncomfortable position.
In addition, the arrows remained vulnerable to conventional enemy weapons. Still, four kilometers is a short distance. Soviet tanks of that time could confidently hit the crew with high-explosive fragmentation ammunition. Therefore, Davey Crockett did not receive mass distribution. Since 1956, 2,100 complexes have been manufactured. They were never used in battle and were removed from service in the 1970s.
Cannon of Mass Destruction
Of all the nuclear artillery ammunition in the USSR, the 152-mm 3BV3 projectile, which was put into service in 1981, became the smallest. The scientific supervisor of the project was the famous Soviet nuclear physicist with a “speaking” surname Evgeny Zababakhin. His group managed to create a unique ammunition in terms of power and weight and size characteristics, which can withstand the overload of an artillery shot without destruction and reducing efficiency. It was developed in the contours of a standard high-explosive fragmentation projectile for the D-20, ML-20 cannons, the 2S3 Akatsia and 2S5 Hyacinth-S self-propelled howitzers, towed by the Hyacinth-B. Thus, all Soviet artillery of 152 mm caliber could arrange a nuclear "hello" to a potential enemy. Special fine-tuning of guns for firing special ammunition was not required.
3BV3 weighed 53 kilograms, had a length of 774 millimeters and a diameter of 152.4 millimeters. The power of the nuclear charge was 2.5 kilotons in TNT equivalent, and the range of an aimed shot was about 17.4 kilometers. It is not difficult to imagine what destruction an artillery battalion armed with such shells could inflict with a single salvo. However, in the early 1990s, both the USSR and the United States eliminated nuclear artillery ammunition.
Backpack with "surprise"
Both the USA and the USSR during the Cold War were engaged in the development of portable low-power nuclear bombs. Both sides were preparing for a sharp exacerbation of the military-political situation in Western Europe and considered all options how to slow down the enemy's advance in the event of an attack. It was planned to arm special sabotage and reconnaissance groups with portable nuclear ammunition, which were ordered to secretly deliver these land mines to enemy territory and undermine control points, bridges, missile silos, and airfields. This weapon could be used to create zones of destruction, blockages, fires, flooding and radioactive contamination of the area.
The first American portable charges weighed between 159 and 770 kilograms, making them difficult to carry by hand. Nevertheless, this issue was resolved: from 1964 to 1967, four types of SADM ammunition were developed. It was a cylinder 40 centimeters in diameter, 60 centimeters high and weighing 68 kilograms. The capacity ranged from 10 tons to kilotons. A special container backpack was used to carry the charge. A trained special forces soldier could easily carry such a weight on himself for a long time, and when he got tired, his colleague took over the "baton". The saboteurs were supposed to act in pairs. It was supposed to throw the group into the mining area by parachute. One soldier sets a mine, the second covers. It was supposed to use SADM primarily in places where it was possible to quickly evacuate saboteurs.
Similar weapons were in the USSR, where from 1967 to 1993 there were special small-sized nuclear mines RA41, RA47, RA97 and RA115. In addition, the so-called "nuclear backpacks" RYA-6 weighing 25 kilograms and with a capacity of up to a kiloton were in service. And to combat enemy saboteurs in 1972, special platoons of reconnaissance and destruction of nuclear bombs were organized in the Warsaw Pact countries. The personnel knew the structure of American ammunition and had the equipment to search for and neutralize them.
The death of aviation
In 1961, the US Air Force adopted an air-to-air missile with an AIM-26 Falcon nuclear warhead. At that time, fighters could not effectively fight supersonic aircraft of the USSR on a collision course with missile weapons due to imperfect guidance systems. And the use of a nuclear charge made it possible to destroy the target even with a miss of several hundred meters. The US Air Force wanted a semi-active radar-guided missile capable of effectively hitting supersonic bombers in a frontal attack. Since the technological capabilities at this point made it possible to easily install a nuclear warhead into the body of a conventional AIM-4, the development took place without any particular difficulties.
The rocket was 2.1 meters long, 290 millimeters in diameter, and its total weight was 92 kilograms. The nuclear warhead has a capacity of 250 tons. The Falcon's flight speed exceeded 2.3 thousand kilometers per hour. Practice has shown that the AIM-26 was not a very reliable weapon. The missile systems were prone to frequent failures, the device was rather capricious and difficult to maintain due to the nuclear warhead. The pilots did not consider the AIM-26 to be a valuable or effective weapon. In 1971, the last AIM-26 was decommissioned.