Suitcase nuke

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A suitcase bomb is a bomb which uses a suitcase as its delivery method. This term is usually used for portable nuclear weapons or mini-nukes (sometimes called suitcase nukes or sukes).

H-912 transport container for Mk-54 SADM.

1 Production of suitcase nukes
2 Controversy surrounding Russian suitcase nukes
3 References in popular culture
4 References
5 External links
6 See also

[edit] Production of suitcase nukes

Thus far, only the United States and the Soviet Union/Russian Federation are known to have possessed nuclear weapons programs developed and funded well enough to manufacture miniaturized nuclear weapons. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have acknowledged producing nuclear weapons small enough to be carried in specially-designed backpacks during the Cold War, but neither have ever made public the existence or development of weapons small enough to fit into a normal-sized suitcase or briefcase.

The smallest nuclear warhead ever acknowledged to have been manufactured by the USA was the W54, which was used in both the Davy Crockett 120 mm recoilless rifle-launched warhead, and the backpack-carried version called the Mk-54 SADM (Special Atomic Demolition Munition). The bare warhead package took the form of an 11"x16" cylinder that weighed only 51 lbs (23 kg). It was, however, easily small enough to fit in a footlocker-sized container. Declassified Russian sources indicate the smallest Soviet miniaturized nuclear weapon was of a similar size, being compared to a "small refrigerator" in dimensions; following the breakup of the Soviet Union, these were the type of devices Alexander Lebed claimed had been issued to the GRU and then subsequently lost.

There has been no official information released on the existence of true suitcase or briefcase-sized nuclear weapons in either the US or Russian arsenals. However, the Washington, DC based intelligence-firm Center For Defense Information (CDI) states that the US government produced a class of nuclear devices in the late 1970s which were small enough to fit into an actual suitcase or briefcase. CDI likewise claims that a detailed training replica — with dummy explosives and no fissionable material — was routinely concealed inside a briefcase and hand-carried on domestic airline flights in the early 1980s.^[1]

While the explosive power of the W54 — up to an equivalent of 1 kiloton of TNT — is not much by the normal standards of a nuclear weapon (the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II were around 13 to 20 kilotons each), their value lies in their ability to be easily smuggled across borders, transported by either foot or automobile, and placed as close to the target as possible. Even a 1-kt. nuclear weapon would be many times more powerful than even the largest truck bombs for purposes of destroying a single building or target; the explosive attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1995, for comparison, effectively demolished the target structure but required an explosive load at least one order of magnitude larger than the W84 while producing a yield more than 2 orders of magnitude weaker. Furthermore, the flash burns and prompt radiation flux from even a small nuclear explosion would create additional damage and casualties where a conventional explosive would not.

[edit] Controversy surrounding Russian suitcase nukes

In 1997, former Russian National Security Advisor Alexander Lebed made public claims about lost "suitcase nukes" following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In an interview with the newsmagazine 60 Minutes, Lebed said:

I'm saying that more than a hundred weapons out of the supposed number of 250 are not under the control of the armed forces of Russia. I don't know their location. I don't know whether they have been destroyed or whether they are stored or whether they've been sold or stolen, I don't know.

However, the Russian government immediately rejected Lebed's claims. Russia's atomic energy ministry went so far as to dispute that suitcase nuclear weapons had even ever been developed by the Soviet Union. Later testimony however insinuated that the suitcase bombs had been under the control of the KGB and not the army or the atomic energy ministry, so they might not know of their existence. Russian president Vladimir Putin, in an interview with Barbara Walters in 2001, stated about suitcase nukes, "I don't really believe this is true. These are just legends. One can probably assume that somebody tried to sell some nuclear secrets. But there is no documentary confirmation of those developments."

The Russian government's statements on this matter have been contradictory. First they denied that such weapons had ever existed; then they said that all of them had been destroyed. However, the highest-ranking GRU defector Stanislav Lunev confirmed that such Russian-made devices do exist and described them in more detail ^[2]. These devices, “identified as RA-115s (or RA-115-01s for submersible weapons)” weigh from fifty to sixty pounds. They can last for many years if wired to an electric source. “In case there is a loss of power, there is a battery backup. If the battery runs low, the weapon has a transmitter that sends a coded message – either by satellite or directly to a GRU post at a Russian embassy or consulate.” According to Lunev, the number of “missing” nuclear devices (as found by General Lebed) “is almost identical to the number of strategic targets upon which those bombs would be used”. He suggested that they might be already deployed by the GRU operatives.

[edit] References in popular culture

Five Russian nuclear suitcase bombs are the primary threat in the sixth season of 24.
In Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Washington, D.C. is threatened by a suitcase bomb codenamed "The Ark."
In the first level of the video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, Bond must retrieve a nuclear suitcase bomb before it is sold to terrorists.
In The Peacemaker 1997 movie the United Nations Headquarters in New York is targeted by a Yugoslavian terrorist wielding small nuclear trigger bomb in his rucksack.
In Nelson DeMille's Wild Fire, 4 suitcase nukes were to be detonated in Los Angeles and San Francisco in order to activate the government's secret "Wild Fire" plan.
In The Agency (2001 TV series), season one episode four, "In Our Own Backyard" a suitcase nuke is found missing in a NJ man's backyard fallout shelter.
In the 2007 Shooting War graphic novel, which depicts events set in 2011, an Islamic terrorist group detonates a suitcase nuke in Bangalore, India, where many of the Indian call centers are located, since the Muslim group regards them as business competitors.
In the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, one of John Nash's paranoid fantasies is his belief that he is pursuing Soviet agents who have smuggled suitcase nukes, originally produced by Nazi Germany, into the United States.
In Frederick Forsyth's 1984 novel (also made into a film in 1987) The Fourth Protocol, the Soviets smuggle a suitcase nuke into the United Kingdom with the intention of having one of their agents explode it next to an American Air Force base just before an upcoming national election, hoping to bring about the election of a Labour government, which they expect will in turn pull the UK out of NATO.

[edit] References

^ Nuclear Terrorism
^ Stanislav Lunev. Through the Eyes of the Enemy: The Autobiography of Stanislav Lunev, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998. ISBN 0-89526-390-4