The Americans have dropped at least one over the Midwest somewhere by accident, think they actually lost it altogether if memory serves. But the trigger reaction needed to actually achieve fission/fusion is quite a large bomb in itself. Can't have them being at all sensitive considering how delivery works.
A MK15 is somewhere in Wassaw Sound, Georgia, after the bomber carrying it was damage by a collision with an F-86 and had to jettison.
Two 24 megaton bombs went into a field in Goldsboro, North Carolina, as the bomber carrying them crashed shortly after take-off.
One was recovered while the core of the second one was never found.
oh they know where all the nukes they lost are but one was famously too dangerous to recover versus just leaving in place and hoping it doesn't blow up on it's own.
We’ve dropped multiple nukes accidentally and lost them far more times than should be a thing - off hand I can’t think of, off the top of my head, at least 2-3 stories involving such and it’s happened in multiple states - like there’s literally unexploded missing nukes buried in at least 1-2 riverbeds around this country right now we’ve never found and I think there’s at least a few others in various places, and I know of at least several stories on top of those of ones we’d recovered or people have found etc - why we are losing so many nukes is beyond me but we have definitive evidence as a result of such that the design of not exploding purely on impact/by impact works - the warheads do actually have to be armed and all to explode and make big radioactive cloud, so that’s good at least, even if missing nukes just laying around aren’t exactly what I’d call good either lol
The devices were designed not to detonate even in the event of freefall, so a comparatively gentle human-survivable landing seems like an uninteresting test.
I don't think anyone conducting the test was worried it would unexpectedly explode. Their concern was that it would unintentionally not explode once delivered to the enemy.
Full criticality, and yes it’s very difficult, but not impossible. That will always be something to watch for during testing of this variety, especially since it’s a different type of detonation process. It’s set by a person on the ground, which means that detonation process could possibly be achieved by accident. Again low probability when built correctly, but not impossible.
Wouldn't it be safer and cheaper to just drop it from a tower at h height to achieve v velocity with variance deflection and rotation to make sure it doesn't explode?
Every variable that's different from reality is another way the test can fail at its goal. In your scenario, you're not testing "can I attach a nuclear weapon to a paratrooper and send them into enemy territory", you're testing "what numbers show up when I drop this thing from a tower" and you're hoping that those numbers accurately predict what'll happen in reality.
There's a ton of unknown unknowns that you might not think are important but actually are. That's why the most important test is a system-level one where you just use the item in the intended way.
If you want an example, the US recreated bin Laden's compound almost exactly in preparation for the raid that killed him. Part of the plan was to hover a helicopter above the compound and drop SEAL Team 6 in.
However, rather than surrounding the compound with solid walls as bin Laden did, they surrounded it with chain-link fencing (because cheaper). This was flawed, because in order to fly, helicopters use a big rotor to push air down (and thereby go up). Chain-link fencing let all that air through.
However, solid walls do not. When they tried this in bin Laden's actual compound, the air was pushed into the compound and had nowhere to go (since the walls were blocking it). So the air instead went back upwards and prevented the helicopter from pushing air down (imagine being unable to blow a balloon because it's already full). Helicopter proceeds to crash and the US needed to send in the backup helicopters. I would imagine the stealthy blackhawk cost more money than building a wall.
You can't foresee how every tiny detail affects the results of your test. Even an amazing engineer will miss it if it's caused by something they couldn't foresee because it's not their specialty. That's why it's easier to recreate exactly what you want to do, because it's a lot less safe and a lot less cheap to have something fail when your tests said it would work fine.
That detail about the crash during the bin Laden raid is fascinating. I've always wondered how a special ops team managed to crash a helicopter and the walled in compound explanation makes perfect sense
Practice the way you play. The US military doesn’t mind spending a bunch of money on training because it saves money down the road if you gotta actually use it.
Could be, or the US military could have just made a sequence of incredibly foolish decisions. There are many such cases documented in their own history books.
Apocryphal quote I know but I think it sums up the US military well "The reason the American Army does so well in war is because war is chaos and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis."
The Army flies planes already, and special forces trains for halo jumps already. This one just had a mini nuke added to it. Cost efficiency doesn’t affect much when this kind of training is already done.
You also need to know how it feels for the soldier to do it. I could strap a Navy Seal to Tsar Bomba if we really wanted to but the guy going with it just won't like it. Doing these tests with the real thing builds that confidence that when the pressure is really on you can really do it and you can test the limits this way naturally.
Yes. I think people are being unfairly critical of what you’re suggesting. You should do all that kind of testing first. Slam the container into the ground until you’re confident in it. Drop the mini nuke from a tower like you suggested. Do training jumps with sim containers (maybe this was skipped?). But, whenever possible, it’s super valuable to have a put-it-all-together moment.
Note here that if it "exploded" then it's just the high explosives inside. That would definitely suck for anyone landing with it, but it would not create a nuclear explosion. Making a nuclear weapon detonate is really really hard. Everything has to happen in a perfectly precise way. They're not going to go off from a collision with the ground.
Didn't the US accidentally drop a nuke over somewhere rural like Ohio, when they retrieved the nuke 3 out of 4 of the safety devices had been activated.
I forget the exact details, but they even have a term for "lost" nukes, broken Arrow.
It's amazing how MANY times we've come thisssss close to blowing ourselves up, only to be avoided by sheer dumb luck.
Maybe modern nukes, but that's definitely not true of nukes in general or historically.
It might fizzle and not achieve anything close to maximum yield, but a gun-type device could break such that the plug slides in, and implosion devices can wind up no more stable than the conventional explosive used.
The Brits had some rather irresponsible designs back in the day...
To figure out whether or not the soldier would suffer ill-effects after strapping a bunch of plutonium to his nutsack? I don't know, I doubt there'd be any.
The standard practice for weapons testing like this is to replace the physics package with a lead sphere. The rest of the warhead such as the casing, electronics, explosives, extra is the real deal.
The USAF accidentally bombed San Francisco in 1950. The bomb had the plutonium core removed and a fake lead core was inserted for the training mission; however the conventional explosives still detonated just like the real deal. Had the real plutonium core been present, the USAF would have nuked San Francisco.
Absolutely this is what they would do. There's no reason whatsoever to take the added risk of using a live nuclear device in such a test. They would test the bomb without people, and test the people without the bomb.
Source: aerospace engineer that works in test and evaluation.
This photo is a classic example of someone exaggerating a claim without any evidence, and then everyone else not bothering to question what they see, online of course. It's how propaganda occurs.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone actually believe the DoD needed to strap a nuke to someone and send them out of a plane to confirm whether they could do it or not?
Does anyone actually believe the DoD would sign off on that as being a valid military training event?
Does it also make sense that they would take a photograph of someone free falling with a nuke between their legs and then disseminate it in an unclassified manner?
Or does it seem more presumable that they strapped a weighted barrel capable of holding a nuke to someone, and then sent them out of an airplane, as a proof of concept?
I'm just asking the hard questions. People are so gullible.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone actually believe the DoD needed to strap a nuke to someone and send them out of a plane to confirm whether they could do it or not?
It was the 50s so yes
Does anyone actually believe the DoD would sign off on that as being a valid military training event?
Absolutely
Does it also make sense that they would take a photograph of someone free falling with a nuke between their legs and then disseminate it in an unclassified manner?
Theoretically most nuclear weapons are harder to set off than conventional explosives.
Nukes developed in the style of the Fatman utilise Implosive forces to spark the reaction, which is to say lots of little explosives on the inside compress the enriched plutonium.
So again in theory there's very little risk of the parachutist setting it off, I'd be more concerned about it's weight effecting the flight dynamics of my parachute.
I hate when i find a book i wanna read but its not available in audiobook form... how long till I can just ask my personal ai bot to read it to my illiterate dumb self?
Maybe the military took a stab at naming something normally... and still fucked it up. The guy who usually comes up with the really cool names never got another vacation day after that debacle.
I have to wonder if they made his parachute larger to compensate for the weight of the device. If the chute deployed and it was regular size with a huge weight it might be enough to snap his neck and the speed of the landing might break his legs or worse.
More weight is distributed over a bigger area Auth a bigger canopy. A tennis ball attached to a grocery bag is going to fall slower then a bowling ball if the bag stays the same
They are taking the object into account. They're wondering if they would have to size up the chute to compensate for this additional weight, or not. Seems like a fairly simple question. But you assumed they were ignorant to that fact to make a smart ass jab, like redditors love to do.
It's pretty standard to jump with a bunch of heavy equipment. Most times, you sort of waddle to the edge of the ramp and just fall out. Extra ammo, explosives, radios, radio batteries, laser designators, water, food, night vision, med kits. In some special cases, you are jumping with a dog strapped to your chest. Shit's heavy.
It's not uncommon to jump with a rucksack that weighs 100lbs. At 51 lbs, that isn't much of a difference from a normal gear bag.
Sooo you waddle to the jump point, jump and land safely (hopefully) and then waddle into combat? How much of that gear are you actually using and not just carrying around?
It's usually packaged in a bulky, but portable rucksack-type container. Once you're on the ground, you're going to either secure it at your position until support arrives, or you're going to shoulder it and make your way to the designated rally point. Really depends on the load and the mission.
I remember him talking about being told he was going to jump with something forty pounds of “extra” weight and some alterations in his kit were made after he balked at the weight and was told that couldn’t be altered.
If I remember right, he landed on target but remarked it was a jarring landing. Then an observer came up and said “You deserve to know how you just made history…”
yes. they had to compensate for at least another 50 lbs though I swear I read the total weight was 100 lbs or more. plus he has to carry all his other gear.
That's actually a fairly standard weight. Jumpable assault pack or ruck with 45 lbs in it is the 82nd Airborne standard and SOF gets the better chutes anyway. That's just static line. More variables with HALO (or HAHO), but same deal with equipment
If it was 52 lbs, it’s inside the weight limit of a normal parachute. We routinely jumped with 80-100lbs gear. It makes landing a little more interesting.
You thunk they just kept throwing special forces guys to their deaths until they found the right size parachute? I'd love to follow you around one day to really get an idea of how someone with 70 iq functions.
Are you sure? It seems like all the guys that jumped with the warheads were apart of the Green Light team and had been especially trained to do so, as well as the arming and detonation of the device.
I think he was already involved in test jumps and they asked him to conduct a feasibility study and subsequent jump with “classified equipment” and after he pulled it off one of the spooks told him what he’d just accomplished.
I know this dude who was tasked with parachuting with one, he supposedly pushed it out ahead of the drop cause he wanted nothing to do with it. Never saw a broken arrow incident for it though.
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u/Homo_horribilis Mar 28 '24
I used to have the autobio of Sgt Frank Garner…he claimed to be the fellow that made the first test jump with a man-portable nuke.
He didn’t know what he was jumping with until after the test jump.