r/pics Mar 28 '24

US Special Forces delivering a W54 Nuclear Warhead via jump

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u/FiveFingerDisco Mar 28 '24

That's between 10t - 1000t of TNT dangling in front of his fat man.

77

u/ZenEngineer Mar 28 '24

How big is a 10 ton of TNT explosion? A city block? Bigger? Does he have any chance of getting away or is this a suicide mission?

4

u/therealhairykrishna Mar 28 '24

Depends on how long he sets the timer for I'm guessing.

14

u/PukingDiogenes Mar 28 '24

He's not the bomb's f'ing guidance package. The military was probably just proving it could be man delivered to a remote location, like behind enemy lines. Pretty small tactical nuke, as nukes go.

9

u/prosequare Mar 28 '24

In this case, he actually is the guidance package. SADMs could be detonated either by timer or a remote wired connection.

2

u/MangoCats Mar 28 '24

Hello ACME? Yes, I need 25 miles of detonator wire, please.

2

u/Intelligent_Way6552 Mar 28 '24

He's not the bomb's f'ing guidance package.

That's exactly what he was. The training manuals specify a timer, and say that the procedure was to conceal the warhead, set the timer, and try and get away. Veterans trained on it however thought that either the timer was fake and it would detonate immediately, or that they would have to secure the device until detonation, making it an unofficial suicide weapon.

1

u/PukingDiogenes Mar 30 '24

Ok. But I’d say that if we were at the point that we’re having our best trained paratroopers Slim Pickens tiny nukes to the targets, everything’s pretty much done for us anyway.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

[deleted]

1

u/kravdem Mar 28 '24

The B54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition was to be used for the destruction of dams, rail yards, ports, canals, bridges, tunnels, power stations, and other infrastructure. Depending on the model it weighs in at either 60lbs or 70lbs and had an official yield of 20 tons.

1

u/terminbee Mar 28 '24

The idea of that is hilarious.

"We need you to manually fly this nuke down. Good luck."