In article , x-ray wrote:
Christopher Campbell wrote:
The W-48 155mm nuclear artillery round is 34" long and weighs about 110 lbs.
It could fit diagonally in a large suitcase,

errrr no it woudldn't. Typical size of a suitcase (and the one claimed by
Lebed) is 24x16x8". And it would take two-three people to carry such
suitcase (depending on the required distance). And that's an every day sight
on the street or airport, right? Three people carying ONE briefcase - it
really doesn't look suspicus at all! By omitting the shielding, your device
will trigger the most cheapest toy radiation sensor (not to mention the
sophisticated ones that would detect you long before you even get into
plane).

But that's not to say that very small nuclear weapons have not been made
(and tested) without killing the operators - they have, and by the
United States no less. The Davy Crockett was tested in the early 1960s.
The M388 projectile weighed 76lbs (the warhead being 51lbs of this), The
projectile was 31 inches long and 11 inches wide at its widest point.
2100 Davy Crocketts were deployed between 1961 and 1971.

I'm not exactly the world's strongest guy but even I could manhandle the
76lb Davy Crockett projectile. Since the weapons deployed to soldiers in
the field didn't kill the soldiers, we can assume that they had adequate
shielding.

The Davy Crockett round was tested in the Little Feller II test in 1962.
The warhead tested was 11 inches wide and 15 inches long, and weighed in
at 50lbs. Both a warhead suspended by cables a couple of feet off the
ground, and an actual firing of the whole Davy Crockett weapons system
was performed. The yields of the explosions were in the 20t range. (20
tonnes, not kilotonnes, tonnes). Even so that's a big bang for a small
bomb. It was the last atmospheric test at the Nevada test site.

The smallest diameter nuclear device tested by the US was 5 inches in
diameter. It exploded with a yield of 190t (it was actually a fizzle).
It weighed 96lbs. That's about the weight of my "portable" Roland A-90
keyboard (which has a travel case with wheels on the bottom. I took it
to the P'ville fly in in the back of a Bonanza about 3 years ago). That
particular round would also fit in my keyboard case. Whilst hardly a
suitcase, not many people are suspicious of musicians moving their kit
and the wheeled case would make it pretty easy to move on foot.

Some more information on the Davy Crockett (and some discussion on
'suitcase nukes') can be found at the Nuclear Weapons Archive:

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/News...ukesExist.html

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"