Pakistan develops smallest nuclear weapon the size of a tennis ball.

KHAAAAAAN ! ! !

Abdul Qadeer Khan




KHAAAAAAN ! ! !


KHAAAAAAN ! ! !

I think it's a hoax, simply because as stated to achieve a true nuclear explosion you need minimum amounts of plutuniom/uranium along with a precisely detonated pre-explosion to start the fusion/fission reaction. At most I think if there is any truth to this, it would be in a dirty-bomb sense. The other reason I think hoax is because if even one of these were to be used in a terror attack ANYWHERE in the world, well then we clearly know the origin of it. In such a case I could see Putin and Obama racing to call each other and argue over who gets to push their red button first, bye bye Pakistan.

Also, if such a technology were created as a weapon or possible weapon, I don't think any nuclear country would tell anyone a damn thing.

I still stand by my position that if at all possible, all nuclear arms on the planet should - as closely to simultaneous as possible - be destroyed, buried, secured, eliminated, or what have you, and the science behind their creation either completely controlled or, ideally, erased entirely from human knowledge.

The reason for that position is this. Nuclear weapons will undoubtedly continue to become more advanced. More miniaturized. More destructive. More deployable. More portable. More concealable. And worst of all, easier to proliferate. The genie is out of the bottle, and so long as it is, no matter how hard or how effectively the world's disparate nations and defense apparatuses try to control and monitor it, it will without question in my opinion one day fall into the hands of those willing to indiscriminately use them.

And once that happens, it becomes inevitable. Not a question of if, but when. And what happens then in response to that is anyone's guess. The nightmare scenario that could emerge from that (and I do mean emerge, as in emergent behavior, e.g. unpredictable, unforeseeable, and not necessarily controllable) is unthinkable. Therefore I advocate destroying the source of that potential scenario. The sooner the better in my opinion.

Peace.

I'm surprise that the u.s. hasn't thought up this first or have they?

tennisball size?
game/ set /match

Sounds like more BS to me, right up there with the mythological "Suitcase Nukes" that the trrrrrrrrists are supposed to have had for the last 2 decades!

No tests, no photos, no real data or hard evidence for the existence of these at all. Lets face it, the Intelligence (and I use that word very loosely) agencies are too busy spying on granny peace protesters and each other these days, or spying on corporate emails for a bit of inside trading info, to ever really find anything worthwhile on Johnny Foreigner! As a result, they just make stuff up to give the appearance of knowing what they are doing and to justify the spiraling budgets!

Oh look, Johnny Foreigner has a new fancy weapon, we need to increase our budgets to make better ones! How very childish and laughable! The world really is run by some very pathetic and insecure people.

Seems to be based in nothing, with no statements from any government about this. If this were true, you can bet that the US would have known already, and they would have made some statement about it. They would most certainly have put a thousand and one obstacles in the way of this supposed invention.

Pakistan is a violent, corrupt, ineffectual country, incapable of managing their military properly, incapable of serving their people in any real capacity, and far behind in almost all respects, it's not plausible in the slightest that they would have the scientific capability of creating something like this, and even more unlikely that they would announce to the world that they have it!

Governments create new military hardware for an upper hand, announcing you have something like this while not at war would be too stupid, even for Pakistan.

Nuclear hand grenade! It probably has a tiny yeild, like blow up the radius of a midsize house (guessing).

The US had the Davy Crocket which was like a bowling ball sized nuke on a launcher that could be launched by one person (or two I guess) on the battlefield.

Now that said.. this is pretty freaky. I have always said and I still believe it's true that the next nuke that goes off in this world will be from Pakistan. Well random nuke = Pakistan, next nuke in a war = Israel.

The ignorance of nuclear capabilities on this thread is amazing. The United States, in 1963, created a nuclear artillery shell with a diameter of 6 inches. To say that you cannot get a nuclear package into a suitcase sized container is blatantly false.

Weapons designers with a full-scale cut-away model of the W48 155mm shell

And also, in a previous post of mine in this thread, uranium and plutonium are not the only materials that could be used in nuclear fission weapons. There is an isotope of Americium with a cross section of fission 10 times greater than plutonium, which means you would need less material to create a critical mass. Now admittedly, this isotope is extremely rare and difficult to produce in the amounts needed for a weapon, but it is possible.

reply to post by bekod


You really think a tennis ball nuke could reach 20kt? I was thinking maybe .5kt or less, maybe I'm just out off touch with technology.

reply to post by BomSquad


Yep.. you can see videos of the US military firing off nuclear artillary. I was under the impression they were low yeild like only in the 100s of tons which.. you know.. you still wouldn't want to walk through a barrage of on the battlefield.

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


True, but if you add in some booster material such as tritium or deuterium you could enhance the yield somewhat.

It would probably max out around 500 tons (0.5 kt) but that is just a guesstimate on my part.

reply to post by skuly


well....fallout fans will at least get a kick out of it...

a real-live nuka-grenade....

I don't know that this would be tacitly usable.
If, God forbid, the US or UK, Israel gets hit with something like this, the offending country or organization would be completely destroyed. So, if they want to martyr themselves, go for it. Just say goodbye to ALL your relatives cause they will be going too.

This is complete paranoid speculation or hype.

A technology like this would revoloutionise a number of technologies, not least, power generation, propultion and heating.

if anyone thinks that a 3rd world country could control or release atomic energy in a tennis ball size then they are seriously blinkered when the entire US/UK/European nuclear research cant do it but are beaten by a few dubious peasants.

get a grip people.

Over the past few years, Pakistan’s strategic forces, responsible for the country’s primary deterrence program, have been doing extensive research into the design and development of smart weapons i.e. nuclear weapons that have a dynamic and compact form, and which can easily be transported from one location to another.

Now you tell me how savage and retarded human nature can be. This country which has so many problems in the education field (no schools or most of them in a very poor status - seen a documentary about this), poverty and serious social problems, finds the time and the financial means to invest heavily in weaponry and defense to create what? The most dangerous weapon, minimizing it to a size that can be easily carried in someone's pocket. Think about a suicide bomber with a nuke in hidden in his turban. Imagine the slaughter. Maybe we do deserve to perish and clean the surface of this planet from the plague called humanity...

Not so sure about this source. It seems far-fetched at best....especially given our knowns about the progress of the Pakistani nuke program.

I'm surprise that the u.s. hasn't thought up this first or have they?

We've had portable nukes for quite some time (though this miniaturized, who knows? But wouldn't surprise me). The big factor is yield. I think people really overestimate the damage of a nuke. Nukes are as different as a berry to a grapefruit. The yield means all the difference as to whether a city block is destroyed, or the whole city and suburbs. There are several online nuclear blast simulators, where you can put in the yield, and see the results. I can't imagine that small of a nuke having a yield larger than the effects of larger past terrorist conventional bombs.

It's a bad, bad idea for Pakistan to deploy and use tactical nuclear weapons. We all know that their nuke arsenal is India specific. India's nuclear doctrine is clear. There will be NO graduated response. Even a tactical nuclear missile strike by Pakistan will be met with full force including the use of nukes for counter force and counter value targets, destroying all industries and infrastructure in Pakistan.

Secondly, it would be a double whammy for Pakistan as the radioactive dust from its own nukes will affect Pakistan more due to the atmospheric conditions in the Northern Hemisphere where the wind blows from the East to the West!

The world powers have understood the implications of using tactical nuclear weapons and have discarded them long ago. But Pakistan it seems is hell bent on exhuming this outdated and dangerous doctrine under the impression that the use of tactical nuclear weapons is a panacea against any Indian attack.

The fact that the use of even small tactical nuclear weapons will result in an all out nuclear exchange seems to have skipped the mind of the self styled strategists of Pakistan who happen to be those hare brained generals.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I recall videos of nuclear tests with the "football" nuke. An atom bomb the size of an american football, launched from artillery. I don't think it was every actually used in battle as the range makes it more of a weapon of last resort.

I'd love to learn more about this device. I know that traditional nukes use conventional explosives to squish the inner core so much and so violently, that it creates a nuclear chain reaction. I assumed, probably wrongly, that the yield is determined by the amount of nuclear material, and also assumed that you needed a hefty amount of conventional explosives to ensure you get a chain reaction.

Pretty much the opposite of a nuclear power generating station, where the amount and purity of the fuel is kept low, as well as the addition of control rods to catch neutrinos, to ensure a chain reaction doesn't get out of hand.

Pakistan is the last place I'd want to possess this technology. Entirely unstable, on questionable grounds with the west, and has high reaching ties with terrorist elements. These are the types of people that would allow the nuclear terrorist boogeyman out of the box.

reply to post by Gazrok

I can't imagine that small of a nuke having a yield larger than the effects of larger past terrorist conventional bombs.

Yes, yield wise. Don't forget the secondary effects : fallout. You might not kill as many in the initial blast, but you are still polluting the area and depriving "the enemy" of ease of use of that area. With weather tracking available today, you could arguably plan for the fallout in advance, using that radiation cloud as a secondary attack.

Now, if the only reason to keep building nukes is deterrence, why start making tiny nukes like this? How is that a deterrent? That we can smuggle a box full of them, spread em out over a city, and level it, while never one setting of alarm bells because of the size, and probably evading most radiation detection.....

Yeah, that sounds about right, this is purely a terror weapon, if it exists at all.

Think of a conventional cluster bomb, or MIRV, armed with hundreds of baseball sized tactical nukes. that's frightening.