The Loadout Room
Menu
  • Shooting
        • Pistol
        • Pistol Accessories
        • Rifle
        • Rifle Accessories
        • Shotgun
        • Machine Guns
        • Air Guns
        • Ammunition
        • Optics and Sights
        • Weapon Lights
        • Tips & How-To
        • Concealed Carry
        • Holsters
        • Suppressors
        • Precision Rifle Shooting
        • Firearms Training
        • 1A Gun to Ride the River With: The Smith & Wesson 686
        • The Tristar folding shotgun is ready for your wilderness adventuresThe Tristar folding shotgun is ready for your wilderness adventures
        • maxim defense cqb stock (8)The Maxim Defense CQB Stock: Short and Sweet
        • Perfecting your zero | A little help goes a LONG wayPerfecting your zero | A little help goes a LONG way
    • Close
  • Gear Reviews
      • Mission Gear
      • Camping Gear
      • Survival Gear
      • Medical Gear
      • Adventure & Travel
      • Knives & Tools
      • Overland
      • Disaster Preparedness
      • Footwear
      • Womens Gear & Clothing
        • RIP-MVehicle Preparedness: Fast access to essential items | Grey Man Tactical RIP-M
        • Midland radioOverland Essential | Midland Radio MXT275 | GXT1000
        • ppGrab your gear and go | Here’s everything you’d need to build an adventure go bag
        • Scrubba Washbag: Keep your clothes clean in the fieldScrubba Washbag: Keep your clothes clean in the field
    • Close
  • Men’s Lifestyle
      • Fitness
      • EDC
      • Eyewear
      • Watches
      • Electronics & Technology
      • Downtime
      • Mens Clothing & Accessories
      • Manly Skills
      • Style & Grooming
      • Gentleman Drinks
      • Crate Club
        • The Outdoor Edge ParaClaw: A concealed stingerThe Outdoor Edge ParaClaw: A concealed stinger
        • How to determine how long you have before the sun setsHow to determine how long you have before the sun sets
        • fireWilderness survival expert breaks down how to build a fire
        • 5.11 Tactical Expedition Long Sleeve Shirt5.11 Tactical Expedition Long Sleeve Shirt, SWAT Tested and Approved
    • Close
  • News
  • Video Demo
  • Shop

Navy SEALs and backpack nukes: US special operators once carried the fury of the atom in a sack

July 13, 2019 by Alex Hollings Leave a Comment

Thanks to decades’ worth of cultural pressure on the international stage, most nations view the use of nuclear weapons in war as a reprehensible act. Today’s nuclear nations, by and large, ascribe to a model of deterrence: Put simply, our nukes stop them from using their nukes. Although posturing can get quite a bit more complicated than that, mutually assured destruction remains the primary mode of prevention when it comes to nuclear war. In the minds of many, a single nuclear strike is conceptually synonymous with a global nuclear war, simply because we’ve spent so long operating under the assumption that the response to one nuke is more nukes.

But that mindset wasn’t always the prevailing one in the national security community. For a time, the tactical use of nuclear weapons seemed like a feasible strategy in the event the Cold War turned hot. The idea wasn’t to strike the Soviet Union with a cascade of ICBMs that would wipe the nation off the planet, but rather to utilize small nuclear weapons as a highly effective means of waging war on an otherwise conventional battlefield.

If this is sounding a bit like the Fallout game series to you, there’s a good reason for it. The “mini-nukes” and other nuclear-powered weapons throughout the series are largely based on nuclear programs (or aspirations) from America’s 1950s, tying in with the game series’ overall aesthetic. In fact, if you think of the way the video games incorporate these nukes, you may be surprised by how frivolous the U.S. government really was with small nuclear devices.

How frivolous? One American Special Forces unit was tasked with learning how to ski down the Bavarian Alps with 60-pound nuclear weapons strapped to their backs.

“It skied down the mountain; you did not,” said Bill Flavin, who commanded a Special Forces team tasked with the operation. “If it shifted just a little bit, that was it. You were out of control on the slopes with that thing.”

It only gets crazier from there. The backpacks those Green Berets were tasked with ferrying down those treacherous slopes were called Special Atomic Demolition Munitions, or SADMs. The U.S. government designed a variety of these man-portable nuclear weapons with destructive yields that ranged from 100 tons of TNT to 1,000 (.1 to 1 kiloton). They weighed approximately 59 pounds and were always meant to be delivered via a two-man team.

Although the deployment of the weapon could really be handled by just one special operator (these weapons never reached the conventional forces), nuclear doctrine dictated that no single person—other than the president—ever have the means to detonate a nuclear weapon on their own. As a result, each special operator was given one half of the detonation code and both would need to input said codes in order to start the countdown on the weapon.

A parachutist tests jumping into water with a SADM, which is attached to the line hanging below him. (Sandia National Laboratories archive photo)

The concept was really pretty simple: You could give a SADM, sealed inside a waterproof housing, to a team of Navy SEAL, who would send two swimmers into a highly secure Soviet shipyard. The SEALs would place the nuke somewhere inconspicuous, enter their codes, and then swim like hell to get out of the area before the weapon detonated. Realistically speaking, it would only take a dozen or so of these sorts of attacks to effectively neuter a military campaign. Other weapons could be delivered via HALO jumps or by sneaking through contested territory on the ground: each method within the areas of expertise of America’s diverse special operations community.

This declassified DoD video breaks down the SADM’s use and deployment (in an unusually cheery manner).

The problem really came in finding ways to effectively use these weapons. Soon, military officials began to question the value of keeping backpack nukes along Europe’s Soviet flank and the DMZ dividing North and South Korea. Aside from concerns within the special operations community that a SADM mission was effectively a suicide mission, military strategists struggled to find a reasonable use for the platform. A large-scale invasion in either Europe or South Korea would require either detonating these nuclear weapons in allied territory to stem the invasion’s forward progress or potentially allowing them to be captured by enemy forces. Neither seemed like a particularly palatable use for such a destructive weapon, and as a result, the program gave way to more reasonable means of nuclear weapons delivery, such as missiles or bombs carried by rockets and aircraft.

No SADMs were ever used in combat, and for good reason. Aside from the risk to the special operators tasked with deploying them, even tactical nukes carry a massive strategic weight. SADM attacks would almost certainly have led to nuclear escalation and, potentially, the use of larger nuclear weapons—which brings us right back to the mutually assured destruction quagmire. When conventional weapons could potentially accomplish many of the same tasks as a nuclear SADM, risking an all-out nuclear war to employ a .1 kiloton weapon just doesn’t make much sense.

General Louis Menetrey, commander of U.S. troops at the North Korean border at the time, reportedly referred to the presence of SADMs near that DMZ as “pretty dumb,” as a result.

Major General William F. Burns (ret.), however, summed up the reason America did away with the SADM program a bit more eloquently, saying, “As this realization sank in, such weapons were quietly retired.”

Share This

Filed Under: Featured, News Tagged With: Alex Hollings, Backpack Nuke, brandon webb navy, brandon webb navy seal, classified weapons, Cold War, Declassified, Green Berets, Headline, low-yield nukes, Mutually Assured Destruction, Navy Seals, nuclear weapons, Nuke, Nukes, SADM, secret weapons, socom, Soviet Union, Special Atomic Demolition Munitions, Special Forces, Special Operations, tactical nuke

About the Author

Avatar

Alex Hollings Alex Hollings writes on a breadth of subjects ranging from fitness to foreign policy, all presented through the lens of his experiences as a U.S. Marine, athlete and scholar. A football player, rugby player and fighter, Hollings has spent the better part of his adult life competing in some of the most physically demanding sports on the planet. Hollings possesses a master's degree in communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor's degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

See All Alex Hollings Articles

More From The Loadout Room

Comments

What’s Hot

Top 8 upgrades every Kel-Tec Sub 2000 owner needs: MCARBO parts review
Featured

Top 8 upgrades every Kel-Tec Sub 2000 owner needs: MCARBO parts review

Ammunition

The Reasons Why FBI Went to Back to 9mm

Why .45ACP is an outdated caliber
Ammunition

Why 45 ACP is an outdated caliber

Dogs

Tactipup Extreme Collar and Leash: Tactical dog gear, Perfected

What Do You Really Need in Your Trauma Kit?
Medical Gear

IFAK - What do you really need?

Email Newsletter

Sign up to receive email updates daily and to hear what's going on with us!

In Case You Missed It

Gear Reviews

A Gun to Ride the River With: The Smith & Wesson 686

October 9, 2019 Leave a Comment

Camping Gear

The MSR Pocket Rocket | Your little camp dragon

October 8, 2019 Leave a Comment

The Outdoor Edge ParaClaw: A concealed stinger
EDC

The Outdoor Edge ParaClaw: A concealed stinger

October 7, 2019 Leave a Comment

Gear Reviews

A plate carrier for the big boys: AR500’s Testudo Gen 2 is a good pick for large frames

October 7, 2019 Leave a Comment

Get it on Google Play

© Copyright 2021 Crate Club Group · All Rights Reserved.

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Advertisers