The W30 was an American

nuclear warhead A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...

used on the

RIM-8 Talos Bendix RIM-8 Talos was a long-range naval surface-to-air missile, and was among the earliest surface-to-air missiles to equip United States Navy ships. The Talos used radar beam riding for guidance to the vicinity of its target, and semiactive r ...

surface-to-air missile and the Tactical Atomic Demolition Munition (TADM). The W30 was in diameter and long, weighing depending on the version. The Talos missile variants were produced from 1959 to 1965, and used until 1979. A total of 300 were produced as missile warheads. The W30 Mod 1, 2, and 3 for Talos all had yields of 5 (sometimes more precisely reported as 4.7)

kiloton TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a ...

s. The TADM warhead was produced from 1961 and saw service until 1966. There were two variants, the W30 Mod 4 Y1 with 0.3

yield (300 tons TNT) and the W30 Mod 4 Y2 with 0.5 kiloton (500 tons TNT) yield. 300 TADM W30s were produced, between the two versions. A yield of 19 kilotons is given in some references for an unspecified version, possibly a not-deployed high yield test only unit. The W30 is stated by nuclear researcher

Chuck Hansen Chuck Hansen (May 13, 1947 - March 26, 2003) was the compiler, over a period of 30 years, of the world's largest private collection of unclassified documents on how America developed atomic and thermonuclear weapons. Research Hansen's documents ...

to have been one of two weapons using a common fission bomb core design, the

Boa primary Kwon Bo-ah (; born November 5, 1986), known professionally as BoA, is a South Korean singer, songwriter, dancer, record producer and actress. One of the most successful and influential Korean entertainers, she has been dubbed the " Queen of K- ...

; the other weapon using the Boa is claimed to have been the 200 kiloton

W52 The W52 was a thermonuclear warhead developed for the MGM-29 Sergeant short-range ballistic missile used by the United States Army from 1962 to 1977. The W52 is in diameter and long, and weighted . It had a yield of 200 kilotons. A total of 30 ...

thermonuclear warhead. The W30 and

W31 The W31 was an American nuclear warhead used for two US missiles and as an atomic demolition munition. The W31 was produced from 1959, with the last versions phased out in 1989. All versions were roughly the same dimensions and weight: in di ...

warheads used simple 3-digit lockout controls on their arming components, and could not be made safe by environmental sensing devices due to their use profile. Other warheads could use sensors to detect whether they had actually been through re-entry or sudden deceleration, prior to arming the weapon.

External links

Beware the old story
by Chuck Hansen, ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'', March/April 2001 pp. 52-55 (vol. 57, no. 02), accessed April 13, 2006

a
globalsecurity.org
accessed April 15, 2006

list of all US nuclear weapons a
nuclearweaponarchive.org

Extensive discussion of nuclear weapons arming and fusing techniques and engineering considerations. {{United States nuclear devices Nuclear warheads of the United States Military equipment introduced in the 1950s

See also

External links