The W52 was a

thermonuclear warhead A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...

developed for the

MGM-29 Sergeant The MGM-29 Sergeant was an American short-range, solid fuel, surface-to-surface missile developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The missiles were built by Sperry Utah Company. The Sergeant was the third and last in a series of JPL rockets fo ...

short-range ballistic missile A short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) is a ballistic missile with a range of about or less. In past and potential regional conflicts, these missiles have been and would be used because of the short distances between some countries and their relat ...

used by the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

from 1962 to 1977. The W52 is in diameter and long, and weighted . It had a yield of 200

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 t ...

s. A total of 300 W52 warheads were produced. 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 w ...

claims based on his research into the US nuclear program that the thermonuclear W52 and (fission-only)

W30 The W30 was an American nuclear warhead used on the RIM-8 Talos 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 ...

warheads both use a common

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or fission first stage, and that this design was nicknamed 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- ...

Reliability controversy

Three models of the W52 were produced, the Mod 1, Mod 2, and Mod 3. A warhead test was performed in 1963, which failed, showing that the Mod 1 and Mod 2 versions of the W52 were essentially duds. The Mod 3 was subsequently redesigned to work properly. The design failures of the Mod 1 and 2 W52, along with early problems with the

W45 The W45 was a multipurpose American nuclear warhead developed in the early 1960s, first built in 1962 and fielded in some applications until 1988. It had a diameter of 11.5 inches (292 mm), a length of 27 inches (686 mm) and weighed 150 pounds ( ...

and

W47 The W47 was an American thermonuclear warhead used on the Polaris A-1 sub-launched ballistic missile system. Various models were in service from 1960 through the end of 1974. The warhead was developed by the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory between 1 ...

warheads, are still an active part of the debate about the reliability of the US nuclear weapons force moving into the future, without ongoing nuclear testing.

References

External links

Allbombs.html
list of all US nuclear weapons a
nuclearweaponarchive.org
{{United States nuclear devices Nuclear warheads of the United States Military equipment introduced in the 1960s

Reliability controversy

See also

References

External links