Backpack Nukes.
 

Ah, yes. Davy Crockett. Nukes at battalion level.....lovely.

I still want Paul to stat these, just for shiggles.

Yeah, who's great idea was it to give a 2nd Lt command of a nuclear weapon, we all know how useless those guys are.

Dear Gawd...a 2nd Lt. With a map, a radio AND a nuke!?!?!?

This violates every Geneva and Hague Convention!!!

there was at least one Challenge magazine article with a backpack nuke that was going to be used in Iran - so there is a precedent for them being in the game

Yeah the Davy Crockett was a weird weapon. Nuclear authority given to 2nd lieutenants, but when they tried to implement a Permissive Action Link they found out that calling all the way up to the president when your target was a motor rifle company that was on the move, you kind of took away the weapon's biggest advantage (speed of use).

Nuclear Shells in Twilight2000
 

The W33 (8" configurable yield) AND W48 (6" 0.12kt Nominal Yield) were BOTH removed from service starting in 1991.

The W33s had seen 20 YEARS of frontline service since their last overhaul and were at the end of their service life. They were very versatile nukes with the four Standard Packages having Nominal Yields of 5kt, 10kt, 5kt (neutron), and 40kt. Their weight ranges of 126kg to 180kg (depending on model and package installed) make them cumbersome, though.

The W48 had a Nominal Yield so low that generation 1 Thermobaric devices were just as destructive WITHOUT the fallout. This caused them to be removed from service as well. This would be the best candidate for a backpack bomb with a weight of just 58kg.

These shells were fairly rare before the war and would be extremely rare in Twilight2000.

With thermobaric weapons don't you have to create an ignition medium first though, e.g., spread a gas or slurry vapor? I'm asking.

The weapon itself contains the ignition medium. The first stage of detonation spreads the fuel and gets that magic ratio of 8% fuel to air mix. The second stage ignites it. The explosion can last for several tenths of a second (making the blast wave perceptible to the human eye) and causes burn damage as well as "overpressure blast" damage.

The Thermobaric's "cousin" the Hyperbaric Munition uses a different method. It spreads reactive metal like Aluminum Oxide, Cesium & Aluminum, Lithium, or Magnesium into the blast radius. The dust ignites almost instantaneously, causing a huge overpressure blast but extinguishing almost as fast. More BANG, less BURN.

If you want to see a fair representation of a Thermobaric Warhead explosion, just Youtube the movie Alex Cross for The Attack on City Hall. The hitman uses an RPG with a Thermobaric Warhead. It is done pretty well.

Hey !!!
 

I were one of dem guys.
Stop laughing I was honest.
Oh that is not why yer laughing.

"Not all who wander are lost. Except the 2nd Lieutenant. He is as lost as fuck. The 2nd Lieutenant is dying of hypothermia."

OK. I will check that out. I have only ever seen big, big battlefield Fuel-Air bomb footage, I didn't realize there were "little" FAE charges like RPG sized and even down to 40mm grenade sized. I did some digging; apparently the Marines have an SMAW warhead that can knock down a single-story building if you get it through the window, or at the very least kill everyone inside.

I wonder how you would model this in T2k V1.

I think it had some stats: yield, timer, and weight. It also had the micro generator stats and other tidbits.

The Russians love their Thermobaric devices. Russia made more Thermobaric warheads for the RPG than they did FRAG warheads. Thermobarics have a strange burst pattern. They act like mini nukes in that they consume all of the oxygen in the primary burst radius. This effect means that the Thermobaric warhead HAS NO SECONDARY BLAST RADIUS. The primary blast is "checked" by the vacuum before it can expand further. This is also what extends the incendiary blast into tenths of a second in length. It needs both a Conventional Blast and an Incendiary Blast too. The RPG-7 Thermobaric has a burst radius of 8 meters in real life. The Conventional Blast is so powerful that it would be at least twice the power of a normal explosive.

Youtube "Alex Cross Death Scene" by Tim Richardson to see the Thermobaric warhead in action. The RPG is an American made Airtronic MK777 (the US take on the RPG-7).

According to canon multiple demolition nukes were deployed by US Army engineers to destroy the transport hubs around Czestochowa when NATO forces withdrew from the city (1998 I think?). But one of the rumour tables had a rumour that one of the demolition nukes hadn't detonated and may have been recovered. It was that backpack nuke that the PCs recovered from beneath the Jasna Gora in my last campaign and subsequently detonated on the outskirts of WarPac Reserve Front HQ in Lublin. The subsequent chaos among Soviet forces in Poland made Operation Omega somewhat more successful than it might otherwise have been.

For flavour, this photo is of a 6kt nuke being detonated.

It was in Challenge No30 for the adventure Shell Game which give the 1st edition game stats for a Tactical Nuclear Device, Portable.

My Rook's Gambit module prominently features a rogue American W45 Medium Atomic Demolition Munition- a tad larger in size and yield than the smaller, more infamous SADM (aka "backpack nuke"), but still in the same ballpark.

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=4881

The premise is the MADM was smuggled into NE Poland by a special forces team immediately prior to the XI Corps summer offensive. The target was the Soviet Baltic Front HQ in Malbork, housed in the old Teutonic Knight's Crusader Castle of Marienberg. The team went missing and the device was never used. The adventure starts in the autumn of 2000- the MADM is in the hands of the paranoid Soviet Front commander, who believes that the upcoming operation OMEGA is actually a cover for a massive amphibious landing on the Baltic Coast between Gdansk and Elblag. He plans on using the captured MADM to attack the anchorage at Bremerhaven and stop this imagined invasion. It's up to the PCs to stop him.

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Has anyone ever tried to use either Thermo- or Hyperbaric warheads to blow firebreaks or steal oxygen from forest fires? If you could ensure the area below is evacuated, it would be a serious timesaver. And seeing how the warheads can be practically miniaturized, how about pods of FAE rockets or a magazine full of FAE 40mm grenades to shoot down a line of trees? Or even more dramatic, blow down an escape route for encircled smokejumpers.

ISTR air dropped depth charges (with the fuse rigged on a long probe to only be activated at slightly above zero elevation) being used to clear jungle in WW2 and purpose-built BLU-82s, also with fuse extensiong for aboveground detonation, in Vietnam--the latter for expedient chopper LZs. Again, the only thing holding firefighters back from using this is keeping boots on the ground out of the blast radius.

Thermobarics would be out because of the incendiary component in them. Hyperbarics would cost too much. That's why Primer Cord and its slightly more powerful cousin Detcord are used for those applications.

Yep
 

With great effect I might add.
I was told (hearsay) that detcord wrapped around POW's necks was an effective way to reduce the number of guards needed.
Now I am telling you this is second hand 'cause it was strictly agin sop.
Yep totally just heard it.
some where.
once

One long piece connecting several POWs, I would guess. Peer pressure will keep a loose cannon from getting too loose.:rolleyes:

One big target for NATO "backpack" nukes was to be dams.