
Putin’s nuclear torpedo and Project Pluto - cronjobber
https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/putins-nuclear-torpedo-and-project-pluto/
======
hitekker
> 65,000 lbs, 80 feet long, with the terrifying code name, SLAM (Supersonic,
> Low Altitude Missile), or … “project Pluto.” This thing was perilously close
> to being built. They tested the engines at full scale and full power at
> Jackass Flats, and the guidance system was good enough they used essentially
> the same thing in the Tomahawk cruise missile.

For those who wish to read more about it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto)

And for those who want to see a very interesting kind of doomsday in which
this superweapon is used:

[http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm)

A most enjoyable short story.

~~~
arethuza
Nuclear powered cruise missiles also feature in _Missile Gap_ by the same
author - ICBMs not being able to work for interesting reasons.

~~~
cstross
* Waves _

~~~
arethuza
As someone who was a teenager in the late 70s and early 80s both _A Colder
War_ and _Missile Gap_ appeal to my morbid fear of, and powerful fascination
with, all things nuclear warish :-)

~~~
cstross
I'm about your age, then. (Born 1964, was 25 when the Berlin Wall came down:
where I grew up, lived, went to school, and attended university was never more
than 10km from a WarPac strategic nuclear target.)

~~~
arethuza
Out of interest, were you writing perl in Edinburgh about '95? Because I have
a very vague suspicion we may have met!

~~~
cstross
Yes. (At fma Ltd, who had Demon Internet's web support business until early
1997.)

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rdtsc
> Soviet Navy sunk this idea, in part because it only had a range of 25 miles
> (meaning it was basically a suicide mission), but also, according to
> Sakharov’s autobiography, some grizzled old Admiral put it “we are Navy; we
> don’t make war on civilian populations…”

If it was for coastal destruction why not drop it to the bottom and then swim
away and let it denotate in safety.

But in general why even bother, why not launch the 20M warhead as an ICBM and
detonate above the target zone. Wouldn't water just dissipate the energy and
waste it? This sounds like science fiction more than anything. Kind of like
how we trolled Soviet Union with Star Wars.

BTW: Nuclear torpedos existed since at least late 50s and almost started WWIII
around the Cuban Missile Crisis times. There was even a hero who saved the
world related to it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov).

~~~
ceejayoz
> Wouldn't water just dissipate the energy and waste it?

Right there in the article:

"The idea is, if you build a big enough bomb and blow it off in coastal
waters, it will create a 1000 foot high _nuclear tidal wave_ that will
physically wipe out coastal cities and Naval installations, as well as pollute
them with radioactive fallout."

"Worse still: blowing up a 1-100 megaton device in coastal mud will make lots
of nasty fallout. Sodium-24 ( _from the salt in the water_ ) is deadly."

~~~
rdtsc
> it will create a 1000 foot high nuclear tidal wave that will physically wipe
> out coastal cities and Naval installations, as well as pollute them with
> radioactive fallout."

That sounds unrealistic especially if it insunuates a device will wipe all all
the East coast cities.

It seems anything they have will be able to wipe out all the stuff they want
to wipe out just with ICBMs.

If this ever comes into play it is all over anyway.

~~~
ceejayoz
> That sounds unrealistic especially if it insunuates a device will wipe all
> all the East coast cities.

Well, they'd have to use more than one.

> It seems anything they have will be able to wipe out all the stuff they want
> to wipe out just with ICBMs.

The idea is that this sort of weapon is a response to US anti-ICBM systems, so
Russia can maintain their MAD.

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sandworm101
Three issues with the physics behind some statements re project pluto's.

(1) Doing damage with sonic booms. Not happening. Sonic booms do not cause
serious damage. Breaking windows, scaring wildlife, keeping people up. They
aren't breaking down doors. Much of our assumptions about sonic booms comes
from the anti-Concorde movement that in turn is political. Even at mach3+,
this thing is tiny compared to concorde and its wake would not be a weapon.
The mythbusters covered this well.

(2) Fallout from the exhaust. The russians actually flew a direct cycle
nuclear (ramjet-style) engine, the Tu-95LAL. The pilots died painfully, but it
didn't contaminate any large area. The americans ran it on theirs on a test
stand for five minutes. How is that test area now? To get the equivalent
5-minutes of overflight this thing would have to do tight laps for years and
years.

(3) Flying at Mach3 at low level. Yes it can be done, but not for years or
even days. At that speed/altitude the craft is well into the "thermal thicket"
where friction and compression heating of the air warms the aircraft. With no
fuel to burn (to dump heat) and nowhere cool to radiate, this missile would
need some magic cooling system. That highspeed dash can only be a dash, which
also impacts (1) and (2) above.

~~~
scottlocklin
1) The sonic booms are from this thing moving at only a few hundred feet
overhead. Concorde was also designed with efficiency in mind: sonic booms
lower efficiency. I doubt as SLAM was, since it doesn't "burn" fuel. The
airframe isn't even area ruled. I doubt it would flatten a modern steel
reinforced concrete building without falling on it, but it would certainly
break windows and damage some structures.

2) Yes, it was relatively clean with no reactor damage when tested on a stand
for 5 minutes. I suspect a few days or weeks of flying at tree level the
reactor would physically decay. Breathing uranium/beryllium dust seems
unpleasant to me.

3) It was definitely designed to fly at low level at Mach 3 for at least as
long as it takes to drop all its bombs. What happens after that is kind of
irrelevant, but whatever it is is guaranteed to make a mess. If you stop to
think about it; this is inherently a high temperature device. Whatever they
were using for electronics and servos would have had to deal with this. It
would be interesting to know how some of these subsystems worked for certain.

------
MichaelMoser123
The first link in the article is quite interesting (the current project is
named Status-6)

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/12/putins-doomsday-
machine...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/12/putins-doomsday-machine-
nuclear-weapon-us-russia/)

also Russian wikipedia has a longer article on this beast

[https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%83...](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%83%D1%81-6)

it says that this contraption is straight out of Dr. Strangelove

* once it is on its way then it can't be recalled

* also they plan to put Cobalt near the fusion core, making it a cobalt bomb, just like in Dr. Strangelove ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb) )

* Russian wikipedia says that this outrage is supposed to counter US Anti ballistic missiles. (Again Dr. Strangelove - the doomsday device was supposed to counter a massive ballistic missile buildup - for a fraction of the cost).

What worries me is that the worlds elites seem to be a bit less rational than
what we had during the cold war ... The Russians seem to be a lot more saber
rattling than the Soviet leadership. (I may be wrong here; the defense council
is said to have considered the nuking of China during the 1969 border conflict
[http://www.scmp.com/article/714064/nixon-intervention-
saved-...](http://www.scmp.com/article/714064/nixon-intervention-saved-china-
soviet-nuclear-attack) )

~~~
ramgorur
what the hell is NUKEMAP 3D? it's in the russian wiki, never heard of it.
[http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap3d/](http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap3d/)

~~~
MichaelMoser123
i think it is supposed to calculate the effect of a blast - given such
parameters as height of detonation and charge, it estimates the fallout and
how it is spread out by prevailing winds. They used to have a paper-wheel
calculator for that
[https://www.fourmilab.ch/bombcalc/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/bombcalc/) ;
this is the online graphical version for the 21st century.

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fencepost
Worth it for this alone:

"Yes, I would have worked on project SLAM: as far as I can tell, it was the
most epic redneck project ever funded by the US government. Not that we should
have built such a thing, but holy radioactive doomsday smoke, Batman, it would
have been a fun job for a few years."

Reminds me of this old bit of Backwoods Fun:
[http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/89q2/origtopfus.366.html](http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/89q2/origtopfus.366.html)

~~~
13of40
Sounds good, but I think you could probably skip the 8-week timer.

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pm90
The article paints a very harsh criticism of the current US "established
experts" on Russia. I wonder why such an important designation is being
appropriated by these "fools".

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amai
Nuclear torpedos or Project Pluto is not what I'm most afraid of. This one is:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_\(nuclear_war\))
"An example of fail-deadly deterrence, it can automatically trigger the launch
of the Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) if a nuclear strike
is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity and overpressure sensors."

~~~
rdtsc
Interesting, why are you afraid of it? Should you be more afraid if it wasn't
there. Idea behind it makes so much sense. Its main reason for existence is to
handle crazy twitchy hands of nervous people at the top of the Soviet
(Russian) govt.

The idea is if they think there is an attack, say from a failed sensor,
without Perimeter they'll be more likely to press the trigger while they still
have time, before they are wiped out and never get a chance to retaliate. With
Perimeter, they just activate it, and it will increase the chance of
retaliation even if initial attack (presumably from US) succeeds. So in result
they'll be less twitchy, more calm and as a result everyone lives happier,
longer lives longer on earth.

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utku_karatas2
The upside of this story is once after this kind of weaponry is fired off
anywhere on earth there will be one hell of an economic vacuum and a lot of
startup opportunities. Considering, of course, you're one of the lucky few
million left alive on this planet :-).

~~~
dogma1138
Indeed I already have sorted enough caps to seed my own radroach farm when the
day comes....

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mrfusion
1000m waves doesn't really sound believable.

~~~
13of40
He said 1000 feet, which makes it about ten times as tall as that big Tsunami
in Alaska in 1958. If you look at the description of the wave created by the
Baker shot at Bikini Atoll, it wasn't nearly that high:

"The disturbance created by the underwater burst caused a series of waves to
move outward from the center of the explosion across the surface of Bikini
lagoon. At 11 seconds after the detonation, the first wave had a maximum
height of 94 feet and was about 1,000 feet from surface zero. This moved
outward at high speed and was followed by a series of other waves. At 22,000
feet from surface zero, the ninth wave in the series was the highest with a
height of 6 feet."

I think the 1000 feet mentioned in this article might come from a
misinterpretation of "1000 feet from surface zero" which just means 1000 feet
from the center of the explosion.

[http://www.abomb1.org/nukeffct/enw77b2.html](http://www.abomb1.org/nukeffct/enw77b2.html)

[Edited because I can't read and was off by an order of magnitude on my first
try.]

~~~
jessriedel
Doesn't this say that the 1958 Tsunami was 100 ft, not 1,000 ft, in height?

> the sudden displacement of water resulted in a megatsunami that destroyed
> vegetation up to 1,722 feet (525 m) above the height of the bay and a wave
> that traveled across the bay with a crest reported by witnesses to be on the
> order of 98 feet (30 m) in height.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Lituya_Bay_megatsunami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Lituya_Bay_megatsunami)

~~~
13of40
Ah, you're right: "A tsunami with a record run-up height of 1720 feet..."

I guess I should read harder.

~~~
pbowyer
Can anyone help me out with how the run-up height is ~17x greater than the
wave height? This is because the wave hits the shore and the volume of water
in the wave gets squished thin, making it temporarily higher?

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charlotteley
Humans are just too "clever" on destroying ourselves! Why can't we build
something for improving our world?

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jkot
That torpedo is for military targets in water, such as carrier. It is too
small to cause tsunami, or to have much effects on ground targets.

~~~
simonh
The description of the torpedoed from the leaked Russian document, when
translated, says: "destroy important economic installations of the enemy in
coastal areas and cause guaranteed devastating damage to the country's
territory by creating wide areas of radioactive contamination, rendering them
unusable for military, economic or other activity for a long time".

