So, Who got the short straw?

The dumb LT I guess (said as someone who is going to commission soon).

I’m glad I won’t ever have to carry one of these!

I wonder if the Soviet's had similar technology......

If they did.....I wonder if a few went 'missing' during the fall of communism......

>It was part of the post-WWII, Cold War era in which the Soviet Union was viewed as an expansionist threat into western Europe

If only there were some sort of pattern we could discern...

This is fairly terrifying.Glad it didn’t need to be used.

You'll carry whatever they tell you and sith a GD smile! Apparently it was known as a suicide mission because you likely couldn't outrun the timer because you had to br sure the weapon was secured before detonation. So you couldn't set timer for 15 mins and driver off. You basically went out with the bomb.

And I thought the W33 was bad enough. This thing is apparently man portable and capable of vaporizing an airport

Thankfully is was phased out with the end of the Cold War. Guarantee you there are no working models atm

I know at least in the US some Korea/Vietnam vets managed to sneak weapons home and hide them in caches, some of which have never been found. I find it very hard to believe that the Soviet’s didn’t do the same, especially considering how much USSR equipment has been popping up in ukraine

What's that pattern?

Russians wanting to expand their empire. I'm afraid my joke...uh, what is the word? Oh yeah. Sucked.

The poor, poor, biggest country on Earth just never had enough land, you see. The saddest thing one could ever imagine. They could always use a lil more.

While not a nuke, had a girlfriend once who's dad kept his M4 from his service. I'd have never seen/held one otherwise. I was helping her with something and outta nowhere was like "Is that a fuckin m4 in your attic?" and no, he did not have any sort of licenses or anything to have it.

Standards were different back then. Heavy customs enforcement wasn’t a thing like it is now. Hell, even in the last 20 years it’s taken a while to heavily enforce them.

I knew a staff sergeant once who was deployed to the Middle East in the early 2000s. He told me a about how when he was on deployment they destroyed a hostile truck (believe it was a car bomb, don’t quite recall).

In the wreckage of that truck he found some prayer beads, perfectly unharmed. He took them and brought them home. Back then during customs the tape they’d use to signal baggage had been checked wasn’t permanent. All he did was wait for the inspectors to slap the tape on and turn their backs, then into his luggage went the beads.

Still has them hanging in his car to this day.

What’s interesting is that Russia’s military has a very curious dichotomy. One of my college professors was deployed many times as a logistics officer, and has a masters in history. She’s very well qualified to talk military history and while I was studying she pointed out an interesting trend.

Russia’s military is very poorly structured for attack. They don’t have a great Air Force or navy. They don’t train for assault, and their doctrine is old. Aside from WW2, modern Russia hasn’t really ever attempted to invade a foreign nation on a large scale (except Ukraine, which has been an abject failure).

What they are REALLY good at is defending their land. They have a ton of armor, a ton of artillery. Almost everyone who’s tried to invade Russia has failed. Hitler failed, napoleon failed, the Japanese almost succeeded but couldn’t quite (Russo-Japanese war prior to WW1).

It’s why Ukraine is going so poorly. Russia simply isn’t great at invasions. But they’re damned good at protecting the motherland (although they’d probably fall eventually if attacked by nato, it would be a long and bloody war).

And most people realized that only one tactical nuke would be fired, followed by the immediate escalation to strategic weapons - all of them.

With all respect to a fellow Cold War veteran, I think Mark Bentley's memory is a little foggy. I was in Germany with the U.S. Army during the Cold War and I maintained Pershing 1a nuclear missiles. Although actual targeting data was and probably still is classified, it was well understood that it was their express purpose was to deny Red Army access to Western Europe by making the Fulda Gap and whatever else required, impassible, not backpack nukes. As for OP's post, I could find no reference to the statement "every infantry and armor battalion in the U.S. Army had one officer trained to deploy the Special Atomic Demolition Munition". Further confusing the issue is that Bentley enlisted and as-such would not have been an officer himself. There were backpack nuclear weapons available, but they certainly were not as widespread as the article describes.

The Army Times is the national enquirer of the Army.

There are thousands of publications and declassified documents describing NATO’s plans for war in Europe. They did not include every battalion to use a backpack nuke.

The Soviet plan was called 7 days to the Rhine

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_to_the_River_Rhine

NATO’s plan to defend the Fulda Gap

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap

Maybe at the division or Corps level but not all the way down to Joe Blow at the Battalion level.

Absolutely agree.

Sounds like a weapon from Fallout

Source for that claim is a history of the military art textbook written by a West Point professor that is a leading authority in Cold War history. It’s a pretty damned reliable source

Just a note that “trained to deploy” doesn’t mean actually issued the device. Very likely that the training was a precaution but very few devices were actually issued.

How did he manage to make it disappear? They're pretty strict about keeping track of those.

Believe it or not, I agree with you. That said, there are still inconsistencies that ought to be cleared up. There's no doubt that the device exists and that there were units deployed. There's also no doubt that there were 3 American battalions and 2 German battalions of Pershing 1a missiles deployed and their mission was to deny the Red Army access to Western Europe. It would be very interesting to see some actual battle plans rather than reading the somewhat contradictory oral history of this device.

I wish I knew, honestly. I bet that it is "missing" from somewhere. Thats why I was so surprised to see it just laying around in the attic. It might have been damaged or missing pins or something, when I picked it up, the upper receiver basically just about came out. Hinged forward from the stock/lower and gave me a good look at the internals. I just kinda put it back down where I found it lol. Wasn't expecting it to be as heavy as it was.