J D Vance & the nuclear suicide vest

Someone asked on X recently if any nuclear physicists knew if the Iranian nuclear suicide vest fears J D Vance was stoking recently were plausible.  As a physicist I said I think the short answer is no.  To the left is a Mk4 Trident reentry vehicle.  It is 130 cm long and 40 cm in diameter.  The dimensions of the W76 thermonuclear warhead inside are a state secret but it might be possible to get a bomb into a suitcase or a backpack.  A vest is pushing it ...

Somebody then chimed in that the Americans had built portable bombs in the 1950s and in a then secret program in the 60s trained a group of suicide cannon fodder called the Green Light Teams to parachute behind enemy lines and plant them...  The program ran from the mid 60s to the mid 80s.  Obviously the chances of these people making a fast getaway after they'd planted their "tactical nukes" were about as slim as Kamikaze pilot surviving by bailing out and the soldiers trained said the plan was very much ...if you can't take the heat stay out of the detonation zone.  Or perhaps find a fridge to hide in.  Incidentally I quite liked the nuke the fridge scene in Indiana Jones and didn't see why people got upset by it.  Apart from the way the fridge is thrown about it's quite plausible.  But then I've only got two degrees.  Some people with three beg to differ.

The Green Light Teams didn't really work very well though as although they could make the nuclear warheads physically smaller than Little Boy and Fat Man by the 1950s, they were still left with the problem that Uranium and Plutonium are amongst the heaviest elements.  After all, it's because their nuclei are so large that they are unstable enough to be capable of fission.  Even the smallest weapon weighed 56 lbs.  I'm not sure what would motivate the Green Light Teams to go on such a mission? A blue light card? I was reminded of the US Air force personnel who said they'd been scrambled to fly their planes directly into United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11 to stop terrorists crashing it into a building and were somewhat relieved but also disappointed when the plane crashed before they could crash into it due to a fight between terrorists and passengers in the cockpit.

I used to kind of accept nuclear weapons and think CND we're a bit naive but I've changed my mind recently.  They are weapons of mass destruction and should be outlawed like poison gas.  Their use as a "deterrent" doesn't seem very plausible in the wake of the number of wars going on anyway.  Israel has had a nuclear weapon for ages but it hasn't deterred anyone from attacking it.  And what is the need for such untargeted weapons when the surveillance and missile technology now exists to assassinate people at long distance on the implausible grounds that they might in the future develop a nuclear bomb to plant on an ICBM that they haven't got yet ...which is how we end up with nonsense like "suicide vests"... There's a reason no one's used them since the end of WWII... They are so deadly both due to the initial blast and the long term radiation consequences that Indiana Jones was mysteriously immune from that domestic let alone international opinion would be deadly to any country that used them.... Assuming there'd be anyone left afterwards... Still, it's not like WWIII already started... so what's the worst that could happen?

Probably the smallest "tactical nuclear weapon" the US came up with was the Davy Crockett.  It was retired because it was thought it might by definition start a nuclear war...