Throughout the Cold War, Soviet and American scientists were working tirelessly to develop new even more destructive weapons. While some of these weapons did work and did make it to production, such as MIRVs, others such as Reagan's SDI, or Star Wars, never made it past the lab. And while others worked, they were luckily were kept away from the rest of the world, SLAM (Supersonic Low Altitude Missile) was one of these.
SLAM was designed to be a nuclear power missile that could fly for an essentially unlimited amount of time at mach 3. It was built as a complement to MAD, in the event of nuclear war it would fly below the cover of enemy radar while dropping roughly 16 hydrogen bombs along its path. As it flew its engine would spew radiation across everything it passed.
The locomotive sized missile was powered by an unsealed nuclear reactor. The unshielded 560-megawatt reactor would heat up tremendous amounts of air to a temperature of approximately 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit and then use the 19 tons of thrust generated by the force of the expanding air to propel itself forward at more than 2,500 miles per hour.
While the initial testing of its engine was a great success, the sheer impracticality of the missile and the recent development of ICBMs doomed it before it had the chance to fly. Tests of the missile would have involved flying the unshielded reactor for hours over the Pacific ocean. And once the tests were finished the missiles were to be crashed into the Mariana Trench, along with its radiation spewing reactor. Even if these tests managed to not be as clearly environmentally harmful as they they appear, they were after all tests, and if one were to accidentally fly over an ally's territory there would be huge problems. Even if the missiles were destroyed safely mid flights, there's still the problem of a supersonic nuclear reactors flying over head. As well as the ram jet used to power the missile violated the recently signed Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty. This was due to the fact that the open-cycle ramjet would exhale radioactive air along with dust-size bits of the nuclear cores it used as a power sources. A waste that we are unable to clean up both then and now.
But it was the very essence of the missile that doomed it in the end. The fact that it worked so perfectly to what it was designed to be, meant that in the spirit of MAD what would stop the Soviets from using such a devastating weapon on America. In the end the SLAM program was cancelled in 1964 by the Pentagon before any test flights were conducted.
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SLAM was designed to be a nuclear power missile that could fly for an essentially unlimited amount of time at mach 3. It was built as a complement to MAD, in the event of nuclear war it would fly below the cover of enemy radar while dropping roughly 16 hydrogen bombs along its path. As it flew its engine would spew radiation across everything it passed.
The locomotive sized missile was powered by an unsealed nuclear reactor. The unshielded 560-megawatt reactor would heat up tremendous amounts of air to a temperature of approximately 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit and then use the 19 tons of thrust generated by the force of the expanding air to propel itself forward at more than 2,500 miles per hour.
While the initial testing of its engine was a great success, the sheer impracticality of the missile and the recent development of ICBMs doomed it before it had the chance to fly. Tests of the missile would have involved flying the unshielded reactor for hours over the Pacific ocean. And once the tests were finished the missiles were to be crashed into the Mariana Trench, along with its radiation spewing reactor. Even if these tests managed to not be as clearly environmentally harmful as they they appear, they were after all tests, and if one were to accidentally fly over an ally's territory there would be huge problems. Even if the missiles were destroyed safely mid flights, there's still the problem of a supersonic nuclear reactors flying over head. As well as the ram jet used to power the missile violated the recently signed Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty. This was due to the fact that the open-cycle ramjet would exhale radioactive air along with dust-size bits of the nuclear cores it used as a power sources. A waste that we are unable to clean up both then and now.
But it was the very essence of the missile that doomed it in the end. The fact that it worked so perfectly to what it was designed to be, meant that in the spirit of MAD what would stop the Soviets from using such a devastating weapon on America. In the end the SLAM program was cancelled in 1964 by the Pentagon before any test flights were conducted.
Resources:
Clearly the SLAM project was never a practical one, and perhaps it is a good thing that it was never even tested, as the environmental and political consequences of doing so could have led to a fiasco. I hope that it would have been clear to the American people that such a weapon is totally immoral and unnecessarily destructive.
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