It’s 1955, and the United States and the Soviet Union are locked in the deadly embrace
that'll come to be known as the Cold War.
Just five and a half years ago the Soviet Union shocked the world by detonating their
own atomic bomb, a feat achieved by the infiltration of the American Manhattan Project by Klaus
Fuchs, a Soviet spy.
Originally vetted by the British, Fuchs had penetrated the British atomic bomb project
known as Tube Alloys in 1941 and was eventually shipped to the US in 1944 to work on the American
bomb.
Now the two superpowers are jockeying for global leadership, and for many in the highest
ranks of their respective militaries and governments, an ultimate confrontation between Communism
and Capitalism is all but inevitable.
In this truly final world war, it will be atomic bombs that determine the winner.
Both superpowers have achieved a balance of sorts however, with the Soviet Union and its
communist bloc allies achieving ground superiority through their far superior numbers in tanks
and infantry.
With West Germany, France, and Britain still reeling from the destruction of World War
II, the United States has countered with a massive European reconstruction plan, pouring
hundreds of billions of dollars in aid money into Europe- even to its former enemies in
Western Germany.
Ten years after the end of World War II, the democracies of Europe are finally on their
feet again, American taxpayers funding much of the reconstruction of nations devastated
by the most destructive war in history.
The West's economic might is backed up by American nuclear power, and its arsenal of
nuclear weapons is keeping the Soviet Union and its hordes of tanks at bay.
America's Strategic Air Command has nuclear bombers on constant patrol over the north
pole, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, ready to move to their failsafe points
at the slightest provocation from the Soviet Union.
Since World War II the United States has become the world leader in aeronautics, and it enjoys
the benefits of a fleet of long-range bombers which can strike deep into Soviet territory.
The Soviets lack an adequate long-range bomber with the lift capacity to carry nuclear weapons
into American territory, and thus their focus instead turns towards rocketry.
Under the guise of scientific discovery, both nations have undertaken an intense effort
to develop ever more advanced rockets, but Soviet engineering and know-how is far ahead
of the Americans and in 1957 the Soviet Union trumps the United States' best efforts by
launching sputnik, the first manmade satellite.
While the world marvels at the tiny beach-ball sized artificial moon orbiting the earth,
American defense officials are in a near full-blown panic.
Not only have the Soviets proven they have better, more capable, and more reliable rockets
than the Americans, but that they may very soon be able to place nuclear warheads on
their rockets.
In that case, America's single advantage in the nuclear arms race- its fleet of long-range
bombers- would be all but nullified as nuclear-armed rockets would be far faster and completely
indefensible against.
The Soviets would have a first-strike capability that could put the US out of action before
it can mount a response.
While SAC's long-range alert bomber fleet would still incinerate a dozen or more Soviet
cities, it would be the US who would be the clear loser in a nuclear war.
Even worse, the sophistication of putting a satellite into orbit hints at the capacity
to build advanced guided missiles which could shoot down SAC's bombers long before they
got to their targets.
Efforts to develop advanced rockets are immediately doubled, and the US at last takes the space
race seriously.
However, some defense planners are now looking at SAC's twenty four seven bomber fleet with
a skeptical eye, and determine that the United States needs a far more survivable nuclear
deterrent.
Submarines have long been thought of as ideal nuclear platforms given their incredible stealthiness
and difficulty in neutralizing, yet development of sub-launched nuclear weapons depends entirely
on the US's rocketry program.
In the meantime, a new weapon is needed that addresses the key vulnerabilities of the SAC's
nuclear alert bomber fleet: their relatively slow speed and their vulnerability to interception.
Attention is turned to one of America's ongoing bleeding-edge and highly secret scientific
endeavors, a program known as Project Pluto.
The aim of Project Pluto is to dramatically increase the speed of American nuclear bombers
through the use of nuclear-assisted ramjet engines.
Originally designed in 1919, ramjet engines are incredibly simple devices with no moving
parts.
While in a regular jet engine a fan is used to compress incoming air, which is then ignited
and forced out the rear to produce thrust, a ramjet engine uses the aircraft's own forward
motion to compress the incoming air using a 'stovepipe' like opening which funnels the
high-speed air into a small area.
This compresses and superheats the air, which then requires nothing more than the injection
of fuel and exposure to a flame to ignite and produce extremely high velocity exhaust.
Capable of speeds up to Mach 6, or 4,600 mph (7,400 km/h), the ramjet is an ideal choice
for increasing the speed of America's bomber fleet.
Yet at such extreme speeds the bomber would disintegrate, and so the ramjet was changed
tracks to serve as an engine for smaller, unmanned vehicles such as missiles.
This is where Project Pluto stepped in, and saw the potential in using ramjet engines
to completely replace SAC's nuclear fleet with a fleet of unmanned nuclear missiles.
By using a nuclear reactor as a fuel source, the ramjet-equipped unmanned missiles could
fly for months, possibly even for years, and were largely limited only by the durability
of the materials used in their construction.
In a typical ramjet a highly reactive fuel is constantly squirted into the super heated
and compressed air much the same as in a regular jet engine, so while a ramjet is exponentially
more reliable than a mechanical jet engine and has a performance that only increases
with acceleration, it has the same basic limitation in endurance that a regular engine has: it
can only fly as far and as long as it has a supply of fuel for.
Project Pluto however sought to break this limitation by installing a large missile with
a miniature nuclear reactor, with the intense heat of the reactor itself superheating the
incoming air until it was expelled with so much force that it provided thrust.
No fuel would be needed, and the missile could fly for as long as the reactor held out.
In 1957 the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory began serious study of the nuclear ramjet
idea.
First they would need to shrink the size of existing nuclear reactors considerably, from
the size of a small locomotive to about that of an average car.
The flight reactor would need a power output greater than 500 megawatts, but to prove that
the concept could work a reactor was first built with a power output of 155 megawatts.
This reactor could heat incoming air to a temperature of 1976 degrees Fahrenheit (1080
C).
This was well in excess of the 1004 degree Fahrenheit (540 C) required to sustain flight.
The nuclear ramjet, insane as it sounded, could actually work.
To test the engine under realistic conditions though a huge test facility was constructed
at Jackass Flats in Nevada.
The facility would include a mile of oil well casing pipe to store 119,050 pounds (54000
kg) of air compressed at 245 atmospheres.
Before entering the engine, the air was then heated by passing through a specially designed
vessel containing 500 tons of ball bearings superheated by a gas furnace.
The engine was then able to be run at full power for up to one minute, and in this and
subsequent tests through 1961 the only issue discovered was some minor cracking of the
ceramic fuel rods.
Soon tests began on the Tory II-C, the first full-scale flight-weight reactor capable of
sustained speeds at low altitude of Mach 3.
Tory II-C was tested extensively in the Nevada desert, and proved that it was more than capable
of sustaining extremely high speed flight at low altitudes for months at a time.
Representing an incredible breakthrough in materials technology, the Tory II-C was one
of the great, and most secretive, technological breakthroughs of the Cold War, and for the
first time a nuclear reactor was shrunk to a size small enough to fit on an aircraft.
Development of the missile itself was immediately approved to several sub contractors.
The SLAM missile as it would come to be known would be America's chief nuclear deterrent.
It would be stored on American missile bases safely out of reach of Soviet bombers and
launched only in times of increased tension.
With the ability to be at their failsafe points in an hour or less and to then loiter for
months at a time, the SLAMs would effectively make the use of SAC's nuclear alert fleet
obsolete- a good thing too because not only were the bombers vulnerable to interception
and their bases vulnerable to a nuclear first strike, but the massive fuel consumption of
maintaining bombers on twenty-four seven patrols in the sky was creating a huge bill for the
US Air Force.
In time of increased international tension, the US would respond by pre-launching a dozen
SLAMs to begin their long-term alert patrols.
The missiles would be launched by solid-fuel booster rockets which would get the SLAM up
to operational speed where its ramjet could be kicked on, and then it would loiter in
holding patterns over the Pacific Ocean and the North Pole for months.
As tensions mounted, more SLAMs could be put in the air, and each SLAM could be equipped
with either a single large warhead, or multiple smaller warheads.
In case of war each SLAM would 'hit the deck' and fly at speeds of Mach 3 as it penetrated
the Soviet Union at treetop level.
This would make them impossible to detect with radar, and their incredible speed would
make them impossible to shoot down even if detected.
This is where the truly evil genius of the SLAM was realized though, as the reactors
could be built so that they would irradiate the incoming air.
Thus a SLAM could deliver its payload to target cities and then simply be ordered to fly around
the Soviet Union in circles, spewing a trail of radioactive death in its wake that would
kill all living beings below it.
With its incredibly low flight profile, the supersonic shockwaves of the Mach 3 missile
flying overhead at just above treetop height would also kill people and destroy structures
beneath it.
Lastly, as it neared the end of its operational lifetime after months of flying around irradiating
the Soviet Union, it could then be ordered to crash into a populated area or agricultural
areas, where it would spread radioactive debris over a huge swathe of land.
Despite the feasibility of building such a weapon, ultimately cooler heads prevailed
and the SLAM was canceled completely.
This cruise missile from hell proved to be so devastating and outright evil that it was
decided constructing them would be too great a provocation for the Soviets to ignore, and
it was feared that they would then build their own.
With the weapon being completely impossible to defend against, the United States did not
want to risk forcing the Soviet's hands into building their own SLAMs.
Capable of not just delivering nuclear weapons to their targets, but of then irradiating
the surrounding countryside for months at a time, SLAMs proved to be far more destructive
and evil a weapon than even hydrogen bombs, and it's for all our good that though the
US proved it could build them, it chose never to do so.
Yet in 2018 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a major expansion of Russian nuclear
capability, to include the use of nuclear-powered missiles.
Sadly it may seem that a fate we once thought averted may ultimately befall us once more.
Do you think weapons like the SLAM should be banned?
Let us know in the comments!
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