Suitcase Bomb
A suitcase bomb refers to a compact nuclear weapon that is designed to be transportable, potentially concealed in a suitcase or similar container. This concept garnered significant attention in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, particularly due to concerns about terrorist organizations, such as al Qaeda, acquiring and deploying such a weapon within the United States. Discussions around suitcase bombs often center on two main challenges: obtaining the nuclear device and delivering it effectively to a target.
Acquisition involves either procuring a weapon from a state entity or developing one independently, both of which present complexities. Reports have suggested that al Qaeda may have attempted to acquire suitcase bombs from the black market, with historical context indicating that the former Soviet Union produced smaller nuclear weapons that fit this description. Delivery poses its own set of difficulties, as non-state actors typically lack the missile technology needed for long-range strikes, instead relying on methods such as smuggling through shipping containers.
While experts acknowledge the potential dangers posed by such devices, they also note factors that may mitigate the risk, such as the decay of nuclear materials over time. Despite ongoing concerns, there have been no verified instances of suitcase bombs being utilized by terrorists. However, the threat remains relevant in discussions about national security and preparedness, especially in urban environments deeply affected by past terrorist events.
Subject Terms
Suitcase Bomb
Summary: In the wake of the al Qaeda attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11/2001, concerns were voiced about the prospect of a nuclear weapon being smuggled into the United States for a follow-up attack. Several scenarios have been suggested for such an attack, including a bomb smuggled in a cargo container and a "suitcase bomb" carried by hand. Experts try to anticipate all the ramifications that would result from the detonation of a small nuclear weapon in the United States and to draw up appropriate emergency response plans.
The notion of a nuclear weapon exploding inside the United States at the hands of terrorists gained some notoriety in January 2007 in the highly popular television series "24" in which the main plot centered around such an explosion and the race to prevent more.
Two and a half years earlier, in the first debate of the 2004 presidential campaign, Vice President Dick Cheney declared: "The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever been used against us-nuclear weapons-able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans."
Elements of a Complex Subject
From the perspective of a terrorist organization like al Qaeda, setting off a nuclear explosion involves two main problems: obtaining a bomb and delivering the bomb to a target inside the United States (or any other target country). Each of these elements has its own set of issues.
Obtaining a bomb. Most analyses of this problem focus on two prospects: terrorists acquiring a bomb from a state power (e.g., North Korea) and terrorists acquiring the technology and materials to build their own bomb. In the absence of specific knowledge of such a weapon in the hands of al Qaeda or other terrorists, we are left to speculate about both prospects.
Unconfirmed news reports in 2004, for example, suggested that al Qaeda agents had bought suitcase bombs "on the black market in Central Asia," part of the former Soviet Union.
For many years there were rumors that the former Soviet Union, like the United States, built "small" nuclear weapons that might be small enough and light enough for a person to carry, if not in a suitcase, then in a steamer trunk. In the late 1950s, the United States developed the "Davy Crockett" artillery shell, also called the W54 warhead, as a tactical nuclear weapon. This device carried the explosive power of around a kiloton (two million pounds of TNT), or less than 10 percent of the power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. The W54 weighed about fifty pounds and could fit into a large suitcase. While relatively small compared to bombs designed to be delivered by intercontinental ballistic missiles or jet bombers, such a bomb could cause tremendous damage over a small area as well as radioactive fallout. By comparison, such a bomb would yield about fifty times the power of the weapon used by terrorist Timothy McVeigh to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
It is widely assumed that the Soviet Union built similar weapons, and there are fears that some of these weapons could have gone astray since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. There have been repeated reports, none verified, that both Chechen separatists and Russian organized crime gangs have obtained nuclear weapons from the old Soviet arsenal and made them available for the black market. In 1997, Alexander Lebed, a former Russian military commander-turned-politician asserted on CBS News "60 Minutes" that "more than a hundred" suitcase-size weapons from the Soviet arsenal "are not under the control of the armed forces of Russia." Lebed said he did not know whether they had been destroyed, put into storage, or "sold or stolen, I don't know." His allegations were denied by the Russian government. Lebed died in a helicopter crash in 2002. Fears have also been expressed that the government of North Korea might be willing to sell nuclear weapons to terrorists.
Building a nuclear weapon from scratch would appear to pose a significant challenge to terrorists-one that appears to be daunting even for nation-states like Iran that possess both significant funding and highly qualified engineers. Nevertheless, press reports persisted that before his death, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden voiced determination to build a tactical nuclear weapon and has made significant funds available to do so. Such unconfirmed rumors have also suggested that A.Q. Khan, the scientist credited with developing a nuclear weapon for Pakistan, might have been willing to lend assistance, or even elements, to al Qaeda for this purpose.
Experts generally agree that the most difficult element to obtain or to develop is enriched uranium, which requires a highly sophisticated processing plant that is both expensive and difficult to build and even harder to hide.
Delivery. Delivering a tactical nuclear weapon poses a different set of challenges. No non-state operator is thought to have developed missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the United States, leaving it to terrorists to deliver such a bomb by hand or by ship, such as via a shipping container.
In the early 200s, there were about eight million shipping containers delivered to the United States each year; since an inspection program expanded after 9/11, only about 350,000 of these containers were physically inspected. Critics of the Bush administration argue that unexamined shipping containers represented a serious potential hazard as a means of importing a nuclear weapon or even living terrorists (in at least one instance, a terrorist was found hidden in such a container). In the 2020s, this problem grew more precarious as the number of shipping containers continued to increase, but global conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic caused a disruption to the shipping industry that could create ideal conditions for illicit activity.
Other Risk Factors
There are other elements of nuclear weapons that seem to mitigate the risk of terrorists obtaining one and delivering into the United States.
Foremost among these is the tendency of nuclear weapons to deteriorate. Nuclear weapons require "triggers" that decay rapidly, with half-lives of under four months (meaning they would be useless to set off a weapon after that time). Similarly, the nuclear cores of such weapons are also subject to decay over a period of several years, which might render useless older Soviet weapons that might have gone missing.
On the other hand, in late November 2006, the Washington Post reported that "the National Nuclear Security Administration said yesterday that studies have concluded that the plutonium used to trigger U.S. nuclear warheads and bombs will remain reliable for about 100 years, far longer than had been believed." Previous estimates had been that the plutonium would degrade sufficiently to affect reliability in about forty-five years-bringing into question the reliability of weapons built in the 1960s.
In the over two decades since Lebed made his claims regarding nuclear devices, none have been employed by terrorists; however, the threat remained viable. Several nuclear devices are known to have been lost or misplaced by the then-Soviet Union, and it remained unknown into whose hands those weapons fell. With increasing advances in technology and ever-evolving terrorist tactics, the threat of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of those wishing harm on the United States remained viable.
Bibliography
Allison, Graham. "A Nuclear Terrorism Report Card." National Interest. Issue 83. (Spring 2006): 3 p.
Allison, Graham. "Nuclear Terrorism." Blueprint. 2004:3. (Oct. 2004): 2 p.
Allison, Graham. Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe. New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2004.
Edwards, Rob. "Only a Matter of Time?" New Scientist. 182:2450. (5 June 2004): 2 p.
Helman, Christopher. "Stopping Porta-Nukes." Forbes. 168:16. (4 Dec. 2001): 2 p.
Hughes, David. "When Terrorists Go Nuclear." Popular Mechanics. 173:1. (Jan. 1996): 4 p.
Patchen, Kenneth. "The Nuclear Suitcase Bomb and Nuclear Terrorism: The Lebed Claims." National Observer. Issue 41. (Winter 1999): 10 p.
Reiss, Mitchell. "The Future That Never Came." Wilson Quarterly. 19:2. (Spring 1995): 20 p.
Suciu, P., & Weintz, S. (2021, March 8). Russia's atomic nightmare: 100 missing 'suitcase' nuclear weapons. The National Interest. Retrieved Oct. 1, 2023, from https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-atomic-nightmare-100-missing-suitcase-nuclear-weapons-179577