W80 (nuclear warhead)

2.1 Early development

The Los Alamos National Laboratory began development
on the W80 in June 1976, with the brief of producing a
custom weapon for the cruise missiles then under construction. The main dierences between the W80 and
W61 appear to relate to the physical packaging of the device, and to the removal of the 0.3 kt yield mode; the W61
apparently needed this feature when deployed as a depth
charge, a role for which the W80 was not intended.
Production of the W80 Model 1 (W80-1 or Mod 1) to
arm the ALCM started in January 1979, and a number of
warheads had been completed by January 1981 when the
rst low-temperature test was carried out. To everyones
surprise the test delivered a much lower yield than was
A W80 nuclear warhead physics package.
expected, apparently due to problems in the TATB based
insensitive high explosives used to re the primary. This
The W80 is a small thermonuclear warhead (fusion or, problem turned out to aect several models of the B61more descriptively, two-stage weapon) in the enduring based line, and production of all weapons was suspended
stockpile with a variable yield of between 5 and 150 kt while a solution was worked on. Production restarted in
of TNT.
February 1982.
It was designed for deployment on cruise missiles and is In March 1982, designers began working on a W80 varithe warhead used in the majority of nuclear-armed US ant intended for the Navys Tomahawk program. The
Air Force ALCM and ACM missiles, and their US Navy W80 Model 0 (W80-0 or Mod 0) used supergrade
counterpart, the BGM-109 Tomahawk. It is essentially a ssion fuel, which has less radioactivity, in the primary
modication of the widely deployed B61 weapon, which in place of the conventional plutonium used in the Air
forms the basis of most of the current US stockpile. The Forces version. Supergrade is industry parlance for
very similar W84 warhead was deployed on the BGM- plutonium alloy bearing an exceptionally high fraction of
109G Gryphon GLCM.
Pu-239 (>95%), leaving a very low amount of Pu-240

which is a gamma emitter in addition to being a high

spontaneous ssion isotope. Such plutonium is produced
from fuel rods that have been irradiated a very short time
as measured in MW-Day/Ton burnup. Such low irradiation times limit the amount of additional neutron capture
and therefore buildup of alternate isotope products such
as Pu-240 in the rod, and also by consequence is considerably more expensive to produce, needing far more
rods irradiated and processed for a given amount of plutonium. Submarine crew members routinely operate in
close proximity to stored weapons in torpedo rooms, in
contrast to the air force where exposure to warheads is
relatively brief. The rst models were delivered in December 1983 and the Mod 0 went into full production in
March 1984.

Dimensions

The W80 is physically quite small: the "physics package"

itself is about the size of a conventional Mk.81 250-pound
(110 kg) bomb, 11.8 inches (30 cm) in diameter and 31.4
inches (80 cm) long, and only slightly heavier at about 290
pounds (130 kg).
Armorers have the ability to select the yield of the resulting explosion in-ight, a capability referred to as variable
yield. The minimum yield, perhaps using just the boosted
ssion primary, is around 5 kilotons of TNT; the highest
yield is equivalent to around 150 kt.

Production of the W80 was completed by September

1990, although the exact date at which the respective Mod
0 and Mod 1 runs ended is not clear. A total of 1750 Mod
1 and 367 Mod 0 devices were delivered; 1,000 Mod 1
devices were deployed on the original ALCM, another

History
1

400 on the later ACM, and 350 Mod 0s on the Tomahawk.

A number of the original ALCMs equipped with the Mod
1 later had their warheads removed in order to use them
with conventional explosives (the CALCM conversion),
and under START II only 400 ACMs would have retained
their warheads and the rest would have been removed, apparently with all remaining ALCMs converted to CALCMs and their warheads removed to the inactive stockpile.

2.2

2007 nuclear weapons incident

Main article: 2007 United States Air Force nuclear

weapons incident
On August 30, 2007, six cruise missiles armed with W801 warheads were mistakenly loaded onto a B-52 and own
from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, to Barksdale
Air Force Base, Louisiana, on a mission to transport
cruise missiles for decommissioning. It was not discovered that the six missiles had nuclear warheads until the
plane landed at Barksdale, leaving the warheads unaccounted for for over 36 hours. This was the rst time
since 1968 that nuclear warheads were publicly revealed
to have been transported on a US bomber. The munitions crews involved in mistakenly loading the nuclear
warheads at Minot were temporarily decertied from performing their duties involving nuclear munitions.

2.3

Notable appearances in media

A stolen W80-1 warhead was one of the plot items in the

Hawaii Five-0 season 5 nale, A Make Kaua (Until We
Die), including references to the dial-a-yield system.

See also
List of nuclear weapons

References
W80 information from Cary Sublettes NuclearWeaponArchive.org
Gibson, James N. (2000). Nuclear Weapons of the
United States: An Illustrated History. Schier Publishing. ISBN 0-7643-0063-6.

External links
W80 information from globalsecurity.org

EXTERNAL LINKS

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

6.1

Text

W80 (nuclear warhead) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W80_(nuclear_warhead)?oldid=661655605 Contributors: Bryan Derksen,

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6.2

Images

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Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?

6.3

Content license

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