AHC/WI: Alternate British Military Nuclear Program (Cold War)

Based off the missile weight here and the payload capacity here, it seems the Mirage IV could have used the original Blue Steel missile. It might require folding wings for the missile though. The Mirage IV*/Mirage IVS proposal with Spey engines wouldn't have enough payload capacity to carry the Blue Steel Mk. II either, so it wouldn't make much of a difference.

The heaviest nuke carried by the Mirage IVA was the 3300lb AN11, the blue steel was 17, 000lb. While the IVA could potentially carry a blue steel such a huge, heavy and draggy weapon would reduce the range of the IVA to virtually nothing even with multiple refueling.

The 1956 spec for the IVA to carry 3000kg and 5.2 metres, well below the blue steel.
 
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The heaviest nuke carried by the Mirage IVA was the 3300lb AN11, the blue steel was 17, 000lb. While the IVA could potentially carry a blue steel such a huge, heavy and draggy weapon would reduce the range of the IVA to virtually nothing even with multiple refueling.

The 1956 spec for the IVA to carry 3000kg and 5.2 metres, well below the blue steel.

Perhaps the Mirage IV fleet could soldier on with gravity bombs until the late 1960s or early 1970s and then receive a 2,000 or 3,000 pound weapon with capabilities akin to Blue Steel Mk. I? That's around the time frame of Exocet and the AGM-69 SRAM. The Mirage IV would then be able to continue to serve as a tactical strike aircraft.

There's also the Green Cheese missile, but I can't determine what kind of range it would have had.
 
So when does this Anglo-French MDA occur? Much like the US-UK one which occurred hard on the heels of successful nuclear testing?

If 1960 after the French nuclear test where is Britain with regards to weaponising the Grapple tests? What design do they give to the French in the W28/Red Snow analogue?
 

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So when does this Anglo-French MDA occur? Much like the US-UK one which occurred hard on the heels of successful nuclear testing?

If 1960 after the French nuclear test where is Britain with regards to weaponising the Grapple tests? What design do they give to the French in the W28/Red Snow analogue?

I think it's more interesting if it prevents the 1958 US-UK Mutual Defense Agreement and the 1958 Euratom Agreement. That gives the British and French more freedom in their nuclear affairs and a larger European market for their nuclear technologies.
 
So when does this Anglo-French MDA occur? Much like the US-UK one which occurred hard on the heels of successful nuclear testing?

If 1960 after the French nuclear test where is Britain with regards to weaponising the Grapple tests? What design do they give to the French in the W28/Red Snow analogue?
Had they not been given access to US designs, the most likely British weapon would have been a 1 tonne/1 megatonne device. It would have used the Flagpole secondary (scaled-down Grapple Y) and the Burgee primary which used gaseous tritium for boosting and was considered preferable to the solid boosting tested in the Pendant test. Either Burgee or Pendant also give you an immune primary, which was considered a major issue.
 
Had they not been given access to US designs, the most likely British weapon would have been a 1 tonne/1 megatonne device. It would have used the Flagpole secondary (scaled-down Grapple Y) and the Burgee primary which used gaseous tritium for boosting and was considered preferable to the solid boosting tested in the Pendant test. Either Burgee or Pendant also give you an immune primary, which was considered a major issue.

Is Flagpole spherical? Do you have a diagram?

Are the primaries based on an improved Red Beard? Can the primary design be passed onto the French for them to manufacture?

What's an immune primary?
 
Is Flagpole spherical? Do you have a diagram?
I'm not aware of any diagrams that I'd really believe. According to Lorna Arnold in Britain and the H-bomb the British secondaries were all spherical because the British believed the calculations were easier for a spherical primary (he US believed things were easier for a cylindrical primary, which is why they went that route).

Are the primaries based on an improved Red Beard? Can the primary design be passed onto the French for them to manufacture?
I'm not sure is the answer to that one. I know they're Plutonium fuelled because there were major safety concerns relating to Burgee due to a possible reaction between Tritium and Plutonium if the weapon wasn't fired within a short period of time after the gas was introduced. I suspect that the mass of plutonium inside the weapon was rather lower which implies a very different design - Burgee was 25kT using gaseous Tritium boosting. Red Beard was a 15/25 kT weapon using no boosting, and which used a composite Pu/HEU core to get around predetonation problems they were having at the time with all-Pu cores. I **think** this implies that Burgee was a relatively small Pu-only core which used Tritium boosting to improve efficiency and get the yield up to Red Beard size.

What's an immune primary?
Not much information available on this (it was very highly classified by the British at the time, because it gave them a massive fright about whether their deterrent would work at all), but essentially if a nuclear bomb goes off near another one it can potentially disable it through radiation effects even if there is no physical damage. Worse, this effect is particularly strong in Plutonium-fuelled weapons such as the British were concentrating on. Boosting the weapons helps deal with this, both because it improves the efficiency of the reaction and because it allows you to use less fissile material making the weapon less vulnerable to predetonation. As a result of this fright Aldermaston seems to have spent as much time trying to design an immune primary as it was on an actual H-bomb at the time. A number of options were tried including solid and gaseous boosting plus three-stage bombs which used radiation compression from a small primary to ignite a second fission primary, which in turn would be used to ignite a secondary. Such a weapon appears to have been tested at American behest in the Halliard test.
This also feeds into ABM systems - if the enemy doesn't have an immune primary (and at the time what evidence was available suggested that the Soviets didn't) then a nuclear-armed ABM system didn't even have to get close enough to the missile to damage it to disable it - the radiation effect of a nuclear ABM warhead at quite some distance would be enough to prevent it detonating on arrival. Hence the military pushing ABM systems so hard despite the apparent "hitting a bullet with a bullet" problems - in fact at the time they didn't need to be anywhere close and one big warhead could potentially take out swarms of warheads.
 
I think it's more interesting if it prevents the 1958 US-UK Mutual Defense Agreement and the 1958 Euratom Agreement. That gives the British and French more freedom in their nuclear affairs and a larger European market for their nuclear technologies.

So the British would be basically giving away the secret of how to make nuclear weapons to a country that didn't possess them?
 

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So the British would be basically giving away the secret of how to make nuclear weapons to a country that didn't possess them?

Yes, but it would be a shrewd political move, and it's not without precedent. The British did it in the 1940s when they donated nuclear data and scientists from Tube Alloys to the Manhattan Project. As they learned from the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, the most difficult part of establishing any nuclear program is building the infrastructure.

As for France, it has already invested in nuclear infrastructure by 1956, so it's illustrated commitment. A nuclear weapon is only a few years away after that, and the actual development is a fraction of the time and expense of the infrastructure. The British wouldn't even have to transfer everything at once or in an official manner. They or some "independent scientists" could give the French some pointers to help them join the atomic club and then an official offer could be made. It seems extreme by modern standards, but wasn't out of place for the time. The United States helped the United Kingdom develop thermonuclear weapons, and the Soviets helped the PRC with nuclear deployment systems and at least basic nuclear knowledge and infrastructure.
 
I'm not aware of any diagrams that I'd really believe. According to Lorna Arnold in Britain and the H-bomb the British secondaries were all spherical because the British believed the calculations were easier for a spherical primary (he US believed things were easier for a cylindrical primary, which is why they went that route).


I'm not sure is the answer to that one. I know they're Plutonium fuelled because there were major safety concerns relating to Burgee due to a possible reaction between Tritium and Plutonium if the weapon wasn't fired within a short period of time after the gas was introduced. I suspect that the mass of plutonium inside the weapon was rather lower which implies a very different design - Burgee was 25kT using gaseous Tritium boosting. Red Beard was a 15/25 kT weapon using no boosting, and which used a composite Pu/HEU core to get around predetonation problems they were having at the time with all-Pu cores. I **think** this implies that Burgee was a relatively small Pu-only core which used Tritium boosting to improve efficiency and get the yield up to Red Beard size.


Not much information available on this (it was very highly classified by the British at the time, because it gave them a massive fright about whether their deterrent would work at all), but essentially if a nuclear bomb goes off near another one it can potentially disable it through radiation effects even if there is no physical damage. Worse, this effect is particularly strong in Plutonium-fuelled weapons such as the British were concentrating on. Boosting the weapons helps deal with this, both because it improves the efficiency of the reaction and because it allows you to use less fissile material making the weapon less vulnerable to predetonation. As a result of this fright Aldermaston seems to have spent as much time trying to design an immune primary as it was on an actual H-bomb at the time. A number of options were tried including solid and gaseous boosting plus three-stage bombs which used radiation compression from a small primary to ignite a second fission primary, which in turn would be used to ignite a secondary. Such a weapon appears to have been tested at American behest in the Halliard test.
This also feeds into ABM systems - if the enemy doesn't have an immune primary (and at the time what evidence was available suggested that the Soviets didn't) then a nuclear-armed ABM system didn't even have to get close enough to the missile to damage it to disable it - the radiation effect of a nuclear ABM warhead at quite some distance would be enough to prevent it detonating on arrival. Hence the military pushing ABM systems so hard despite the apparent "hitting a bullet with a bullet" problems - in fact at the time they didn't need to be anywhere close and one big warhead could potentially take out swarms of warheads.

In this https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=365529&page=2 thread you gave me this http://www.mcintyre.plus.com/grapple/MegatonWeaponsMA.pdf link. In here is mentions a primary based on Red Beard with 45kt, perhaps the first outcome of Grapple would be to produce this weapon, perhaps instead of the 25kt Red Beard MkII which was for low altitude and LABS release or perhaps as a follow on MkII in a continuous production model. Then it could have a secondary added to become the WE.177 analogue.
 

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It would appear the British were very lucky with their naval reactor program. Apparently France started work on the Q244 experimental nuclear powered submarine with the expectation that they could acquire highly enriched uranium fuel from the United States to help power it (source here). They also seem to have been working on a heavy water reactor for the Q244 (source here). The French weren't able to get their reactor to work (if they were using natural uranium, it would be difficult to do) and couldn't secure a nuclear reactor or highly enriched fuel from the United States to try to make it work (source here). Q244 was later completed as the Gymnote, a diesel-electric submarine for testing ballistic missile technologies.

The American denial of assistance to France was around 1958 or 1959. If not for Mountbatten really impressing Rickover, the British and French would both be looking at developing their own naval reactors around the same time.
 
Do you mean Black Arrow? With a smaller diameter first stage and a lower height (possibly as simple as omitting the third stage) it seems the missile could even fit in a Polaris/Poseidon launch tube (Poseidon information (here). The tube could of course be any size desired with an independent or joint deterrent, but a missile capable of fitting in Polaris/Poseidon launch tubes might be of interest to Italy.
No, the Black Knight sounding rocket. There was a 54" diameter - same as Polaris - version version proposed. The engine would have been the same as the basic 36" version but with enlarged tanks. A liquid-fuelled, single-stage missile based on the 54" Black Knight was studied; it could put a Skybolt missile on a 1,000-mile ballistic trajectory, or 1,500 miles if the fuels were changed.

It's also very close in size to the Polaris missile, which is a very convenient coincidence.
 

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No, the Black Knight sounding rocket. There was a 54" diameter - same as Polaris - version version proposed. The engine would have been the same as the basic 36" version but with enlarged tanks. A liquid-fuelled, single-stage missile based on the 54" Black Knight was studied; it could put a Skybolt missile on a 1,000-mile ballistic trajectory, or 1,500 miles if the fuels were changed.

It's also very close in size to the Polaris missile, which is a very convenient coincidence.

Were any payloads considered other than Skybolt?

This also explains why the British were always examining 54 inch diameter rockets.
 
In this https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=365529&page=2 thread you gave me this http://www.mcintyre.plus.com/grapple/MegatonWeaponsMA.pdf link. In here is mentions a primary based on Red Beard with 45kt, perhaps the first outcome of Grapple would be to produce this weapon, perhaps instead of the 25kt Red Beard MkII which was for low altitude and LABS release or perhaps as a follow on MkII in a continuous production model. Then it could have a secondary added to become the WE.177 analogue.
Possibly, but I think he's making assumptions here and being a little hazy about what is assumption and what is documented fact. He suggests the primary for the Granite series was based on Red Beard, citing Arnold's Britain and the H-bomb as his source, but noting that little information has been released. I've got Arnold's book (it's the same one I was citing earlier), and I'm far from convinced it supports his contention fully. It's entirely possible they used Red Beard or a close relative in the early days (Red Beard was first tested about 9 months before Short Granite), but it's clear from Arnold's work that they fairly rapidly moved away from the Red Beard design (unboosted fission) to a gas or solid boosted design as the only way they could make an immune weapon. Such a primary might well have been adopted as a WE.177 analogue in time. but the agreement with the US upended everything.
 
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