Weaponising the Grapple tests.

So given the British built a bunch of W28 warheads and developed and built their own version of the W59 which became the ET.317 and the WE.177A & B in the decade after the MDA what would be the cost and performance difference between these and the weapons that could have been built from the last granite tests?

The British weren't satisfied with the W28 and put a fair amount of development into the primary of the ET.317 and WE.317, so I am wondering about the cost difference of this and development of a secondary as well.
 
Didn't notice this discussion until now. I think most of you have the right information, but I thought I would add a brief summary:

Green Bamboo - Highly boosted single stage bomb. Never tested.

Orange Herald - One the "Megaton class" bombs (i.e. hundreds of kt that could be rounded up to a Megaton). Mildly boosted fission bomb. Grapple-2 was an Orange Herald Small test. "Large" would have been the same except for a more powerful explosive trigger. Advantage of the "small" was that it was light enough to be carried by Blue Streak and Blue Steel.

Granite - Lots of variations, all based on "proper" two-stage H-bombs. Grapple-1 and 3 were disappointing, although a lot was learned, they were not failures and both achieved ignition.
Later designs (Grapple-X,Y,couple of Zs) were all improvements on the basic design. None were "deployable weapons", but by the end of the tests all the concepts had been proved in order to build them.

The US weapons were of great interest because they were already deployed and tested. As several have noted, that doesn't mean they were perfect, but they were ready to be fitted to bombs and missiles in the knowledge they would work as advertised.
 
At the very least the British could put into production the improved Red Beard with the 45kt composite core as both a stand alone weapon and a primary. Red Beard was a practical and sustainable weapon that served until 1970 when enough WE.177s were produced, I assume that the follow up would be successful as well.

I don't know about weaponised secondary but the British did successfully test several designs so presumably could have produced a suitable version. I do wonder how long it would take compared to simply producing the W28 which they found unsuitable anyway?
 
At the very least the British could put into production the improved Red Beard with the 45kt composite core as both a stand alone weapon and a primary. Red Beard was a practical and sustainable weapon that served until 1970 when enough WE.177s were produced, I assume that the follow up would be successful as well.

Better primaries than Red Beard (and its Grapple-X derivative) were tested under Grapple-Z. No doubt they could have been developed into serviceable weapons.

I don't know about weaponised secondary but the British did successfully test several designs so presumably could have produced a suitable version. I do wonder how long it would take compared to simply producing the W28 which they found unsuitable anyway?

For an "emergency capability" type weapon, not much longer, however without the '58 agreement there would not have been as many of them (or rather, production of a stockpile would have been slower). The US designs used less nuclear material and we were able to trade Plutonium for HEU. They had also put a lot more effort into accident-proofing and other aspects of real world use, so their designs were safer to handle.
 
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