Hugh Harkins

SLAM, Project Pluto and the Uninhabited Nuclear Bomber Hugh Harkins

SLAMConceived in the late 1950's as a Mach 3+ global range nuclear warhead delivery system, the Chance Vought SLAM (Supersonic Low Altitude Missile), powered by a ramjet engine propelled by a nuclear reactor developed under Project Pluto, can be considered an unrealised anachronism of the Cold War era. This was a period when human kind proved its ingenuity in many fields, including, unfortunately, that of provisioning the ability to destroy itself on an ever increasing scale. This volume looks at the genesis and development of the SLAM concept and the results of Project Pluto, and details how the concept lost out to the intercontinental ballistic missile concept as the major delivery system for nuclear weapons in the 1960's. The volume is supported by photographs, technical drawings, renderings and flight vehicle and nuclear propulsion planned performance charts. All technical data relating to the concepts have been supplied by contractors and test organisations. There is a deliberate switch from imperial measurements/weights to the fore and metric measurements/weights secondary to metric to the fore and imperial secondary at various stages in the text. This has been done to ensure 100% accuracy in primary reporting from respective designer/test/research organisations, whereas secondary measurements may, at times, be rounded to the nearest cm, kg, inch or lb.