Pluto.

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MORE RUSSIAN BOASTING!

The nuclear-powered cruise missile. A weapon system with more or less unlimited range and flight duration.

According to President Putin such a weapon now exists in the Russian military arsenal! A threat awesome so we are told.

OVER FIFTY YEARS AGO NOW THAT ATOMIC POWERED CRUISE MISSILE AS IN DEVELOPMENT WAS PLUTO!

Pluto! Circa early 1960's. Early American development of an atomic-powered cruise missile.

An aviation project that literally never got off the ground!

"Project Pluto was a United States government program to develop nuclear powered ramjet engines for use in cruise missiles."

Image courtesy of Leicht modifiziert. Merely the engine for the proposed American nuclear-powered cruise missile. Man on top shown for purposes of scale. Gigantic!

"The principle behind the nuclear ramjet was relatively simple: motion of the vehicle pushed air in through the front of the vehicle (ram effect), a nuclear reactor heated the air, and then the hot air expanded at high speed out through a nozzle at the back, providing thrust."

"The notion of using a nuclear reactor to heat the air was fundamentally new . . . The nuclear engine could, in principle, operate for months, so a Pluto cruise missile could be left airborne for a prolonged time before being directed to carry out its attack."

PLUTO EVEN AFTER DELIVERING CONVENTIONAL ORDNANCE ON A TARGET STILL A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION [WMD]. PLUTO SENDING FOR A DEADLY CONTAMINATION OF RADIOACTIVE ELEMENTS SPREAD FAR AND WIDE WITH DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES FOR ALL COMING IN CONTACT!

coolbert.