August 25th 2020 declassified footage of first ever nuclear bomb exercise from the internal weapons bay of a fighter at supersonic speed.
Sandia National Laboratories, in cooperation with the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Air Force, recently completed a round of flight tests as part of the integration of the new B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb onto the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter. Sandia has also released first-of-its-kind video footage of one of these test sorties, which involved the first-ever release of an inert version of this weapon from an internal bomb bay on a plane flying faster than the speed of sound and that also provides an unprecedented look at the bomb’s rocket spin stabilization system.
The press release from Sandia said that the supersonic test had taken place over the Tonopah Test Range on Aug. 25. The range is a secretive site nestled in the northwestern end of the sprawling Nevada Test and Training Range and it has been used for various kinds of nuclear weapons testing, as well as other sensitive
Aug. 25. The range is a secretive site nestled in the northwestern end of the sprawling Nevada Test and Training Range and it has been used for various kinds of nuclear weapons testing, as well as other sensitive research and development and test and evaluation activities, over the years. You can see a rare video tour montage of the range in this previous post of ours.
The F-35A dropped the test B61-12, which included functional non-nuclear components and simulated nuclear components, from an altitude of 10,500 feet. It took approximately 42 seconds for the bomb to hit the designated target on the range.
“We successfully executed this historic, first-ever F-35A flight test at Tonopah Test Range within the specified delivery criteria,” Brian Adkins, the range manager at the facility, said in a statement.
