What exactly were SA's nuclear capabilities?

[empirex]

So branching off from this thread, are there any weapons experts on the boards that can explain just exactly what SA's nuclear capabilities where during the apartheid years?

I'm talking about
- size
- distance / range (what delivery systems did we have?), and
- number of nukes.

Anyone?

[ponder]

- size
- distance / range (what delivery systems did we have?), and
- number of nukes.

- Dunno
- Plane. Rockets were in the works based on RSA-3 & 4 from the space program. So distance could have been far.
- 6

[FNfal]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_A...ss_destruction
6 nukes G5 and G6 and MRL delivery system for tactical, planes for further afield.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_A...ss_destruction

[empirex]

Ah awesome thanks guys.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, South Africa pursued research into weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Six nuclear weapons were assembled.[2] Before the anticipated changeover to a majority-elected African National Congress government in the 1990s, the South African government dismantled all of its nuclear weapons, the first nation in the world which voluntarily gave up all nuclear arms it had developed itself.

The warheads were originally configured to be delivered from one of several aircraft types then in service with the South African Air Force (SAAF), including the Canberra B12 and the Blackburn Buccaneer. Concerns about the vulnerability of the aircraft to the Cuban anti-aircraft defence network in Angola subsequently led the SADF to investigate missile-based delivery systems.[8]

Image of a RSA-3 3 stage LEO rocket

The missiles were to be based on the RSA-3 and RSA-4 launchers that had already been built and tested for the South African space programme. Three rockets had already been launched into suborbital trajectories in the late 1980s in support of development of the RSA-3 launched Greensat Orbital Management System (for commercial satellite applications of vehicle tracking and regional planning). Following the decision in 1989 to cancel the nuclear weapons program, the missile programs were allowed to continue until 1992, when military funding ended, and all ballistic missile work was stopped by mid-1993. In order to join the Missile Technology Control Regime the government had to allow American supervision of the destruction of key facilities applicable to both the long range missile and the space launch programmes.[9]

[Chevron]

And look where we are now. Can't even get stable adsl.