Green Light Teams
[3] These initial Atomic Demolition Munitions required large teams of trained soldiers and still weighed hundreds of pounds.
[1] The development of the Davy Crockett nuclear device, an atomic weapon with a sub-kiloton energy yield that can be transported on the back of a jeep, served as a precursor to the eventual final product foreseen by the military, the Mk-54 SADM.
The Davy Crocket's lightweight Mark-54 composition was encouraging to the further production and advancement of smaller SADMs, such as the W-54 version, which could be carried by a single trained soldier.
[1] The United States of America's military leaders and President Dwight D. Eisenhower were concerned about the nuclear weapons cache and large manpower of the Soviet Union.
[1] Green Light Team recruits would endure around twelve hours instruction in a classroom each day, while additionally working through concentrated exercises.
[5] The targets for most of the SADMs or tactical nuclear weapons were in Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East including Iran and even Korea.
The United States Atomic Energy Commission, or AEC, even produced pressurized encasements for the tactical nuclear weapon to travel underwater at depths as deep as 200 feet (61 m).
Green Light Team member Billy Waugh recalled being launched subsurface from the U.S. nuclear attack submarine USS Grayback while carrying an actual atomic weapon, a W54 SADM.
If the team members were instructed to bury the nuclear device, they certainly may have been able to evade the explosion, but radioactive fallout could still cause heavy damage.
[5] The fact that these missions were kept top secret meant that few medals or recognition were ever bestowed upon the Green Light Team members.
[5] Another key reason the SADMs and Green Light Teams operations were kept highly secretive was also due to the targets and locations of the tactical nuclear weapons.
As a counter to the Warsaw Pact forces perceivably outgunning and outmanning the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) during the standstill of the Cold War, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his generals intended for the Green Light Teams to conduct missions not only in NATO occupied countries, but also in the Warsaw Pact nations.
At the time of the Atomic Demolition Munitions program's inception in the 1950s, the idea and practicality of this new smaller, tactical warfare was rational.
When NBC Nightly News ran two stories in the 1980s depicting the plan by the United States to operate Special Forces-led missions involving Atomic Demolition Munitions, West Germany's Defense Minister Manfred Worner led the plea for the United States to remove its Atomic Demolition Munitions cache in the area.
[1] By the end of the Cold War, not a single Green Light Team conducted a real mission involving SADMs.
