Slam Pluto

Two years ago I was searching new planes to design when I found one of the most crazy ideas of the cold war: The Slam Pluto.

The PLUTO project had the goal to create a nuclear-powered ramjet Supersonic Low-Altitude Missile (SLAM). The Pluto would be launched most likely from a hardened underground site via three solid rocket boosters. These would accelerate the missile to ramjet speed, then be jettisoned.

Now, today it should be classified as a unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) due to its capacity to fly by days and do high and low maneuvers.

It would climb to 35,000 feet at Mach 3, until arriving near enemy terrain, where it would descend to tree-top altitude (still going supersonic) and launch between 14 and 26 nuclear bombs until depleting, and then crash itself.

If that were not enough the engine was a nuclear reactor, having the “friendly” effect of contaminate all its travel route from launch to crash site.

The project continued until the testing phase. But were do you test an engine that will contaminate by centuries any place were it could crash (and by 1964 crash test were more common than success)

By 1964 the project was canceled, and the last reactor was dissembled on 1976.

So I saw this craziness, and asked myself: How would had looked this Ucav if it had been build? And it was an Ucav, same like the BGM-109 Tomahaw of present day.

There was only one scale mockup of the Pluto, but there were a lot of similar missiles of the same age that were finished and put in service, that I used as a guide.

Once printed, I found that it was BIG (Bigger than a F-111) and easy to build. So you can find it in ecardmodels in 1:33, 1:72 and 1:100

Now, when I started to make the Slam Pluto model, I had a picture of the only mokup made of the UCAV.

But how would have been it's development if it have been build?

So for the development side I took some information from the Navaho proyect, that was build in the same years, and for the operational side I took information from the Hound Dog missiles.

So even being a "what-if" proyect, the models still are the more realistic possible.

But if the Slam Pluto was never build, where the color schemes and dates came?

Well, the 60 was a time when any idea was being researched by both sides, and not once but many times in parallel. So there was the Pluto, the SM-64 Navaho and the SM-62 Snark. So I had a lot of information about paint schemes and dates.

The last color scheme was the South East Asia scheme, primarily utilized a combination of FS 34079 Forest Green, FS 34102 Medium Green, and FS 30219 Dark Tan on the upper surfaces. The undersides were typically painted FS 36622 Camouflage Gray. The AGM-82 Hound Dog and maybe other missiles were painted similar.

So, had this Ucav have been build, have it been deployed, i'm very sure that if would had all this color schemes and more.

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Aber wenn die Slam Pluto nie gebaut wurde, woher stammen dann die Farbschemata und Daten?

Nun, die 60er Jahre waren eine Zeit, in der jede Idee von beiden Seiten untersucht wurde, und zwar nicht nur einmal, sondern mehrmals parallel. Es gab also die Pluto, die SM-64 Navaho und die SM-62 Snark. Ich hatte also viele Informationen über Farbschemata und Daten.

Das letzte Farbschema war das Südostasien-Schema, das hauptsächlich eine Kombination aus FS 34079 Waldgrün, FS 34102 Mittelgrün und FS 30219 Dunkelbraun auf der Oberseite verwendete. Die Unterseiten wurden typischerweise in FS 36622 Tarngrau lackiert. Die AGM-82 Hound Dog und möglicherweise andere Raketen trugen eine ähnliche Lackierung.

Wäre diese Ucav also gebaut und eingesetzt worden, bin ich mir sehr sicher, dass sie all diese Farbschemata und noch mehr gehabt hätte.