Why the United States Military Complex developed the backpack nuke

SADM - Remind you of a name of a man that had killed for war-crimes?

SADM - Special Atomic Demolition Munition

H-912 transport container for Mk-54 SADM: The Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) was a family of man portable nuclear weapons fielded by the US military in the 1960s, but was never used in actual combat. The US Army planned to use the weapons in Europe in case of a Soviet Invasion. US Army Engineers would use the weapon to irradiate, destroy, and deny key routes of communication through limited terrain such as the Fulda Gap. US Army Special Forces were trained to jump the SADM into Soviet overrun/occupied western Europe and destroy power plants, bridges, and dams.

The project, which involved a small nuclear weapon, was designed to allow one person to parachute from any type of aircraft carrying the weapon package and place it in a harbor or other strategic location that could be accessed from the sea. Another parachutist without a weapon package would follow the first to provide support as needed.

The two-person team would place the weapon package in the target location, set the timer, and swim out into the ocean where they would be retrieved by a submarine or a high-speed surface water craft. The parachute jumps and the retrieval procedures were practiced extensively.[citation needed]

In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States developed several different types of lightweight nuclear devices. The main one was the W54, a cylinder 40 by 60 cm that weighed 68 kg. It was fired by a mechanical timer and had a variable yield equivalent to between 10 tons and 1 kiloton of TNT. Three hundred SADMs were assembled and remained in the US arsenal until 1989.

-wikipedia.org