English Tech/Engineering Military / Defense

Hello everyone,

Britain was now engaged in a nuclear arms race and Orford Ness was transformed into the atomic weapons research establishment. You don't want an atomic bomb to go off between the factory and the air field. You don't want the atomic bomb to go off on the plane on the way to the target and you don't want the atomic bomb to go off at the wrong time after you drop it. All of those problems needed to be worked out with experimentation and that required an experimentation site. So what experiments took place here? The site's manager Grant Lahoar, explains. The first test carried out here was on vibration, so they were trying to replicate the vibration in an aircraft or in a lorry on the road, or they were subjecting them to shock, or g-forces, or humidity, or temperature. Each laboratory was designed to test different components of nuclear bombs. So this is what was called the hard target or the high impact facility and this essentially is where they were rocket-propelling atomic bomb cases and nuclear bomb cases into very hard concrete wall, which was effectively ***replicating the impact of the weapon when it was dropped***.

What was the point of that test? To check whether the (bomb) case can withstand impact on a very hard surface?
Or to check whether the (bomb) case can break/destroy concrete?

Thank you.