Andrew: Whatever we may think of them, mini-nukes are far from new.
“Nuclear satchel charges” were certainly in the NATO armory in the late
1970s, & so presumably the Warsaw Pact had them too. There was a 4-letter
acronym for them that I can’t recall. “Satchel charge” was a bit of a
stretch: they actually came in a customized backpack that one strong man
could just about cope with–the unit weighed over 100 lbs. Yield as I
recall was less than 10 kilotons. They were intended for blowing up big
bridges and such.