Ok...to ME...THIS is what it looked like. (and I DO know a bit about nukes--though nothing "classified", but open literature IS pretty detailed nowadays--probably TOO detailed, if you ask me.)
ONE of the RV's was left onboard the train to purposely detonate and destroy it and everything else around for a good distance, say about 5-10 miles or so. This would cover the theft of the other 9 RV's. (Remember --it said a 500-700 KT yield was suspected from the blast. Today--that is NOT a "small blast".)
The "timer device" that they placed on the one RV was most likely some sort of "test fixture" that could test the various devices in the RV, that are needed to initiate the various processes needed to produce a full thermonuclear blast, such as gas boost, neutron injection, implosion charge triggering, etc, to insure they were in "good order" during routine missile maintenance. As such--it WOULD be able to detonate the warhead, if programmed to do so. Keep in mind--it FIT the connector on the RV, so it would HAVE to be something like that. (and the terrorist in charge would have had access to such a device, too, since he was involved in the missile program.) And the "implosion charges" mentioned by a poster before WERE INSIDE of the warhead, surrounding the "primary", that was shown near the end of the movie.(although..THAT was pretty hokey, too...but I WILL NOT elaborate on why...)
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