Category Archives: Nuclear Weapons

US Nuclear Weapons: A Secret History

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us-nuclear-weapons-secret-historyThis book by Chuck Hansen is an encyclopedia of nuclear weapons, and I recommend it as such to anyone who would be interested in reading about that. The book is listed at $144 on Amazon, so I recommend trying the interlibrary loan system before you commit to a purchase. It had less information about the subjects in which I have as an interest, and the short review to follow is a reflection of that. It has great pictures of various nuclear blasts as well as pictures of various weapon bodies and various delivery systems. Hansen’s feelings about nuclear weapons are not subdued. He describes in the introduction that “…a vast empire has arisen largely unnoticed in the United States.” “The secret empire has cost taxpayers dearly: $89 billion in development costs since 1940, and $700 billion for delivery systems for its products. The sheer volume and number of these products is mind-boggling: between 1945 and 1986, the nuclear weapons complex in the U.S. manufactured approximately 60,000 warheads of 71 types for 116 different weapons systems.” “The U.S. government has always gone to extreme lengths to keep this orgy of nuclear self-indulgence hidden from public view.” There is a reference that “…tens of millions of documents chronicling this vast ‘black project’ remain locked away in vaults…” (It makes one wonder how the author was able to find anything to write about.)

Ironically, a discussion follows of how it had been thought the U.S. would maintain a nuclear monopoly much longer than what occurred. The Soviets were able to steal everything they needed by espionage to develop atomic bombs while bypassing the need to invent and test the design information developed by the U.S. Continue reading →

America’s Plans for War Against the Soviet Union, 1945-1950, Vol. 14, Long Range Planning, Dropshot

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A review was posted last week of Vol. 13 in the series of books edited by Steven T. Ross and David Alan Rosenberg. That book evaluated the military plan called “OFFTACKLE,” which called for being prepared to engage in war with the Soviet Union in the late 1940s to early 1950s with 220 atomic bombs dropped on Soviet targets followed by conventional bombing. Volume 14 carries the plan into the future with the Soviet attack into Europe expected to occur in 1957. The extra time allowed the planners to produce the war plan with the code name “DROPSHOT,” which expanded the scale of the attacks. DROPSHOT was being prepared when NSC-68 was written, which was a planning document calling for an extensive U.S. rearmament plan. The Korean War and the fall of China to the Communists reinforced belief that World War III with the Soviets was inevitable. This volume1 contains the declassified (from top secret) facsimiles of the Joint Chiefs of Staff document JCS 1950/5 prepared in three sections. The basic assumption is that “…war against the USSR has been forced upon the United States by an act of aggression of the USSR and/or her satellites.”

It was believed that the massive Soviet conventional forces would sweep into and through Europe when the Soviet leaders decided that war would be to their advantage. Their armies were expected to be in control of Western Europe in twenty days. The report indicates that there was more confidence in intelligence about Soviet capabilities that in previous war plans. For example, “The committee is now informed that the Joint Intelligence Committee has available a revised estimate of the 1957 Soviet atomic bomb stock pile.” One aspect of planning that didn’t change was that it was considered strategically important to hold the oil producing areas of the Near and Middle East. Continue reading →

America’s Plans for War Against the Soviet Union, 1945-1950, Vol. 13, Evaluating the Air Offensive

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This book 1, edited by Stephen R. Ross and David Alan Rosenberg, is an unusual book to be reviewed this web site. The book is listed as unavailable and out of print on Amazon. I obtained a copy on interlibrary loan from the “Center for Naval Analysis” in Arlington, VA. For those who might wonder why I would be interested in such an obscure book, I worked at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado, and have been researching why the nation believed we needed such a facility to be built in the early 1950s. I had motivation to obtain the book, but I’ll warn others that the book is very large. It has in excess of 400 8 ½ X 11 pages, even though it only contains the declassified information from the original top secret report. A quick summary is that the report describes an evaluation of “War Plan OFFTACKLE,” which called for a strike with atomic bombs on 220 Soviet industrial site followed by massive conventional bombing.

I’ve read much about the negative effects on military planning created by the competition between the military services in the late 1940s. There was also a lack of cooperation between the civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the military planners. The AEC felt they were prevented by the Atomic Energy Act from revealing physical characteristics of the atomic bombs (which was crucial to determining how the weapons could be carried and delivered) or even the number of weapons in the stockpile. This report discusses the stark fact that the military didn’t have the capability to carry out the full war plan and also clearly emphasizes the even more depressing reality of the nearly complete lack of effective intelligence about the Soviet Union, its military capabilities, and its intentions. The only thing that seemed a certainty to the planners was that a World War with the Soviet Union was inevitable.   Continue reading →

Jefferson Parkway Legal Ruling

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I’m a bit late with this posting, since the ruling was made in mid-April. The article describing the ruling was written by John Aguilar in the Denver Post. He begins the article, “The controversial Jefferson Parkway, long entangled in a series of courtroom challenges, won a major legal battle Friday when the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a complex land swap that enables construction of the Broomfield-to-Golden highway to move ahead. The land transfer involved a 617-acre parcel on the southwestern corner of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge for a 300 –foot wide transportation right of way parallel to Indian Avenue. “A federal judge ruled in favor of the swap in 2012.The 10th circuit judges unanimously affirmed the ruling…”

Plaintiffs in the case had contended that backers of the Parkway “…think the future of the Front Range lies in building more roads, more strip malls, and more housing tracts.” They had claimed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lacked the authority to make the transfer and violated environmental laws including consideration for the Pebble’s meadow jumping mouse, which has become a consistent component of opposition to any Front Range development project. There is, of course, the charge that construction would “…disturb plutonium buried in the soil of the defunct Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.”

The future of the Parkway is far from certain because opponents are unlikely give up their legal challenges. They have legitimate concerns that the Parkway will increase the amount of development in their area. It is common for people who are happy with their current situation to not want more people to come in to enjoy their area.

I wonder whether there could have been any development in the State of Colorado if the current rules had been in effect in the 1940s and 1950s. Could I-70 been approved to traverse Colorado with current rules? How could it possibly have been approved with the disruption to wildlife migration routes and other significant environmental impacts? Could the series of irrigation canals in the Denver metropolitan area that provide a wonderful system of hiking and biking trails have ever been built? Those are probably are unanswerable questions.

 

The Road to Trinity

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road-to-trinityThis book, which had the subtitle, “A Personal Account of How America’s Nuclear Policies Were Made, was written by Major General Kenneth D. Nichols, (Retired). Nichols was a Lieutenant Colonel when he began an assignment as deputy district engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District. He was deputy to Leslie Groves. There have been many books written on the subject, but I would recommend this and the Groves account “Now it Can be Told,” as the best two to read if you are just beginning to want to understand what happened in the Manhattan Project and beyond. I was shocked that there hasn’t been a single review of the Nichols book on Amazon. You can buy a used copy of the book for about a dollar plus shipping. It would be worth your investment, although interlibrary loan was even less expensive.

The book begins in November 1952 when Nichols is directed to write his “…personal views on the political and military implications of the hydrogen bomb and given three hours to write it.” He wrote that the hydrogen bomb “…has equal or greater political than strictly military implications.” He warned that to achieve deterrence the U.S. must convince the Soviet Union we will utilize nuclear weapons ruthlessly. He believed we should have used tactical nuclear weapons in Korea “…proving to the world we really mean to use every potential weapon available to us to preserve peace and thereby deter war. He recognized that might or probably would  have precipitated a major war “…at a time when we have the greatest potential for winning it with minimum damage to the U.S.A.”

People who are “anti-nuclear” and favor disarmament will gasp at some of the things Nichols writes. I was comfortable with his advice and opinions, and judge that he had, because of the roles he filled, an informed understanding of the real world situation that should be carefully and respectfully considered despite which side of the argument you might stand on. Continue reading →

The Fate of the Earth

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fate-of-the-earthThis book by Jonathan Schell presents a stark prediction of the nuclear apocalypse. I found the writing style to be too grandiose, but kept slugging away to consider the author’s point of view. As an example of it being grandiose, the cover tells us, “Schell has taken upon himself the task of speaking for man, and acting for man; and it can be hoped that what he has written here will lead the way for many.” More to the point of the content, “Schell describes, within the limits of what is dependably and unarguably known to science, a full-scaled nuclear holocaust.” He writes as if he needs to convince readers that nuclear war would be bad. The book was written in 1982 when multiple books were written predicting the end of civilization. I recommend this one as being a good example of that genre.

The first section of the book is titled “A Republic of Insects and Grass,” which describes what would survive a nuclear holocaust. Note there is no indication any humans would survive. The book begins with irrefutable facts about the number of nuclear weapons and megatonnage that have been built since the first nuclear detonation at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The book then gives a brief primer of the horrible effects of a nuclear exchange. President Dwight Eisenhower recognized the risks in a 1956 letter that said, “…one day both sides have to ‘meet at the conference table with the understanding that the era of armaments has ended, and the human race must conform its actions to this truth or die.” There are many examples of political figures making statements that reinforce or confirm that comment. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in 1974, “…the accumulation of nuclear arms had to be constrained if mankind is not to destroy itself.” President Jimmy Carter said in his farewell address that after a nuclear holocaust, “…the survivors, if any, would live in despair amid the poisoned ruins of a civilization that had committed suicide.” (Those were surprising words for a President who authorized more nuclear weapons programs than any other President.) Continue reading →