nuclear weapons

A Neutron Bomb Is Not A Death Ray

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

In fact, death rays do not exist. Not neutron bombs, not whatever is causing Havana Syndrome (Anomalous Health Incidents). I am sad to be the bearer of these tidings, but whatever role a death ray pistol plays in your fantasies, it will have to stay fantastic.

The big problem is the amount of power required for your typical death ray, if you assume that there are physical and biological principles that allow killing people without leaving a mark. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that nobody has shown how it works, the energy interaction with the human body.

Yes, neutrons can fry living organisms. But what does it take to produce those neutrons?

Stephen Schwartz posts on the history of nuclear weapons. He’s on Bluesky, not Twitter, and worth following if that’s one of your interests. Today he posted a thread on the neutron bomb.

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Yet Another Alleged Russian Superweapon

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

I guess I’m going to have to write something about this. It’s a tempest in a samovar.

I wrote that post just after Mike Turner (R-OH) came out as Chicken Little. It has stood up well.

It appears that

  1. Turner’s primary purpose seems to be to show a need to continue Section 702 surveillance. His secondary purpose may be to imply that the Biden administration is unprepared.
  2. Russia may be thinking of putting nuclear weapons into orbit.
  3. Most of the articles in response to Turner need not have been written.
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Arms Control Talks To Start With China

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

Some good news for a change:

On Monday, China’s foreign ministry said the two countries would hold “consultations on arms control and non-proliferation” in the coming days, as well as separate talks on maritime affairs and other issues. It follows a visit to Washington by the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi. (Guardian)

A meeting is scheduled for Monday. Mallory Stewart, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, and Sun Xiaobo, the head of the arms control department at China’s foreign ministry, will lead the talks.

China has resisted arms control talks. It has been building up its nuclear arsenal to about 500 weapons.

The estimate of 500 nuclear weapons comes from a recent DoD report on China, required yearly by Congress. A broader report from the Congressional Commission on US Strategic Posture, a bipartisan group of experts, recommends increasing the defense budget in multiple dimensions. For nuclear weapons, they recommend “an overhaul and expansion of the capacity of the U.S. nuclear weapons defense industrial base and the DOE/NNSA nuclear security enterprise, including weapons science, design, and production infrastructure.”

Other recommendations imply an increase in the numbers of nuclear weapons, to deal with simultaneous attacks by Russia and China. This is a recipe for an arms race.

Monday’s meeting is a start. What matters in talks like this, as much as or more than any agreement they may produce, is that ability of the two sides to share views and possibly information. It’s early days, and meetings may be called off or rescheduled. The important thing is to start.

Photo: Military vehicles carry DF-5B intercontinental ballistic missiles during a parade commemorating the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender during World War II held in front of Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, Sept. 3, 2015. VOA News.

Cross-posted to Lawyers, Guns & Money

New Warfighting Strategy Needed

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

Oppenheimer and other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project recognized that atomic bombs would change warfighting. Many of them worked toward world government in response. Lewis Strauss and Edward Teller saw a future of more and bigger weapons. The film dramatizes this conflict.

But a third group wanted to work out how wars might be fought with theoe weapons. The dust jacket of my copy of Wizards of Armageddon says “For thirty years [publication date 1983] a small group inside the U.S. strategic community has devised the plans and shaped the policies on how to use the bomb.”

Some who would join that community began to think about strategy as soon as they heard of the dropping of the bombs on Japan. The principles of warfighting strategy with nuclear weapons are incredibly simple. Bernard Brodie enunciated them by 1946:

  • Wars would be too brief to allow adaptation
  • Defenses are useless
  • The most valuable targets are cities
  • A nation must be constantly prepared for war
  • A second strike could be as devastating as the first
  • Surprise becomes an unimportant element of warfare
  • Deterrence is the only use

Two more points that aged poorly but were influential early on:

  • Strategies would depend on how many atomic bombs a country held
  • Fissile materials were inherently in short supply

This was similar to Oppenheimer’s analysis, but the scientists focused on ways to control the fissile materials and agreements among nations. Brodie and others went in a different direction.

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Today in 1949: Nuclear War Becomes Possible

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

There was no need for a special strategy for using nuclear weapons in the spring and early summer of 1945. There was more thought than usual about choosing targets, but only a little more than for choosing the targets of firebombing. That was why the military machine ground on until President Harry S Truman halted the nuclear pipeline on August 10.

That changed almost exactly four years later, on August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear device, a close duplicate of the device tested at Trinity Site. The scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project knew that that day would come, although it came faster than they expected, having been goosed along by stolen Manhattan Project documents. As the scientists expected, the Soviets reproduced much of their work, but having the plans for a device that had already been tested removed the fears of Stalin’s retribution for a failure.

With that explosion came the possibility of nuclear war. People were already preparing to develop nuclear strategy, having cut their strategic teeth on developing bombing plans for the Army Air Corps, which would become the Air Force in 1947. I plan to write about that history in the next posts.

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After The War

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

The film “Oppenheimer” skips from 1945 to 1954 with only one stop in between: a 1949 discussion of the results of airborne isotope collection that showed that the Soviets had tested a fission device. But a lot of other things happened in those nine years.

At the end of the war, the Manhattan Project was disbanded as a military project. J. Robert Oppenheimer and others left Los Alamos to return to their universities. The industrial base for building atom bomb remained, but it was not clear that Los Alamos would continue. Norris Bradbury became director. Having been a naval officer, Bradbury used his connections to arrange a series of tests, Operation Crossroads, at Bikini Atoll in 1946, to help justify a future for Los Alamos.

Two bills were introduced in Congress – the May-Johnson bill proposed a heavy military presence in the nuclear venture, and the McMahon bill proposed civilian control. The May-Johnson bill was vehemently opposed by and lobbied against by scientists. The McMahon bill was eventually passed, and the Atomic Energy Commission, the forerunner of today’s Department of Energy, was formed.

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Truman Establishes Sole Presidential Authority

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

The Harry Truman scene in “Oppenheimer” is accurate in spirit, although Truman made the “crybaby” remark later. The film sticks with the conventional telling of the decision to use the bombs, though, which is another narrative we need to jettison. At the same time, we must recognize Truman as the originator of a trope we now find natural, that only the President can authorize the use of nuclear weapons.

The dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan is presented as the result of deliberate decisions by a small group, with Truman the ultimate decider. centering on Truman. I’m working mostly from Alex Wellerstein’s accounts of the history. Here are some resources from Alex: perhaps the fullest academic statement of his findings; a more popular version via interview; a focus on Nagasaki; a podcast with transcript.

When Germany surrendered in May 1945, the Manhattan Project was nearing its goal. A month ear;lier, President Franklin Roosevelt died, and Truman became president. Before that, Truman had not been informed of the Manhattan Project. The goal of the Manhattan Project was to get a bomb before the Germans did. With Germany’s surrender, some of the scientists questioned the purpose of their work.

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Giving Up A Myth

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

It is time for arms controllers and nuclear abolitionists to retire the Oppenheimer/ Manhattan Project myth.

The Oppenheimer/ Manhattan Project myth tells us that a group of people can rapidly build something that has never been built before when under the pressure of fear during war. Physicists, all white men, did it all, with Oppenheimer the most brilliant and at the center of the story. Recent modifications have added a few women and minorities to the capable, and have included the victims, who were not earlier included in the myth.

It’s an origin myth. It tells us how things came to be the way they are. The myth is similar to Pandora’s Box, in which breaching a forbidden barrier unleashes evils upon the world. Thus the focus on Oppenheimer, who is conscious of what he is doing and who later may feel remorse and is punished, but unjustly, like Prometheus as in the title of the book on which the film “Oppenheimer” is based.

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Oppenheimer – Other Reactions

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

It’s early days, and we will continue to see reactions to “Oppenheimer.” My interest in the response whether any of it is likely to have a political effect on nuclear weapons.

Even before the film was released, some organizations provided lists of “what to look for” in the film. Those lists usually tilted toward the organizations’ agendas.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative provided reading that was less obviously tilted, and in 2020 Alex Wellerstein provided some useful basics.

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Nolan’s Narrative

Posted on by Cheryl Rofer

[There are probably spoilers in this post. I don’t believe in such things, so I can’t be sure. If you are bothered by them, perhaps best not to read.]

Christopher Nolan has commented that he hopes the movie will spark a discussion of nuclear weapons. Many people, particularly those born since the late 20th century, believe that nuclear weapons are no longer a threat. For others, they are simply a part of our world, not something that can be changed.

But nuclear weapons are very relevant. Vladimir Putin and other Russians have made nuclear threats during Russia’s war against Ukraine. China is expanding its nuclear arsenal so that the nuclear standoff becomes a three-party problem, more difficult to solve than the Cold War two-party problem, which was not a walk in the park. International agreements to limit nuclear weapons are falling. Anticolonialism emphasizes the wrongs done during the development of nuclear weapons to states and communities of color. We need new ways to think about nuclear weapons and war, while a 19th-century war of conquest is in progress. We need new ways to think about the ongoing damages of an arms race, which were previously ignored.

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