Nuclear Weapons Systems Research Articles

Trident and nuclear law*

On 8 July 1996, the International Court of Justice gave its Advisory Opinion on the legality of the use or threat of nuclear weapons, in response to a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations. This paper considers the status of Trident, now the United Kingdom's only nuclear weapon system, in the light of the Opinion. While it cannot be concluded definitively that the threat or use of Trident is illegal, at the very least the legality of the programme is brought into considerable doubt. The continued deployment of Trident raises important legal and military issues, which must be addressed urgently.

Accidental nuclear war--a post-cold war assessment.

In the 1980s, many medical organizations identified the prevention of nuclear war as one of the medical profession's most important goals. An assessment of the current danger is warranted given the radically changed context of the post-Cold War era. We reviewed the recent literature on the status of nuclear arsenals and the risk of nuclear war. We then estimated the likely medical effects of a scenario identified by leading experts as posing a serious danger: an accidental launch of nuclear weapons. We assessed possible measures to reduce the risk of such an event. U.S. and Russian nuclear-weapons systems remain on a high-level alert status. This fact, combined with the aging of Russian technical systems, has recently increased the risk of an accidental nuclear attack. As a conservative estimate, an accidental intermediate-sized launch of weapons from a single Russian submarine would result in the deaths of 6,838,000 persons from firestorms in eight U.S. cities. Millions of other people would probably be exposed to potentially lethal radiation from fallout. An agreement to remove all nuclear missiles from high-level alert status and eliminate the capability of a rapid launch would put an end to this threat. The risk of an accidental nuclear attack has increased in recent years, threatening a public health disaster of unprecedented scale. Physicians and medical organizations should work actively to help build support for the policy changes that would prevent such a disaster.

No nukes is good news for supercomputers [nuclear weapons simulation

By the year 2010, the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative will develop high performance, full-system high-fidelity predictive codes to support weapons design, production analysis, accident analysis, and certification. It will stimulate the US computer manufacturing industry to create the more powerful high-end supercomputing capability required by these applications and create a computational infrastructure and operating environment that makes these capabilities accessible and usable. The program has four main objectives: Performance-create predictive simulations of nuclear weapon systems to analyse behaviour and assess performance in an environment without nuclear testing; safety - predict with high certainty the behaviour of full weapons systems in complex accident scenarios; reliability - achieve sufficient, validated predictive capabilities to extend the lifetime of the stockpile, predict failure mechanisms, and reduce routine maintenance. renewal - use virtual prototyping to reduce production and testing facilities for stockpile requalification and replacement work.

Tactical nuclear weapons: Do they have a role in U.S. military strategy?

This article reviews the purpose and role that tactical nuclear weapon systems (TNWS) can provide in supporting the National Military Strategy (NMS), and recommends requirements be determined using a strategy based upon political, economic, and military national interests versus the current target‐based strategy. Tactical nuclear weapons can provide both a force multiplier capability for deterrence and an economy of force enhancement in a warfighting role for continency operations against nuclear‐capable, irrational (or undeterrable) actors.

North Korea's Terrorism Against South Korea: An Historical Analysis of Their Political Background and its Characteristics

North Korea, also known as the People's Republic of Korea, is the least understood nation in the world in terms of socio-political agenda, economic development, military and nuclear capabilities, and so on. In recent years, tensions between the so-called International Community and North Korea have become more pronounced due to North Korea's refusal to allow international (or UN) inspections of nuclear facilities. The Clinton administration is seriously considering “economic sanctions” against North Korea, if North Korea does not meet the Geneva Accord. The western world contends that if North Korea develops nuclear offensive weapons systems, while the United States and other “advanced” nations of the world are halting the development of nuclear missile defense systems, the “balance of power” would change, influencing the “Strategic Defense Initiative” and likely cause another form of “cold war.” Against that background, this paper endeavors to explore one aspect of North Korea's terrorism against South K...

Warsaw pact military doctrines in the 1970s and 1980s: Findings in the East German archives

Drawing on recently opened East German military archives, this article traces the evolution of Soviet military doctrine through Warsaw Pact training and maneuver documentation. Paradoxically, while the USSR was deploying more usable and survivable nuclear weapons (the SS‐20), it was developing a strategy which attempted to win a limited war in Europe with conventional weapons only. Pact records do show planning for preemptive nuclear strikes in response to observations of NATO preparations for nuclear launches. Great care was taken not to proceed to a nuclearization of the conflict unless the enemy was about to do so. These planning documents also reveal that the Pact was not expecting to launch all the nuclear weapons at its disposal. The article also describes Soviet discussions in the 1980s on the blurring of distinctions between conventional and nuclear weapons systems and the ensuing “offense‐defense” debate.

Population Behavior Change: A Theory-Based Approach

Behavioral science provides useful ideas about how programs of mass communication and community participation can produce synergistic influences on the lifestyles and policy decisions of populations and their representatives. Media campaigns featuring real-life behavior models and community networks mobilized to promote behavior change provide a theoretically sound paradigm for community-level activities to accelerate the diffusion of innovation in health. Illustrative case studies demonstrate how behavioral science concepts can be applied to preventing HIV infections and to promoting citizen lobbying against selected nuclear weapons systems.

The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat

This book is interesting, frightening, wise, and important. In another highly provocative collaborative effort, this time with sociologist Eric Markusen, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton has succeeded in warning citizens of the world not to fall asleep on nuclear weapons issues. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has pushed back the minutehand on its doomsday clock, US-Soviet relations are starting to warm-up, and brakes are starting to be applied to the arms race, but in reading this book, it is clear that our confrontation with nuclear weapons has only just begun. Careful to delineate differences as well as similarities, the book reflects on the Nazi genocide to help us better understand how modern societies can create and maintain nuclear weapons systems and strategies capable of species genocide. Like the Nazi experience, the process whereby ordinary people become cogs in the wheels that drive a potentially genocidal system for amassing and deploying nuclear weapons is sustained by certain psychological mechanisms that protect the individuals involved from inwardly acknowledging the real or potential harmful effects that

Soviet nuclear weapons

Contents: Soviet Nuclear Weapons: An Overview; The Soviet Nuclear Stockpile; Soviet Military Organization; Design and Production of Nuclear Weapons Systems; Strategic Nuclear Forces; Cruise Missiles and Anti-Ship Missiles; Non-Strategic Missiles, Rockets and Artillery; Nuclear-Capable Aviation; Naval Nuclear Weapons; Soviet Nuclear Testing. Indexes and Appendixes.

After the Cold War: New tasks for arms controllers

"After the Cold War: New tasks for arms controllers." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 45(6), pp. 7–8

The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology: US Fleet Ballistic Missile Guidance and Navigation: II: `Going for Broke' — The Path to Trident II

This paper (the second of two Parts) continues the historical case study of the evolution of Fleet Ballistic Missile guidance and navigation technologies by tracing the origins and development of the Trident system. This comprises a new submarine and two different missiles, Trident I (C4) and Trident II (D5), the latter of which is considered to be optimized for the destruction of `hardened' targets such as missile silos and command posts. It thus appears to mark a significant shift from the ultimate retaliatory `counter-city' deterrent (which was the main perceived role of Polaris). Is Trident II's technology simply the culmination of inevitable technological change, acting as an independent causal factor that itself determines strategy? Or is technological change the consciously intended product of political will? This historical case is used to discuss various analytical frameworks commonly used to explain such developments — `Technology-out-of-Control'; `Soft Determinism'; `Technologists-out-of-Control'; `Politics-in-Command'; and `Bureaucratic Politics'. It is concluded that the material is most consistent with a `Bureaucratic Politics' perspective, but that this unduly favours one set of `factors' in a `seamless web' where the `technical' cannot readily be distinguished from the `social'. Nevertheless, we feel it possible and useful to try to distinguish patterns in this seamless web, and close with a discussion of one such pattern — the `black-boxing' of technical programmes.

The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology: US Fleet Ballistic Missile Guidance and Navigation: I: From Polaris to Poseidon

This paper (published in two Parts) presents a detailed historical case study of the evolution of the Polaris, Poseidon and Trident weapons programmes, and of the development of the guidance and navigation technologies which are essential to their role in nuclear strategies. Over the last thirty years, these technologies have changed in the direction of greatly increased missile accuracy. Simultaneously, the strategic rationale of these weapons has shifted from that of ultimate retaliatory `counter-city' deterrent (the main perceived role of Polaris) to `counterforce' targeting of opposing silos and command posts (a major role of Trident II). Has technological change been an independent causal factor in this sequence, bringing into being a new strategy, or is technological change the consciously intended product of political will? Part I of this paper presents the historical material as far as the production of Poseidon: Part II will complete the history, and then discuss the various analytical frameworks commonly used to explain such developments.

Nuclear Weapons Testing

NEWS ANALYSIS Michael Heylin , C&EN Washington Ever since the first nuclear test explosion 43 years ago, there have been efforts to ban, or at least constrain, such tests. Such efforts have been spotty and have met with only modest success. For 25 years there have been treaty limits on where tests can be conducted: They must be underground. For 12 years there have been limits on their size: not larger than the equivalent of 150 kilotons of TNT. But these constraints have done nothing to hamper development and deployment of new nuclear weapons systems. There are no treaty limits on the number of tests and they go on unabated. Last year there were 47 worldwide. The long-term average is 42 per year. That first nuclear blast, which brightened the early morning sky near Alamogordo, N.M., on July 16, 1945, has been followed by more than 1750 nuclear explosions conducted by at least six nations. Nuclear ...

Focus on the nuclear infrastructure

Command, communications, intelligence, and testing facilities are a growing concern of citizens and governments who refuse to be a link in the superpowers' nuclear weapons systems.

The Failed Design: Kennedy, de Gaulle, and the Struggle for Europe

The John F. Kennedy administration's pursuit of new frontiers in the emerging nations made its relations with Western Europe all the more important.1 Accordingly, Kennedy and his advisers crafted an elaborate policy, labeled the Grand Design, to shape European development while redressing America's relative decline in power.2 The Kennedy team perceived weakness in the nation's international position. The administration fretted over the persistent balance of payments deficit, the sluggish growth rate, and nuclear strategy.3 Western Europe, with its payments surplus, skyrocketing growth, and nascent nuclear weapons systems, appeared to be the key to resolving these problems. To turn that key, Kennedy officials wielded the Grand Design, an integration of economic, political, and military policies toward Western Europe. The scheme included the Trade Expansion Act (TEA) to reduce tariffs and create an Atlantic-wide free trade area. Its promoters believed that expanded exports were essential to America's global strength. The New Frontiersmen determined to tap Europe's, particularly West Germany's, financial surplus for aid to underdeveloped nations and assistance in maintaining U.S. troops. They wanted to stabilize the Cold War in Europe so they could concentrate on the battle with communism in the Third World. This conflicted with German and French aspirations. Americans tried to blunt those ambitions through British admission to the Common Market. The Kennedy administration also valued European unification as the way to contain West Germany and build a broader market for American products. Consequently, it talked about equal partnership with a united Europe. Yet like its predecessors, this administration had difficulty practicing partnership on other than American terms. In strategic military matters, the Kennedy team was particularly reluctant to share control. Proud of its managerial expertise, the administration wanted to keep Western nuclear forces centralized and in its own hands. This meant blocking independent German nuclear ambitions while trying to stifle those of France and extinguish those of Britain. By January 1963, the Kennedy administration's energetic pursuit of these policies had embittered French President Charles de Gaulle, estranged German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and undercut British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. The French veto of Britain's admission to the Common Market signaled the Grand Design's defeat and the end of America's easy predominance in Western Europe.

Self-Activation of the World Nuclear Weapons System

It is shown that two antagonistic global nuclear weapons systems engaged in the arms race evolve in time in to a single uncontrollable randomly self-activating stockpile. This is due to the essential dynamics of the de velopments in nuclear weapons and is a special feature of the race in this type of weaponry not revealed by traditional mathematical models of the arms race. A mathematical model, which takes into consideration the qualitative changes involved in the race in this type of weapons as well as the inherent random behaviour of complex computer software of Early Warning Systems (EWSs), provides a framework for computing the probability of self-activation of the world nuclear weapons system. Faster delivery to targets of nuclear wea pons through technological development and/or deployment of new nuclear weapons vehicles nearer to tar get can drastically increase this probability. Conditions under which the arms race leads to such self-activa tion with probability 1, are given. The dangers involved by the increased dependence of the nuclear weapons systems on computers, arising from the impossibility to avoid errors in the corresponding software, are discussed in some detail. Assuming certain conditions for reduction in the nuclear arsenals of the two op posing systems considered, an approach to minimizing the probability of self-activation is presented. The paper offers a technical proof that the adage 'we shall have to live with nuclear weapons' is contradic tory. The model used is validated by published information on the random behaviour of a real EWS and the present trends in the development of new nuclear weapon systems, details of which are given in the notes at the end of the paper.

Presidential Directive (P.D.) 59

Nuclear weapons have been available to the United States since 1945, and to the USSR since 1949. Particularly in the years since 1960 the academic and analytical journal literature has contained literally many hundreds of papers dealing with the subjects of nuclear 'deterrence', 'mutual assured destruction', etc. For the most part, these papers have demonstrated a pervasive and thorough ignorance of the actual state of planning regarding the potential use of these weapons. If anything, that segment of the research community most interested in arms control has shown itself to be particularly poorly informed, and most resistant to giving up its misconceptions. These critics sought the maintenance of a fictional status quo. Ironically critics on the 'right' who have consistently sought increased strategic nuclear war-fighting policies have falsely portrayed the official policies in exactly the same way so as to press for changes. The following paper is designed to provide official information regarding US nuclear weapon targeting in the hope of redressing this pervasive misunderstanding. The paper can only deal with the nuclear targeting policy of the United States. The paper is intended to do no more than to provide this information, in the hope of setting the record straight. It demonstrates that at least since 1960, US nuclear weapon targeting has always been primarily counter-military — 'counterforce' — and not directed in the first instance against the cities of the USSR. These military targets have always and primarily been the nuclear weapon systems of the USSR, including hardened missile silos as these were developed by the USSR.

The Western Alliance: Drift or Harmony?

I A number of factors have led, in the past couple of years, to an acute sense of crisis among the members of the Atlantic Alliance and to heightened tensions within it.' Of those, the recent report of the Directors of the American, French, German and British Councils or Institutes of International Relations constitutes an excellent survey.2 Clearly, the three fundamental considerations are: a new awareness of the fact that the world has become a single strategic stage, and that the security of the members of the Alliance can be threatened by events occurring outside its geographic area, especially in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region; the unfavorable evolution of the military balance in Europe, because of the relentless modernization of Soviet conventional forces and of the development of new Soviet middle-range nuclear weapon systems that are both mobile and highly precise; and the collapse of the SovietAmerican detente. In this essay, I will concentrate on what I deem essential: the different reactions to these events within the Alliance, and the causes of these divergences. I will then suggest certain ways to restore harmony.

Curbing International Transfers of Arms and Military Technology

The magnitude of the value and quantity of transfers of arms and military technology, the internationalization and commercialization of armaments industry (through vastly increased direct investments, through co-production, licensing and sub-contracting arrangements), the supply of training and technical services as adjuncts of arms supply, the blurring of the dividing line between military and civilian technology - all have made control measures infinitely more complicated and difficult. What compounds the difficulty is the fact that, since an overwhelmingly preponderant portion of arms transfers is made up of government-to-government transactions, control measures must emanate from supplying and/or receiving governments. But even if by some miracle these measures were forthcoming and proved effective, they will have touched only a small part of the problem of disarmament, because the share of international transfers of arms and military technology amounts to only 5–6% of the total world military expenditure. The other, far larger and more intractable, part relates to the staggering stockpiles of both conventional and nuclear weapon systems, almost wholly concentrated in the hands of the two superpowers. Both transfers and stockpiles of armaments are inextricably enmeshed in the existing international structure, epitomized in a dominance-dependency relationship. The paper examines the measures that the supplier nations and recipient nations can take unilaterally, bilaterally and multilaterally to curb arms transfers, and comes to the conclusion that unilateral initiatives, especially on the part of receiving nations, are more feasible. Not to take such initiatives on the ground that they cannot succeed unless taken in concert is only an excuse for doing nothing.

Changing Fashions in Medical Education

The magnitude of the value and quantity of transfers of arms and military technology, the internationalization and commercialization of armaments industry (through vastly increased direct investments, through co-production, licensing and sub-contracting arrangements), the supply of training and technical services as adjuncts of arms supply, the blurring of the dividing line between military and civilian technology - all have made control measures infinitely more complicated and difficult. What compounds the difficulty is the fact that, since an overwhelmingly preponderant portion of arms transfers is made up of government-to-government transactions, control measures must emanate from supplying and/or receiving governments. But even if by some miracle these measures were forthcoming and proved effective, they will have touched only a small part of the problem of disarmament, because the share of international transfers of arms and military technology amounts to only 5–6% of the total world military expenditure. The other, far larger and more intractable, part relates to the staggering stockpiles of both conventional and nuclear weapon systems, almost wholly concentrated in the hands of the two superpowers. Both transfers and stockpiles of armaments are inextricably enmeshed in the existing international structure, epitomized in a dominance-dependency relationship. The paper examines the measures that the supplier nations and recipient nations can take unilaterally, bilaterally and multilaterally to curb arms transfers, and comes to the conclusion that unilateral initiatives, especially on the part of receiving nations, are more feasible. Not to take such initiatives on the ground that they cannot succeed unless taken in concert is only an excuse for doing nothing.