Abstract
The weapons to be discussed in this chapter differ in several important respects from those of the previous two chapters. First of all, and most obviously, nuclear weapons are far more destructive than small arms or catapults – any comparison with the latter in particular seems ridiculous. Nuclear weapons are by far the most destructive weapons ever devised, so much so that, as we will see, those that possess them have struggled (unsuccessfully in my view) to say what role they are supposed to play in warfare, what advantage they convey on those that have them and what utility they have. In the second place, not only are nuclear weapons hugely destructive, but when delivered in the form of warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), there is no defence against them. The atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 could have been defended against if Japan had any interceptor aircraft left, but they had none, and the US air force was so confident of this that the planes sent to bomb the cities had no escorts. But there is no plausible defence, either in existence nor even really in theory, that can resist a sustained offensive with ICBMs. Nuclear weapons also differ from small arms and catapults in regard to their genesis. The development of nuclear weapons is unique in that it was the first large WR project driven initially entirely by scientists – some of the most eminent scientists of the last century – who were aware of the possible implications of a relatively new kind of science (nuclear physics).
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- 1.
One might conceivably challenge this judgement by pointing to the possibility of highly infectious biological weapons and suggesting that a single one of this category might kill more people than a small nuclear weapon. I’d be happy to stand by the claim about nuclear weapons.
- 2.
Having made such a bold claim, I should qualify it by saying that I am talking about a ‘moderately’ heavy attack by US, Russian, Chinese, etc., strategic systems and not a single first generation North Korean missile. The chances of any missile defence shooting down the latter are not too promising.
- 3.
I suggest that the development of weapons of mass destruction in general, and nuclear weapons in particular, have been the most dramatic changes in weaponry because of their potential to kill a significant proportion of life on Earth quickly and efficiently. But let us note here that the bombs, high explosives, etc., that have been developed for military purposes since gunpowder was invented can be put into a sequence, with nuclear explosive, included. Also, as we saw in Chap. 3, evolutionary theory can accommodate spectacular change via the mechanism of punctuated equilibrium. And finally, as we also saw at the end of Chap. 3, for present purposes a ‘quasi-evolutionary’ account would do, which sees distinct ‘bushes’ of related artefacts. Leo Szilard’s work might then be seen as the beginning of a new, relatively unprecedented evolutionary episode.
- 4.
WR has therefore devised a weapon that can end human civilisation, and much other life on the planet as well. If that is not a signal that something has gone wrong somewhere, I am at a loss to know what else would be.
- 5.
One wonders, however, how seriously the prospects of success were taken by the weapons researchers in question, though they were happy to take the money.
- 6.
There has been a great deal written about the discovery of nuclear weapons – here I relate just a very brief part of this story. For more: Rhodes (1986) is a readable history of the Manhattan Project, and is a mostly non-technical account of the discovery, manufacture and use of the first nuclear weapons. Weart and Szilard (1978) and Grandy (1996) talk about Szilard’s story. Hoddeson et al. (1993) is a detailed though largely non-technical discussion, based on original documents, of period between 1943 and 1945 when the scientists struggle to come up with designs for the bombs, and as such it is a good example of a history of WR. Balash et al. (1980) is of interest because it records testimony of the some of the weapons researchers involved in the Manhattan Project.
- 7.
I have discussed the Joliot episode at length in another context and for a different purpose, see Forge (2008: 72–76). Note that if no fissile substance liberated more than one neutron per fission event, nuclear weapons would not be possible for that reason. If it happened that there was at least one fissile material that liberated more than one neutron per fission, then there could still be other reasons why nuclear weapons were impossible.
- 8.
The letter can be found at http://www.dannen.com/ae-fdr.html
- 9.
The Franck Report is reprinted in Junck (1960) with the passage quoted here on pp. 311–312.
- 10.
Szilard tried on several other occasions to influence the decision as to what to do with the bombs, including writing personal letters to the President, Secretary of State and other influential government officials. The Franck Report, however, did lead to the founding of a journal, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, whose brief reads: “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was established in 1945 by scientists, engineers, and other experts who had created the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. They knew about the horrible effects of these new weapons and devoted themselves to warning the public about the consequences of using them. Those early scientists also worried about military secrecy, fearing that leaders might draw their countries into increasingly dangerous nuclear confrontations without the full consent of their citizens.” A bit late, perhaps.
- 11.
Grandy sums this move up by saying that it was the way science had become politicised, not that it had become so, that disenchanted him (Grandy 1996: 101). Szilard had always been keen to interest the authorities in what science could do, but he learnt to his cost that scientists in fact have little influence over what is done with their creations.
- 12.
Hans Bethe’s attitude was typical “After the fall of France I was desperate to do something – to make some contribution to the war effort” (Berstein 1980: 61).
- 13.
But the attitude of the physicists who were on the mission reflected that of Szilard and others, and is expressed in the opening chapter of the Alsos chief, Samuel Goudsmit, in his book on the subject “Looking back to the end of 1942 and the early months of 1943, from the vantage point of the information we have today, one must admit that there was an element of high comedy in the state of mind that prevailed at that time among American scientists about German science. The Americans, having succeeded in producing the first chain reaction in a uranium pile, and seeing the atom bomb as a definite possibility, were certain that the Germans must know as much and more…And especially and above all, everyone knew that German science was superior to ours” (Goudsmit 1947: 3).
- 14.
For instance, in an influential study, Enthoven and Smith calculated that 400 one megatonne warheads would be enough to kill 39% of the Soviet population, 96 million people immediately, and destroy 77% of Soviet industry – many more people would die later owing to radiation, injuries, lack of food and the other necessities of life. Doubling the number of warheads would result in only a marginal increase in people killed and no increment in industry destroyed. Evidently, 400 is enough. Comparable figures apply in the case of a Russian attack on the US (Enthoven and Smith 1971: 207).
- 15.
If the binding energy was always proportional to atomic weight, then there would be no excess when fission occurred and hence there would be no atomic bombs – and there would actually be no fission for there would be no reason for a heavy atom to fission. Moreover, since fission reactions are needed to initiate thermonuclear explosions, on Earth at any rate, then there would also be no thermonuclear weapons.
- 16.
The latest generation of medium yield nuclear devices are known as fission-fusion-fission weapons. The fission step ignites the fusion reaction, which requires energy densities corresponding to a temperature of several million degrees. The fusion process generates vast numbers of fast neutrons, in addition to the liberation energy. The fast neutron flux finally causes additional fission in a surrounding blanket of uranium. This blanket also has the added merit of holding the device together, due to its high inertial mass, thus allowing more efficient burn-up of the fuel.
- 17.
Rockets were used as tactical military weapons in India, which inspired William Congreve to design the famous British rocket named after him, by the Red Army who used the famous ‘Stalin’s Organ’ system, and by others. The German V1, effectively a cruise missile, was the first strategic missile.
- 18.
There was a proposal to include some terminal guidance to warheads, so called MARVing (manouverable re-entry vehicle) which would have meant that the warheads would have been powered after their initial rocket boost, but that innovation was not introduced.
- 19.
The information is this paragraph is taken from Petersen’s recent book Missiles for the Fatherland (Petersen 2009).
- 20.
Some systems did not come online until after the end of the Cold War, for instance the MX and the final deployment of the Trident submarine fleet. There is recent date information about these matters in Amy Woolf’s Congressional Research Service report on US nuclear forces (Woolf 2009).
- 21.
Further sub-categories could be distinguished: for instance here I am conflating medium range and intermediate range missiles.
- 22.
It is, for example, about 9,000 km from the US missile silos in Kansas and Wyoming to Moscow. The early mainstay of the US strategic forces, the Minuteman, has a range of 13,000 km. It is approximately the same distance between the Soviet missiles silos in Kazakhstan and New York. The most formidable ICBM of the Soviet arsenal, the SS-18, has a range of 11,000 km, though on a variant carrying a huge 20 mt warhead had (it is out of service) a range of 16,000 km.
- 23.
However the ‘bus’, the payload that carries the warheads and terminal targeting systems and the warheads themselves have been placed in storage for possible future use, and the silos have been retained, see Woolf (2009: 8). The information as to how to make the bus, etc., and what to do with it will presumably never be lost.
- 24.
My own view is that it is enough for a potential aggressor to believe that one has at least one deliverable weapons for him to be deterred. Finite deterrence was discussed in 1959, as an alternative to massive retaliation, see for instance Backus (1959).
- 25.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science report on R&D for the 2009 financial year presents a graph for US defence spending from 1976 to 2008. This shows maxima at 2007 and 2009 in constant (2008) dollar terms – see AAAS (2009), Chapter 5. One might suppose that this increased funding is directed towards conventional weapons, for instance in relation to the fight against terrorism, perhaps even with reductions in nuclear weapons research. But while this is true in relation to weapons acquisition programmes, it does not appear to be true that there is any reduction in nuclear weapons research. The same report show that the Department of Energy’s defense R&D budget has remained approximately constant for the last 20 years and the Department of Energy is in control of nuclear weapons research.
- 26.
I will discuss some of the attempts to control the spread of nuclear weapons directly after the end of the war in Chap. 12.
- 27.
Lawrence Freedman’s book The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy gives a good account of the twists and turns of Cold War nuclear doctrine.
- 28.
The Soviet Union had smaller nuclear forces than the US until the decade of 1970; it did its best to build up its nuclear forces quickly but the US was building again. When I say that the Soviet Union had the ability to massively retaliate by, say, 1957, I mean that it had a good chance of succeeding in dropping some nuclear weapons on the US homeland, but it could certainly attack US forces and US allies in Europe by that time. Whether this really counts as ‘massive’ depends on one’s frame of reference.
- 29.
As the names imply, counterforce is a strategy that targets one’s enemy’s nuclear forces, for instance, missile silos, airfields and, if possible, submarines. Countervalue is a euphemism for targeting cities.
- 30.
There is no contradiction here. MIRVed missiles are offensive weapons in the sense that what they physically do is fly many thousands of kilometers and explode with huge force. In the same sense, an ABM system has a defensive mission. However, at the ‘higher’ level of strategy, or grand strategy, such offensive forces may be intended to have a defensive role in the sense of deterring attack. More will be said about these distinctions in Chap. 8.
- 31.
See for instance Lebow and Stein (1994: 349–350). One can think of these as defining classes with various subdivisions rather than single kinds, but we need not be concerned with any such nuances here. I agree with their basic view as to how to classify the various positions, pace my comments on MAD.
- 32.
Gray and Payne wrote a paper in 1980 with the title “Victory is Possible” with reference to nuclear war.
- 33.
This judgement is confirmed by the terrible anguish felt by the attack on the World Trade Towers, which would have been a miniscule incident compared with a nuclear attack on New York City.
- 34.
In a careful study, written just after the end of the Cold War, Michael MccGwire concluded that Russia had never been inherently expansionist and neither was the Soviet Union. He posed a series of questions about Soviet strategic moves, none of which could be interpreted as anything other than defensive. See MccGwire (1991): 398–403.
- 35.
Both sides in the Cold War routinely played war games, to simulate and practice for nuclear attack. A command and control exercise is one in which plans are made and orders are sent from central command centres to local systems controls, but none of the hardware is engaged: in other words, the orders to fire missiles, etc., are ignored. Furthermore, during Able Archer, the words “exercise, exercise, exercise” were attached to every command. All the radio signals were picked up by Soviet intelligence, as NATO was well aware. Given that all such signals can be overheard, what better time to plan a real attack than under cover of an exercise? Rhodes gives an account of this episode in Rhodes (2007, Chapter 9).
- 36.
Both sides were, of course, worried about the other’s intentions and were constantly monitoring the other’s troop movements, forces, etc. However, Project Ryan was the outcome of an unusually high level of concern by Andropov, given the bellicose stance of the Reagan Administration over the previous 3 years.
- 37.
The speech is well-known, widely available and can be easily accessed on the web, and I will not reproduce it here. It can be found, for instance, on the federation of American scientists site, www.fas.org. It is worth noting that it was in the week before this announcement that the president referred to the Soviet Union as an evil empire.
- 38.
I will have more to say about this confusion in Chap. 8.
- 39.
Hafner’s paper is a balanced account of the three panels that were set up in the months after the speech. There was a technical committee under Ed Fletcher to look at the feasibility of the technologies needed, the second under Franklin Miller was to look at the strategic implications and the third under Fred Hoffman to assess the effects on allies and on the Soviets, see Hafner (1985).
- 40.
But the Soviets also cast doubt on the feasibility of SDI in general and of space-based weapons in particular, and stressed the relative ease and cheapness of counter measures. For instance, designing ICBMs with special protective coatings and having them rotate in the boost phase would nullify the effect of any chemical laser attack. There is a question, then, of the overall consistency of the Soviet response to SDI. On the other hand, the Soviets had great respect for US R&D, which had almost all had the advantage in technical breakthroughs. See Westwick (2008) for further discussion.
- 41.
- 42.
In fact the Soviet response is precisely what would have been predicted by certain (but not all) members of the realist school of International Relations, who we will encounter again in Chap. 11. They stress that what counts with respect to armaments procurements are capabilities and not intentions, that is, what the arms are capable of doing, for instance in a worst case scenario, rather than what those who obtain them (say that they) intend. One should then act and plan accordingly. One advantage of this approach is that it is easier to assess capabilities than intentions, though it does not follow that one will be better off by adopting this viewpoint.
- 43.
In Prague in 2009 President Obama promised to “To put an end to Cold War thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy….”
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Forge, J. (2013). The Development of Nuclear Weapons. In: Designed to Kill: The Case Against Weapons Research. Research Ethics Forum, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5736-3_5
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