The United States ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language was the first country in the world to develop nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter; a modern thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than a thousand kilograms can produce an explosion, and is the only country to have used them in warfare, with the two bombings During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against Japan in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki of Hiroshima Hiroshima ( listen (help·info)) is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshū, the largest island of Japan. It became the first city in history destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15am on August 6, 1945, near the end of World War and Nagasaki Nagasaki ( listen (help·info)) is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū in Japan. Nagasaki was founded by the Portuguese in the 16th century. It was formerly part of Nishisonogi District. It was a center of Portuguese and European influence in the 16th through 19th centuries. Nagasaki was home to a in World War II Albania · Australia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Belgium · Brazil · Bulgaria · Burma · Cambodia · Canada · Ceylon (Sri Lanka) · Channel Islands · China · Czechoslovakia · Denmark · Dutch East Indies · Egypt · Estonia · Finland · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Greenland · Hong Kong · Hungary · Iceland ·. Before and during the Cold War The Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945), primarily between the Soviet Union and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, particularly the United States. Although the primary participants' military forces never it conducted over a thousand nuclear tests Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout the twentieth century, most nations that have developed nuclear weapons have tested them. Testing nuclear weapons can yield information about how the weapons work, as well as how the weapons behave under and developed many long-range weapon delivery systems.[3] It maintains an arsenal of 5,113 warheads[1][2] and facilities for their construction and design Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package of a nuclear weapon to detonate. There are three basic design types. In all three, the explosive energy of deployed devices has been derived primarily from nuclear fission, not fusion, though many of the Cold War facilities have since been deactivated and are sites for environmental remediation Generally, remediation means providing a remedy, so environmental remediation deals with the removal of pollution or contaminants from environmental media such as soil, groundwater, sediment, or surface water for the general protection of human health and the environment or from a brownfield site intended for redevelopment. Remediation is.

Contents

Development history

Manhattan Project

Main article: Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was the codename for a project conducted during World War II to develop the first atomic bombs. The project was led by the United States, and included participation from the United Kingdom and Canada. Formally designated as the Manhattan Engineering District , it refers specifically to the period of the project from 1942–194 The "Trinity Trinity was the first test of technology for an atomic weapon. It was conducted by the United States on July 16, 1945, at a location 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico on the White Sands Proving Ground, headquartered near Alamogordo. Trinity was a test of an implosion-design plutonium device. Using the same conceptual design, the Fat Man" explosion was the first nuclear weapon ever tested.

The United States of America first began developing nuclear weapons during World War II Albania · Australia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Belgium · Brazil · Bulgaria · Burma · Cambodia · Canada · Ceylon (Sri Lanka) · Channel Islands · China · Czechoslovakia · Denmark · Dutch East Indies · Egypt · Estonia · Finland · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Greenland · Hong Kong · Hungary · Iceland · under the order of President The President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is one of only two nationally elected federal officers, the other being the Vice President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war. The only American president elected to more than two terms, he was often referred to by his initials, FDR. Roosevelt won his in 1939, motivated by a fear that they were engaged in a race with Nazi Germany Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany under the government of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party , from 1933 to 1945. Third Reich (German: Drittes Reich) denotes the Nazi state as the historical successor to the mediæval Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) and to the modern German Empire (1 to develop such a weapon. After a slow start under the direction of the National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology , known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), is a measurement standards laboratory which is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. The institute's official mission is:, at the urging of British The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[note 7] is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land scientists and American administrators the program was put under the Office of Scientific Research and Development, where in 1942 it was officially transferred under the auspices of the U.S. Army The United States Army is the branch of the United States armed forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven uniformed services. The modern Army has its roots in the Continental Army which was formed on 14 June 1775, before the establishment of the and became known as the Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was the codename for a project conducted during World War II to develop the first atomic bombs. The project was led by the United States, and included participation from the United Kingdom and Canada. Formally designated as the Manhattan Engineering District , it refers specifically to the period of the project from 1942–194. Under the direction of General In the United States Army, United States Air Force, and United States Marine Corps, general is a four-star general officer rank, with the pay grade of O-10. General ranks above lieutenant general and below General of the Army or General of the Air Force; the Marine Corps does not have an established grade above general. General is equivalent to Leslie Groves, over thirty different sites were constructed for the research, production, and testing of components related to bomb making. These included the scientific laboratory, Los Alamos Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), located in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The laboratory is one of the largest science and technology institutions in the world that conducts multidisciplinary research for fields such as (in New Mexico The state's total area is 121,412 square miles . The eastern border of New Mexico lies along 103° W longitude with the state of Oklahoma, and three miles (5 km) west of 103.5° W longitude with Texas. On the southern border, Texas makes up the eastern two-thirds, while the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora make up the western third, with), under the direction of physicist Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for his role as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort to develop the first nuclear weapons at the secret Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. For this reason, a plutonium Plutonium is a synthetic transuranic radioactive chemical element with the chemical symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-white appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, forming a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation states. It reacts with carbon, halogens, production facility, Hanford The Hanford Site is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, operated by the United States federal government. The site has been known by many names, including Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works, Hanford Nuclear Reservation or HNR, and the Hanford Project. Established in 1943 as (in Washington Washington (pronounced /ˈwɒʃɪŋtən/ ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Washington was carved out of the western part of Washington Territory which had been ceded by Britain in 1846 by the Oregon Treaty as settlement of the Oregon Boundary Dispute. It was admitted to the Union as the forty-second state in 1889), and a uranium enrichment Enriched uranium is a kind of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Natural uranium is 99.284% 238U isotope, with 235U only constituting about 0.711% of its weight. 235U is the only isotope existing in nature that is fissile with thermal neutrons facility, Oak Ridge Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram science and technology national laboratory managed for the United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle. ORNL is the DOE's largest science and energy laboratory. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Knoxville. Scientists and engineers at ORNL conduct basic and applied research and (in Tennessee The State of Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact generally regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians. What is now Tennessee was initially part of North Carolina, and later part of the Southwest Territory. Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state on June 1, 1796. In the).

By investing heavily both in breeding plutonium in early nuclear reactors A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate, control, and sustain a nuclear chain reaction. The most common use of nuclear reactors is for the generation of electrical power and for the power in some ships (see Nuclear marine propulsion). This is usually accomplished by methods that involve using heat from the nuclear reaction to power steam, and in both the electromagnetic and gaseous diffusion enrichment processes for the production of uranium-235 Uranium-235 is an isotope of uranium making up about 0.72% of natural uranium. Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238 it is fissile, i.e. it can sustain fission chain reaction. It is the only fissile isotope that is a primordial nuclide or found in significant quantity in nature, the United States was able by mid-1945 to develop three usable weapons. A plutonium-implosion design Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package of a nuclear weapon to detonate. There are three basic design types. In all three, the explosive energy of deployed devices has been derived primarily from nuclear fission, not fusion weapon was tested on 16 July 1945 ("Trinity Trinity was the first test of technology for an atomic weapon. It was conducted by the United States on July 16, 1945, at a location 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico on the White Sands Proving Ground, headquartered near Alamogordo. Trinity was a test of an implosion-design plutonium device. Using the same conceptual design, the Fat Man"), with around a 20 kiloton TNT equivalent is a method of quantifying the energy released in explosions. The ton of TNT is a unit of energy equal to 4.184 giga yield. On the orders of President Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953). As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice-president and the 34th Vice President of the United States, he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his historic fourth term, on 6 August of the same year a uranium-gun design bomb ("Little Boy "Little Boy" was the codename of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets of the 393d Bombardment Squadron, Heavy, of the United States Army Air Forces. It was the first atomic bomb to be used as a weapon. The second, the "Fat Man", was") was used against During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against Japan in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and on 9 August a plutonium-implosion design bomb ("Fat Man "Fat Man" is the codename for the atomic bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, by the United States on August 9, 1945, at 10:47 PM . It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons to be used in warfare to date, and its detonation caused the third man-made nuclear explosion. The name also refers more generically to the early") was used against the city of Nagasaki Nagasaki ( listen (help·info)) is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū in Japan. Nagasaki was founded by the Portuguese in the 16th century. It was formerly part of Nishisonogi District. It was a center of Portuguese and European influence in the 16th through 19th centuries. Nagasaki was home to a, Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is. The two weapons killed approximately 250,000 Japanese civilians outright, and thousands more have died over the years from radiation sickness Radiation poisoning, also called radiation sickness or a creeping dose, is a form of damage to organ tissue caused by excessive exposure to ionizing radiation. The term is generally used to refer to acute problems caused by a large dosage of radiation in a short period, though this also has occurred with long term exposure. The clinical name for and related cancers Cancer /ˈkænsər/ (medical term: malignant neoplasm) is a class of diseases in which a group of cells display uncontrolled growth (division beyond the normal limits), invasion (intrusion on and destruction of adjacent tissues), and sometimes metastasis (spread to other locations in the body via lymph or blood). These three malignant properties.

During the Cold War

Between 1945 and 1990, more than 70,000 total warheads were developed, in over 65 different varieties, ranging in yield from around .01 kilotons (such as the man-portable Davy Crockett shell) to the 25 megaton B41 bomb.[4]

Between 1940 and 1996, the U.S. spent at least $5.8 trillion (in 1996 dollars) on nuclear weapons development.[5] Over half of this was spent on building delivery mechanisms for the weapon. $365 billion was spent on nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a waste product containing radioactive material. It is usually the product of a nuclear process such as nuclear fission, though industries not directly connected to the nuclear power industry may also produce radioactive waste management and environmental remediation.

Post-Cold War

After the end of the Cold War The Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945), primarily between the Soviet Union and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, particularly the United States. Although the primary participants' military forces never following the dissolution of the Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик (help·info), tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, IPA [sɐˈjʊs sɐˈvʲeʦkʲɪx səʦɪ in 1991, the U.S. nuclear program was heavily curtailed, halting its program of nuclear testing, ceasing in the production of new nuclear weapons, and reducing its stockpile by half by the mid-1990s under President Bill Clinton William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. At 46 he was the third-youngest president. He became president at the end of the Cold War, and was the first baby boomer president. His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is currently the United States Secretary of State. Each received a Juris. Many of its former nuclear facilities were shut down, and their sites became targets of extensive environmental remediation. Much of the former efforts towards the production of weapons became involved in the program of stockpile stewardship, attempting to predict the behavior of aging weapons without using full-scale nuclear testing. Increased funding also was put into anti-nuclear proliferation Nuclear proliferation is a term now used to describe the spread of nuclear weapons, fissile material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information, to nations which are not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or NPT programs, such as helping the states of the former Soviet Union eliminate their former nuclear sites, and assist Russia Russia (pronounced /ˈrʌʃə/ ; Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya, pronounced [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya, pronounced [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈraʦəjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal in their efforts to inventory and secure their inherited nuclear stockpile. As of February 2006, over $ The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. The U.S. dollar is normally abbreviated as the dollar sign, $, or as USD or US$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies and from others that use the $ symbol. It is divided into 100 cents1.2 billion were paid under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 to U.S. citizens exposed to nuclear hazards as a result of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, and by 1998 at least $759 million was paid to the Marshallese Islanders in compensation for their exposure to U.S. nuclear testing, and over $15 million was paid to the Japanese government following the exposure of its citizens and food supply to nuclear fallout from the 1954 "Bravo" test.[4][6]

In 1998, the country spent an estimated total of $35,100,000,000 on its nuclear weapons and weapons -related programs.[7]

During the presidency of George W. Bush, and especially after the 11 September terrorist attacks of 2001, rumors have circulated in major news sources that the U.S. has been considering design of new nuclear weapons ("bunker-busting nukes"), and potentially the resumption of nuclear testing for reasons of stockpile stewardship, and non-nuclear missile defense has received additional funding as well. Statements by the U.S. government in 2004, however, imply that by 2012 the arsenal will drop to around 5,500 total warheads.[8] According to recent reports, much of that reduction was already accomplished by January 2008.[9]

Nuclear testing

Main article: Nuclear testing The U.S. conducted hundreds of nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site.

Between 16 July 1945 and 23 September 1992, the United States maintained a program of vigorous nuclear testing, with the exception of a moratorium between November 1958 and September 1961. A total of (by official count) 1,054 nuclear tests and two nuclear attacks were conducted, with over 100 of them taking place at sites in the Pacific Ocean, over 900 of them at the Nevada Test Site, and ten on miscellaneous sites in the United States (Alaska, Colorado, Mississippi, and New Mexico).[10] Until November 1962, the vast majority of the U.S. tests were atmospheric (that is, above-ground); after the acceptance of the Partial Test Ban Treaty all testing was regulated underground, in order to prevent the dispersion of nuclear fallout.

The U.S. program of atmospheric nuclear testing exposed a number of the population to the hazards of fallout. Estimating exact numbers, and the exact consequences, of people exposed has been medically very difficult, with the exception of the high exposures of Marshallese Islanders and Japanese fisherman in the case of the "Castle Bravo" incident in 1954. A number of groups of U.S. citizens — especially farmers and inhabitants of cities downwind of the Nevada Test Site and U.S. military workers at various tests — have sued for compensation and recognition of their exposure, many successfully. The passing of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 allowed for a systematic filing of compensation claims in relation to testing as well as those employed at nuclear weapons facilities. As of June 2009 over $1.4 billion dollars total has been given in compensation, with over $660 million going to "downwinders".[11]

A few notable U.S. nuclear tests include:

Shot "Baker" of Operation Crossroads (1946) was the first underwater nuclear explosion.

Delivery systems

Main article: Nuclear weapons delivery Early weapons models, such as the "Fat Man" bomb, were extremely large and difficult to use.

The original weapons ("Little Boy" and "Fat Man") developed by the United States during the Manhattan Project were relatively large (the latter had a diameter of 5 feet) and heavy (around 5 tons each) weapons which required specially modified bomber planes to be adapted for their bombing missions against Japan, each of which could only carry one such weapon and only within a limited range. After these initial weapons, a considerable amount of money and research was conducted towards the goal of standardizing ("G.I. proofing") nuclear warheads (so that they did not require highly specialized experts to assemble them before use, as in the case with the idiosyncratic wartime devices) and miniaturization of the warheads for use in more variable delivery systems.

Through the aid of brainpower acquired through Operation Paperclip at the tail end of the European branch of World War II, the United States was able to embark on an ambitious program in rocketry. One of the first products of this was the development of rockets capable of holding nuclear warheads. The MGR-1 Honest John was the first of such weapons, developed in 1953 as a surface-to-surface missile with a 15 mile/25 kilometer maximum range. Because of their limited range, their potential use was heavily constrained (they could not, for example, threaten Moscow with an immediate strike).

The MGR-1 Honest John was the first nuclear-tipped rocket developed by the U.S. in 1953.

Development of long-range bombers, such as the B-29 Superfortress, during World War II was continued during the Cold War period. The development of the B-52 Stratofortress in particular was able by the mid-1950s to carry a wide arsenal of nuclear bombs, each with different capabilities and potential use situations. Starting in 1946, the U.S. based its initial deterrence force on the Strategic Air Command, which, by the late 1950s maintained a number of nuclear-armed bombers in the sky at all times, prepared to receive orders to attack the USSR whenever needed. This system was, however, tremendously expensive, both in terms of natural and human resources, and raised the possibility of an accidental nuclear war.

During the 1950s and 1960s, elaborate computerized early warning systems such as Defense Support Program were developed to detect incoming Soviet attacks and to coordinate response strategies. During this same period, intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) systems were developed which could deliver a nuclear payload across vast distances, allowing the U.S. to house nuclear forces capable of hitting the Soviet Union in the American Midwest. Shorter-range weapons, including small "tactical" weapons, were fielded in Europe as well, including nuclear artillery and man-portable Special Atomic Demolition Munition. The development of submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) systems allowed for hidden nuclear submarines to covertly launch missiles at distant targets as well, making it virtually impossible for the Soviet Union to successfully launch a first strike attack against the United States which would not guarantee a deadly response.

Improvements in warhead miniaturization in the 1970s and 1980s allowed for the development of MIRVs — missiles which could carry multiple warheads, each of which could be separately targetable. The question of whether these missiles should be based on constantly rotating train tracks (so as to avoid being easily targeted by opposing Soviet missiles) or based in heavily fortified silos (to possibly withstand a Soviet attack) was a major political controversy in the 1980s (eventually the silos won out). MIRVed systems allowed the U.S. to make the Soviet missile defense economically unfeasible, as each offensive missile would require between three and ten defensive missiles to counter.

Additional developments in weapons delivery included cruise missile systems, which allowed a plane to fire a long-distance, low-flying nuclear-tipped missile towards a target from a relatively comfortable distance. This innovation would make missile defense additionally difficult, if not impossible.

The current delivery systems of the U.S. makes virtually any part of the Earth's surface within the reach of its nuclear arsenal. Though its land-based missile systems have a maximum range of 10,000 kilometers (less than worldwide), its submarine-based forces extend its reach from a coastline 12,000 kilometers inland. Additionally, in-flight refueling of long-range bombers and the use of aircraft carriers extends the possible range virtually indefinitely.

Public reactions

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be and removed. (January 2010)
Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have remained highly controversial and contentious objects in the forum of public debate.

From the public debut of nuclear weapons during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were a highly controversial technology among the citizens of the United States. While it appears that most Americans in the postwar period believed that they had, as claimed by the government, hastened the end of the war with Japan, even at that early period there were questions about the ethics of their use. In the immediate postwar period, much of the public debate was on the question of whether or not the U.S. should attempt to have a monopoly on the weapons — potentially encouraging a nuclear arms race — or whether or not it should relinquish them to an intergovernmental body (such as the newly created United Nations) or contribute to some other form of international control or information dispersal. According to the historian of science Spencer Weart, it was not until the development of multi-megaton hydrogen bombs in the 1950s that a belief that nuclear weapons could potentially end all life on the planet (especially through means of nuclear fallout, highlighted by the "Castle Bravo" accident) became common in American thought or cultural expression. For the most part, however, the vast majority of American citizens believed during this time that nuclear weapons were necessary in order to ward off the threat from the Soviet Union.

The now-familiar peace symbol was developed (in the United Kingdom) as the logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and was taken up enthusiastically by anti-nuclear protesters in the U.S. during the 1960s.

During the 1960s, following the rise of political activism in the civil rights movement, the controversy over the Vietnam War, and the beginnings of the environmentalism movement, public anxiety related to nuclear weapons began to rise to the point of direct protest. While there is little evidence that these sentiments were felt or expressed by any more than a minority of the U.S. population, their expression became increasingly amplified, especially in relation to the health hazards of nuclear testing. After the cessation of American atmospheric nuclear testing, however, the sentiment against nuclear weapons in general lost much of its momentum. During the period of détente in the 1970s, marked by weapons reduction and restriction treaties between the U.S. and the USSR, much of the anxiety over nuclear weapons in the populace and activists was transferred towards protesting civilian nuclear power plants, according to Spencer Weart's analysis.

During the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, public anti-nuclear weapons sentiment reached its highest point, spurred by the administration's strong anti-Soviet rhetoric, Strategic Defense Initiative, and apparent reinvigoration of the arms race. Again, however, the majority of the American populace generally felt the weapons were required for U.S. national security, even though they increasingly became the flashpoints of political controversies and concern. Anti-nuclear activists shifted to a strategy of describing in detail the results of a potential nuclear attack on the United States, and a number of prominent anti-nuclear films were developed during this period, typified by the controversial The Day After in 1983.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the cessation of the arms race, U.S. public attitudes towards nuclear weapons became less polarized on the whole. Following the 9/11 attacks of 2001, however, concerns over whether the U.S. should develop new weapons have reinvigorated some of the older debates over their practicality, morality, and danger. The debate over the ethical implications of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, begun in private amongst scientists and statesmen during the war, has continued to this day, in the general public as well as amongst historians, military experts, and other scholars.

Accidents

Main article: Nuclear and radiation accidents The Castle Bravo fallout plume spread dangerous levels of radioactive material over an area over 100 miles (160 km) long, including inhabited islands, in the largest single U.S. nuclear accident.

The United States nuclear program has, since its inception, suffered from a number of accidents of varying forms, ranging from single-casualty research experiments (such as that of Louis Slotin during the Manhattan Project), to the nuclear fallout dispersion of the "Castle Bravo" shot in 1954, to the accidental dropping of nuclear weapons from aircraft ("broken arrows"). How close any of these accidents came to being "major" nuclear disasters is a matter of technical and scholarly debate and interpretation.

Weapons accidentally dropped by the United States include incidents near Atlantic City, New Jersey (1957), Savannah, Georgia (1958) (see Tybee Bomb), Goldsboro, North Carolina (1961), off the coast of Okinawa (1965), in the sea near Palomares, Spain (1966, see 1966 Palomares B-52 crash), and near Thule Air Base, Greenland (1968) (see 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash). In some of these cases (such as Palomares), the explosive system of the fission weapon discharged, but did not trigger a nuclear chain reaction (safety features prevent this from easily happening), but did disperse hazardous nuclear materials across wide areas, necessitating expensive cleanup endeavors. Eleven American nuclear warheads are thought to be lost and unrecovered, primarily in submarine accidents.

The nuclear testing program resulted in a number of cases of fallout dispersion onto populated areas. The most significant of these was the Castle Bravo test, which spread radioactive ash over an area of over one hundred square miles, including a number of populated islands. The populations of the islands were evacuated but not before suffering radiation burns. They would later suffer long-term effects, such as birth defects and increased cancer risk. There were also instances during the nuclear testing program in which soldiers were exposed to overly high levels of radiation, which grew into a major scandal in the 1970s and 1980s, as many soldiers later suffered from what were claimed to be diseases caused by their exposures.

Many of the former nuclear facilities (see next section) produced significant environmental damages during their years of activity, and since the 1990s have been Superfund sites of cleanup and environmental remediation. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 allows for U.S. citizens exposed to radiation or other health risks through the U.S. nuclear program to file for compensation and damages.

Development agencies

The United States Atomic Energy Commission (1946-1974) managed the U.S. nuclear program after the Manhattan Project.

The initial U.S. nuclear program was run by the National Bureau of Standards starting in 1939 under the edict of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Its primary purpose was to delegate research and dispense of funds. In 1940 the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was established, coordinating work under the Committee on Uranium among its other wartime efforts. In June 1941, the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was established, with the NDRC as one of its subordinate agencies, which enlarged and renamed the Uranium Committee as the Section on Uranium. In 1941, NDRC research was placed under direct control of Vannevar Bush as the OSRD S-1 Section, which attempted to increase the pace of weapons research. In June 1942, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took over the project to develop atomic weapons, while the OSRD retained responsibility for scientific research.[13]

This was the beginning of the Manhattan Project, run as the Manhattan Engineering District (MED), an agency under military control which was in charge of developing the first atomic weapons. After World War II, the MED maintained control over the U.S. arsenal and production facilities and coordinated the Operation Crossroads tests. In 1946 after a long and protracted debate, the Atomic Energy Act was passed, creating the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) as a civilian agency which would be in charge of the production of nuclear weapons and research facilities, funded through Congress, with oversight provided by the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. The AEC was given vast powers of control over secrecy, research, and money, and could seize lands with suspected uranium deposits. Along with its duties towards the production and regulation of nuclear weapons, it additionally was in charge of stimulating development in civilian nuclear power while also regulating its safety uses. The full transference of activities was finalized in January 1947.[14]

In 1975, following the "energy crisis" of the early 1970s and public and congressional discontent with the AEC (in part because of the impossibility to be both a producer and a regulator), it was disassembled into component parts as the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), which assumed most of the AEC's former production, coordination, and research roles, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which assumed its civilian regulation activities.[15]

ERDA was short-lived, however, and in 1977 the U.S. nuclear weapons activities were reorganized under the Department of Energy,[16] which currently maintains such responsibilities through the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration today. Some functions have also been taken over or shared by the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. The already-built weapons themselves are in the control of the Strategic Command, which is part of the Department of Defense.

In general, these agencies served to coordinate research and build sites. They generally operated their sites through contractors, however, both private and public (for example, Union Carbide, a private company, ran Oak Ridge National Laboratory for many decades; the University of California, a public educational institution, has run the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore laboratories since their inception, and will joint-manage Los Alamos with the private company Bechtel as of its next contract). Funding was received both through these agencies directly, but also from additional outside agencies, such as the Department of Defense. Each branch of the military also maintained its own nuclear-related research agencies (generally related to delivery systems).

Weapons production complex

This table is not comprehensive, as numerous facilities throughout the United States have contributed to its nuclear weapons program. It includes the major sites related primarily to the U.S. weapons program (past and present), their basic site functions, and their current status of activity. Not listed are the many bases and facilities at which nuclear weapons have been deployed. In addition to deploying weapons on its own soil, during the Cold War the United States also stationed nuclear weapons in 27 foreign countries and territories, including Okinawa, Japan (during the occupation immediately following WWII)), Greenland, Germany, Taiwan, and Morocco.[17]

Site name Location Function Status
Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos, New Mexico Research, Design, Pit Production Active
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livermore, California Research and design Active
Sandia National Laboratories Livermore, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico Research and design Active
Hanford Site Richland, Washington Material production (Plutonium) Not active, remediation
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge, Tennessee Material production (Uranium-235, fusion fuel), research Active to some extent
Y-12 National Security Complex Oak Ridge, Tennessee Component fabrication, stockpile stewardship, uranium storage Active
Nevada Test Site Near Las Vegas, Nevada Nuclear testing and nuclear waste disposal No nuclear tests since 1992, engaged in waste disposal
Yucca Mountain Nevada Test Site Waste disposal (primarily power reactor) Pending
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant East of Carlsbad, New Mexico Radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production Active
Pacific Proving Grounds Marshall Islands Nuclear testing Not active, last test in 1962
Rocky Flats Plant Near Denver, Colorado Components fabrication Not active, remediation
Pantex Amarillo, Texas Weapons assembly, disassembly, pit storage Active, esp. disassembly
Fernald Site Near Cincinnati, Ohio Material fabrication (Uranium-235) Not active, remediation
Paducah Plant Paducah, Kentucky Material production (Uranium-235) Active (commercial use)
Portsmouth Plant Near Portsmouth, Ohio Material fabrication (Uranium-235) Active, (centrifuge), but not for weapons production
Kansas City Plant Kansas City, Missouri Component production Active
Mound Plant Miamisburg, Ohio Research, component production, Tritium purification Not active, remediation
Pinellas Plant Largo, Florida Manufacture of electrical components Active, but not for weapons production
Savannah River Site Near Aiken, South Carolina Material production (Plutonium, Tritium) Active (limited operation), remediation

Proliferation

Main article: Nuclear proliferation

Early on in the development of its nuclear weapons, the United States relied in part on information-sharing with both the United Kingdom and Canada, as codified in the Quebec Agreement of 1943. These three parties agreed not to share nuclear weapons information with other countries without the consent of the others, an early attempt at nonproliferation. After the development of the first nuclear weapons during World War II, though, there was much debate within the political circles and public sphere of the United States about whether or not the country should attempt to maintain a monopoly on nuclear technology, or whether it should undertake a program of information sharing with other nations (especially its former ally and likely competitor, the Soviet Union), or submit control of its weapons to some sort of international organization (such as the United Nations) who would use them to attempt to maintain world peace. Though fear of a nuclear arms race spurred many politicians and scientists to advocate some degree of international control or sharing of nuclear weapons and information, many politicians and members of the military believed that it was better in the short term to maintain high standards of nuclear secrecy and to forestall a Soviet bomb as long as possible (and they did not believe the USSR would actually submit to international controls in good faith).

The Atoms for Peace program distributed nuclear technology, materials, and know-how to many less technologically advanced countries.

Since this path was chosen, the United States was, in its early days, essentially an advocate for the prevention of nuclear proliferation, though primarily for the reason originally of self-preservation. A few years after the USSR detonated its first weapon in 1949, though, the U.S. under President Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to encourage a program of sharing nuclear information related to civilian nuclear power and nuclear physics in general. The Atoms for Peace program, begun in 1953, was also in part political: the U.S. was better poised to commit various scarce resources, such as enriched uranium, towards this peaceful effort, and to request a similar contribution from the Soviet Union, who had far fewer resources along these lines; thus the program had a strategic justification as well, as was later revealed by internal memos. This overall goal of promoting civilian use of nuclear energy in other countries, while also preventing weapons dissemination, has been labeled by many critics as contradictory and having led to lax standards for a number of decades which allowed a number of other nations, such as India, to profit from dual-use technology (purchased from other nations other than the U.S.).

The United States is one of the five "nuclear weapons states" permitted to maintain a nuclear arsenal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory on 1 July 1968 (ratified 5 March 1970).

The Cooperative Threat Reduction program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was established after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 to aid former Soviet bloc countries in the inventory and destruction of their sites for developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and their methods of delivering them (ICBM silos, long range bombers, etc.). Over $4.4 billion has been spent on this endeavor to prevent purposeful or accidental proliferation of weapons from the former Soviet arsenal.[18]

After India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998, President Bill Clinton imposed economic sanctions on the countries. In 1999, however, the sanctions against India were lifted; those against Pakistan were kept in place as a result of the military government which had taken over. Shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001, President George W. Bush lifted the sanctions against Pakistan as well, in order to get the Pakistani government's help as a conduit for US and NATO forces for operations in Afghanistan.

The U.S. government has officially taken a silent policy towards the nuclear weapons ambitions of the state of Israel, while being exceedingly vocal against proliferation of such weapons in the countries of Iran and North Korea, something which has been called hypocritical by many critics. The same critics point out the fact that it is violating its own non-proliferation treaties in the pursuit of so-called "nuclear bunker busters". The 2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S. was done, in part, on accusations of weapons development, and the Bush administration has said that its policies on proliferation were responsible for the Libyan government's agreement to abandon its nuclear ambitions.[19]

IAEA proposed 2005 a ban on fissile material that would greatly limit the production of weapons of mass destruction. 147 countries voted for this proposal but the United States voted against.[20]

International relations and nuclear weapons

In 1958, the United States Air Force had considered a plan to drop nuclear bombs on China during a confrontation over Taiwan but it was overruled, previously secret documents showed after they were declassified due to the Freedom of Information Act in April 2008. The plan included an initial plan to drop 10-15 kiloton bombs on airfields in Amoy (now called Xiamen) in the event of a Chinese blockade against Taiwan's Offshore Islands.[21]

Current status

U.S. nuclear warhead stockpile, 1945-2002. Under the 2002 Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions ("SORT") treaty, the U.S. will reduce its stockpile to 2,220 operationally deployed warheads by 2012.

The United States is one of the five recognized nuclear powers under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ("NPT"). As of September 2009[update] it possessed 5,113 warheads operationally deployed, in active reserve, or held in inactive storage. This figure compare to a peak of 31,225 total warheads in 1967 and 22,217 in 1989, and does not include "several thousand" warheads that have been retired and scheduled for dismantlement.[1][2]

As of 2006, it was believed to maintain an arsenal of around 9,960 intact warheads, of which 5,735 were considered active or operational, and of these only a certain number were deployed at any given time. These broke down into 5,021 "strategic" warheads, 1,050 of which were deployed on land-based missile systems (all on Minuteman ICBMs), 1,955 on bombers (B-52, B-1B, and B-2), and 2,016 on submarines (Ohio class), according to a 2006 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.[22] Of 500 "tactical" "nonstrategic" weapons, around 100 are Tomahawk cruise missiles and 400 are B61 bombs. A few hundred of the B61 bombs are located at seven bases in six European NATO countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and the United Kingdom), the only such weapons in forward deployment.[23][24] The United States has considered withdrawing these nuclear weapons.[25] According to one source, the quantity of the B61 nuclear bombs is 200 in five of the six countries (excluding the United Kingdom), including 80 bombs deployed at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.[25]

Around 4,225 warheads have been removed from deployment but have remained stockpiled as a "responsible reserve force" on inactive status. Under the May 2002 Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions ("SORT"), the U.S. pledged to reduce its stockpile to 2,200 operationally deployed warheads by 2012, and in June 2004 the Department of Energy announced that "almost half" of these warheads would be retired or dismantled by then.[26]

The future nuclear stockpile under SORT will be based on:

The SORT treaty does not make the U.S. reduce its tactical nuclear arsenal so there will be 500-800 active tactical nuclear weapons. Also the weapons taken from active states do not have to be destroyed so there will be at least 2400 responsive reserve warheads.

A 2001 nuclear posture review published by the Bush administration called for a reduction in the amount of time needed to test a nuclear weapon, and for discussion on possible development in new nuclear weapons of a low-yield, "bunker-busting" design (the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator). Work on such a design had been banned by Congress in 1994, but the banning law was repealed in 2003 at the request of the Department of Defense. The Air Force Research Laboratory researched the concept, but the United States Congress canceled funding for the project in October 2005 at the National Nuclear Security Administration's request. According to Fred T. Jane's Information Group, the program may still continue under a new name.

In 2006, the Bush administration also proposed the Reliable Replacement Warhead program and initiated its design and development. The program, intended to produce a simple, reliable, long-lasting, and low-maintenance future nuclear force for the United States, encountered opposition due to the obligations of the United States under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the United States has signed, ratified, and is bound by, and which obligates the five nuclear weapons states who are bound by it (of which the United States is such a state) to work in good faith towards nuclear disarmament.

The Reliable Replacement Warhead was designed to replace the aging W76 warhead currently in a life-extension program. It was to incorporate a well-tested and verified primary SKUA9 and a new fusion secondary. The device would be built much much more robustly than its predecessors and should require longer periods between service and replacement. It will use insensitive high explosives, which are virtually impossible to detonate without the right mechanism. The new insensitive explosives can hit a concrete wall at Mach 4 and still not detonate. The device would also use a heavy radiation case for reliability. Since this weapon will supposedly never be tested via detonation, as has every weapon presently in the US arsenal, some fear that either the weapon will not be reliable, or will require testing to confirm its reliability, breaking the moratorium that has been observed by the recognized nuclear powers (the recognized nuclear powers include the US, Russia, the UK, the PRC, and France; they do not include the generally-recognized but undeclared Israel, nor the declared but unrecognized India, Pakistan, and North Korea) and was disliked by several elements of the Bush Administration, who believed nuclear tests ought to be conducted routinely; indeed, the Reliable Replacement Warhead was seen as the first step in the implementation of the US nuclear weapons laboratories' plan, called "Complex 2030", to rebuild dismantled nuclear weapons infrastructure so as to ensure that nuclear weapon design continues to be a field of research in the US through the mid-point of the 21st century.

In 2005 the U.S. revised its declared nuclear political strategy, the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, to emphasize the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons preemptively against an adversary possessing weapons of mass destruction or overwhelming conventional forces. Whether the Single Integrated Operational Plan ("SIOP") has been revised accordingly is uncertain, but possible.

However in 2009 and 2010 the administration of Barack Obama declared policies that would invalidate the Bush-era policy for use of nuclear weapons and its motions to develop new ones. First, in a prominent 2009 speech, U.S. president Barack Obama outlined a goal of "a world without nuclear weapons".[27] To that goal, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a new START treaty on April 8, 2010 to reduce the number of active nuclear weapons from 2,200 to 1,550.[28][29] That same week Obama also revised U.S. policy on the use of nuclear weapons in a Nuclear Posture Review required of all presidents, declaring for the first time that the U.S. would not use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear, NPT-compliant states. The policy also renounces development of any new nuclear weapons.[30]

See also

Wikinews has related news: US to reduce nuclear weapons arsenal

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Arshad Mohammed and Phil Stewart (2010-05-03). "U.S. says nuclear arsenal includes 5,113 warheads". Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64251X20100503?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews. Retrieved 2010-05-03.
  2. ^ a b c Anthony Capaccio and Viola Gienger (2010-05-03). "U.S. Discloses Arsenal of 5,113 Nuclear Warheads". Bloomberg. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-03/u-s-discloses-arsenal-of-5-113-nuclear-warheads-update1-.html. Retrieved 2010-05-03.
  3. ^ According to Carey Sublette's Nuclear Weapon Archive, the United States "conducted (by official count) 1054 nuclear tests" between 1945 and 1992.
  4. ^ a b Brookings Institution, "50 Facts About Nuclear Weapons", at http://www.brook.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/50.HTM
  5. ^ Brookings Institution, "Estimated Minimum Incurred Costs of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Programs, 1940-1996", at http://www.brook.edu/fp/projects/nucwcost/figure1.htm
  6. ^ "Radiation Exposure Compensation System Claims to Date Summary of Claims Received", updated regularly at http://www.usdoj.gov/civil/omp/omi/Tre_SysClaimsToDateSum.pdf
  7. ^ http://www.brookings.edu/projects/archive/nucweapons/50.aspx
  8. ^ Norris, Robert S.; Hans M. Kristensen (September/October 2007). "The U.S. stockpile, today and tomorrow". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist 63 (5): 60–63. doi:10.2968/063005013. http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/3605g0m20h18877w/fulltext.pdf. Retrieved 5 May 2009.
  9. ^ Norris, Robert S.; Hans M. Kristensen (March/April 2008). "U.S. nuclear forces, 2008". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 64 (1): 50–53. doi:10.2968/064001012. http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/pr53n270241156n6/fulltext.pdf. Retrieved 5 May 2009.
  10. ^ Carey Sublette, "Gallery of U.S. Nuclear Tests", online at http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/
  11. ^ Radiation Exposure Compensation System: Claims to Date Summary of Claims Received by 06/11/2009
  12. ^ MacKenzie, Donald A. (1993). Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 343–344. ISBN 0262631474.
  13. ^ "Henry DeWolf Smyth Papers, American Philosophical Society". Amphilsoc.org. http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mole/s/smythoverview.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
  14. ^ "DOE Office of Science — Chicago Office". Ch.doe.gov. http://www.ch.doe.gov/html/site_info/atomic_energy.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
  15. ^ "DOE Office of Science — Chicago Office". Ch.doe.gov. http://www.ch.doe.gov/html/site_info/energy_research.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
  16. ^ "DOE Office of Science — Chicago Office". Ch.doe.gov. 2004-04-01. http://www.ch.doe.gov/html/site_info/department_energy.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
  17. ^ "United States Secretly Deployed Nuclear Bombs In 27 Countries and Territories During Cold War". National Security Archive. 1999-10-20. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/19991020/index.html. Retrieved 2006-08-06.
  18. ^ [1]
  19. ^ "President Bush: Libya Pledges to Dismantle WMD Programs". Georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. 2003-12-19. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/12/20031219-9.html. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
  20. ^ [2]
  21. ^ Apr 30, 2008 (2008-04-30). "US Air Force planned nuclear strike on China over Taiwan: report". Afp.google.com. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jujIhYgbkZqmcHmmcXzVQiivkwVA. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
  22. ^ Norris, Robert S.; Hans M. Kristensen (January/February 2006). "U.S. nuclear forces, 2006". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 62 (1): 68–71. doi:10.2968/062001020. http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/j8v4421j728q2v76/fulltext.pdf. Retrieved 5 May 2009.
  23. ^ "United States Still Deploys Some 480 nuclear weapon in Europe, report finds". Natural Resources Defense Council. February 9, 2005. http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressReleases/050209.asp. Retrieved 2006-08-06.
  24. ^ "United States Removes Nuclear Weapons From German Base, Documents Indicate". Federation of American Scientists. http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2007/07/united_states_removes_nuclear.php. Retrieved 2007-07-10.
  25. ^ a b "Report: US considers withdrawing nuclear bombs from Turkey," Today's Zaman. April 03, 2010.
  26. ^ "Country Overview: United States: Profile". Nuclear Threat Initiative. May 2006. http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/USA/index.html. Retrieved 2006-08-06.
  27. ^ "Obama sets goal of world without nuclear weapons — World Politics, World". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/obama-sets-goal-of-world-without-nuclear-weapons-1661727.html. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
  28. ^ [" ""U.S., Russia Agree To Pursue Nuclear Reduction""]. ".
  29. ^ Michael D. Shear (8 April 2010). "Obama, Medvedev sign treaty to reduce nuclear weapons". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/08/AR2010040801677.html. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
  30. ^ David E. Sanger; Peter Baker (5 April 2010). "Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/06arms.html. Retrieved 8 April 2010.

References

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