The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), nicknamed the "Star Wars program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons. The concept was first announced on March 23, 1983 by President Ronald Reagan, a vocal critic of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which he described as a "suicide pact", and called upon American scientists and engineers to develop a system that would render nuclear weapons obsolete.
An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Nuclear warfare is a military conflict or political strategy which deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can produce destruction in a much shorter time and can have a long-lasting radiological result. A major nuclear exchange would have long-term effects, primarily from the fallout released, and could also lead to a "nuclear winter" that could last for decades, centuries, or even millennia after the initial attack. Some analysts dismiss the nuclear winter hypothesis, and calculate that even with nuclear weapon stockpiles at Cold War highs, although there would be billions of casualties, billions more rural people would nevertheless survive. However, others have argued that secondary effects of a nuclear holocaust, such as nuclear famine and societal collapse, would cause almost every human on Earth to starve to death.
World War III and the Third World War are names given to a hypothetical third worldwide large-scale military conflict subsequent to World War I and II. The term has been in use since at least as early as 1941. Some have applied it loosely to refer to limited or smaller conflicts such as the Cold War or the War on Terror, while others assumed that such a conflict would surpass prior world wars both in its scope and in its destructive impact.
Nuclear weapons possess enormous destructive power from nuclear fission or combined fission and fusion reactions. Building on scientific breakthroughs made during the 1930s, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and free France collaborated during World War II, in what was called the Manhattan Project, to build a fission weapon, also known as an atomic bomb. In August 1945, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conducted by the United States against Japan at the close of that war, standing to date as the only use of nuclear weapons in hostilities. The Soviet Union started development shortly after with their own atomic bomb project, and not long after, both countries were developing even more powerful fusion weapons known as hydrogen bombs. Britain and France built their own systems in the 1950s, and the list of states with nuclear weapons has gradually grown larger in the decades since.
Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:
- To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and
- To scientifically analyze UFO-related data.
The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) proposes that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being physical spacecraft occupied by extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens, or non-occupied alien probes from other planets visiting Earth.
The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this same period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries developed nuclear weapons, though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers.
Harold Brown was an American nuclear physicist who served as United States Secretary of Defense from 1977 to 1981, under President Jimmy Carter. Previously, in the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations, he held the posts of Director of Defense Research and Engineering (1961–1965) and United States Secretary of the Air Force (1965–1969).
The Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) was a nuclear-weapons delivery system developed in the 1960s by the Soviet Union. One of the first Soviet efforts to use space to deliver weapons, FOBS envisioned launching nuclear warheads into low Earth orbit before bringing them down on their targets.
In late December 1980, there was a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights near Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England which have become linked with claims of UFO landings. The events occurred just outside RAF Woodbridge, which was used at the time by the United States Air Force (USAF). USAF personnel, including deputy base commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles I. Halt, claimed to see things they described as a UFO sighting.
Kapustin Yar is a Russian rocket launch and development site in Astrakhan Oblast, about 100km east of Volgograd. It was established by the Soviet Union on 13 May 1946 and in the beginning used technology, material and scientific support from defeated Germany. Numerous launches of test rockets for the Russian military were carried out at the site, as well as satellite and sounding rocket launches. The town of Znamensk and Kapustin Yar were built nearby to serve the missile test range.
The Robertson Panel was a scientific committee which met in January 1953 headed by Howard P. Robertson. The Panel arose from a recommendation to the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) in December 1952 from a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) review of the U.S. Air Force investigation into unidentified flying objects, Project Blue Book. The CIA review itself was in response to widespread reports of unidentified flying objects, especially in the Washington, D.C. area during the summer of 1952.
The United States was the first country to manufacture nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in combat, with the separate bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Before and during the Cold War, it conducted over one thousand nuclear tests and tested many long-range nuclear weapons delivery systems.
The Ministries of the Soviet Union were the government ministries of the Soviet Union.
The 12th Chief Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the former USSR and of the modern Russian Federation is a department within the Russian (ex-Soviet) Ministry of Defense. It is responsible for the safe-keeping, technical maintenance, transportation, delivery, issuance, disposal, etc. of the nuclear arsenal of the state, as well as the testing of nuclear charges, which includes ensuring ecological safety of such tests and the maintenance of Soviet/Russian testing grounds, known in Russian as "polygons" – in Semipalatinsk and on Novaya Zemlya Archipelago.
A missile launch facility, also known as an underground missile silo, launch facility (LF), or nuclear silo, is a vertical cylindrical structure constructed underground, for the storage and launching of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Carl Ernest Duckett was the founder of the Central Intelligence Agency's science and technology operations.
Proud Prophet was a simulated war game played by the United States that began on June 20, 1983. The war game was designed by Thomas Schelling. The Simulation was played in real time during the Cold War. Proud Prophet was essentially played to test out various proposals and strategies, in response to the Soviet Union's military buildup. There were advocates for a number of strategies, which varied from demonstration nuclear attacks, limited nuclear war, and decapitation attacks. It was not possible for the United States to pursue each of these strategies. President Ronald Reagan and his administration were faced with the dilemma of figuring out how the United States should respond to the Soviet Union's large nuclear programs, while finding which strategy would be most effective. This game demonstrated the importance of thinking about the unthinkable by running through scenarios and planning appropriate responses to opposing nuclear strikes. The game simulated conflict in a number of regions, from East Asia to Europe and in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The simulation consisted of 200 Military Personnel and Politicians with only twelve days of actual play. Stretching the twelve days of gameplay over several week periods, Personnel involved in the simulation were forced to make critical strategic and diplomatic decisions to test the effectiveness of the United States strike plan. Due to heightened tensions with the ongoing Cold War made this simulation the most realistic in United States Military history. For the first time ever, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff took part in the game, although their participation was concealed. One of the main purposes of the simulation was to test the response of the National Command Authority's (NCA) decision making when dealing with many different situations at once. Although Proud Prophet was intended to help senior officials test their nuclear strategies, it was apparent that many of the concepts in place were incompatible with current Military capabilities. Many important parts of this simulation saw limited use of de-escalation tactics. If a risk of a war did occur, many Military advisors saw the use of nuclear missiles as the deterring factor when dealing with the Soviet Union. The idea behind this concept was that Soviet forces would seek ceasefire if the West moved to use nuclear weapons. The final outcome of the Proud Prophet war game would show the need to resolve global issues in times of war or potential war. The outcome of an all-out nuclear war is the total destruction of both sides involved, and a death toll nearly reaching half a billion with the remaining dying from starvation or lethal doses of radiation. The government file for Proud Prophet was not declassified until December 20, 2012, and was only declassified in part. There is no known reason why it was unclassified under the Obama administration.
