In order to be effective militarily, a neutron bomb would have to incapacitate its victims quickly. This requires a very high dose, in the neighborhood of 8, rems. For a one-kiloton ERW detonated at 1, feet, the required lethal dose would cover an area of about 0. Anyone in this kill zone would die in a particularly gruesome manner, as neutrons collided with protons inside living tissue.
The ionization would break down chromosomes, cause nuclei to swell and destroy all types of cells, especially those in the central nervous system. Cohen and his colleagues at the nuclear weapons labs spent years lobbying government and military officials to develop the neutron bomb, arguing that it was a more discriminating weapon with both moral and military advantages. Finally, they found support from President Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, who was seeking the capability to conduct limited nuclear warfare "so that if deterrence were to fail…the use of nuclear weapons would not result in [an] orgy of destruction.
The neutron bomb offered Schlesinger what he wanted. He remained the Secretary of Defense after Nixon's resignation and, in , the Ford administration authorized development of the weapon, which would be overseen by the Energy Research and Development Administration ERDA.
The neutron bomb would be designed for tactical use to offset the Warsaw Pact's three-to-one advantage in tank forces. The army requested neutron warheads for its Lance short-to-medium-range tactical missile and its 8-inch and mm artillery pieces. But, it was President Jimmy Carter who would inherit the program and make the final decision about deployment. There was just one small problem: nobody had bothered to tell Carter that the weapon was being built.
The president found out about it the same way as the rest of the world…. Reporter Walter Pincus had learned about the neutron bomb when he saw a congressional committee report that included testimony about its development.
Most of the Carter administration had not been aware of the neutron bomb project. Those who had known about, including Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and James Schlesinger who was now the Secretary of Energy , never imagined that it would be controversial.
Carter's aides knew differently—not least, because the president had made it a point to pledge in his inaugural address , "we will move this year a step toward our ultimate goal—the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth.
Domestic critics saw the neutron bomb as an escalation of the arms race. Others charged that, by making nuclear weapons less destructive, it made nuclear war easier to wage.
Leftists even called it a "capitalist" bomb because it killed people while protecting property. Some publications were moderate or even supportive of the neutron bomb but the general effect was inflammatory. As late as August , opinion polls in the United States favored building the neutron bomb by a margin of 44 to 37 percent, but that fell steadily toward 47 percent against it in Key NATO leaders were more inclined toward the neutron bomb than they said publicly.
In West Germany, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt supported the concept but for political reasons was constrained from getting too far out front. By March , negotiators had worked out a compromise agreement for production and deployment of the neutron bomb.
The arrangement would avoid a Dutch veto and allow tacit acceptance by Italy, Denmark, and Norway. It was to be announced at a meeting of the North Atlantic Council March Carter, reviewing the draft agreement, was not satisfied and canceled the meeting.
According to The New York. Carter announced his decision to defer neutron bomb production April 7. In fact, his position was the result of two separate decisions and much behind-the-scenes wrangling.
He made the first decision—not to produce the neutron bomb—in isolation during a fishing trip to Georgia. The decision was a big victory for opponents of the neutron bomb and anti-nuclear activists in the United States and abroad. He invited Carter to join him in a ban on neutron weapons. Also in , the French, who had remained aloof from the neutron bomb controversy in NATO, revealed that they were considering development of a neutron bomb of their own. NATO officials preferred to concentrate on that problem instead of diluting their effort to promote the neutron bomb.
Reagan solved the problem for everybody by making the decision himself without asking for any European commitment. In August, he announced that the United States would produce the neutron warheads for Lance and the artillery shell, but would stockpile them in storage in the United States rather than deploy them to Europe.
It was a third smaller than the eight-inch shell and had a range of 18 miles. In the end, the decision was for a modernized mm atomic round that could be converted to a neutron weapon with the addition of a special component. In , France began production of a neutron weapon under the presidency of Socialist Francois Mitterand but the program was canceled in when he was succeeded by his arch-rival, Gaullist Jacques Chirac.
Bush canceled programs for upgrade replacements for the fission warheads on the Lance missile and nuclear artillery shells in Europe. In , Bush removed the battlefield nuclear weapons altogether. We will bring home or destroy all of our nuclear artillery shells and short-range ballistic missile warheads. We will, of course, ensure that we preserve an effective air-delivered nuclear capability in Europe. At peak deployment in the s, the United States had 7, tactical nuclear weapons in Europe alone.
The neutron bomb is seldom mentioned today except in unusual circumstances. One such was in when John Gilbert rose in the British House of Lords to propose dropping a neutron bomb on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to create a barrier against terrorists.
By numerous accounts, Israel and China have tested and possess neutron bombs. The strangest case, however, is that of Russia. Their vulnerability was now akin to that of NATO in the s.
When the war is over, the world is still intact," he told the New York Times in September. It also reduced the risk of long-term nuclear contamination as the neutrons dissipated quickly. Neutron bomb: Why 'clean' is deadly. Bush in , following the end of the Cold War. Besides the United States and Soviet Union, France and China are understood to have tested neutron or enhanced radiation bombs in the past, with France apparently leading the field with an early test of the technology in [15] and an "actual" neutron bomb in Considerable controversy arose in the U.
The article focused on the fact that it was the first weapon specifically intended to kill humans with radiation. Neutron bombs are purposely designed with explosive yields lower than other nuclear weapons. However, the intense pulse of high-energy neutrons that is generated is intended as the principal killing mechanism, not the fallout, heat or blast.
Although neutron bombs are commonly believed to "leave the infrastructure intact", current designs have explosive yields in the kiloton range, [23] the detonation of which would cause considerable destruction through blast and heat effects. Neutron bombs could be used as strategic anti-ballistic missile weapons or as tactical weapons intended for use against armored forces.
Upon detonation, a 1 kiloton neutron bomb would produce a large blast wave, and a powerful pulse of both thermal radiation and ionizing radiation , mostly in the form of fast The thermal pulse would cause third degree burns to unprotected skin out to approximately meters. The blast would create at least 4. The lethal dose would extend out past meters, where approximately half of those exposed would die of radiation sickness after several weeks.
The questionable effectiveness of ER weapons against modern tanks is cited as one of the main reasons that these weapons are no longer fielded or stockpiled. With the increase in average tank armor thickness since the first ER weapons were fielded, tank armor protection approaches the level where tank crews are now almost completely protected from radiation effects. Therefore for an ER weapon to incapacitate a modern tank crew through irradiation, the weapon must now be detonated at such a close proximity to the tank that the nuclear explosion 's blast would now be equally effective at incapacitating it and its crew.
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