Nuclear weaponry and the cold war

The United States and Soviet Union were in the midst of the 30-year cold war. By mid-1958, both possessed proven capabilities for producing nuclear weapons and for delivering them by one means or another to the other country. And both were near-paranoid in their suspicions of the other.

Thus, both were urgently examining potential capabilities for detecting the det­onation of nuclear test devices by the other country, and for protecting themselves against atomic bomb attacks if they should occur. In the United States, air filters to remove radioactive debris from the air and airborne water had been developed by the

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Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) as early as 1947.1 Beginning in late 1948, several weather reconnaissance B-29 squadrons routinely patrolled over the Pacific Ocean with those air filters to assist in detecting Soviet test detonations. The first Soviet nuclear detonation, referred to as Joe-1 in the United States and as RDS-1 in the USSR, and occurring on 29 August 1949, was first detected by ground and airborne air and rain filters of that type. The Weather B-29s that I was flying for weather reconnaissance over the Pacific Ocean during 1952 continued that nuclear detonation monitoring effort as an add-on classified mission objective.

Beginning as early as July 1957, our country relied heavily on the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW Line), a network that eventually grew to 63 radar and commu­nications stations built across northern Canada and Alaska to provide early detection of any Soviet aircraft or missiles that might be headed for the United States.

The Soviets announced their successful test of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) on 26 August 1957. That demonstrated an improved capability for launching nuclear weapons against the United States.

With that new information, Nicholas C. Christofilos, a physicist working on magnetic fusion at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL, operated by the University of California, Berkeley), became greatly concerned that the Soviets might try to conceal a sneak ICBM attack by detonating a nuclear device beforehand at high altitude. The ionospheric effects and the synchrotron radiation resulting from spiraling electrons produced by the blast might cause radio interference that would severely limit the range at which the DEW Line could see approaching missiles. Conceivably, that particle shell might completely blind the radars.

With the launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October, Christofilos’ concern heightened. He believed that the new Soviet capability placed the United States in near-term peril. Building on his experience with magnetically confining charged particles, he came up with the idea of depositing and storing huge numbers of electrons in the Earth’s magnetosphere to make a defensive shield. The source of the electrons would be a large number of nuclear explosions at high altitude.

During October and November 1957, he discussed that possibility repeatedly with Herbert F. York, then director of the LLNL. According to York, Christofilos even predicted the existence of the naturally occurring trapped radiation before it was discovered by stating, during those discussions, that “there are already high energy (MeV range) electrons trapped there!” He believed that cosmic rays hit­ting the Earth’s atmosphere produced, among other things, neutrons; some of those moved radially outward and decayed, and a fraction of those were trapped in the magnetosphere.2

Christofilos thought that an electron shell, if produced by the United States, might serve as a defensive electromagnetic shield against Soviet ICBMs. If dense

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enough, it might heat the outer surfaces of approaching ICBMs to make them bright enough targets for heat-seeking defensive missiles. Beyond that was the possibil­ity that a sufficiently dense shell (produced by perhaps thousands of megatons of nuclear detonations per year) might directly damage approaching missiles or their warheads. They might even prematurely and harmlessly trigger incoming nuclear bombs.

His concept became known as the Argus Effect, and the endeavor to test it became known as the Argus Project.