The - Z of Nuclear Jargon (Routledge Revivals)

Jonathon Green

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317908234
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History

First published in 1986, the purpose of this dictionary is to clarify the technology behind nuclear jargon. The entries deal with all areas of nuclear warfare: its strategies and tactics, personnel and weapons systems, arms control and disarmament talks. The terminology of the nuclear age expands and changes as fast as the weapons and strategies it describes; the dictionary therefore covers a span ranging from the first tentative post-Hiroshima ideas and systems through to the near-fictions of the 'Star Wars' initiative. This fascinating reissue will be of particular value to those in need of a comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of nuclear warfare, as well as students of linguistics with a particular interest in slang and jargon.

A

A ring the circle of complete destruction that surrounds the epicentre of the explosion of a nuclear device. The A ring is an area surrounding ground zero with an overpressure exceeding 11 psi. Such a degree of blast will cause an estimated 85 per cent of deaths, assuming no adequate shelter protection.

See also B ring, C ring

ABC warfare acronym for Atomic, Biological and Chemical warfare. Battlefield strategies dependent on the full range of weaponry available to modern armies: atomic and latterly nuclear armaments; toxins developed from natural substances, including micro-organisms such as anthrax, which can cause disease and death in human, animal and plant life; artificial agents, including nerve gases, which can be used to disable and kill the enemy.

See also CW, integrated battlefield, NBC warfare

ABM acronym for anti-ballistic missiles. ABM technology - the extension of anti-aircraft gunnery into the missile age, developed in parallel with the superpower researches into the offensive missiles themselves. The USA used their Nike-Zeus and Nike-X missile systems, latterly refined as Sentinel and Safeguard, to set up a fledgling ABM system in 1956. The Russians, starting in the 1940s, were able in 1962 to install a primitive system around Leningrad. By 1964 the sophisticated Galosh ABMs were in place around Moscow and, inevitably, the US response was to upgrade their own attempts to shoot down the enemy missiles before they could explode. In 1969 President Nixon ratified a substantial increase in US ABM development. ABM systems can best be overcome by simple saturation - too many missiles to be shot down in the available time - and the appearance of MIRVs in the 1960s as the perfect means of such overkill lent weight to those who saw the ABM as creator of a 'defensive' arms race that would simply mirror the traditional 'offensive' struggle. The SALT I talks of 1972 ratified the 'Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missiles'. This was to last indefinitely and was intended to end any 'defensive' arms race; each side would be allowed only two ABM systems - one to protect the respective capital city and the other to protect a single ICBM installation. Two years later the facility was cut to one system only. Ironically, the MIRVs, which had been created to nullify the ABMs, now had no real place in the arsenals except, as it turned out, to fuel further efforts towards parity and then superiority in the acquisition of this new brand of offensive weapon. President Jimmy Carter persisted in holding to the ABM Treaty. Ronald Reagan made it clear that the 1972 accord was 'an historical mistake' which 'ties our hands for ever'. As long as the MAD scenario was generally acceptable, any efforts to defuse the arms race seemed sensible. In the mid-1980s, touting the Pentagon's belief in a 'winnable' nuclear war, President Reagan felt no such restraint. To this end Reagan has looked for ways to escape the restrictions of SALT I. Many of the current technological advances, such as MARVed warheads and plans for energy-beam and laser weapons, tend not towards the defensive uses that are claimed for them but towards the destabilising of the strategic balance. The current Star Wars plans are in effect a super-ABM system, based on the premise that only American technology can, and should, be permitted to safeguard world peace. On the offensive front, the MX missile is said to require some form of ballistic missile defence (BMD), which would be unlawful under the ABM treaty as it stands. As of May 1985 the US is trying for a double attack on the ABM treaty. On the diplomatic front the negotiators have dragged out a clause from 1972 which provides for the scrapping of the ABM treaty should an arms treaty of more general import not have been concluded within five years of the initial signature. President Carter chose to extend the ABM rules, but President Reagan wants out. Simultaneously the Pentagon claims that the Soviets have continually and extensively cheated on the ABM treaty indeed, both parties have cheated throughout by continuing with R&D programmes on ABM systems that, under the treaty, could never be deployed - and that, in this case, the US has every justification for going its own way. To underline this the US is engaged in compiling as large as possible a list of these contraventions. All of this, from the Soviet point of view, is construed as aggression. The US, it is considered, is not aiming at defence, inside or outside the ABM treaty; what 'Star Wars' and its allied advances really imply is a new US initiative towards first-strike capability. Such beliefs, which are shared by the more doveish of US experts, can only undermine the fragile nuclear peace that still restrains the superpowers.

See also ASAT, BMD, ICBM, star wars

absolute dud a nuclear weapon that fails to explode on target.

acceptable casualties the percentage of casualties that can be suffered in combat when forcing a retreat, defeat or similar reversal, Applicable to all levels of combat up to nuclear exchange, at which point civilian casualties have to be taken into account. What is acceptable to the strategic planners seems, fortunately, to vary between the paper studies of the US think tanks and the possibility of an actual war. In 1961, when East-West tensions were exacerbated by the building of the Berlin Wall, and the US still possessed a definite nuclear superiority, it was suggested that a first strike attack might now be feasible; according to the planners, the Soviet retaliation would kill at least 20 million Americans. This, they had computed, was acceptable. Fortunately the politicians and military were less sanguine. It is to be hoped, in an age of infinitely greater military capability, that the chilly assumptions of the number-crunching hardware will still be balanced by flesh and blood restraint.

See also megadeath

ACDA acronym for Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. The ACDA was set up in 1961 by the US; it had four aims: (1) 'The conduct, support and coordination of research for arms control and disarmament policy formation'; (2) 'The preparations for and management of US participation in international negotiations in the arms and disarmament field'; (3) 'The dissemination and coordination of public information concerning arms control and disarmament'; (4) 'The preparation for, operation of, or, as appropriate, direction of US participation in such control systems as may become part of US arms control and disarmament activities.' Despite these aims, it was soon apparent that the Administration's view of the Agency, under a succession of right-wing, hard-line directors, was more interested in sabotaging real progress in talks than encouraging it. Fred Ikle was appointed by President Ford to ensure that Henry Kissinger's efforts to make a real breakthrough on SALT II in 1976 were wasted. When President Carter appointed Paul Warnke to the job, he met overwhelming opposition from those who saw him as too soft on Moscow; his appointment, said one far-right critic, was 'like choosing a boll weevil to head the Department of Agriculture'. President Reagan's director, Eugene Rostow, the veteran law professor, elder statesman and leading member of the right-wing lobby group The Committee for the Present Danger, seemed ideal for the White House's posture on arms control. In the event Rostow moved from a hard-line to a far more flexible position. His enemies in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs (the State department's in-house mini-Pentagon) found it simple to persuade Reagan to sack him. He went, aggrieved and unbowed, in January 1981. He was replaced by Kenneth Adelman, a 36-year-old neoconservative whose appointment met severe resistance in the Senate before it was ratified. Adelman lacked the clout a Rostow could muster and the ACDA, by no means popular with the Administration, faded further from influence. Its staff was cut by a quarter, its research budget by a half, there were lengthy delays in the choosing of senior officials; with justification a writer in Foreign Affairs (Summer, 1983) declared 'the ACDA is in no position to fulfil its responsibilities effectively'.

active defence the use of weapons systems - both conventional and nuclear - to defeat enemy troops; the implication is that the enemy will have made the first hostile move.

See also point defence

ADGOM acronym for Aerospace Defence Command.

See also NORAD

AFAP acronym for artillery-fired atomic projectile.

See also tactical nuclear weapons

AFSATCOM acronym for Air Force satellite communications system. A USAF communications system which, while it has no actual satellite dedicated to itself, works by mounting its transponders on other satellites. AFSATCOM has been in operation since 1974, providing the Air Force with communications between command posts and missile launch centres, with receivers aboard bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and submarines. Part of the overall US C³I complex. By 1986 the USAF will have spent an estimated $1.5bn constructing some 920 AFSATCOM terminals. Once the programme is complete, AFSATCOM-capable planes will be able to obtain and report instant updates on their position, enemy movements, etc., and will thus fulfil its mission to provide command and control over the whole range of strategic bombers, flying command posts, silo-based missiles and TACAMO aircraft, coming into its own when hostile jamming efforts or nuclear blackouts are severe.

See also FLTSATCOM, MILSTAR

AGI acronym for auxiliary gatherer intelligence/aliens gathering intelligence. The Russian 'trawlers' and similar vessels that are used to track NATO fleets or anchor conveniently near land-based military installations.

air breather a jet or rocket engine that requires the intake of air for the combustion of its fuel.

air burst a nuclear explosion that is detonated sufficiently far above the ground to ensure that none of the fireball actually touches the ground and thus none of the effect of the explosion is dissipated by local geographical factors such as irregular contours. For a 1 MT bomb the explosion would have to be centred some 1 km above the ground to keep the fireball from touching the earth. An air burst ensures the maximum production and dissemination of radiation in the immediate areas of the detonation, but since it does not create a crater, there is no production of the long-term fallout which accompanies a ground burst; even the effects of the radiation that the air burst does cause are mainly academic, since the heat and blast that accompany the explosion will be the cause of maximum destruction and casualties. The air burst is designed for use against any large-scale concentration, notably large cities or industrial areas.

See also ground burst

air defence warning conditions

(1) yellow - attack by hostile aircraft and/or missiles is probable; hostile aircraft and/or missiles are en route; unknown aircraft and/or missiles suspected to be hostile are en route towards, or within, an air defence sector or division.

(2) red - attack by hostile aircraft and/or missiles is imminent/in progress; hostile aircraft and/or missiles are within an air defence division/sector or in its immediate vicinity, with high probability of entering that division/sector.

(3) white - attack by hostile aircraft and/or missiles is improbable (this may be issued before or after yellow or red conditions).

airborne alert the policy of maintaining a bomber force permanently in the air around the clock in order to make for a more speedily launched offensive and to save planes from being destroyed on the ground. This was abandoned by the USAF, its chief advocate, in 1968, by which time the USA's main defences were entrusted to missiles, but it is put into operation on the declaration of any level of crisis alert.

ALCM acronym for air launched cruise missile

See also cruise missiles, GLCM, SLCM

alert crew

(1) five-man USAF teams who man the Strategic Air Command (SAC) missile launch facility at Offutt Air Force Base and the equivalent posts in the Cover All flying command post.

(2) the SAC bomber crews who ranked second in excellence and skill to the 'select crews'. These categories were originated in 1951 by SAC commander General Curtis LeMay.

anticipatory reaction a surprise attack.

See also anticipatory retaliation, pre-emptive strike

anticipatory retaliation a surprise attack.

See also anticipatory reaction, massive retaliation, pre-emptive strike

arc light a bomb strike delivered by a B-52 bomber. The flash and explosion of the massive payload gives an exceptionally bright light.

area defence he ability to defend a large proportion of one's country; in a US nuclear scenario, this means the protection of cities. Under the 1972 ABM treaty, area defence against nuclear attack was outlawed, and ABM sites were restricted first to two and latterly to one only. In the event the US has no area defence, and the Soviets have only thirty two Galosh missiles surrounding Moscow. The new plans for US ballistic missile defence, while contravening the ABM treaty if they are put into effect, will concentrate on defending ICBM sites rather than the vulnerable cities.

See also point defence

ASALM acronym for advanced strategic air-launched missile. A development of the ALCM initiated in the mid-1970s. This bomber-launched missile was designed to skim the ground for long distances at supersonic speed. It had fins like a rocket but because of its speed did not, unlike cruise, require wings to stay in flight. ASALM was intended to destroy hostile aircraft which in turn sought to attack cruise missiles, and to destroy anti-aircraft missile sites (also threatening incoming cruise) as well as penetrating to strategic targets. ASALM was to be powered by a rocket/ramjet solid-fuelled engine in which the rocket-fuel ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• The A-Z of nuclear jargon
• Bibliography