Engineer Memoirs
to their research and development, including a test which they conducted at the Nevada
test site of one of their warheads. I was supposed to go to England, but with my tour
cut short, I never made it.
That was the main diplomatic thing. We didn't have any cooperation with the French,
because they were pursuing a program that we didn't entirely agree with. This may have
changed since; I don't know.
The cooperation with the British was kept very quiet. I remember that they didn't want
any announcement of their test, which was called Fallon. Later it all came out, but they
didn't want any advance announcement. Testing was very controversial in England, and
the government didn't want this to be the subject of debate in Parliament.
They wanted to do the tests. They wanted to have the weapons improved. But they
didn't want to go through all the flack of a parliamentary debate over this, and they
succeeded in avoiding it at the time. Then it did come out and they did have the debate.
By then the test was done so it didn't matter.
Q:
You know, recently the question of whether any nation can win a nuclear war has been
a frequent topic of discussion.
A:
My thinking on that has undergone a fundamental change. When I joined the nuclear
program, I didn't view nuclear war as totally different from conventional war. I realized
nuclear weapons were more destructive, but during my first ten years with the program
I had the view that it was just another weapon, however much more powerful. Now I
think that the number and destructiveness of these weapons has grown to the point
where nuclear war would be catastrophic to civilization.
I don't think it would end life on earth. I don't think it would end the human race. But
I think it would be every bit as traumatic as the Dark Ages civilization went through
after the fall of Rome. Maybe that's not quite the right analogy, but that's the general
idea. Compare the state of civilization at the height of Rome with the situation in the
Middle Ages. You could very well have at least that serious a setback to civilization if
you had nuclear war. I don't mean one or two weapons, but a real nuclear exchange.
Q:
When did your assessment change? Can you pin it to a certain period?
A:
I wasn't thinking about this issue much when I was the Director of Military Application.
It was a management problem for me then. I didn't spend a lot of time on the issue of
nuclear weapons employment--primarily development, testing, production, safety, and
security.
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