Sam Cohen has struggled against politicians who, in his
opinion, have sacrificed good sense when it comes to the nation's defenses. Cohen is the
physicist who invented the neutron bomb, the one that kills people but leaves things like
tanks and buildings intact
Cohen's neutron bomb would use nuclear fusion, but in a different way. The detonation of a
neutron bomb would still produce an explosion, but one much smaller than a standard
nuclear weapon's. The main effect of a neutron bomb would be the release of high-energy
neutrons that would take lives far beyond the blast area. The result: fewer buildings,
cars, tanks, roads, highways and other structures destroyed.
And unlike standard nuclear bombs that leave long-term contamination of the soil and
infrastructure, the neutron radiation quickly dissipates after the explosion.
For Cohen, the neutron bomb is the ultimate sane weapon. It kills humans, or as he puts it
"the bad guys," but doesn't produce tremendous collateral damage on civilian
populations and the infrastructure a civilian population needs to survive.
This meant, in Cohen's mind, that a conventional war could escalate without immediately
leading to an all-out nuclear holocaust. If regular nuclear weapons were used across
Europe, the radioactive fallout could turn the continent into a wasteland for decades.
That wouldn't be the case if neutron bombs were used.
Between 1958 and 1961 the neutron bomb idea was tested successfully, but the politicians
in Washington nixed development and deployment of the weapon. Cohen persisted. As the
Vietnam War began and festered in the 1960s, Cohen became an advocate of using neutron
bombs there. To Cohen, his weapon was "a perfect fit" for dealing with the Viet
Cong hidden in the jungles and rice paddies.
Again, the politicians had other ideas. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ruled that no
nuclear weapons of any type would be used in the war. The use of the small neutron bombs
would have brought the war to a quick end, Cohen still argues, and saved the loss of more
than 50,000 American lives.
In 1969, Cohen was fired from the Rand Corp. for continuing to advocate the use of
tactical neutron bombs to end the conflict. "I lost all my battles," Cohen says
today.
In 1979, he was in Paris helping the French build their own arsenal of neutron bombs when
presidential candidate Ronald Reagan came through on a European tour. Cohen met with
Reagan to brief him on the neutron bomb. Reagan grasped the idea of neutron weaponry
immediately, and made a pledge to Cohen, and later a public pledge, that he would reverse
Carter administration policy by building and deploying a large number of neutron bombs.
As president, Reagan fulfilled that pledge and approximately a thousand weapons were
constructed. But criticism from European allies kept the weapons from being deployed
across Europe.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism as we knew it, the Bush
administration moved to dismantle all of our tactical nuclear weapons, including the
Reagan stockpile of neutron bombs. In Cohen's mind, America was brought back to Square
One. Without tactical weapons like the neutron bomb, America would be left with two
choices if an enemy was winning a conventional war: surrender, or unleash the holocaust of
strategic nuclear weapons.
Other nation's haven't been afflicted by the U.S. blindness regarding neutron bombs.
According to Cohen:
Evidence exists that China has
neutron bombs stockpiled, and that the United States gave the Chinese the technology to
build them.
Russia has a large quantity of such weapons, as well as the world's largest
arsenal of nuclear weapons.
Israel has hundreds of neutron weapons. The neutron bombs would allow Israel to stop
advancing Arab armies and tank columns even one on Israeli soil without permanently
contaminating the land.
South Africa, which constructed a cache of neutron weapons before the end of white rule,
claimed it dismantled those weapons before handing over power to the Nelson Mandela
government. Cohen, however, claims to have it on good authority that white military
leaders still control the secret stockpile as "an insurance policy."
Most frightening for Cohen is the relative ease by which neutron bombs can be created with
a substance called
(Censored by Warriors). It is a compound containing (censored) that has undergone massive
irradiation. When exploded, it creates tremendous heat and pressure - the same type needed
to trigger a fusion device such as a mini-neutron bomb.
The cheap substance has been produced in Russia, Cohen said, and shipped on the black
market throughout the world.
Cohen said that when U.N. inspectors went to Iraq to examine the Iraqis'
nuclear weapons capabilities, the U.N. team found documents showing that they had
purchased quantities of (censored). The material means a neutron bomb can be built
"the size of baseball" but able to kill everyone within several square blocks.
The public isn't being warned about this development because the politicians have little
desire to combat the menace or to confront nations like Iraq, Iran and Libya that likely
would use such weapons, Cohen said.
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A bipartisan Congressional report on China's acquisition of United States technology
includes a detailed, but still secret, account of Beijing's efforts to obtain neutron bomb
secrets, including reports of efforts during the Clinton Presidency. But government
officials say that the Clinton administration resisted requests from Congress to make the
material public
The Energy Department completed an analysis of the neutron bomb case in July 1996, and it
unearthed some intriguing connections. The study, officials said, raised the possibility
that the chief suspect in the W-88, a computer scientist in Los Alamos, had also been
involved in the transfer to China of neutron bomb secrets.
The suspect, Wen Ho Lee, was dismissed from his job after the Energy Department said he
violated security regulations. No criminal charges have been filed against him. Officials
said the FBI has investigated the Energy Department's theory but has not been able to
establish that Lee has any connection to the neutron bomb case.
As they investigated further, Energy Department officials discovered that Lee had attended
a classified meeting in 1992 in which solutions to the neutron bomb's design flaw were
discussed, officials said.
The FBI, officials said, had also found that Lee had made at least one telephone call to
the scientist at Lawrence Livermore who was suspected of having provided the Chinese with
the original neutron bomb data in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
According to the FBI's informant, Chinese officials were boasting in 1995 about obtaining
new data from the United States but did not specifically mention the government's weapons
laboratories.
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Tactical neutron bombs are primarily intended to kill soldiers who are protected by armor.
Armored vehicles are very resistant to blast and heat produced by nuclear weapons, but
steel armor can reduce neutron radiation only by a modest amount so the lethal range from
neutrons greatly exceeds that of other weapon effects. The lethal range for tactical
neutron bombs can exceed the lethal range for blast and heat even for unprotected troops.
Armor can absorb neutrons and neutron energy, thus reducing the neutron radiation to which
the tank crew is exposed, but this offset to some extent by the fact that armor can also
react harmfully with neutrons. Alloy steels for example can develop induced radioactivity
that remains dangerous for some time. When fast neutrons are slowed down, the energy lost
can show up as x-rays. Some types of armor, like that of the M-1 tank, employ depleted
uranium which can undergo fast fission, generating additional neutrons and becoming
radioactive. Special neutron absorbing armor techniques have also been developed, such as
armors containing boronated plastics and the use of vehicle fuel as a shield."
"Also called ENHANCED RADIATION WARHEAD, specialized type of small thermonuclear
weapon that produces minimal blast and heat but which releases large amounts of lethal
radiation. The neutron bomb delivers blast and heat effects that are confined to an area
of only a few hundred yards in radius. But within a somewhat larger area it throws off a
massive wave of neutron and gamma radiation, which can penetrate armour or several feet of
earth. This radiation is extremely destructive to living tissue. Because of its
short-range destructiveness and the absence of long-range effect, the neutron bomb would
be highly effective against tank and infantry formations on the battlefield but would not
endanger cities or other population centres only a few miles away. It can be carried in a
Lance missile or delivered by an 8-inch (200-millimetre) howitzer, or possibly by attack
aircraft.
In strategic terms, the neutron bomb has a theoretical deterrent effect: discouraging an
armoured ground assault by arousing the fear of neutron bomb counterattack. The bomb would
disable enemy tank crews in minutes, and those exposed would die within days. U.S.
production of the bomb was postponed in 1978 and resumed in 1981."
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