6 ms·

Operation Argus: How a Cold-War Secret Was Revealed

64 points by matt4077 8y ago

CamperBob2 8y ago
Admittedly I only read about half the article and skimmed the rest, but this seems like kind of a nothingburger, in the parlance of our times. So a couple of bombs were set off in space for research purposes, in an environment already permeated with radiation. Is this supposed to be morally worse than setting them off on the ground, where people actualy live? What's the actual controversy here? Please consider answering my question rather than mindlessly downvoting. I'm genuinely curious.
- akiselev 8y ago
  To reduce cutting edge nuclear weapons tests, at a time when the USA and USSR were neck deep in an arms race and at each other's throats, to a nothingburger about space radiation is... fantastic. How great is it that today we can live so ignorant of one of the scariest times in human civilization? The everythingburger had to do with the orbital EMP, not the radiation or even the secret tests. If the US had developed an effective way to neutralize Soviet ICBMs with atmospheric detonations, it would have been the end of MAD and would have forced the Soviet Union into all out war in a race to beat the US before a full defense system could be built - at a time when they were first starting to come to the table.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    Some good points there with respect to MAD. Perhaps the article should have made the same case you just did, but that lede was deeply buried if it was in there at all. Instead, the reporters treated it as a matter of concern primarily to the newspaper itself.
    - archgoon 8y ago
      The focus of the article is less on the importance of the Argus project, and it's place in the Cold War, and more on illustrating how deeply entwined the supposedly independent press was with the Government, and how the press was effectively self censoring itself due to perceived national security concerns. Equally important, however, is noticing that ultimately what caused the New York Times to publish was the recognition that the press is a competitive environment, and, (amusingly, given the MAD overtones of any article about the Cold War), it's game theory that dictates that eventually the press will defect from an embargo due to competitive fears of being scooped.
  - giardini 8y ago
    akiselev says>"it would have been the end of MAD and would have forced the Soviet Union into all out war ..." I don't buy that extrapolation at all because: - We'll never see the "end of MAD" - there's too much uncertainty around large-scale nuclear weapons and - no one, including the Soviet Union, is in a rush to end the world.
  - dylan604 8y ago
    >The everythingburger had to do with the orbital EMP How would an EMP in near space affect an ICBM? Once the warhead has separated, isn't it basically a dumb object on a Newtonian trajectory? Maybe mess up the electronics in the trigger to prevent the critical mass explosion rendering it just a man made meteor? Maybe a MIRV would have some electronics to separate. I can't remember if they separated after re-entry or not.
    - haloux 8y ago
      short answer; it depends, but in general we are looking for holes in EM shielding to turn the RVs into paperweights. As a former nuke maintainer, the way I think they would do it would be to launch a titan with a full MIRV payload of W53s or their predecessors out into an area for HAD (high altitude detonation). The understanding is that we were relying on the emp from nuclear blasts to make things drop from the sky. This is also a time when insensitive high exposives were not a thing and simple shock would begin a detonation for most weapons. The emp overloading electronics in either the launch vehicle (depending on altitude) or the reentry vehicle could cause the weapon to detonate (noncriticality, just a simple detonation). Aditionally consider that passing through the EM contaminated zone would likely render the same effects to the launch vehicle. The RV might not even separate and instead just continue into orbit. Lastly, the RV angle and positioning done by the RS (reentry system) is highly dependent on both explosives and electronics. Lots of room for EM to muck with that and cause a poor reentry angle or even an outright spin fault which would lead to detonation on reentry. Regardless, most RVs will not critically detonate unless all flight conditions are met. This means launch, RS positioning, proper spin, etc. Side note : In the service I’ve heard rumors of the Russians having the same doctrine when under attack and defending key government areas, but at lower altitudes and being initiated with Tuplovs and gravity weapons (non rv, aircraft dropped). This inherently implies fratricidal consequences for pilots and civilians.
- simion314 8y ago
  At least 3 satellites failed because of the radiations, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosion#Drawbacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosio... I can relate with the scientists that worked on this satelites, send them in space to collect data and 2 weeks later the americans destroy them because they want to try nuclear bombs in every possible place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmCe0GeCwA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmCe0GeCwA0
dmurray 8y ago
The fourth estate seems to have added disappointingly little here. If the government decided they would release details of the program, the NYT would "scoop" them by publishing it a day or two earlier. If the government decided not to release details, the NYT heard nothing, saw nothing, spoke nothing. Not exactly "all the news that's fit to print".
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  Consider it payment for doing their job. Without this journalism, the government would have probably never been compelled to bother telling anybody about Argus. So the fourth estate seemed to have performed its role perfectly.
  - toyg 8y ago
    “Perfectly”, no: if they had done it properly, the explosions would never had happened, our precious Universe would be a bit cleaner, and scientists wouldn’t have wasted time trying to understand the resulting “unexplicable” phenomena.
    - Waterluvian 8y ago
      Cleaner? Source?
- archgoon 8y ago
  I think it's depicted as a little more complicated than that; the New York Times started pressuring the government to let them publish out of fear that another news agency would publish before them; which pushed the government to start doing the release, which prompted the New York Times to do it instead, preventing the government from perpetually delaying the release.
chillaxtian 8y ago
Does anyone have a link to the NYT article mentioned?
- archgoon 8y ago
  Can't find a public link; but this appears to be the article, if you have a New York Times subscription. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/issue.html https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/iss... https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/89163137.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/891...
Tsubasachan 8y ago
Reminds me of how the US was going to use their disposable allies in the North by intercepting Soviet ICBMs over Canada.
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  What plan was that?
toyg 8y ago
One thing that stuck out for me: the leak was never identified, but s/he also didn’t achieve what s/he wanted. Imagine being someone so horrified by having to work on such a project that going to the press, risking career and livelihood, is the only resort. Then you spend a few months biting your lips, and... nothing happens, because reporters sit on it. What does that do to your trust in the free press? At that point, it would be perfectly reasonable to become completely paranoid: they are all complicit, and now they know me, do they think I’m a traitor? Am I under surveillance? Two men in a car over there, could they be...?

64 points by matt4077 8y ago

Admittedly I only read about half the article and skimmed the rest, but this seems like kind of a nothingburger, in the parlance of our times. So a couple of bombs were set off in space for research purposes, in an environment already permeated with radiation. Is this supposed to be morally worse than setting them off on the ground, where people actualy live? What's the actual controversy here? Please consider answering my question rather than mindlessly downvoting. I'm genuinely curious.

akiselev 8y ago
To reduce cutting edge nuclear weapons tests, at a time when the USA and USSR were neck deep in an arms race and at each other's throats, to a nothingburger about space radiation is... fantastic. How great is it that today we can live so ignorant of one of the scariest times in human civilization? The everythingburger had to do with the orbital EMP, not the radiation or even the secret tests. If the US had developed an effective way to neutralize Soviet ICBMs with atmospheric detonations, it would have been the end of MAD and would have forced the Soviet Union into all out war in a race to beat the US before a full defense system could be built - at a time when they were first starting to come to the table.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  Some good points there with respect to MAD. Perhaps the article should have made the same case you just did, but that lede was deeply buried if it was in there at all. Instead, the reporters treated it as a matter of concern primarily to the newspaper itself.
  - archgoon 8y ago
    The focus of the article is less on the importance of the Argus project, and it's place in the Cold War, and more on illustrating how deeply entwined the supposedly independent press was with the Government, and how the press was effectively self censoring itself due to perceived national security concerns. Equally important, however, is noticing that ultimately what caused the New York Times to publish was the recognition that the press is a competitive environment, and, (amusingly, given the MAD overtones of any article about the Cold War), it's game theory that dictates that eventually the press will defect from an embargo due to competitive fears of being scooped.
- giardini 8y ago
  akiselev says>"it would have been the end of MAD and would have forced the Soviet Union into all out war ..." I don't buy that extrapolation at all because: - We'll never see the "end of MAD" - there's too much uncertainty around large-scale nuclear weapons and - no one, including the Soviet Union, is in a rush to end the world.
- dylan604 8y ago
  >The everythingburger had to do with the orbital EMP How would an EMP in near space affect an ICBM? Once the warhead has separated, isn't it basically a dumb object on a Newtonian trajectory? Maybe mess up the electronics in the trigger to prevent the critical mass explosion rendering it just a man made meteor? Maybe a MIRV would have some electronics to separate. I can't remember if they separated after re-entry or not.
  - haloux 8y ago
    short answer; it depends, but in general we are looking for holes in EM shielding to turn the RVs into paperweights. As a former nuke maintainer, the way I think they would do it would be to launch a titan with a full MIRV payload of W53s or their predecessors out into an area for HAD (high altitude detonation). The understanding is that we were relying on the emp from nuclear blasts to make things drop from the sky. This is also a time when insensitive high exposives were not a thing and simple shock would begin a detonation for most weapons. The emp overloading electronics in either the launch vehicle (depending on altitude) or the reentry vehicle could cause the weapon to detonate (noncriticality, just a simple detonation). Aditionally consider that passing through the EM contaminated zone would likely render the same effects to the launch vehicle. The RV might not even separate and instead just continue into orbit. Lastly, the RV angle and positioning done by the RS (reentry system) is highly dependent on both explosives and electronics. Lots of room for EM to muck with that and cause a poor reentry angle or even an outright spin fault which would lead to detonation on reentry. Regardless, most RVs will not critically detonate unless all flight conditions are met. This means launch, RS positioning, proper spin, etc. Side note : In the service I’ve heard rumors of the Russians having the same doctrine when under attack and defending key government areas, but at lower altitudes and being initiated with Tuplovs and gravity weapons (non rv, aircraft dropped). This inherently implies fratricidal consequences for pilots and civilians.
simion314 8y ago
At least 3 satellites failed because of the radiations, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosion#Drawbacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_nuclear_explosio... I can relate with the scientists that worked on this satelites, send them in space to collect data and 2 weeks later the americans destroy them because they want to try nuclear bombs in every possible place. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmCe0GeCwA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmCe0GeCwA0

dmurray 8y ago

The fourth estate seems to have added disappointingly little here. If the government decided they would release details of the program, the NYT would "scoop" them by publishing it a day or two earlier. If the government decided not to release details, the NYT heard nothing, saw nothing, spoke nothing. Not exactly "all the news that's fit to print".

Waterluvian 8y ago
Consider it payment for doing their job. Without this journalism, the government would have probably never been compelled to bother telling anybody about Argus. So the fourth estate seemed to have performed its role perfectly.
- toyg 8y ago
  “Perfectly”, no: if they had done it properly, the explosions would never had happened, our precious Universe would be a bit cleaner, and scientists wouldn’t have wasted time trying to understand the resulting “unexplicable” phenomena.
  - Waterluvian 8y ago
    Cleaner? Source?
archgoon 8y ago
I think it's depicted as a little more complicated than that; the New York Times started pressuring the government to let them publish out of fear that another news agency would publish before them; which pushed the government to start doing the release, which prompted the New York Times to do it instead, preventing the government from perpetually delaying the release.

chillaxtian 8y ago

Does anyone have a link to the NYT article mentioned?

archgoon 8y ago
Can't find a public link; but this appears to be the article, if you have a New York Times subscription. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/issue.html https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/iss... https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/89163137.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/891...

Tsubasachan 8y ago

Reminds me of how the US was going to use their disposable allies in the North by intercepting Soviet ICBMs over Canada.

brokenmachine 8y ago
What plan was that?

toyg 8y ago

One thing that stuck out for me: the leak was never identified, but s/he also didn’t achieve what s/he wanted. Imagine being someone so horrified by having to work on such a project that going to the press, risking career and livelihood, is the only resort. Then you spend a few months biting your lips, and... nothing happens, because reporters sit on it. What does that do to your trust in the free press? At that point, it would be perfectly reasonable to become completely paranoid: they are all complicit, and now they know me, do they think I’m a traitor? Am I under surveillance? Two men in a car over there, could they be...?