The nuclear blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan were extraordinarily powerful explosions. Their combined power yielded an equivalent of about 36,000 tons of TNT.
Only sixteen years later, the Soviets designed a bomb 3,000 times mo…
During the Cold War, the American nuclear deterrent strategy required coming up with ways to guarantee the survival of nuclear weapons if the Soviets managed a surprise first strike. The surviving devices would then be used to destroy Soviet civiliz…
In 1951, the Navy built the SSM-N-8A Regulus cruise missile in conjunction with the Chance Vought Aircraft Company. Developed from the German V-1 missile, the Regulus was built to maintain the Navy’s relevance in the nuclear age. The turbojet-powered missile could be equipped with a nuclear payload and launched from surface ships or submarines. However, … Continued
There’s a lot about the Song-class Chinese submarine that’s special. It was the first submarine developed entirely by the People’s Republic of China and the first to use the modern teardrop hull shape. It’s also the only Chinese submarine ever to pop up in the middle of an American aircraft carrier group. In November of … Continued
A sudden flash. A mushroom cloud. A sudden expanding pressure wave. In the event of a thermonuclear attack, seeing these things means its probably too late to survive. So the U.S. developed warning systems to give Americans a heads up before the bom…
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is frequently touted as the most advanced fighter ever to take to the skies, and soon it will be certified to carry nuclear bombs.
Like all fifth generation fighters, the F-35 is a stealth platform…
The military makes a big deal out of when a rifle goes missing, not to mention when a nuke disappears. In spite of the fact the program is designed to be “zero defect,” here are 7 examples of doomsday devices wandering off (including a few wher…
During the Cold War, the Air Force and the Atomic Energy Commission (which was later folded into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) set out to create an all-new nuclear reactor that not only would be more efficient than the reactors we have today, b…
In 1952, an accident at Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories near Deep River, Ontario caused a partial meltdown in an experimental nuclear reactor. Hydrogen explosions followed and hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive water flooded the cor…
Even today, people can go on YouTube and watch videos of old military parades from the days of yore, when the Soviet Union was a constant threat to the United States. Part of those old parades included a drive by of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles driven on the back of trucks. If you watched one of … Continued