This timeline of nuclear weapons development is a
chronological catalog of the evolution of
nuclear weapons rooting from the development of the science surrounding
nuclear fission and
nuclear fusion. In addition to the scientific advancements, this timeline also includes several political events relating to the development of nuclear weapons. The availability of intelligence on recent advancements in nuclear weapons of several major countries (such as
United States and the
Soviet Union) is limited because of the classification of technical knowledge of nuclear weapons development.
1920 – Rutherford postulates the existence of a neutral particle in the atomic nucleus at a
Bakerian Lecture in
London.[2]
1924 – Writing for The Pall Mall Gazette,
Winston Churchill speculates "Might a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings – nay to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of
cordite and blast a
township at a stroke?"[3]
1933 –
Leó Szilárd realizes the concept of the
nuclear chain reaction, although no such reaction was known at the time. He invented the idea of an atomic bomb in 1933 while crossing a London street in
Russell Square. He patented it in 1934. (British patent 630,726)
1940 – May – The paper which Dr.
Yoshio Nishina of Nuclear Research Laboratory of
Riken and Professor of Chemical Institute, Faculty of Science, Imperial University of Tokyo, Kenjiro Kimura presented to
Physical Review,showed that they had produced
neptunium-237 by exposing
triuranium octoxide to fast neutrons for more than 50 hours.[6][7]
1940 – May - After the
defeat of Belgium in only 18 days, the Nazis took possession of a significant amount of high quality uranium ore from the
Belgian Congo, some still "on the docks".[8] In 1939 both Britain and France had expressed interest in securing Belgium's uranium inventory but no action was taken.[9]
1940 - June - The
French Third Republic collapses during the
Battle of France. The rapid military collapse would contribute to nearly universal French public support for a nuclear deterrent in later years.[10]
1940 – July – The paper explaining that Dr.
Yoshio Nishina and Kenjiro Kimura discovered
symmetric fission on the previously described test appeared in Nature.[11][7][12] The LibreTexts libraries based upon work supported by the
National Science Foundation says, "Multiple combinations of symmetric fission products are possible for fission chain reactions."[13] And, again, it as
fission product yield, is known that the higher the energy of the state that undergoes
nuclear fission is more likely a symmetric fission.
1940 – July – The
Soviet Academy of Sciences starts a committee to investigate the development of a nuclear bomb.
1940 – September – Belgian mining engineer
Edgar Sengier orders that half of the uranium stock available from the
Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo—about 1,050 tons—be secretly dispatched to New York by African Metals Corp., a commercial division of Union Minière.[9]: 186–187
1941 – June 15 – The MAUD Committee approves a report that a uranium bomb could be built.
1941 – June 22 –
Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, begins. Soviet nuclear research is subsequently delayed.
1941 – October – President Roosevelt receives MAUD report on the design and costs to develop a nuclear weapon. Roosevelt approves project to confirm MAUD's finding.
1942 – The
United Kingdom opts to support the United States' efforts to build a bomb rather than to pursue its own nuclear weapons program due to wartime economic damage, and allows the
Tube Alloys programme to be subsumed into the American project.[5]
1942 – April –
Joseph Stalin was first informed of the efforts to develop nuclear weapons based on a letter sent to him by
Georgii Flerov pointing out that there was nothing being published on nuclear fission since its discovery, and the prominent physicists likely involved had not been publishing at all. This urged the Soviet Union to start a nuclear weapons program.
1942 – July – The Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) relinquishes control of the
German nuclear energy project to the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council), essentially making it only a research project with objectives far short of making a weapon.
1942 – September - Lieutenant Colonel
Kenneth Nichols meets Edgar Sengier in the New York offices of Union Minière. Nichols has been ordered by General Groves to find uranium. Sengier's answer has become history: "You can have the ore now. It is in New York, a thousand tons of it. I was waiting for your visit." Nichols reaches an agreement with Sengier that an average of 400 tons of
uranium oxide will begin shipping to the US from Shinkolobwe each month.[14]
1942 – October - A special detachment from
United States Army Corps of Engineers arrives in the
Belgian Congo to reopen the
Shinkolobwe mine. Work involves draining water from flooded workings, upgrading the plant machinery and constructing transportation facilities.[9]: 3, 6–7, 11
1942 – November - The first uranium oxide shipment leaves the Congolese port of
Lobito (it will later change to
Matadi because of better security). Only two shipments will ever be lost at sea. Aerodromes at
Elizabethville and
Leopoldville are expanded with US assistance. The
OSS is employed to prevent ore smuggling to Nazi Germany.[9]: 3, 6–7, 11 [8]: 45–49
1943 – March – The Japanese Committee on Research in the Application of Nuclear Physics, chaired by
Yoshio Nishina concludes in a report that while an atomic bomb was feasible, it would be unlikely to produce one during the war.
Japan then concentrated on research into
radar.
1943 – April – Introductory lectures begin at Los Alamos, which later are compiled into The Los Alamos Primer.
1948 – September – The Soviet Union launches its first ballistic missile, a reverse-engineered version of the V-2 rocket later renamed the
R-1 rocket.[15]
1948 – The United States transfers nuclear-capable B-29 bombers to Europe during the
Berlin Blockade.[20]
1949 – August 29 – The Soviet Union conducts its first
atomic test,
RDS-1 (nicknamed
Joe 1 by the Americans).[18]
1949 – September 3 – U.S. atmospheric monitoring flights begin detecting effects of the Soviet test.[18]
1949 – September 23 – President Truman announces that the Soviets have conducted an atomic test.[18]
1950 – January 31 – President Harry S. Truman authorizes the development of the hydrogen bomb.[5]
1950 – March 10 – President Truman instructs AEC to prepare for hydrogen bomb production.[18]
1950 – April 7 – The National Security Council issues its classified
NSC 68policy paper advocating for the United States to expand its conventional and nuclear arms in response to the Cold War and the decline of former
great powers such as the United Kingdom, France, and Japan. President Truman takes the paper's advice and triples U.S. military expenditures over the course of three years.[22]
1951 – President Truman establishes the
CONELRAD emergency broadcasting system to alert the United States to an enemy attack. The system is later succeeded by the
Emergency Broadcast System in 1963 and the
Emergency Alert System in 1997.
1951 – The United States opens the
Nevada Test Site for nuclear weapons tests.
1951 –
China and the Soviet Union sign an agreement whereby China would supply
uranium ore in exchange for technical assistance in producing nuclear weapons.
1953 – The first nuclear-tipped rockets are deployed by the United States. The
MGR-1 Honest John is such as example.
1953 – February – President Eisenhower considers using nuclear weapons when negotiations on the
Korean Armistice Agreement stalled.[20]
1953 – August 12 – The Soviet Union conducts its first test of a
hydrogen bomb, nicknamed
Joe 4 by the Americans. Unlike the American hydrogen bomb, the Soviet
RDS-4 design is deliverable.[5]
1953 – August 20 – The United States test-fires the
PGM-11 Redstone rocket, its first ballistic missile.
1953 – October 30 – The United States formalizes its
New Look foreign policy through
NSC 162/2, emphasizing the United States's superiority in nuclear and conventional forces.
1956 – October–November – The Soviet Union threatens nuclear strikes against the United Kingdom and France during the
Suez Crisis.[29]
1956 – November 30 –
France establishes a secret committee for the Military Applications of Atomic Energy under
Pierre Guillaumat and
Yves Rocard. It establishes a secret protocol between the CEA and the
Ministry of Defence for procuring weapons material.[5]
1957 – In response to the new threat of Soviet ICBMs, the U.S. Army accelerates production on the
Nike Zeus missile, an
anti-ballistic missile designed to intercept ICBMs in mid-air.
1958 – The United States and the United Kingdom sign the
1958 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement. This is a bilateral treaty on nuclear weapons cooperation signed after the United Kingdom successfully tested a
hydrogen bomb during
Operation Grapple. Under the agreement the United States supplies the United Kingdom with nuclear weapons through
Project E.
1958 – The U.S. Air Force drafts
Project A119, a classified plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the
Moon. The plan is quickly cancelled in favor of a
Moon landing.
1958 – The United States considers a nuclear strike on China during the
Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, in which China resumed its bombardment of Kinmen and the Matsu Islands.[37]
1958 – January – The United States deploys nuclear weapons to South Korea.[38]
1958 – November 10 – Soviet General Secretary
Nikita Khrushchev makes a speech demanding the withdrawal of American, British, and French forces from
West Berlin, beginning a series of political crises.[41][42]
1960 –
Operation Chrome Dome, in which nuclear-armed B-52 bombers are continually flown by the U.S. Air Force close to the Soviet Union on continuous alert, begins.
1961 –
Australia considers purchasing nuclear weapons from the United Kingdom, but the idea is rejected by the
Cabinet of Prime Minister
Robert Menzies.[46][47]
1961 - President Kennedy announces that the federal government will begin the construction of
fallout shelters.[48]
1961 – October 27 – The
Berlin crisis occurring after the construction of the
Berlin Wall by
East German authorities culminates when the United States deploys tanks to
Checkpoint Charlie, a move reciprocated by the Soviet Union. President Kennedy and General Secretary Khrushchev ultimately negotiate the removal of the tanks through diplomatic
backchannels and prevent a war.[42][41]
1961 – October 30 – The Soviet Union detonates
Tsar Bomba, the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.
1963 – August – President Kennedy considers using conventional and nuclear air strikes against China's nuclear facilities to prevent it from developing an atomic bomb.
1965 – Pakistan constructs a research reactor purchased from the United States.
1965 – The television
docudramaThe War Game is filmed in the United Kingdom as an episode of The Wednesday Playanthology series providing a realistic depiction of a nuclear war. Although the film's broadcast is blocked by the
BBC and the British government for 20 years due to its disturbing content, it is released abroad to critical acclaim, and receives the
1966 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in the United States.
1965 – The Command Center for the Office of Emergency Planning mistakes the
Northeast blackout for a nuclear attack.[51]
1966 – France withdraws from
SHAPE and the
NATO integrated command structure due to disputes over its nuclear weapons and does not rejoin until 2009.[52]
1966 – The United States' nuclear stockpile peaks at 31,149 warheads.[53]
1966 - China begins moving its nuclear facilities into the interior during its
Third Five-Year Plan.[26]
1966 - October 27 - China tests a nuclear-armed
Dongfeng-2 missile, which launches from
Shuangchengzi Space and Missile Center and strikes Lop Nur. It is the only time a country has tested an armed nuclear missile over populated areas.[26]
1967 – January – President Johnson claims that the Soviet Union has constructed an anti-ballistic missile barrier around Moscow.[54]
1967 – September – The United Kingdom assists France in thermonuclear weapons development in a failed attempt to lobby France to allow Britain to join the
European Economic Community.[5]
1967 - The United States provides Iran with a 5-megawatt research reactor at the
University of Tehran and supplies of enriched uranium.[34]
1968 – January 28 – An
aircraft accident occurs when an American B-52 bomber armed with a
Mark 28 nuclear bomb bound for
Thule Air Base,
Greenland, has an in-flight fire and is forced to make a crash landing in
North Star Bay, resulting in the detonation of the bomb's conventional explosives and the release of radioactive contamination over Greenland. The accident causes the cancellation of Operation Chrome Dome.
1969 – The United Kingdom transfers its strategic nuclear warheads to its
Polaris submarines away from the aging
V-bomber fleet.[5]
1969 – October –
President Richard Nixon, as part of his "
madman theory" postulating that the Soviet Union would avoid aggressive acts if they feared an unpredictable response from the United States, and
National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger approve
Operation Giant Lance, an operation involving nuclear-armed B-52 bombers flying near the Soviet border to simulate an American nuclear attack.
1972 – March 26 – The SALT I Agreement is ratified between the United States and the Soviet Union, leading to the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
1972 – April 25 – President Nixon proposes using nuclear weapons to end the Vietnam War, but is quickly dissuaded by National Security Advisor Kissinger.[20][60]
1973 – October – Israel considers using nuclear weapons during the
Yom Kippur War, while the Soviet Union considers transporting nuclear weapons to Egypt and causes the United States to place its military on high alert.[61][62]
1975 – The number of American nuclear warheads deployed in the
Atlantic Ocean peaks at 4,500.[64]
1975 - China deploys its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the
Dong-Feng 4.
1975 -
Brazil purchases a nuclear reactor from West Germany, a move criticized by the United States and Mexico due to concerns that it will use the reactor to produce nuclear weapons.[65]
1975 – December – Khan returns to Pakistan with photographs and blueprints from his job.[5]
1977 – March – The
Boeing E-3 Sentry is introduced as NATO's primary AWACS aircraft.
1977 – July 13 –
Somalia invades
Ethiopia in the
Ogaden War, and congressional support for SALT II in the United States weakens as a result of Soviet intervention in the war.[68]
1979 – June 18 – General Secretary Brezhnev and President Carter sign the SALT II Agreement in
Vienna agreeing to limit
strategic nuclear weapons.
1979 – September 22 – An American
Vela Hotel satellite records a strange double-flash of light near the
Prince Edward Islands in
Antarctica known as the
Vela incident. The flash is widely believed to have been caused by a nuclear test, possibly carried out by South Africa or Israel.
1979 – November 9 – A
computer glitch at NORAD creates a false alarm for a Soviet missile launch, and U.S. nuclear forces prepare for a retaliatory strike.[70]
1983 – September 26 – A
false alarm occurs in the Soviet Union when the
Okoearly-warning system malfunctions and erroneously reports an incoming American missile strike. The
Soviet Air Defense Forces command officer at the
Serpukhov-15 bunker, Lieutenant Colonel
Stanislav Petrov, correctly deduces that the alarm was false and does not report it to his superiors, preventing a retaliatory strike.[75][76]
1983 – 2 November-11 November – The Soviet Union, which had been monitoring American nuclear forces through the
KGB's
Operation RYAN, mistakes NATO's
Able Archer 83command post exercise for genuine preparations for a preemptive nuclear strike, and places its forces in East Germany and Poland on high alert.[77]
1990 - July – NATO issues the
London Declaration declaring its relations with the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union to be no longer adversarial and urging reductions in tactical nuclear forces in Europe.[85][86]
1990 – October 16 – The
Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is ratified in the United States, providing monetary compensation to victims of radiation-related illnesses, including cancer, caused by contact with nuclear testing and
uranium mining.
1991 –
South Africa signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; they also announce that from 1979 to 1989, they had built and then dismantled a number of nuclear weapons. The IAEA confirms that the program has been fully dismantled.
1991 – France and China ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.[26]
1993 – The United States agrees to purchase excess highly enriched uranium from dismantled Soviet nuclear warheads from Russia for conversion into lower-grade uranium for electricity production through the
Megatons to Megawatts Program.[89]
1993 – North Korea rejects IAEA inspections and threatens to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.[90]
1994 – January – The United States and Russia negotiate a
detargeting agreement that they will no longer directly target each other with nuclear weapons.
1994 – After a meeting between Kim Il-Sung and Jimmy Carter and the ratification of the
Agreed Framework, North Korea agrees to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for
aid, easing of
sanctions, and two civilian
light-water reactors, which are built by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Corporation.[90]
1994 – December 10 – Ukraine agrees to the
Budapest Memorandum transferring its strategic nuclear weapons to Russia and dismantling its nuclear infrastructure through the U.S.-sponsored
Cooperative Threat Reduction Program in exchange for a guarantee of sovereignty from Russia.[87]
1995 – The
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is ratified by
168 states. India, Pakistan, and North Korea have not signed the Treaty while China, Iran, Israel, and the United States have signed but not ratified it.
1995 – Russia agrees to complete the
Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran that had been commenced by West Germany in the 1970s.[5]
1998 – May – India tests five more nuclear weapons as part of
Operation Shakti at the
Pokhran test site. This was India's second round of nuclear weapons testing.
2000 – January – Russia publicly begins to reformulate its doctrine to include the possibility of a nuclear response to a large-scale conventional attack.[29]
2003 – North Korea withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
2003 – North Korea announces that it has several nuclear explosives. The
Six-Party Talks begin in
Beijing.[90]
2003 – December –
Libya announces the closure of its
WMD programs, including an early attempt to develop an atomic bomb using designs from Abdul Qadeer Khan.[5]
2005 – August – In
Iran,
AyatollahAli Khamenei issued a
fatwa forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons.
2006 – May – The United States begins preparing missile defense systems in the
Czech Republic and
Poland.[16]
2006 - April 11 - President Ahmedinejad announces that Iran has produced enriched uranium in defiance of the UN and the IAEA, leading to
sanctions.[98][99]
2006 – July – Prior to the
32nd G8 summit, Russia threatens to retaliate to missile defense preparations in Eastern Europe by targeting European urban centers.[16]
2008 – The
Russian Navy conducts ten limited patrols with its strategic nuclear submarines, its greatest amount since the collapse of the Soviet Union.[15]
2008 – January – Israel is believed to have tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the
Jericho III.[101]
2010 – November 2 – The United Kingdom and France agree to closer cooperation regarding nuclear forces in the
Lancaster House Treaties.[10]
2012 – Russia announces that it will resume regular patrols with its SSBN fleet in
international waters.[15]
2012 – April 19 – India tests its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the
Agni-V.
2012 – October – The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that Russia will not renew the framework for cooperation with the United States on nuclear dismantlement after the expiration of the Nunn-Lugar Act.[29]
2013 – June – President Obama proposes reducing American strategic nuclear weapons to their lowest point since 1953 in a speech at the
Brandenburg Gate in
Berlin.[104]
2015 – Under the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran agrees to limit its uranium-enrichment operations in exchange for submitting to IAEA inspections and reduced sanctions.
2016 – May 27 – President Obama becomes the first American head of state to visit Hiroshima, expressing sympathy for victims but not issuing a public apology for the bombings as many expected.[105]
2018 – June 12 – Trump and Kim meet at the
2018 North Korea–United States Singapore Summit, the first American and North Korean heads of state to meet, and issue a joint declaration pledging a denuclearized Korea.
2019 – February – The United States and Russia withdraw from the INF Treaty.
^
abCrane, Conrad C. (June 2000). "To avert impending disaster: American military plans to use atomic weapons during the Korean War". Journal of Strategic Studies. 23 (2): 72–88.
doi:
10.1080/01402390008437791.
ISSN0140-2390.
S2CID154742337.
^M., Cole, Paul (1994). Sweden without the bomb : the conduct of a nuclear-capable nation without nuclear weapons. United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Office of Research and Development., Rand Corporation. National Security Research Division. Santa Monica, CA: Rand.
ISBN0833015834.
OCLC31300407.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)
^Quester, George H. (2016-04-21).
"Missiles in Cuba, 1970". Foreign Affairs: America and the World. No. April 1971.
ISSN0015-7120. Retrieved 2019-06-11.
This timeline of nuclear weapons development is a
chronological catalog of the evolution of
nuclear weapons rooting from the development of the science surrounding
nuclear fission and
nuclear fusion. In addition to the scientific advancements, this timeline also includes several political events relating to the development of nuclear weapons. The availability of intelligence on recent advancements in nuclear weapons of several major countries (such as
United States and the
Soviet Union) is limited because of the classification of technical knowledge of nuclear weapons development.
1920 – Rutherford postulates the existence of a neutral particle in the atomic nucleus at a
Bakerian Lecture in
London.[2]
1924 – Writing for The Pall Mall Gazette,
Winston Churchill speculates "Might a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings – nay to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of
cordite and blast a
township at a stroke?"[3]
1933 –
Leó Szilárd realizes the concept of the
nuclear chain reaction, although no such reaction was known at the time. He invented the idea of an atomic bomb in 1933 while crossing a London street in
Russell Square. He patented it in 1934. (British patent 630,726)
1940 – May – The paper which Dr.
Yoshio Nishina of Nuclear Research Laboratory of
Riken and Professor of Chemical Institute, Faculty of Science, Imperial University of Tokyo, Kenjiro Kimura presented to
Physical Review,showed that they had produced
neptunium-237 by exposing
triuranium octoxide to fast neutrons for more than 50 hours.[6][7]
1940 – May - After the
defeat of Belgium in only 18 days, the Nazis took possession of a significant amount of high quality uranium ore from the
Belgian Congo, some still "on the docks".[8] In 1939 both Britain and France had expressed interest in securing Belgium's uranium inventory but no action was taken.[9]
1940 - June - The
French Third Republic collapses during the
Battle of France. The rapid military collapse would contribute to nearly universal French public support for a nuclear deterrent in later years.[10]
1940 – July – The paper explaining that Dr.
Yoshio Nishina and Kenjiro Kimura discovered
symmetric fission on the previously described test appeared in Nature.[11][7][12] The LibreTexts libraries based upon work supported by the
National Science Foundation says, "Multiple combinations of symmetric fission products are possible for fission chain reactions."[13] And, again, it as
fission product yield, is known that the higher the energy of the state that undergoes
nuclear fission is more likely a symmetric fission.
1940 – July – The
Soviet Academy of Sciences starts a committee to investigate the development of a nuclear bomb.
1940 – September – Belgian mining engineer
Edgar Sengier orders that half of the uranium stock available from the
Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo—about 1,050 tons—be secretly dispatched to New York by African Metals Corp., a commercial division of Union Minière.[9]: 186–187
1941 – June 15 – The MAUD Committee approves a report that a uranium bomb could be built.
1941 – June 22 –
Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, begins. Soviet nuclear research is subsequently delayed.
1941 – October – President Roosevelt receives MAUD report on the design and costs to develop a nuclear weapon. Roosevelt approves project to confirm MAUD's finding.
1942 – The
United Kingdom opts to support the United States' efforts to build a bomb rather than to pursue its own nuclear weapons program due to wartime economic damage, and allows the
Tube Alloys programme to be subsumed into the American project.[5]
1942 – April –
Joseph Stalin was first informed of the efforts to develop nuclear weapons based on a letter sent to him by
Georgii Flerov pointing out that there was nothing being published on nuclear fission since its discovery, and the prominent physicists likely involved had not been publishing at all. This urged the Soviet Union to start a nuclear weapons program.
1942 – July – The Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) relinquishes control of the
German nuclear energy project to the Reichsforschungsrat (RFR, Reich Research Council), essentially making it only a research project with objectives far short of making a weapon.
1942 – September - Lieutenant Colonel
Kenneth Nichols meets Edgar Sengier in the New York offices of Union Minière. Nichols has been ordered by General Groves to find uranium. Sengier's answer has become history: "You can have the ore now. It is in New York, a thousand tons of it. I was waiting for your visit." Nichols reaches an agreement with Sengier that an average of 400 tons of
uranium oxide will begin shipping to the US from Shinkolobwe each month.[14]
1942 – October - A special detachment from
United States Army Corps of Engineers arrives in the
Belgian Congo to reopen the
Shinkolobwe mine. Work involves draining water from flooded workings, upgrading the plant machinery and constructing transportation facilities.[9]: 3, 6–7, 11
1942 – November - The first uranium oxide shipment leaves the Congolese port of
Lobito (it will later change to
Matadi because of better security). Only two shipments will ever be lost at sea. Aerodromes at
Elizabethville and
Leopoldville are expanded with US assistance. The
OSS is employed to prevent ore smuggling to Nazi Germany.[9]: 3, 6–7, 11 [8]: 45–49
1943 – March – The Japanese Committee on Research in the Application of Nuclear Physics, chaired by
Yoshio Nishina concludes in a report that while an atomic bomb was feasible, it would be unlikely to produce one during the war.
Japan then concentrated on research into
radar.
1943 – April – Introductory lectures begin at Los Alamos, which later are compiled into The Los Alamos Primer.
1948 – September – The Soviet Union launches its first ballistic missile, a reverse-engineered version of the V-2 rocket later renamed the
R-1 rocket.[15]
1948 – The United States transfers nuclear-capable B-29 bombers to Europe during the
Berlin Blockade.[20]
1949 – August 29 – The Soviet Union conducts its first
atomic test,
RDS-1 (nicknamed
Joe 1 by the Americans).[18]
1949 – September 3 – U.S. atmospheric monitoring flights begin detecting effects of the Soviet test.[18]
1949 – September 23 – President Truman announces that the Soviets have conducted an atomic test.[18]
1950 – January 31 – President Harry S. Truman authorizes the development of the hydrogen bomb.[5]
1950 – March 10 – President Truman instructs AEC to prepare for hydrogen bomb production.[18]
1950 – April 7 – The National Security Council issues its classified
NSC 68policy paper advocating for the United States to expand its conventional and nuclear arms in response to the Cold War and the decline of former
great powers such as the United Kingdom, France, and Japan. President Truman takes the paper's advice and triples U.S. military expenditures over the course of three years.[22]
1951 – President Truman establishes the
CONELRAD emergency broadcasting system to alert the United States to an enemy attack. The system is later succeeded by the
Emergency Broadcast System in 1963 and the
Emergency Alert System in 1997.
1951 – The United States opens the
Nevada Test Site for nuclear weapons tests.
1951 –
China and the Soviet Union sign an agreement whereby China would supply
uranium ore in exchange for technical assistance in producing nuclear weapons.
1953 – The first nuclear-tipped rockets are deployed by the United States. The
MGR-1 Honest John is such as example.
1953 – February – President Eisenhower considers using nuclear weapons when negotiations on the
Korean Armistice Agreement stalled.[20]
1953 – August 12 – The Soviet Union conducts its first test of a
hydrogen bomb, nicknamed
Joe 4 by the Americans. Unlike the American hydrogen bomb, the Soviet
RDS-4 design is deliverable.[5]
1953 – August 20 – The United States test-fires the
PGM-11 Redstone rocket, its first ballistic missile.
1953 – October 30 – The United States formalizes its
New Look foreign policy through
NSC 162/2, emphasizing the United States's superiority in nuclear and conventional forces.
1956 – October–November – The Soviet Union threatens nuclear strikes against the United Kingdom and France during the
Suez Crisis.[29]
1956 – November 30 –
France establishes a secret committee for the Military Applications of Atomic Energy under
Pierre Guillaumat and
Yves Rocard. It establishes a secret protocol between the CEA and the
Ministry of Defence for procuring weapons material.[5]
1957 – In response to the new threat of Soviet ICBMs, the U.S. Army accelerates production on the
Nike Zeus missile, an
anti-ballistic missile designed to intercept ICBMs in mid-air.
1958 – The United States and the United Kingdom sign the
1958 US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement. This is a bilateral treaty on nuclear weapons cooperation signed after the United Kingdom successfully tested a
hydrogen bomb during
Operation Grapple. Under the agreement the United States supplies the United Kingdom with nuclear weapons through
Project E.
1958 – The U.S. Air Force drafts
Project A119, a classified plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the
Moon. The plan is quickly cancelled in favor of a
Moon landing.
1958 – The United States considers a nuclear strike on China during the
Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, in which China resumed its bombardment of Kinmen and the Matsu Islands.[37]
1958 – January – The United States deploys nuclear weapons to South Korea.[38]
1958 – November 10 – Soviet General Secretary
Nikita Khrushchev makes a speech demanding the withdrawal of American, British, and French forces from
West Berlin, beginning a series of political crises.[41][42]
1960 –
Operation Chrome Dome, in which nuclear-armed B-52 bombers are continually flown by the U.S. Air Force close to the Soviet Union on continuous alert, begins.
1961 –
Australia considers purchasing nuclear weapons from the United Kingdom, but the idea is rejected by the
Cabinet of Prime Minister
Robert Menzies.[46][47]
1961 - President Kennedy announces that the federal government will begin the construction of
fallout shelters.[48]
1961 – October 27 – The
Berlin crisis occurring after the construction of the
Berlin Wall by
East German authorities culminates when the United States deploys tanks to
Checkpoint Charlie, a move reciprocated by the Soviet Union. President Kennedy and General Secretary Khrushchev ultimately negotiate the removal of the tanks through diplomatic
backchannels and prevent a war.[42][41]
1961 – October 30 – The Soviet Union detonates
Tsar Bomba, the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated.
1963 – August – President Kennedy considers using conventional and nuclear air strikes against China's nuclear facilities to prevent it from developing an atomic bomb.
1965 – Pakistan constructs a research reactor purchased from the United States.
1965 – The television
docudramaThe War Game is filmed in the United Kingdom as an episode of The Wednesday Playanthology series providing a realistic depiction of a nuclear war. Although the film's broadcast is blocked by the
BBC and the British government for 20 years due to its disturbing content, it is released abroad to critical acclaim, and receives the
1966 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in the United States.
1965 – The Command Center for the Office of Emergency Planning mistakes the
Northeast blackout for a nuclear attack.[51]
1966 – France withdraws from
SHAPE and the
NATO integrated command structure due to disputes over its nuclear weapons and does not rejoin until 2009.[52]
1966 – The United States' nuclear stockpile peaks at 31,149 warheads.[53]
1966 - China begins moving its nuclear facilities into the interior during its
Third Five-Year Plan.[26]
1966 - October 27 - China tests a nuclear-armed
Dongfeng-2 missile, which launches from
Shuangchengzi Space and Missile Center and strikes Lop Nur. It is the only time a country has tested an armed nuclear missile over populated areas.[26]
1967 – January – President Johnson claims that the Soviet Union has constructed an anti-ballistic missile barrier around Moscow.[54]
1967 – September – The United Kingdom assists France in thermonuclear weapons development in a failed attempt to lobby France to allow Britain to join the
European Economic Community.[5]
1967 - The United States provides Iran with a 5-megawatt research reactor at the
University of Tehran and supplies of enriched uranium.[34]
1968 – January 28 – An
aircraft accident occurs when an American B-52 bomber armed with a
Mark 28 nuclear bomb bound for
Thule Air Base,
Greenland, has an in-flight fire and is forced to make a crash landing in
North Star Bay, resulting in the detonation of the bomb's conventional explosives and the release of radioactive contamination over Greenland. The accident causes the cancellation of Operation Chrome Dome.
1969 – The United Kingdom transfers its strategic nuclear warheads to its
Polaris submarines away from the aging
V-bomber fleet.[5]
1969 – October –
President Richard Nixon, as part of his "
madman theory" postulating that the Soviet Union would avoid aggressive acts if they feared an unpredictable response from the United States, and
National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger approve
Operation Giant Lance, an operation involving nuclear-armed B-52 bombers flying near the Soviet border to simulate an American nuclear attack.
1972 – March 26 – The SALT I Agreement is ratified between the United States and the Soviet Union, leading to the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
1972 – April 25 – President Nixon proposes using nuclear weapons to end the Vietnam War, but is quickly dissuaded by National Security Advisor Kissinger.[20][60]
1973 – October – Israel considers using nuclear weapons during the
Yom Kippur War, while the Soviet Union considers transporting nuclear weapons to Egypt and causes the United States to place its military on high alert.[61][62]
1975 – The number of American nuclear warheads deployed in the
Atlantic Ocean peaks at 4,500.[64]
1975 - China deploys its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the
Dong-Feng 4.
1975 -
Brazil purchases a nuclear reactor from West Germany, a move criticized by the United States and Mexico due to concerns that it will use the reactor to produce nuclear weapons.[65]
1975 – December – Khan returns to Pakistan with photographs and blueprints from his job.[5]
1977 – March – The
Boeing E-3 Sentry is introduced as NATO's primary AWACS aircraft.
1977 – July 13 –
Somalia invades
Ethiopia in the
Ogaden War, and congressional support for SALT II in the United States weakens as a result of Soviet intervention in the war.[68]
1979 – June 18 – General Secretary Brezhnev and President Carter sign the SALT II Agreement in
Vienna agreeing to limit
strategic nuclear weapons.
1979 – September 22 – An American
Vela Hotel satellite records a strange double-flash of light near the
Prince Edward Islands in
Antarctica known as the
Vela incident. The flash is widely believed to have been caused by a nuclear test, possibly carried out by South Africa or Israel.
1979 – November 9 – A
computer glitch at NORAD creates a false alarm for a Soviet missile launch, and U.S. nuclear forces prepare for a retaliatory strike.[70]
1983 – September 26 – A
false alarm occurs in the Soviet Union when the
Okoearly-warning system malfunctions and erroneously reports an incoming American missile strike. The
Soviet Air Defense Forces command officer at the
Serpukhov-15 bunker, Lieutenant Colonel
Stanislav Petrov, correctly deduces that the alarm was false and does not report it to his superiors, preventing a retaliatory strike.[75][76]
1983 – 2 November-11 November – The Soviet Union, which had been monitoring American nuclear forces through the
KGB's
Operation RYAN, mistakes NATO's
Able Archer 83command post exercise for genuine preparations for a preemptive nuclear strike, and places its forces in East Germany and Poland on high alert.[77]
1990 - July – NATO issues the
London Declaration declaring its relations with the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union to be no longer adversarial and urging reductions in tactical nuclear forces in Europe.[85][86]
1990 – October 16 – The
Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is ratified in the United States, providing monetary compensation to victims of radiation-related illnesses, including cancer, caused by contact with nuclear testing and
uranium mining.
1991 –
South Africa signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; they also announce that from 1979 to 1989, they had built and then dismantled a number of nuclear weapons. The IAEA confirms that the program has been fully dismantled.
1991 – France and China ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.[26]
1993 – The United States agrees to purchase excess highly enriched uranium from dismantled Soviet nuclear warheads from Russia for conversion into lower-grade uranium for electricity production through the
Megatons to Megawatts Program.[89]
1993 – North Korea rejects IAEA inspections and threatens to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.[90]
1994 – January – The United States and Russia negotiate a
detargeting agreement that they will no longer directly target each other with nuclear weapons.
1994 – After a meeting between Kim Il-Sung and Jimmy Carter and the ratification of the
Agreed Framework, North Korea agrees to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for
aid, easing of
sanctions, and two civilian
light-water reactors, which are built by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Corporation.[90]
1994 – December 10 – Ukraine agrees to the
Budapest Memorandum transferring its strategic nuclear weapons to Russia and dismantling its nuclear infrastructure through the U.S.-sponsored
Cooperative Threat Reduction Program in exchange for a guarantee of sovereignty from Russia.[87]
1995 – The
Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is ratified by
168 states. India, Pakistan, and North Korea have not signed the Treaty while China, Iran, Israel, and the United States have signed but not ratified it.
1995 – Russia agrees to complete the
Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran that had been commenced by West Germany in the 1970s.[5]
1998 – May – India tests five more nuclear weapons as part of
Operation Shakti at the
Pokhran test site. This was India's second round of nuclear weapons testing.
2000 – January – Russia publicly begins to reformulate its doctrine to include the possibility of a nuclear response to a large-scale conventional attack.[29]
2003 – North Korea withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
2003 – North Korea announces that it has several nuclear explosives. The
Six-Party Talks begin in
Beijing.[90]
2003 – December –
Libya announces the closure of its
WMD programs, including an early attempt to develop an atomic bomb using designs from Abdul Qadeer Khan.[5]
2005 – August – In
Iran,
AyatollahAli Khamenei issued a
fatwa forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons.
2006 – May – The United States begins preparing missile defense systems in the
Czech Republic and
Poland.[16]
2006 - April 11 - President Ahmedinejad announces that Iran has produced enriched uranium in defiance of the UN and the IAEA, leading to
sanctions.[98][99]
2006 – July – Prior to the
32nd G8 summit, Russia threatens to retaliate to missile defense preparations in Eastern Europe by targeting European urban centers.[16]
2008 – The
Russian Navy conducts ten limited patrols with its strategic nuclear submarines, its greatest amount since the collapse of the Soviet Union.[15]
2008 – January – Israel is believed to have tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the
Jericho III.[101]
2010 – November 2 – The United Kingdom and France agree to closer cooperation regarding nuclear forces in the
Lancaster House Treaties.[10]
2012 – Russia announces that it will resume regular patrols with its SSBN fleet in
international waters.[15]
2012 – April 19 – India tests its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the
Agni-V.
2012 – October – The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that Russia will not renew the framework for cooperation with the United States on nuclear dismantlement after the expiration of the Nunn-Lugar Act.[29]
2013 – June – President Obama proposes reducing American strategic nuclear weapons to their lowest point since 1953 in a speech at the
Brandenburg Gate in
Berlin.[104]
2015 – Under the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran agrees to limit its uranium-enrichment operations in exchange for submitting to IAEA inspections and reduced sanctions.
2016 – May 27 – President Obama becomes the first American head of state to visit Hiroshima, expressing sympathy for victims but not issuing a public apology for the bombings as many expected.[105]
2018 – June 12 – Trump and Kim meet at the
2018 North Korea–United States Singapore Summit, the first American and North Korean heads of state to meet, and issue a joint declaration pledging a denuclearized Korea.
2019 – February – The United States and Russia withdraw from the INF Treaty.
^
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^M., Cole, Paul (1994). Sweden without the bomb : the conduct of a nuclear-capable nation without nuclear weapons. United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Office of Research and Development., Rand Corporation. National Security Research Division. Santa Monica, CA: Rand.
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"Missiles in Cuba, 1970". Foreign Affairs: America and the World. No. April 1971.
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