
Operation Argus: How a Cold-War Secret Was Revealed - matt4077
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/operation-argus-how-cold-war-secret-new-york-times/575983/
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toyg
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...?

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dmurray
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".

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Waterluvian
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.

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toyg
“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
Cleaner? Source?

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

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brokenmachine
What plan was that?

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chillaxtian
Does anyone have a link to the NYT article mentioned?

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archgoon
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/iss...](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/issue.html)

[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/891...](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/03/19/89163137.pdf)

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CamperBob2
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.

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akiselev
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.

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dylan604
>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.

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haloux
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.

