Science, Technology and Society Weapons of Mass Destruction

The first major development of the United States in the Nuclear Arms Race was the development of the first atomic bomb that was dropped on the Japan city of Hiroshima & Nagasaki during last days of the World War II to make the Japanese surrender. This was only the time when USA has used the nuclear weapons.

The United States had a test of its first hydrogen bomb on 1st of November 1952. Soviet had also tested the same bomb three years later.

The Soviet Union's greatest strength is its land-based missile force. It outnumbers the US both in missile and in warheads. The reason is that because its missiles are much more heavily MIRVed than the American land based Minuteman.The Soviet's have also concentrated on intermediate- range missiles based in Europe(Cirincione, 25-125).

Soviet's major development during the Cold War was the Sputnik-1 in October 1957 which introduced the world to the fear of a missile attack. Due to the development of Sputnik, it led to the making of the Inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM's). In 1960, Russians spent their money in making more of the ICBM's than the US without caring for the quality like the US.

Nuclear-weapons data is extremely sensitive, so it's difficult to sort through public information about whether reactor-grade plutonium can be weaponized. Some prominent individuals have singled out reactor-grade plutonium as a weak link in proliferation barriers.

Other knowledgeable individuals have interpreted public data to indicate that making nuclear weapons out of reactor-grade plutonium has been over-hyped. This particular Knol is devoted to describing and clarifying the controversy. While no final judgment can be made on the basis of public information, there is considerable circumstantial information to advise the difficulties of even trying to make such inferior weapons(Kathleen et al., 23).

Particularly unjustified has been selective “milking” of publications written by the former head of Los Alamos' weapons-theory branch early in the Cold War. Some nonproliferation dogmatists have been exploiting his written words to support their otherwise unfounded alarmism.

Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START)This treaty was signed by The US & the USSR. It was to reduce and limit the strategic offensive arms. This treaty is the largest and the most comples arms control treaty in the history. It was first proposed by United States President 'Ronald Reagan' in Geneva on 29th June 1982 and its final implementation in late 2001. In the treaty it says that the two countries USA and the USSR cannot deploy more than 6,000 nuclear warheads a top of total of 1,600 ICBM's, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bombers.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT or NNPT)This treaty limits the spread of nuclear weapons. It opened for the signatures of all the countries on 1st of July 1968. Currently there are 189 countries who have signed the treaty. It also includes the five countries which have nuclear weapons. The countries are US, USSR, UK, France & People's Republic of China (the permanent members of the UN Security Council). Only India, Israel, Pakistan & North Korea, ...