Neutron bomb and its role in the "arms race"

Almost all Soviet people remember how the government in the 1980s frightened citizens with a new terrible weapon invented by "decaying capitalism." Politinformators in institutions and teachers at school in the most eerie colors described the danger for all living things carried by a neutron bomb, adopted in the US. It can not hide in underground bunkers or behind concrete shelters. She will not be rescued from bulletproof vests and defenses. All organisms, in case of striking, will perish, while buildings, bridges and mechanisms, with the possible exception of the epicenter of the explosion, will remain intact. Thus, the country's powerful economy of developed socialism will fall into the hands of the American military.

The insidious neutron bomb operated quite differently from the atomic or hydrogen "king-bomb", which the USSR was so proud of. When a thermonuclear explosion occurs a powerful release of thermal energy, radiation and shock waves. Atoms carrying a charge, bumping into objects, especially metals, enter into interaction with them, are held by them, and therefore the enemy forces hiding behind metal barriers are safe.

It should be noted that neither the Soviet nor the American military thought of the peaceful population, all the thoughts of the developers of new types of weapons were aimed at destroying the military might of the enemy.

But the neutron bomb, the design of which was developed by Samuel Cohen, incidentally, back in 1958, was a charge from a mixture of radioactive isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and especially tritium. As a result of the explosion, a huge number of neutrons are produced - particles that do not have a charge. Being neutral, unlike atoms, they quickly penetrated through solid and liquid physical barriers, bringing death only to the organics. Therefore, such a weapon was called the "humane" by the Pentagon.

As indicated above, the neutron bomb was invented in the late fifties. In April 1963, her first successful test at the test site was conducted. Since the mid-1970s, warheads with neutron charges have been installed on the US defense system against Soviet missiles based at Grand Forks in the state of North Dakota. What, then, shocked the Soviet government when, in August 1981, the US Security Council announced the mass production of neutron weapons? After all, it was already used by the American army for about twenty years!

The rhetoric of the Kremlin about "world peace" hid concern about the fact that our own economy is no longer able to "pull" the costs of the military-industrial complex. Indeed, since the end of the Second World War, the USSR and the States have been constantly competing in the creation of new weapons capable of destroying a potential enemy. Thus, the creation of an atomic bomb by the Americans entailed the production of a similar charge and its carrier TU-4 in the USSR. On the Russian attack - the intercontinental nuclear missile "R-7A" - the Americans responded with a Titan-2 missile.

As a "our response to Chamberlain" back in 1978, the Kremlin instructed atomic scientists at the secretive Arzamas-16 facility to develop and present Russian neutron weapons. However, it turned out that they could not overtake and overtake the United States. While only laboratory development was under way, President Ronald Reagan announced in 1983 about the creation of a program of "star wars". Compared with this grandiose program, a bomb explosion, even with a neutron charge, seemed like a shot of a baby cracker. Since the Americans reclaimed obsolete weapons, Russian scientists forgot about it.