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Honorable Henry M. Jackson
Chairman, Subcommittee on Military Applications
Joint Committee on Atomic Energy
Congress of the United States
Dear Senator Jackson:
—. During General Starbird's appearance before the Subcommittee on
Military Applications of the Joint Committee on January 23, 1956,
bs a discussion took place relative to the testing of Live nucleer
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relative to the need for the testing of the complete weapons to
include nuclear warheads.
In producing a nuclear warhead for a missile, as for a bomb, it. is
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necessary to follow a procedure whereby the weapon is tested in
various stages of development so as to insure that it will operate
reliably upon completion and be capable of being stockpiled even
without a true proof test of the complete warhesd-miesile system.
The procedure followed mekea use of extensive laboratory tests and
of flight tests to achieve this reliability.
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As requested at
hearing, the following elaboration of testimony is provided
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Pre-production test programe can be divided inte three phases.
In
the first phase a laboratory nuclear device ia produced and fired
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‘eget9 resulting nuclear system design is usually sufficiently close to
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dQ the laboratory device design to insure « reliably predicted behavior —
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for the stockpile weapon.
In the second phase the non-nuclear
components developed for the stockpile version are tested individually
in the lsboratory. Here, by means of test celis, cold-chambere,
vibrators and other environment simulating equipment, the resistance
and functioning of these components ere examined under conditions
more extreme than expected in actual employment. In the third phase
all components sre assembled and tested as a complete system with
the exception that dumy nuclear material and usually dummy bigh
explosives ere substituted for the live mterial. The arming, ‘fusing
‘and firing systems are all sequentially proven in this stage, in
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