Effects Experiments
All the CASTLE shots tested new weapon developments.
Priorities of
time and space and go or no-go considerations favored the weapon development experiments over the effects experiments.
Although the effects ex-
periments were clearly secondary, they directly involved a relatively
large number of DOD organizations and individuals and are therefore of
prime importance for this report.
[In fact, the total support requirements
for the effects experiments were 60 percent of the total support requirement
(Reference 4, p.
57).
The effects experiments were intended to acquire urgently needed military data that could not be obtained from the smaller yield tests at the
Nevada Proving Ground
(NPG), now called the Nevada Test Site
experiments may be classed into two general kinds.
(NTS).
These
The first class of
measurements was made to document the hostile environment created by the
nuclear detonation.
The second class of effects experiments documented
the response of systems to the hostile environment; these measurements are
termed systems response experiments.
ENVIRONMENTAL MEASUREMENTS.
The purpose of environmental measurements
was to gain a comprehensive view of the hostile environment created by a
nuclear detonation to allow military planners to design survivable military hardware and systems and train personnel to survive.
environmental measurements include static
wind)
(crushing)
Examples of
and dynamic
(blast
air pressures in the blast wave, heat generated by the detonation,
and fallout radiation.
The measurement techniques employed for CASTLE
varied with the effect being measured, but usually measuring devices or
gauges were placed at a variety of ranges from ground zero and their measurement recorded in some way.
techniques was used.
A wide variety of gauges and data recording
In some cases, meaSurements were similar to those
being made by the weapon designers, but at greater distances or longer
after the detonation, which simplified the recording of the data, although
the recovery problems were by no means trivial.
35