-11He also notes as desirable experiments concerned with the effects of nuclear
bursts on warheads and re-entry bodies and communication in general.
There is
no mention of any such thing as Urraca.
A 27 June letter from Bradbury to the Manager of LAAO, J. Burke, notes that
the problem with the LASL weapons budget will not affect the local program as
previously hypothesized but another method has been found to defer the cost and
stay within the 42 million dollar ceiling.
Here are some most interesting words from Bradbury and Mark sent to Weisner
in the Whit House on 17 July 61, presumably in response to the on-going studies
>
of the-BEE@-and the Panofsky Panel to investigate the possiblity of Soviet cheating.
In answer to questions concerning the gains from future weapons testing,
in areas
such as the neutron bomb; whether the Russians have been secretly testing; whether
the U.S.
should unilaterally resume testing;
where the U.S.
is vs.
the USSR in
nuclear weapons; and whether the Russians will cheat if we do not resume testing;
Bradbury and Mark have the same general feelings with a few specific differences in
their answers.
That is that they do not believe the Russians have been secretly
testing, or in the case of Mark, if they have,
the rather low yields attainable
could not permit important changes in strategic capabilities.
Neither man feels
that there is an urgent need to resume weapons testing, particularly as far as
there being a strong military urgency.
Furthermore,
they don't see any great
advances to be made from weapons testing, probably about a factor of two increase
in yield per pound for higher yield weapons and some efficiency increase in smaller
weapons, and in particular don't see the development of a neutron bomb as
practically likely.
About the only area that they see where substantial gains
could be made from testing seems to be high altitude effects and vulnerability
tests and neither feels there is an overriding importance to this area since the
other side certainly does not have that information either.