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from the neither-long-ago-nor-far-away dept.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/22/blast-from-the-past-vela-satellite-israel-nuclear-double-flash-1979-ptbt-south-atlantic-south-africa/ (may be paywalled; alternate link):
Shortly before sunrise on Sept. 22, 1979, a U.S. surveillance satellite known as Vela 6911 recorded an unusual double flash as it orbited the earth above the South Atlantic. At Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, where it was still nighttime on Sept. 21, the staff in charge of monitoring the satellite's transmissions saw the unmistakable pattern produced by a nuclear explosion—something U.S. satellites had detected on dozens of previous occasions in the wake of nuclear tests. The Air Force base issued an alert overnight, and President Jimmy Carter quickly called a meeting in the White House Situation Room the next day.
Nuclear proliferation was just one of the Carter administration's headaches in late 1979. The president was dealing with a slew of foreign-policy dilemmas, including the build-up to what would become the Iran hostage crisis. Carter was also preparing for a reelection campaign in which he had hoped to showcase his foreign-policy successes, from brokering Israeli-Egyptian peace to successful arms control talks with Moscow. The possibility that Israel or South Africa, which had deep clandestine defense ties at the time, had tested a nuclear weapon threatened to tarnish that legacy. And the fact that South Africa's own nuclear weapons program, which the Carter administration was seeking to stop, was not yet sufficiently advanced to test such a weapon left just one prime suspect: Israel. Leading figures within the administration were therefore keen to bury the story and put forward alternative explanations.
Those alternative explanations were widely dismissed by many members of the scientific and intelligence community at the time; four decades years later, they look even more questionable.
On the 40th anniversary of the Vela event, Foreign Policy has assembled a team of scientists, academics, former government officials, and nonproliferation experts to analyze the declassified documents and data in the public domain, explain the political and strategic objectives of the key players at the time, and argue why a mysterious flash 40 years ago still matters today.
[Ed. Note: Many here may not have experienced what it was like during the cold war with frequent nuclear weapons tests and the ever-present threat of thermonuclear war. Given the increasing rhetoric and sabre rattling going on around the world today, this seemed a good reminder of the past. Let's hope we do not try to repeat it.]
(Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday September 26 2019, @11:39PM (2 children)
Well, the timing and context are rather strange -- Like when Netanyahu tweeted that he and Trump were best buds, and in that tweet was a picture of Ytzak Rabin and John F. Kennedy.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 26 2019, @11:46PM (1 child)
Timing? The Israeli army was active at that time in Lebanon, influencing the Lebanese civil war. It doesn't take much imagination to understand that Israel was preparing for another Six Day War scenario, where they would whip the asses of five, six, even twelve different enemy militaries.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday September 27 2019, @10:34PM
It may not take much imagination for that, but it takes a helluva lot of imagination to turn the Vela incident into "America Caught a Nuclear Violator Red-Handed". After decades of arguing, the end of the cold war, and declassification of a ton of surrounding material, it's still up for debate what it was that was detected. At the time, there was no indication that anyone had been caught red-handed, or even that it was a nuclear detonation.