THE EFFECT OF NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS ON RADIO COMMUNICATION

Technical Report · Fri Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1960

OSTI ID:4082181

Williams, H P

An explosion in the lower ionosphere of a nuclear bomb in the megaton range will convert midnight ionizstion conditions into noon conditions. As a result long-range transmissions in the region 100 kc/sec to 2 Mc/sec suffer appreciable attenustion and are likely to be unserviceable not only for the whole night but also for the next night or two. HF ionospheric communications are also severely affected and a virtually complete black-out occurs over an area of some 10 million square kilometers for some hours. It would appear thst the higher HF frequencies say, 20 Mc/sec, will escape full extinction if their point of reflection is st least 1000 km from the explosion. On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that VHF ionoscatter links would have suffered to any measurable degree. In order to black out ionoscatter communications with certainty, the bomb must have some 100 times the residual radioactivity. The propontion of fission material in the Johnston Island 4-MT bomb is not known, but it seems probable that this factor of 100 would require a "dirty" bomb with a power of some 40 MT. (auth)

• Research Organization: SHAPE Air Defense Technical Center, Hague
• NSA Number: NSA-15-011771
• OSTI ID: 4082181
• Report Number(s): SADTC-1960/TM-5; AD-241487
• Country of Publication: Country unknown/Code not available
• Language: English

Related Subjects

ABSORPTION
FISSION PRODUCTS
FREQUENCY
IONIZATION
IONOSPHERE
IONS
LOSSES
NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS
PHYSICS
RADIO WAVES
RADIOACTIVITY
REFLECTION
SCATTERING