Nuclear Weapons

WASHINGTON: The United States Space Force launched its first national security mission on Thursday, sending an ultra-secure military communication satellite into orbit even as the coronavirus pandemic paralyses much of the country. The Lockheed Martin Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 4:18pm…

Flashpoints | Security | South Asia Pakistan has been rapidly advancing its nuclear weapons capabilities with China’s help. What can India do about it? A Pakistani-made ballistic missile NASR is loaded on a trailer during a military parade to mark Pakistan National Day, in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 23, 2019. Credit: AP Photo/Anjum NaveedIndian custom…

Renowned scientist and best-selling author Vaclav Smil meticulously charts one of the single largest causes of non-natural mortality.WWII is the quintessential transformational war, not only because of the sweeping changes it brought to the global order but also because of the decades-long shadows it cast over the rest of the…

PHOTO: GAVI/TONY NOEL (2018)There is an unprecedented race to develop a vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). With at least 44 vaccines in early-stage development, what outcome can we expect? Will the first vaccine to cross the finish line be the safest and most effective? Or will…

Written by Vivek Deshpande | Updated: March 26, 2020 12:07:01 pm Deserted Gateway of India in Mumbai, Maharashtra. (Express photo by Pradip Das)Every global crisis has its own philosophical import and an embedded message. We can ignore it only at our peril. In more recent history World War II ended…

Key point: Since no one else was going to act, Israel took matters into its own hands. It struck hard at where it thought Hussein was working on a nuclear weapon. In the late 1970s, it became clear to the international community that Iraq, under the despotic leadership of Saddam Hussein,…

So let’s focus on the real world. In the real world, we have to wash our hands. We need to pay anyone who’s sick to stay home. We have to figure out ASAP whether we should cross our fingers and hope private pharmaceutical companies develop a patented vaccine, or if it makes…

“Could something like this really happen?”  This was the question posed by President Ronald Reagan on June 8, 1983, to a room full of cabinet members and congressmen in the White House. As author Fred Kaplan explains in his book Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, Reagan had…

The concept of nuclear winter -- a years-long planetary freeze brought on by airborne soot generated by nuclear bombs -- has been around for decades. But such speculations have been based largely on back-of-the-envelope calculations involving a total war between Russia and the United States. Now, a new multinational study…

Average changes in maize yield in the five years following a nuclear war between Pakistan and India. Credit: Adapted from Jägermeyr et al., 2020 The concept of nuclear winter—a years-long planetary freeze brought on by airborne soot generated by nuclear bombs—has been around for decades. But such speculations have been…