Topic Explorer

The Topic Explorer uses the same search and topic filters for all of the different resources on this site. It is meant to allow easy cross-examination of different issues.

Topics

1940s (29) 1950s (32) 1960s (43) 1970s (21) 1980s (17) 1990s (8) 2000s (5) 2010s (24) Bush, George W. (1) Carter, James (6) Chain of command (15) Civilian-military divide (22) Clinton, William J. (2) Congress (21) Congressional Research Service (4) Constitutionality (6) Custody (22) Cybersecurity (3) Directives (6) Doctrine (20) Early warning systems (17) Eisenhower, Dwight D. (20) Ford, Gerald R. (2) France (12) India (11) Israel (7) Johnson, Lyndon B. (11) Kennedy, John F. (24) Law of war (9) Missiles (6) NATO (21) News Media (18) Nixon, Richard M. (11) Non-Use (8) North Korea (10) Nuclear accidents (17) Nuclear football (17) Nuclear launch procedure (32) Nuclear safety (34) Nuclear war plans (31) Obama, Barack (8) Oral history (1) Overseas deployment (19) Pakistan (17) People's Republic of China (15) Permissive Action Links (23) Predelegation (17) Presidential nuclear control (57) RAND Corporation (4) Reagan, Ronald (8) Remedies (5) Russian Federation (16) South Africa (1) Soviet Union (23) Succession (3) Truman, Harry S. (21) Trump, Donald J. (18) Two-man rule (9) United Kingdom (19) United States of America (126) US Air Force (21) US Atomic Energy Commission (15) US Department of Defense (28) US Department of Energy (5) US Joint Chiefs of Staff (17) US National Security Council (7) US Secretary of Defense (11) US Strategic Air Command (15) US Strategic Command (15) World War II (8)

Primers

  • Nuclear launch process: The nuclear launch process of the United States is a topic of high interest and importance but is also subject to considerable misunderstanding.

Documents

Date ▲TitleFile
1961-01-25DDRS, Memorandum for the record by Brigadier Gen. A.J. Goodpaster outlines his meeting with President-elect Kennedy to inform Kennedy of procedures to be used in the event of a national emergency.PDF
1961-07-16Atomic Stockpiles MemorandumPDF
1962-06-2NSA, Permissive Links for Nuclear Weapons in NATO Memorandum No. 160PDF
1963-03-22NSA, Assignment of Highest National Priority to Project PAL (Permissive Links for Nuclear Weapons in NATO)PDF
1963-05-29NSA, Secret Memorandum from Jerome Bert Wiesner, Science Adviser to President KennedyPDF
1963-08-10NSA, Permissive Link for MinutemanPDF
1963-08-31DDRS, Comments on Department of Defense Draft Memorandum: Strategic Striking ForcesPDF
1964-07-22DDRS, Letter to McGeorge Bundy from the Deputy Secretary of Defense regarding the modified installation of permissive action link (PAL) devices on various weapons systems.PDF
1964-12-01DDRS, Briefing to the Gilpatric Committee by William J. HowardPDF
1968-06DOD, Strategic Offensive Weapons Employment in the Presence of Defenses (WEPS)PDF
1969-08-26DOD, WSEG Report 148 - Strategic Offensive Weapons Employment in the Time Period About 1975PDF
1975-06IDA, "The Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control and Warning, 1945-1972"PDF
1978-02OASOD, "History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons, July 1945 through September 1977"PDF

Bibliographies

Ball, Desmond. Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

Burr, William. "Consultation is Presidential Business": Secret Understandings on the Use of Nuclear Weapons, 1950-1974. Electronic Briefing Book No. 159. Washington, D.C.: National Security Archive, 2005. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB159/.

Burr, William. Presidential Control of Nuclear Weapons: The "Football." Briefing Book #632. Washington, D.C.: National Security Archive, 2018. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2018-07-09/presidential-control-nuclear-weapons-football.

Curry, Dan. Always/Never: The Quest for Safety, Control & Survivability. Documentary. Sandia National Laboratories, 2010.

Deaile, Melvin G. “The SAC Mentality.” Air & Space Power Journal 29, no. 2 (April 3, 2015): 48–73.

Deaile, Melvin G. Always at War: Organizational Culture in Strategic Air Command, 1946-62. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2018.

Ellsberg, Daniel. The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.

Feaver, Peter D. Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.

Freedman, Lawrence. The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Gavin, Francis J. "The Myth of Flexible Response: United States Strategy in Europe during the 1960s." The International History Review 23, no. 4 (December 2001): 847-875

Gulley, Bill. Breaking Cover. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980.

Jackson, Michael Gordon. "Beyond Brinkmanship: Eisenhower, Nuclear War Fighting, and Korea, 1953-1968." Presidential Studies Quarterly 35, no. 1 (March 2005): 52-75.

Kaplan, Fred. The Wizards of Armageddon. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983.

Kimball, Jeffrey P.  and William Burr. Nixon's Nuclear Specter: The Secret Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2015.

Knipp, Delores J., et al. "The May 1967 Great Storm and Radio Disruption Event: Extreme Space Weather and Extraordinary Responses." Space Weather 14 (2016): 614–633. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2016SW001423.

Krugler, David F. This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Nolan, Janne E. Guardians of the Arsenal: The Politics of Nuclear Strategy. New York: Basic Books, 1989.

Rubel, John H. Doomsday Delayed: USAF Strategic Weapons Doctrine and SIOP-62, 1959-1962. Lanham, Maryland: Hamilton Books, 2008.

Sagan, Scott D. "SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy." International Security 12, no. 1 (Summer, 1987): 22-51.

Schlosser, Eric. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. New York: The Penguin Press, 2013.

Tannenwald, Nina. "Nuclear Weapons and the Vietnam War." Journal of Strategic Studies 29, no. 4 (August 2006): 675-722,

Tannenwald, Nina. The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons since 1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Welcome! This site is in beta release, meant primarily for external review, not public usage. It is being actively updated and modified, and there are many rough edges. It should not appear in search engines. You are welcome to look at and use it, but please do not cite or link to it without contacting the site manager first. Click here to hide this message.