Neutron Bomb Inventor Dies at 89
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: December 1, 2010
Samuel T. Cohen, the physicist who invented the small tactical nuclear weapon known as the neutron bomb, a controversial device designed to kill enemy troops with subatomic particles but leave battlefields and cities relatively intact, died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.
The cause was complications of stomach cancer, his son Paul said.
Unlike J. Robert Oppenheimer and
Edward Teller, the respective fathers of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, Mr. Cohen was not well known outside government and scientific circles, although his work for years influenced the international debate over the deployment and potential uses of nuclear arms.
In contrast to strategic warheads, which can kill millions and level cities, and smaller short-range tactical nuclear arms designed to wipe out battlefield forces, the neutron bomb minimized blast and heat. Instead, it maximized a barrage of infinitesimal neutrons that zipped through tanks, buildings and other structures and killed people, usually by destroying the central nervous system, and all other life forms.
While doubters questioned the usefulness, logic and ethics of killing people and sparing property,
Mr. Cohen called his bomb a “sane” and “moral” weapon that could limit death, destruction and radioactive contamination, targeting combatants while leaving civilians and towns unscathed. He insisted that many critics misunderstood or purposely misrepresented his ideas for political, economic or mercenary reasons.
A specialist in the radiological effects of
nuclear weapons, he relentlessly promoted the neutron bomb for much of his life, writing books and articles, conferring with presidents and cabinet officials, taking his case to Congressional committees, scientific bodies and international forums. He won many converts, but ultimately failed to persuade the United States to integrate the device into its tactical nuclear arsenal.
The Reagan administration developed but never deployed the weapons in the 1980s. France, Israel and the Soviet Union were believed to have added versions of the bomb to their arsenals. Western military planners rejected their use in the Vietnam War and regarded them only as a possible deterrent to superior Soviet tank forces in Europe. But the end of the cold war obviated even that purpose.
A graduate of the
University of California at Los Angeles, Mr. Cohen was recruited while in the Army in World War II for the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, N.M. After the war, he joined the RAND Corporation and in 1958 designed the neutron bomb as a way to target a cluster of enemy forces while sparing infrastructure and distant civilian populations.
Fired via a missile or an artillery shell and detonated a quarter-mile above ground, his bomb limited death to an area less than a mile across, avoiding wider indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. It was not a radioactively “clean” bomb, but its neutrons dissipated quickly, leaving no long-term contamination that could render entire regions uninhabitable for decades.
But many military planners scoffed at the idea of a nuclear bomb that limited killing and destruction, and insisted that deployment would escalate the arms race and make nuclear war more likely. The device was anathema to defense contractors and armed services with vested interests in nuclear arsenals. Even peace activists denounced it as “a capitalist weapon” because it killed people but spared the real estate.
Washington rejected the bomb repeatedly. The Kennedy administration said it might jeopardize a test-ban moratorium. The Johnson administration said its use in Vietnam might raise the specter of Hiroshima — Asians again slaughtered by American nuclear bombs — drawing worldwide condemnation. In 1978, President
Jimmy Carter said development might impede disarmament prospects.
In 1981, President
Ronald Reagan ordered 700 neutron warheads built to oppose Soviet tank forces in Europe. He called it “the first weapon that’s come along in a long time that could easily and economically alter the balance of power.” But deployment to the North Atlantic alliance was canceled after a storm of antinuclear protests across Europe. President George H. W. Bush ordered the stockpile scrapped.
By 1982, Mr. Cohen had abandoned his deployment quest. But he continued for the rest of his life to defend the bomb as practical and humane.
“It’s the most sane and moral weapon ever devised,” he said in a telephone interview for this obituary in September. “It’s the only nuclear weapon in history that makes sense in waging war. When the war is over, the world is still intact.”
Samuel T. Cohen Dies
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Originally Posted by Flixy
