Defense
Are Russia and China Teaming Up to Control the Arctic?
Worried Pentagon officials are resetting U.S. Arctic policy and training in response to China and Russia’s plans
Defense75 articles archived since 1845
Defense
This Filipina Physicist Helped Develop a Top Secret Weapon
Emma Unson Rotor worked on the proximity fuze, a groundbreaking piece of World War II weapons technology that the U.S. War Department called “second only to the atomic bomb.”...
Defense
New Microwave Weapons Could Defend against Swarms of Combat Drones
The Pentagon is readying high-powered microwave weapons that are capable of invisible strikes against swarming combat drones
Defense
The Members of This Reservation Learned They Live with Nuclear Weapons. Can Their Reality Ever Be the Same?
The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara peoples are learning more about the missiles siloed on their lands, and that knowledge has put the preservation of their culture and heritage in even starker relief...
Defense
What Would It Mean to 'Absorb' a Nuclear Attack?
The missiles on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota make it a potential target for a nuclear attack. And that doesn’t come close to describing what the reality would be for those on the ground...
Defense
If You Had a Nuclear Weapon in Your Neighborhood, Would You Want to Know about It?
The Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota has had nuclear missile silos on its land for decades. Now the U.S. government wants to take the old weapons out and replace them with new ones, and it’s unclear how many living there know about that...
Defense
Inside the $1.5-Trillion Nuclear Weapons Program You’ve Never Heard Of
A road trip through the communities shouldering the U.S.’s nuclear missile revival
Defense
Just One U.S. Reservation Hosts Nuclear Weapons. This Is The Story of How That Came to Be
15 nuclear missiles deployed in underground concrete silos across the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota. It took displacement and flood to get them there.
Defense
Behind the Scenes at a U.S. Factory Building New Nuclear Bombs
The U.S. is ramping up construction of new “plutonium pits” for nuclear weapons
Defense
Who Would Take the Brunt of an Attack on U.S. Nuclear Missile Silos?
These fallout maps show the toll of a potential nuclear attack on missile silos in the U.S. heartland
Defense
The U.S.’s Plans to Modernize Nuclear Weapons Are Dangerous and Unnecessary
The U.S. should back away from updating its obsolescent nuclear weapons, in particular silo-launched missiles that needlessly risk catastrophe
Defense
The New Nuclear Age
The U.S. is beginning an ambitious, controversial reinvention of its nuclear arsenal. The project comes with incalculable costs and unfathomable risks...
Defense
What Radioactive Fallout Tells Us about Our Nuclear Future
The U.S. has embarked on the largest and most expensive nuclear build-out ever. The U.S. military says it is necessary to replace an aging nuclear arsenal. But critics fear the risks.
Defense
How Did Nuclear Weapons Get on My Reservation?
A member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation digs into a decades-long mystery: how 15 intercontinental ballistic missiles came to be siloed on her ancestral lands.
Defense
This Code Breaking Quaker Poet Hunted Nazis
How Elizebeth Smith Friedman went from scouring Shakespeare for secret codes to taking down a Nazi spy ring
Climate Change
‘The Moose’ and Other Military Planes May Have to Cut Cargo as Planet Warms
The C-17 Globemaster III—which transports troops and tanks—may have to shed weight as rising temperatures driven by climate change affect flying conditions
Defense
They Remembered the Lost Women of the Manhattan Project So That None of Us Would Forget
Physicists Ruth Howes and Caroline Herzenberg’s 10-year research project ensured a place in history for the female scientists, engineers and technicians who worked on the atomic bomb...
Defense
Meet the Physicist who Spoke Out against the Bomb She Helped Create
After atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear physicist Katharine Way persuaded the world’s greatest physicists to contribute essays to a book opposing nuclear weapons...
Defense
She Helped Build the Atomic Bomb to Stop the Nazis, But Was Haunted by What It Did to Japan
Here’s the story of the Lilli Hornig, the only female scientist named in the film Oppenheimer.
Defense
Meet the Woman Who Supervised the Computations That Proved an Atomic Bomb Would Work
Naomi Livesay worked on computations that formed the mathematical basis for implosion simulations. Despite her crucial role on the project, she is rarely mentioned as more than a footnote—until now...
