Mysterious Nuclear Explosion | No One Took Responsibility

On September 22, 1979, U.S. spy satellites detected a nuclear explosion over the Atlantic, and no one still knows who exactly tested the nuclear bomb.
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[williampeek]

My father worked on the Vela Satellite Progin the 60' and 70's. They had other detection methods such as seismometers. He said he twice witnessed unauthorized nuclear detonation. I'd don't remember the first but he said the second was in South Africa.

[jamesahoffman]

"Who's bomb, nobody's bomb, everybody's bomb, therefore nobody's to blame"

[terrydavis]

See, this is why I love your channel. Way more info about this incident than you usually get. I had no idea about the sosus signature or the Iodine in AU.

[michaellehman]

At just before the 1:00 mark, it's suggested that the available methods for detection of nuclear explosions in 1963 were inadequate for global detection. That is factually incorrect. VELA was developed to enhance an already robust Atomic Energy Detection System (AEDS) operated by AFTAC (Air Force Technical Applications Center), a unit which was not cited in your video, but which is vital to understanding the history of this topic.

Under it's previous unit designation, AFOAT-1, the organization had achieved near-global coverage by 1949, when it detected the USSR's first test, which it designated as Joe-1. This test occurred deep inside the USSR, but was first sensed by a WB-29 operating on the synoptic weather track that stretched from Alaska to Japan. Subsequent efforts following the alert this generated tracked Joe-1's fallout around the world.

Nearly all early nuclear testing was done in the atmosphere in the Northern hemisphere and its detection relied primarily on the collection by aircraft of samples of bomb debris, known more popularly as fallout. Global air circulation patterns tended to isolate most fallout in the hemisphere in which it occurred. The British conducted much of their testing in Australia and nearby, so they were the only known contributors to fallout in the Southern hemisphere in the 1950s. While it focused on the North, AFTAC had a significant number of ground stations in the South and could always vector aerial collection platforms where needed to obtain samples.

Despite the stark confrontations of the early Cold War, by 1963 the original nuclear powers (the US, USSR and UK) all agreed that atmospheric testing needed to end. This resulted in the ratification of the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty. AFTAC had anticipated that its easy access to the nuclear secrets of other nations through its analysis of fallout might end if a test ban treaty were agreed to. Despite pressure to end all testing, resistance from the Air Force led to only a ban on atmospheric testing, but AFTAC had anticipated the potential loss of this vital intel by sponsoring the development of new technology to accomplish its mission.

However, AFTAC had always relied on means other than fallout to accomplish its mission. In order to collect good samples of a suspect event, it was important to get samplers to a site to collect the freshest samples, since many significant isotopes had very short half-lives. These included an Army-operated atmospheric sound detection system, the Navy-operated SOSUS underwater sound detection system mentioned in the video, and the earliest EMP systems operated by AFOAT-1 itself. All provided quick indication of a test along with varying degrees of direction and location guidance to vector samplers to potential sample collection locations.

Enhancement of these capabilities in light of a test ban led the Air Force to sponsor R&D that improved the existing EMP and sound detection systems, and included adding an expanded seismic system and the space-based sensor system known VELA. The high viewpoint of a satellite-based system, as well as the instantaneous nature of detection provided by observation watching for the unique double-pulse light signature of nuclear detonation offered real advantages over the existing systems.

However, actual detection of nuclear debris/fallout that could be tied back to the detected site of origin has remained the standard by which AFTAC assesses the validity of available evidence about a detected event. Whether by design or accident, whoever was behind the the incident in the South Atlantic, assuming it actually was a nuclear event, managed to avoid providing enough evidence to directly make that connection. While suggestive, the observations of I-131 in sheep in Australia and New Zealand weren't conclusive enough to confirm.

While it's past my main era of research on this topic, my understanding it that there were also potential problems with the sensors on the VELA satellites that suggest the lack of clear confirmatory evidence is what has blocked an assessment of the event's as of Israeli origin. Circumstances point that way, but rather inconclusively without eliminating other explanations.

[deckape]

Great Coverage of the "Vela Incident" good to hear your perspective.👍

[alecdoig]

You would think after 43 years one country would own up or have declassified documents with it in

[Schlipperschlopper]

It might be one of the German Nuclear Bombs from WW2 exploded in a sunken Type 21 submarine lost after WW2.

[shroom]

Cuba has a mark3 fatman in the middle of the oad being loaded into a m8ssile silo- along with 100s if nt 1000s missiles all over the island maybe it was them?