Almost all Soviet people remember how the government in the 1980s frightened citizens with a terrible new weapon invented by "decaying capitalism". Political informants in institutions and teachers at school in the most terrible colors described the danger to all living things that the neutron bomb, adopted by the United States, poses. You can't hide from it in underground bunkers or behind concrete shelters. Bulletproof vests and stronger means of protection will not save you from it. All organisms, in the event of a strike, will die, while buildings, bridges and mechanisms, with the exception of perhaps the epicenter of the explosion, will remain intact. Thus, the powerful economy of the country of developed socialism will fall into the clutches of the American military.
The insidious neutron bomb operated on a completely different principle than the atomic or hydrogen "Tsar Bomb" that the USSR was so proud of. In a thermonuclear explosion, a powerful release of thermal energy, radiation and a shock wave occurs. Atoms carrying a charge, bumping into objects, especially metals, interact with them, are held by them, and therefore the forcesenemies hiding behind metal barriers are safe.
Note that neither the Soviet nor the American military somehow thought about the civilian population, all the thoughts of the developers of new types of weapons were aimed at destroying the military power of the enemy.
But the neutron bomb, the project of which was developed by Samuel Cohen, by the way, back in 1958, was a charge from a mixture of radioactive isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and especially tritium. As a result of the explosion, a huge amount of neutrons are released - particles that do not have a charge. Being neutral, unlike atoms, they quickly penetrated solid and liquid physical barriers, bringing death only to organics. Therefore, such weapons were called "humane" by the Pentagon.
As stated above, the neutron bomb was invented in the late fifties. In April 1963, her first successful test at the test site was carried out. Since the mid-1970s, neutron warheads have been installed on the American defense system against Soviet missiles at the Grand Forks base in North Dakota. What shocked the Soviet government so much when, in August 1981, the US Security Council announced the serial production of neutron weapons? After all, it has already been used by the US Army for about twenty years!
Behind the Kremlin's rhetoric about "world peace" was a concern that its own economy was no longer able to "pull" spending on the military-industrial complex. After all, since the end of World War IIThe USSR and the States constantly competed in the creation of new weapons capable of destroying a potential enemy. Thus, the creation of the atomic bomb by the Americans led to the production of a similar charge and its carrier TU-4 in the USSR. The Americans responded to the attack of the Russians - the R-7A intercontinental nuclear missile - with the Titan-2 missile.
As "our answer to Chamberlain" back in 1978, the Kremlin instructed nuclear scientists at the secret Arzamas-16 facility to develop and present domestic neutron weapons. However, they were unable to catch up and overtake the United States. While only laboratory developments were underway, President Ronald Reagan announced in 1983 the creation of the Star Wars program. Compared to this grandiose program, the explosion of a bomb, even with a neutron charge, seemed like a cracker shot. Since the Americans disposed of obsolete weapons, Russian scientists also forgot about them.
