When Israel exploded an atomic weapon - the Vela story

Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC), at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida was the organization responsible for running the U.S. Atomic Energy Detection System. Late on, September 21, 1979 , a technician conducted a routine readout from the Vela 6911 satellite, which had been launched on May 23, 1969. (Pic of Israelie Dimona reactor in Negev desert 2001)

As well as sensors to detect gamma rays, x-rays, and neutrons, the7 year old Vela 6911 satellite also carried two bhangmeters - sensors which could detect the light flashes associated with a detonation, which included an initial brief but intense flash, and a subsequent, longer lasting flash.

That night AFTAC technicians saw a double humped signal that corresponded to the double flash associated with a nuclear explosion. In the 41 previous occurrences when a Vela satellite detected such a double flash subsequent data and / or enquiries confirmed that a nuclear detonation had actually occurred.

What startled the technicians was, this signal, detected at at 3.00 am local time came from a remote an area 3,000 miles in diameter - the southern tip of Africa, the Indian Ocean, the South Atlantic, and a bit of Antarctica. The test location was later localized at 47 deg. S, 40 deg. E in the Indian Ocean, in the vicinity of South Africa's Prince Edward Island, by hydroacoustic data.

Other detections systems were used to collect more data,;

The Defense Support Program (DSP), these satellites operated in geosynchronous orbit, 22,300 miles above the earth, and carried sensors that could detect the infrared (heat) signature of a nuclear detonation, bhangmeters, an x-ray locator, and an atmospheric fluorescence detector.

Satellite Data System (SDS)

The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites

Other systems were called in - the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) and Missile Impact Location System (MILS), whose primary missions, respectively, were to monitor Soviet submarines and to determine where missile test warheads splashed down.

Searches were made for debris such as the debris While AFTAC sent specially-configured aircraft to try to gather debris from the region of the apparent blast, the CIA sent some of its personnel into various nations in the region to gather the leaves from trees - leaves that might contain the radioactive residue of an explosion. Such efforts apparently were futile.

In September 1980 a professor who had been studying sheep thyroids around the world reported that iodine-131 [a fission product] had been detected in the thyroids of sheep slaughtered in Melbourne, Australia in November 1979, but not subsequently. The pic below is from Sderot today - the sign says "Kassams Kill" - a Kassam contains some 3 Kg of explosive -tops.

An urgent meeting to discuss the handling of this event was held in the White House situation room soon after the intelligence report on the incident reached the Oval Office. Among those attending were National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, his aide for global issues Gerald Oplinger, deputy director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Spurgeon Keeny, and Presidential Science Advisor Frank Press. An ad - hoc Presidential panel was set up to consider the data as much as to dealy matters but also review the data - the published copnclusion was - that the most likely explanation of the Vela detection was a meteoroid hitting the satellite - in part because of a slight discrepancy in bhangmeter readings.

Of course the Carter administration were reluctant to accept that either Israel or South Africa - or both had detonated a nuclear device. Especially as President Carter had placed great emphasis on nuclear non-proliferation

Other people looking at the same data came to a different conclusion - such as the DIA, the national laboratories, and contractors reached a very different conclusion - that the data supported the conclusion that on September 22, 1979 Vela 6911 had detected a nuclear detonation.

The National Security Archive released a great deal of the documentation which supported their views recently .

for example :

Henry G. Horak, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Vela Event Alert 747, May 1980. Secret Source: Freedom of Information Act Request

Among the issues addressed by Horak in his paper is why the bhangmeters on two Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites which could receive signals from the South Atlantic area - DSP 6 and DSP 7 - did not trigger. He offers two explanations: the event did not take place within the satellite's field of view or the signal was weakened by transmission through clouds and was not strong enough to reach the necessary brightness threshold for detection. He concluded that after looking at all the data associated with the signal, there was "strong evidence that a nuclear explosion actually produced Vela Alert 747." ( a view widely shared at Los Alamos at the time and since)


SA Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk announced in March 1993 that South Africa had built nuclear weapons, and since that time additional information has periodically come forth. It was revealed that SA had indeed developed and manufactured nuclear weapons (gun-type devices using highly enriched uranium) but no tests (beyond a single zero-yield lab test) were disclosed.

In 1994 a claim came from Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, a convicted Soviet spy who was at the time the commander of the Simonstown naval base near Cape Town. After this release from prison, Gerhardt settled in Switzerland. In Februrary 1994, he told Des Blow of the Johannesburg City Press that the flash was produced by an Israeli-South African test code-named "Operation Phenix".

Quite a stir erupted in 1997 when in a 20 April 1997 article that appeared in the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz, South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad was quoted as confirming that the 22 September 1979 flash over the Indian Ocean was indeed from a South African nuclear test. The article said that Israel helped South Africa develop its bomb designs in return for 550 tons of raw uranium and other assistance.

Whether the device was South African or Israeli in origin, Gerhard's account (if true - and there is now no reason to doubt it) indicates joint Israeli-South African participation in the test. South Africa has now admitted direct Israeli involvement with the South African weapons program, at least to the extent of providing weapon design advice and exchanging material support. Israel had previously been known to provide certain special materials - in particular rather large amounts of tritium - to the weapons program.

The Israeli government has never confirmed or denied (pre or post Vanunu) that it has a nuclear weapon program, and has an unofficial but rigidly enforced policy of deliberate ambiguity, saying only that it would not be the first to "introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East" Israel is one of three sovereign nation-states not to sign or ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the other two being India and Pakistan.