Talk:Vela incident

message: There have been a couple stories bubbling on the AFP feed that a newspaper in Israel is claiming to have gotten documents "confirming" a 1979 test. (see, i.e., ). I think we can wait 24 hours for the story to actually be published with the details before trying to update the article here. It is well known that there were some US reports which concluded that it was a test, and some which concluded that there was not, and without more information than in these teasers it is difficult to know what is actually being claimed. --Fastfission 21:45, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "In an April 20, 1997 article that appeared in the Israeli Ha'aretz daily newspaper, South African deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, confirmed for the first time that a flare over the Indian Ocean detected by an American satellite in September 1979 was from a nuclear test. This statement was confirmed by the US embassy in Pretoria as an accurate account of what Pahad officially acknowledged. The article said that Israel helped South Africa develop its bomb designs in return for 550 tons of uranium and other assistance. Original analyses conducted by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists and others in the US intelligence community said the flash could only be from a nuclear test (Blast from the past: Lab scientists receive vindication)."Phase4 14:17, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect it is part and parcel of Israel's nuclear posture. They don't admit to having a nuclear arsenal but reap the deterrence benefit by 'leaking' stories like this time to time. This latest round of revelations are likely due to the Iran situation; a subtle reminder that they have the Bomb.--DV8 2XL 14:27, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Aziz Pahad later retracted his statement and claimed to have been misquoted, as this very article mentions. To use his statement as "proof" is incorrect. — Impi 16:06, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't know, what possible motive would SA have for continuing with the secrecy? Relations between the ANC government and Israel have certainly been very frosty for a number of years now. Most likely, I think, is that Aziz Pahad screwed up and repeated a widely-held belief as fact without having the evidence to back it up. Furthermore, while co-operation between SA and Israel on nuclear weapons was possible (especially considering their co-operation on ICBMs), it is nowhere close to being certain or even probable. Indeed, David Albright, the former United Nations weapons inspector considered by many to be the primary expert on SA's nuclear weapons program, has stated before that the available evidence argued against such co-operation. Considering that the IAEA was granted full and complete access to all the records and personnel of the nuclear program, I would say it's highly doubtful that significant Israeli assistance to the program would have been missed. In any case, SA's refinement methods and bomb designs do not appear to resemble Israeli designs, which also counts against possible co-operation. Thing is, this is actually makes a fair amount of sense. Despite their active co-operation in many areas, SA and Israel still did not fully trust each other, due to Israel's distrust of the nature of the apartheid regime, and the quietly anti-semitic beliefs of many of the National Party's hardliners. Their respective nuclear programs, it would seem, were beyond a red line that neither trusted each other to cross. — Impi 22:44, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Recent developments"

message: To answer SimonP, who queried whether South Africa actually had a nuclear weapon ready for testing in 1979, I quote from UN weapons inspector David Albright's report :
:"Although the [1977] test was canceled, the nuclear explosive program continued unabated. In 1978, the Atomic Energy Board built a second, smaller device. This device was designed to be rapidly deployed for a fully instrumented underground nuclear test at the Kalahari site. This second device was still not loaded with fissile material. The Y-plant [at Valindaba, next to the Pelindaba Research Center] had produced its first Highly Enriched Uranium, but it was not until the second half of 1979 that the plant would produce enough for a device, about 55 kilograms of material. The first batch of uranium was only about 80 per cent enriched. The device was designed to use weapon-grade uranium (greater than 90 per cent enriched), but the principal effect of the lower enrichment would have been a lower yield."
Enough said?Phase4 13:03, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They had bombs, but they did not have enough fissile material until the end of 1979, after the Vela Incident occured. Here is a quote from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists "According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), however, South Africa did not construct its first nuclear explosive device until November 1979, two months after the mysterious flash." - SimonP 13:33, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem then becomes: how did the IAEA reach its November 1979 conclusion? IAEA inspectors weren't allowed access to SA's nuclear facilities until 1991 – and then it was under strict confidentiality conditions. The inspectors had to rely upon the Y-Plant's hand-written daily operating logs – provided by SA's Atomic Energy Corporation – to conclude (somewhat unconvincingly) that enough fissile material was not available until after the Vela Incident occurred.Phase4 14:24, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just want to point out that both of these article are by David Albright, though the one saying they didn't have a bomb by then was published three years after the other one. --Fastfission 14:28, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: SimonP seems to have jumped the gun on this. The second sentence of his latest article edit does not logically follow from the first.Phase4 21:19, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What do you mean? According to the IAEA the South African documents show that no weapon existed before November 1979. Thus either the weapon was not a South African one, or the records were faulty. This site has some more on this issue. It states that "South Africa's accounts of its weapon development activities indicate that its first device was not complete until months after the incident. From documents made available to it, the IAEA believes that the first nuclear device was not manufactured until November." That site also states that the records make clear that all the highly enriched uranium produced by South Africa is accounted for up to 1989. - SimonP 21:44, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never heard reports of anything but full and open access for the IAEA's inspectors during that whole process, so I don't know how Phase4 can claim that their conclusion was "unconvincing". The co-ordinated effort it would have required to fudge all the records and brief every single person conceivably involved in a 1979 test would be considerably difficult, if not impossible. Besides, there were dozens of people involved in SA's nuclear program, and a nuclear test in 1979 would have required the support of South African Navy ships and dozens more sailors and support personnel. Yet in the past 27 years, despite the presence of an entirely new regime wholly hostile to the previous one, not a single witness has come forward to claim involvement in the 1979 event. Considering the proven inability of any project to remain secret for long, this appears to be fairly strong evidence against the Vela Incident actually having been a nuclear test. In any case, the evidence in favour of it having been a test is decidedly weak and circumstantial, and I simply don't see how anybody can honestly claim that they're certain it was a nuclear test. — Impi 12:57, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

text: The issue, for our purposes here, is how best to write this. I agree that the current status of the argument seems to be that the jury is out, even though there are some reports that imply that S.Africa would not have had a weapon themselves. The other option which is often discussed, even if S. Africa didn't have bomb capacity themselves, is that they were providing logistical aid for an Israeli test, in exchange for the testing data. --Fastfission 18:17, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Fastfission. How best to write it? Why not simply delete the whole Responsibility section?Phase4 18:28, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the "responsibility" section is not too bad as it is, except a few of the sentences don't logically follow each other (I'll fix that right now). As it currently stands, it makes it clear that there isn't any necessarily obvious candidate for who would have hosted a test, though there are a few plausible options. --Fastfission 14:04, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Weapon availability

message: Having, in my view, unjustifiably removed Operation Phenix from the introduction to the Vela Incident article, Impi should now presumably also remove the disambiguation link to Operation Phoenix in the preamble?Phase4 12:17, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: South African cannot have tested a nuclear device in 1979. For two very good reasons. Firstly its first device was not finished until 1980. That should be definitive enough! Secondly, because there is absolutely no evidence that any of its sex weapons were ever exploded. Six were built, six were dismantled. The only "evidence" of a SA bomb is allegations by anti-South African activists. There is no objective evidence at all. It disappoints me that the allegations of a SA bomb are given as much credence as they are, as they are no more plausible than stories of UFO abductions.Royalcourtier (talk) 22:18, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Operation Phenix

message: Removed from article: "A number of commentators have suggested that it might have been a battlefield nuclear weapon being developed by Gerald Bull, whose company Space Research Corporation had a contract with Armscor."
Extraordinary claims and all that. Rmhermen 00:18, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, quite extraordinary. If memory serves me well, there was talk in the late seventies/early eighties of using the G5 howitzer to launch battlefield weapons, both chemical and mini-nukes. And, coincidentally, U.S. Customs charged Bull with breaching the UN's mandatory arms embargo in 1977 (and he was imprisoned the year after the Vela Incident) for supplying South Africa with gun barrels and artillery shells. There may therefore be something in these claims but sources need to be cited before reinserting in the article.Phase4 11:58, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bull's company assisted South Africa in creating the G5 howitzer and its base-bleed shells, but that's about it. It was not involved in research for battlefield nuclear weapons, and it certainly did not supply any to South Africa. As I'm sure you realise, it's a non-trivial endeavour to create nuclear weapons small enough and advanced enough to be fired from 155mm artillery, and South Africa was certainly nowhere near that level of capability in its own nuclear program. On balance therefore, I don't think there's anything at all in that claim. — Impi 13:28, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, and on top of that, I doubt Bull would be the guy who would be able to develop a battlefield nuke. Sure, he could make the gun to fire them out of, but accomplish that degree of nuclear miniaturization? I know almost nothing about the guy but that doesn't seem to be his skill set. In the U.S., design miniaturization was done chiefly by theoretical physicists (i.e. Ted Taylor). --Fastfission 14:02, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Right. Gerald Bull was an aeronautical engineer, and had no expertise in nuclear physics and engineering. Neither he nor his company were ever involved in nuclear weapons research, let alone nuclear weapons miniaturization. Clearly, the original claim was entirely spurious. — Impi 16:08, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Personal anecdotes and assertions: not a good basis for an encyclopedic article! Let's have some objective and unimpeachable sources so that these claims can be tested.Phase4 21:38, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, let's have them! That's exactly the issue here — no sources. --Fastfission 21:56, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bull fact

message: isn't speculation about the north korean blast that it could not have been nuclear as the "minimum required yield for a nuclear weapon" is in the range of 10-20kt? wouldn't that make this a non-nuclear explosion by default? ... aa:talk 17:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see Nuclear warfare#Sub-strategic use, and you will find that a weapon with a yield of just 1kt is sufficient. So the Vela Incident was most likely a low-yield nuclear device.Phase4 17:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

text: No, critical mass only sets a minimum amount on how much fissionable material is in a bomb.  (and critical mass can be reduced by a number of technical tricks).  A large mass of fissionable material can make a small explosion-- anywhere down to a "fizzle".  Geoffrey.landis (talk) 15:59, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The smallest ever true nuclear "bomb" actually detonated was the american Davy Crockett test, which had a yield of a mere 10 (ten) tons of TNT. It was essentially an oversized RPG with a small atomic payload. Supposedly an A-bomb made of fissile element Californium could be made small enough to fit in a 20mm autocannon projectile or even caliber .50 (12.7mm) heavy machine gun ammo. It would cost about 900,000 USD to make one if series produced and possible a billion to make a prototype. The small amount of explosive yield from such a warhead would not be worth the trouble and expense, considering the political and environmental movement fallout.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.83.18.251 (talk) 22:53, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  comparisons to north korea? 

message: The article doesn't mention anything about this incident's place in UFO lore. Not saying it was, but it is of cultural interest. --MacRusgail 19:54, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  UFOs etc. 

message: Could be a vacuum bomb.  Recently (as of 2007) Russia has claimed that it has a 
device that is similar to a nuclear device without radiation.  If so, this could have 
been tested then, and is 20 years ahead of the  design of russian vacuum bombs.  Anything that's able to be strapped on a rocket and propelled anywhere on
earth is a ballistic missile.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.54.62.144 (talk) 14:53, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't trust a claim from modern Russia if you strapped it to a Saint and put a big sign on it, saying "You Can Trust Me".  Russia is currently a deeply corrupt dictatorship with a wide range of motives to issue misleading information.  Toby Douglass (talk) 13:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That "vacuum bomb" was "just" a massive thermobaric weapon. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 10:53, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vacuum Bombs? 

message: The latter part of the revised opening paragraph of the article is in quotation marks and now reads: "The conclusions of the presidential panel (the Ad Hoc Panel) were reassuring, as they suggested that the most likely explanation of the Vela detection was a meteoroid hitting the satellite — in part because of the discrepancy in bhangmeter readings. Others who examined the data, including 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."
Neither of the two inline references ( &  appears to support this quotation. Which raises the obvious question about the "conclusions of the presidential panel (the Ad Hoc Panel)": to whom were they "reassuring"?---PJHaseldine (talk) 14:57, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: "Reassuring" to whom?

message: "Low levels of iodine-131 (a short-half-life product of nuclear fission) were reportedly detected in the thyroid glands of sheep in the Australian States of Victoria and Tasmania soon after the "detection" of the light flashes. Studies of wind patterns confirmed that fall-out from an explosion in the southern Indian Ocean could have been carried from there to southwestern Australia."
I'm not sure if this is just a typographic error or a careless elision, but Victoria and Tasmania are in southeastern Australia.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.84.62.80 (talk) 21:39, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Australia

message: It is out of question that a Vela satellite has detected a double flash (or at least an unusual signal), isn't it? The interpretation of the signal is disputed, whereupon the thesis of a nuclear test as the cause is/was supported by serious institutions like the Naval Research Laboratory, so that the Vela Incident cannot be categorized as conspiracy theory, I'd say.--Severino (talk) 20:21, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: As you say, the "interpretation of the signal is disputed..." but it's not just disputed. There are numerous conspiracy theories as to what the flash was, who caused it and why. Moreover, the conspiracy theories about a "cover-up" take this into conspiracy theory territory. An anology might be the JFK assassination: there's no dispute that the President was killed, but numerous conspiracy theories about who did it, how and why. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 23:30, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: OK. But still I'm uncertain if this "policy" doesn't lead somebody who wants to read up on the case on the basis of this article to the conclusion that the whole thing is comparable with the supposed landing of martians in Area 51.--Severino (talk) 10:47, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: ... what? That makes no logical sense whatsoever. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 15:46, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conspiracy? 

message: Uhh, a number of well-known meteor showers (that is, flashes that are KNOWN to be meteors) have double flashes, ie, in a time exposure, using ascii graphics, the trail looks something like:
 ----==#=# 
In many cases surviving meteorites from these falls have been recovered and found to be stony-iron. The hypothesis is that the two flashes represent the separate ignition points of the stony and the metallic components. Or is this too boring a theory?
Old_Wombat (talk) 12:14, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:OR Socrates2008 (Talk) 12:20, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another explanation of the double flash? 

message: Hello, everyone :)
Citation number 16, which should link to an article at Los Alamos called "Blast from the past, Los Alamos scientists receive vindication", the link is broken.
But I rooted around on their site and found what looks like the same article at 
http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/archive/97-087.shtml
Forgive me, please, but I don't really know the rules here about editing it myself, so I thought I'd post it in here and one of you veterans could check it out.
Thanks very much!
'Possum
Redpossum (talk) 17:23, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  broken link to los alamos, and correct url 

message: The "Subsequent developments" section is bolted on to the end of the article as an afterthought.  It's not chronological (some of the things mentioned were not subsequent developments).  The bullet points are disjointed, and not prose in compliance with the manual of style.  So I'd like to restructure and copyedit a large chunk of the article.  Is there any support for doing this? Socrates2008 (Talk) 10:55, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Article restructure

message: This article refers to the detecting satellite as Vela Hotel model whereas Vela (satellite) states it was the Advanced Vela model which was designed to detect atmospheric detonations, should references to Hotel be replaced with Advanced or just referred to as Vela?
:Vela was the overall project for detecting clandestine nuclear tests.  Vela Hotel was the satellite detection system; Vela Uniform was the seismic systems. Vela Sierra was sensing through the atmosphere (for radioactive species) [this last from the wikipedia article "Project Vela", as I forgot the name - you could have found it yourself, I'll bet.]. Sierra Hotel was the project in which all Vela satellites were launched, operated and eventually abandoned. SkoreKeep (talk) 07:27, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vela Hotel? 

message: There's an interesting bit about the Vela incident in this Guardian article, in particular the quote: "There was a storm and we figured it would block Vela, but there was a gap in the weather – a window – and Vela got blinded by the flash." That differs from the Gerhardt quote already in the article, but appears to back it up. Perhaps this could be incorporated into the article. Modest Genius talk 15:02, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quote & source 

message: Added a wikilink to "extraterrestrial" in the 'Detection' section. Added a wikilink to "Bell Island" in conjunction with the 'Bell Island Boom'.
TheInformativePanda (talk) 04:54, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit on February 12 2014 

message: Hey guys,
The link in the references section called "Blast from the past: Los Alamos Scientists Receive Vindication" is broken again. I posted back in January 2012 last time they broke it, and offered a new address. Some good-hearted soul updated the link then, but now it's broken again. I spent 5 minutes or so working with the search engine on the Los Alamos site, but it looks like the article is just gone. Maybe this is just normal sunsetting of old data, or maybe somebody still doesn't want this info in public view.
Chau, Possum
Redpossum (talk) 00:01, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Los Alamos link broken again 

message: Is there any information on steps form the USSR to investigate ? We know that the US sent some naval assets to the location and that the report came from a US Vela satellite but what about the USSR ?  95.92.46.218 (talk) 17:12, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russia 

message: Isn't "highly disputed" somewhat colloquial and emotive for an encyclopaedia?Royalcourtier (talk) 22:13, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Highly disputed" 

message: Vela Incident: South Atlantic Mystery Flash in September 1979 Raised Questions about Nuclear Test
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 570 (December 8, 2016) Edited by William Burr and Avner Cohen
CIA Panel Found Evidence “Consistent” with a “Nuclear Explosion in Outer Space” But White House Board Later Disagreed  Critics Labeled White House Report a “Whitewash”  New Declassified Records Deepen the Debate on the 22 September 1979 Event – Including Whether Israel and South Africa Were Involved.  Johnvr4 (talk) 16:53, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, but it was not really a conspiracy theory; it was just another theory for what might have happened.  A conspiracy theory, maybe, later on when people began getting paranoid about it. SkoreKeep (talk) 04:49, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV issue: developments and new sources about those developments 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Vela Incident. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140606232313/http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/23198/Weiss_IsraelNuclearTest.pdf to http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/23198/Weiss_IsraelNuclearTest.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 12:34, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Quoting from the article: "Twenty years earlier in 1959, the USSR had conducted secret underwater tests in the Pacific in violation of the 1958 bilateral moratorium between the Soviet Union and the U.S. (cf. List of nuclear weapons tests of the Soviet Union)<ref>"  I'd sure like to see some documentation on these tests.  As far as I know, there were no full-sclae nuclear tests by the Soviet Union in 1959 or 1960.  There may have been some sub-critical testing (which the Americans did as well), but it is ridiculous to look for them in the Pacific.  I assure you that the citation made for the wikipedia article on Soviet testing does NOT have such a test in it.  If I don't get a valid source reference in a week or so, the statement will be gone.  
There are three other sources made for the statement. The first is to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and its citation in the journal's archve shows this for Jan 1985 p33:
@Article{Anonymous:1985:GAC,
  author =       "Anonymous",
  title =        "{General Advisory Committee Report} excerpts",
  journal =      j-BULL-AT-SCI,
  volume =       "41",
  number =       "1",
  pages =        "32--34",
  month =        jan,
  year =         "1985",
  CODEN =        "BASIAP",
  ISSN =         "0096-3402 (print), 1938-3282 (electronic)",
  ISSN-L =       "0096-3402",
  bibdate =      "Sun Nov 03 05:26:06 2013",
  bibsource =    "http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/bullatsci.bib",
  acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
  fjournal =     "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists",
}
That looks to me to be a bulletin housekeeping article, not anything about Soviet Pacific Testing.  The other two references are to a series of essays by a Russian scientist "Essays of a Soviet Scientist", by Vitaliĭ Iosifovich Golʹdanskiĭ, the second to a book about the Cuban missile crisis, "One hell of a gamble" by Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali.  I have access to neither.  I find it exceedingly odd that such a thing is not mentioned in any of the more usual references about cataloguing nuclear weapons testing.  SkoreKeep (talk) 19:44, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Soviet test in the Pacific? 

message: Comes Jonathan Buttall with the fact that the Vela Incident has now been confirmed as being a nuclear test, and that all other explanations are now "unlikely".  While the findings of iodine-131 in sheep in Australia is certainly evidence on that view, I do not know of any definitive confirmation having been issued by anyone; certainly, these current changes have not provided one.  Reverted the good faith edit.  SkoreKeep (talk) 04:53, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Confirmed?

message: The name in references is "Locating" vice "Location" as seen here and here. Though a largely public project with its purpose well known (unlike its "parent" SOSUS), and advertised it has surprisingly few published detailed descriptions. Palmeira (talk) 16:31, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missile Impact Locating System (MILS) 

message: Hi, there was a very interesting article about the possibility of antimatter existing in nature as tiny self contained nuggets of "contra-terrene" matter which held together by electrostatic forces.
Upon entering the Earth's atmosphere they might be protected by Leidenfrost like effects as we've never seen antimatter in bulk so it is hard to know what might happen. 
Some early work suggests that antimatter might have odd properties like generating magnetic fields in bulk, but it is hard to even simulate this due to there being no work on nuclei denser than lithium so it might superconduct in the vacuum of space and generate its own shielding from the solar wind.
As the shielding starts to collapse all the antimatter would suddenly react, superheat and produce a multi kiloton blast if a lot is present. My estimate is about 480 milligrams.
If the antimatter were in the form of anti-metal(plausible) and a solid, that would account for how it could survive so long. We'd literally never see it coming. 78.111.195.1 (talk) 07:15, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: What does this have to do with the Vela incident? –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:43, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contra-terrene meteor ?!