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Atomic Weapons Detection Recognition And Estimation Of Yield
Atomic Weapons Detection Recognition and Estimation of Yield known by the acronym AWDREY was a desk-mounted automatic detection instrument, located at 13 of the 25 Royal Observer Corps (ROC) controls, across the United Kingdom, during the Cold War. The instruments would have detected any nuclear explosions and indicated the estimated size in megatons. With the display unit mounted in a steel cabinet, the system used two sets of five photo-sensitive cells within the detection head to record the intense flash of light produced by the detonation of the weapon followed, within a second, by a second intense flash. This double flash is characteristic of a nuclear explosion and measurement of the short gap between the two flashes enabled the weapon's power to be estimated, and the bearing to be indicated. It had a range of 150 miles (240 km) in good visibility. From 1974 AWDREY units were used together with a device known as DIADEM (Direction Indicator of Atomic Detonation by Elec ...
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Atomic Weapons Detection Recognition And Estimation Of Yield (AWDREY)
Atomic may refer to: * Of or relating to the atom, the smallest particle of a chemical element that retains its chemical properties * Atomic physics, the study of the atom * Atomic Age, also known as the "Atomic Era" * Atomic scale, distances comparable to the dimensions of an atom * Atom (order theory), in mathematics * Atomic (coffee machine), a 1950s stovetop coffee machine * Atomic (cocktail), a champagne cocktail * ''Atomic'' (magazine), an Australian computing and technology magazine * Atomic Skis, an Austrian ski producer Music * Atomic (band), a Norwegian jazz quintet * ''Atomic'' (Lit album), 2001 * ''Atomic'' (Mogwai album), 2016 * ''Atomic'', an album by Rockets, 1982 * ''Atomic'' (EP), by , 2013 * "Atomic" (song), by Blondie, 1979 * "Atomic", a song by Tiger Army from '' Tiger Army III: Ghost Tigers Rise'' See also * * * Atom (other) * Atomicity (database systems) * Atomism, philosophy about the basic building blocks of reality * Atomic City (dis ...
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Royal Observer Corps
The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. It operated in the United Kingdom between 29 October 1925 and 31 December 1995, when the Corps' civilian volunteers were stood down (ROC headquarters staff at RAF Bentley Priory stood down on 31 March 1996). Composed mainly of civilian spare-time volunteers, ROC personnel wore a Royal Air Force (RAF) style Uniforms of the Royal Air Force, uniform and latterly came under the administrative control of RAF Strike Command and the operational control of the Home Office. Civilian volunteers were trained and administered by a small En cadre, cadre of professional full-time officers under the command of the Commandant Royal Observer Corps; latterly a serving RAF Air Commodore. Overview In 1925, following a List of committees of the United Kingdom Parliament, Defence Committee initiative undertaken the previous year, ...
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of List of islands of the United Kingdom, the smaller islands within the British Isles, covering . Northern Ireland shares Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border, a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. It maintains sovereignty over the British Overseas Territories, which are located across various oceans and seas globally. The UK had an estimated population of over 68.2 million people in 2023. The capital and largest city of both England and the UK is London. The cities o ...
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Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term ''Cold war (term), cold war'' is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and Nuclear arms race, nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, Economic sanctions, embargoes, and sports diplomacy. After the end of World War II in 1945, during which the US and USSR had been allies, the USSR installed satellite state, satellite governments in its occupied territories in Eastern Europe and N ...
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Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse
A nuclear electromagnetic pulse (nuclear EMP or NEMP) is a burst of electromagnetic radiation created by a nuclear explosion. The resulting rapidly varying electric and magnetic fields may couple with electrical and electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges. The specific characteristics of a particular nuclear EMP event vary according to a number of factors, the most important of which is the altitude of the detonation. The term "electromagnetic pulse" generally excludes optical (infrared, visible, ultraviolet) and ionizing (such as X-ray and gamma radiation) ranges. In military terminology, a nuclear warhead detonated tens to hundreds of miles above the Earth's surface is known as a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) device. Effects of a HEMP device depend on factors including the altitude of the detonation, energy yield, gamma ray output, interactions with the Earth's magnetic field and electromagnetic shielding of targets. History The fact th ...
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Atomic Weapons Establishment
} The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is a United Kingdom Ministry of Defence research facility responsible for the design, manufacture and support of warheads for the UK's nuclear weapons. It is the successor to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) with its main site on the former RAF Aldermaston and has major facilities at Burghfield, Blacknest and RNAD Coulport. AWE plc, responsible for the day-to-day operations of AWE, is owned by the Ministry of Defence and operated as a non-departmental public body. Until June 2021, AWE plc was owned by a consortium of Jacobs Engineering Group, Lockheed Martin UK, and Serco through AWE Management Ltd, which held a 25‑year contract (until March 2025) to operate AWE, although all the sites remained owned by the Government of the United Kingdom which had a golden share in AWE plc. In November 2020, it was announced that the Ministry of Defence had triggered a contractual break point and would take ownership of AWE ...
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Aldermaston
Aldermaston ( ) is a village and civil parish in Berkshire, England. In the 2011 census, the parish had a population of 1,015. The village is in the Kennet Valley and bounds Hampshire to the south. It is approximately from Newbury, Basingstoke, and Reading and is from London. Aldermaston may have been inhabited as early as 1690 BCE; a number of postholes and remains of cereal grains have been found in the area. Written history of the village is traced back at least as far as the 9th century CE, when the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicles'' showed that the Ealdorman of Berkshire had his country estate in the village. The manor of Aldermaston was established by the early 11th century, when the village was given to the Achard family by Henry I; the manor is documented in the Domesday Book of 1086. St Mary the Virgin Church was established in the 13th century, and some of the original Norman architecture remains in the building's structure. The last resident Lord of the Manor, ...
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Kiritimati
Kiritimati (), also known as Christmas Island, is a Pacific Ocean atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. The name is derived from the English word "Christmas" written in Gilbertese according to its phonology, in which the combination is pronounced /s/. Kiritimati is one of the world's largest atolls in terms of land area, consisting of about land area and a network of lagoons;. The atoll is about in perimeter, while the lagoon shoreline extends for over . Kiritimati comprises over 70% of the total land area of Kiribati, a country encompassing 33 Pacific atolls and islands. It lies north of the equator, south of Honolulu, and from San Francisco. Kiritimati is in the world's furthest forward time zone, UTC+14, and is therefore one of the first inhabited places on Earth to experience New Year's Day (see also Caroline Atoll, Kiribati). Although it lies east of the 180th meridian, the Republic of Kiribati realigned the International ...
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United Kingdom Warning And Monitoring Organisation
The United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO) was a British civilian organisation operating to provide UK military and civilian authorities with data on nuclear explosions and forecasts of fallout across the country in the event of nuclear war. The UKWMO was established in 1957 and funded by the Home Office and used its own premises which were mainly staffed by Royal Observer Corps (ROC) uniformed full-time and volunteer personnel as the fieldforce. The ROC was administered by the Ministry of Defence but mainly funded by the Home Office. The only time the combined organisations were on high alert in the Cold War was during Cuban Missile Crisis in October and November 1962. The organisation was wound up and disbanded in November 1992 following a review prompted by the government's Options for Change report. Its emblem-of-arms was a pair of classic hunting horns crossing each other, pointed upwards, with the enscrolled motto "Sound An Alarm", a title also used ...
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Four-minute Warning
The four-minute warning was a public alert system conceived by the British Government during the Cold War and operated between 1953 and 1992. The name derived from the approximate length of time from the point at which a Soviet nuclear missile attack against the United Kingdom could be confirmed and the impact of those missiles on their targets. The warning system Basic details The warning would be initiated by the detection of inbound missiles and aircraft targeted at the United Kingdom. Early in the Cold War, Jodrell Bank was used to detect and track incoming missiles, while continuing to be used for astronomical research. Throughout the Cold War, there was a conflict between the Royal Air Force and the Home Office about who was in charge of the warning system. This was not for any practical or technical reason but more to do with who would be blamed if a false alarm were given or if an attack occurred without warning. By the 1980s, the warning was to be given on the ord ...
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Bomb Power Indicator
Bomb Power Indicator, also known by the acronym BPI, was an instrument built to detect nuclear explosions and measure the peak overpressure of their blast waves. It was used at the twenty five British Royal Observer Corps (ROC) controls and nearly 1,500 ROC underground monitoring posts, across the United Kingdom during the Cold War. Overview The instruments, operated by volunteers, measured the level of peak-overpressure at the instrument's location. Once readings had been combined with information provided by the Ground Zero Indicators it would be possible to estimate the size of the nuclear explosion in megatons. Detailed BPI information was backed up by the automatic AWDREY readings. The BPI was designed and built by the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. The design was tested for performance and accuracy using real nuclear explosions at the 1957 Kiritimati (or Christmas Island) nuclear weapons tests, after being mounted on board a ship. A number of BPIs were als ...
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Faraday Cage
A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure used to block some electromagnetic fields. A Faraday shield may be formed by a continuous covering of conductive material, or in the case of a Faraday cage, by a mesh of such materials. Faraday cages are named after scientist Michael Faraday, who first constructed one in 1836. Faraday cages work because an external electrical field will cause the electric charges within the cage's conducting material to be distributed in a way that cancels out the field's effect inside the cage. This phenomenon can be used to protect sensitive electronic equipment (for example RF receivers) from external radio frequency interference (RFI) often during testing or alignment of the device. Faraday cages are also used to protect people and equipment against electric currents such as lightning strikes and electrostatic discharges, because the cage conducts electrical current around the outside of the enclosed space and none passes through the interior. ...
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