Did the US Air Force attempt to nuke the moon?

December 1, 2012
Michael Salla
Exonews

By Michael E. Salla, Ph.D.

moon-pic_1627741a — Did the USAF attempt to nuke the moon?

Itâ€™s official â€“ the US Air Force had a plan to nuke the moon. According to a declassified report obtained by CNN in a story that aired on November 28, the Air Force plan involved sending a nuclear missile that would detonate on impact with the lunar surface. The aim was apparently to respond to Soviet success in launching Sputnik I, and showing that the US had a capacity to send rockets to, and eventually from the moon. The project was titled “A Study of Lunar Research Flightsâ€ (aka “Project A-119â€) and was planned in 1958. According to the declassified report, the plan was never implemented, and was abandoned one year later due to concerns over the effect of nuclear radiation on the moon, and a public backlash. According to one senior US Air Force officer, however, not only was an attempt made to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon decades later, but there was an external intervention to destroy the missile.

CNN was able to track down and interview the physicist who led Project A-119. Leonard Reiffel told CNN:

People were worried very much by (first human in space Soviet cosmonaut Yuri) Gagarin and Sputnik and the very great accomplishments of the Soviet Union in those days, and in comparison, the United States was feared to be looking puny. So this was a concept to sort of reassure people that the United States could maintain a mutually-assured deterrence, and therefore avoid any huge conflagration on the Earth,”

â€œThe basic plan,â€ according to Reiffel, â€œwas for an intercontinental ballistic missile to be launched from an undisclosed location, travel some 240,000 miles to the moon, and detonate on impact.â€ Information from the impact, according to Report, would yield information â€œconcerning the capability of nuclear weapons for space warfare.â€ Reiffel explained:

The thinking â€¦ was that if the Soviets hit the United States with nuclear weapons first and wiped out the U.S. ability to strike back, the U.S. could launch warheads from the moon.

Reiffel claims that Project A-119 was quickly abandoned because:

We didn’t want to clutter up the natural radioactivities of the moon with additional bits of radioactivity from the Earth,.. Project planners also weren’t sure of the reliability of the weapons, and feared the public backlash in the U.S. would be significant.

So if Reiffel and the 1959 report is accurate, then the plan to nuke the moon was never attempted. Or was it? According to a retired USAF Colonel, not only was an attempt made to nuke the moon, but there was UFO intervention to destroy the missile soon after its launch.

Colonel Ross Dedrickson explained his background in nuclear weapons security in an interview with Dr Steven Greer of the Disclosure Project:

I was a staff officer for the military liaison committee between the chairman of the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] and the Secretary of Defenseâ€¦. During that period of time [early 1950s] one of my functions was to accompany a security team which visited all of the nuclear facilities to check on the security of weaponsâ€¦. I was assigned to the Unified Command under Admiral Felt during the â€˜60s. I was the officer in charge of the Alternate command post involved with nuclear weapons operation planning. During that period of time, I maintained contacts with NORAD, with the SAC operations, and was involved with operational plans for the use of nuclear weapons.

Colonel Dedrickson then explained:

I finally retired from the Air Force and joined the Boeing Company where I was assigned to the Minute Man program where I was responsible for the accounting of all the nuclear fleet, the Minute Man One, Two, and Three. And during that period of time, I also learned about incidents involving nuclear weapons. And among these incidents were those where a couple of nuclear weapons that were sent into space were destroyed â€¦

Dedrickson claims that one of these nuclear weapons fired into space was aimed at the moon:

It was my understanding that in either the very end of the â€˜70s or the early â€˜80s that we attempted to put a nuclear weapon on the Moon and explode it for scientific measurements and other thingsâ€¦

Who was it that destroyed the nuclear missile aimed at the moon, and interfered with other nuclear weapons tests by the USA? According to Dedrickson, the missiles were destroyed by UFOs that he believed were manned by an extraterrestrial intelligence. Dedricksonâ€™s remarkable claims are backed by other retired USAF officials that state that US and Soviet nuclear missiles were regularly interfered with by UFOs since the dawn of the nuclear era.

In conclusion, we know that the USAF did officially conceive a plan in 1958 to launch and detonate a nuclear missile on the moon. Apparently, “Project A-119â€ was abandoned one year later. If Colonel Dedrickson is accurate, however, then Project A-119 was either resurrected decades later or a new project was conceived with a similar goal. The timing of the later project, in the late 1970s/early 1980s, suggests the nuclear missile attempt may have been related to circumstances surrounding the end of the Apollo lunar missions. According to some whistleblowers the USA was not â€œallowedâ€ to return to the moon by an extraterrestrial intelligence based on the moon. It appears that there was indeed an attempt to send a nuclear missile to the moon by the USAF, and that it was destroyed by some external agency â€“ UFOs and/or extraterrestrial intelligence â€“ closely monitoring nuclear weapons testing on Earth, outer space and the moon.

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Further Reading

moon, nuclear weapons, UFOs, US Air Force