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Report on the 1979 Vela Incident

By Carey Sublette

Last changed 1 September 2001

The Vela Incident

On 22 September 1979 around 00:53 GMT, the Vela 6911 satellite detected the characteristic double flash
of an atmospheric nuclear explosion apparently over the Indian Ocean or South Atlantic. 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. Due to the position ambiguity of the initial detection (the Vela optical
sensors were not imaging sensors and could did not detect location), the location is variously described as
being in the Indian Ocean or South Atlantic. The characteristics of the light curve indicated that it was a low
kiloton explosion (approximately 3 kt). The hydroacoustic signal indicated a low altitude explosion. A major
and lingering controversy erupted over the interpretation of this apparent detection.

The Vela satellite program was an nuclear detonation (NUDET) detection system setup after the 1963
limited test ban and was designed to detect nuclear explosions in space and (later) air. There were two
groups of Vela satellites developed. The original Vela were equipped only with sensors for space detection
and were launched in three pairs between 1963 and 1965. They operated for at least five years, far beyond
their nominal design life of six months. A second generation called Advanced Vela were launched in 1967,
1969 and 1970. These satellites added "bahngmeters" - optical sensors for detecting atmospheric tests - and
had a nominal design life of 18 months, but were later rated with a seven year lifespan, although they were
all operated for more than ten years, with the last one being turned off in 1984 -- after 14 years of successful
operation [JPL 2001]; [Astronautix 2001].

Vela 6911 is presumably one of the Advanced Vela pair launch launched on 23 May 1969 (perigee 77,081
km, apogee 145,637 km, inclination 61.6 deg), and had thus been operating over ten years at the time of the
1979 detection.

The Vela satellite system had previously made 41 similar detections of atmospheric tests, each of which had
been subsequently confirmed through other means. The detection came at a bad time for the Carter
administration which would be under pressure to take definite action if the detection were accepted as
accurate. Inescapably it seemed that either Israel, South Africa, or both, would be implicated. Consequently
a panel of scientists from academia known as the Ruina Panel, after its head Dr. Jack Ruina, was created to
review the reliability of the Vela data. Since this satellite was operating past its expected lifespan, and its
electromagnetic pulse (EMP) sensor was inoperative, questions about the reliability of the detection were
raised. The panel ultimately concluded in a report released in the summer of 1980 that the signal "was
probably not from a nuclear explosion. Although we cannot rule out that this signal was of nuclear origin".

This conclusion has cast a pall over public confidence in the ability of the U.S. to unambiguously detect
clandestine nuclear explosions for over twenty years.

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 The Start of the Controversy

The instruments used by the Vela satellites for detecting

atmospheric nuclear explosions are called "bhangmeters".
These are optical sensors that record light fluctuations on a
sub-millisecond time scale. All atmospheric nuclear
explosions produce a unique and easy to detect signature: an
extremely short and intense flash, followed by a second much
more prolonged and less intense emission of light. The initial
flash is typically 1 millisecond long, and although it emits
only about 1% of the total thermal energy of the fireball, it is
actually the point of maximum brightness for the fireball. The
second peak may take from hundreds of milliseconds to
several seconds to develop, depending on the size of the
explosion, and lasts a comparable period of time.

This phenomenon occurs because the surface of the early

fireball is quickly overtaken by the expanding hydrodynamic
shock wave. This shock wave acts as an optical shutter,
hiding the small but extremely hot and bright early fireball
behind an opaque ionized shock front which is comparatively
quite dim.

No natural phenomenon is known that can imitate this

signature. In fact it is reported that no false alarms have ever
been detected with a Vela bhangmeter. Every other double-
flash detection has later been confirmed to be an actual
nuclear test.

According to Seymour Hersh, the idea of referring this

detection to an advisory panel was floated before any
potential problems with the detection had been noted. An
Advanced Vela 5 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. At this meeting the
probability of a nuclear test was placed at 90 percent or better. Either Keeny or Press (accounts of the
participants vary) suggested convening a panel - at least as much as a delaying tactic as an effort to ensure
that the data was carefully evaluated [Hersh 1991].

There is no question that a confirmed detection of a nuclear test would have put the Carter administration in
a very difficult position. President Carter had placed great emphasis on nuclear non-proliferation. The
administration had been a troubled one, with the recent collapse of a major ally in the Middle East (Iran) as
one of many problems. The upcoming re-election campaign was certain to be an uphill battle. If Israel were
to be linked to a nuclear test (as seemed likely, it it was real) the political damage from imposing sanctions,
or not imposing sanctions, would likely be severe.

Within several weeks the eminent membership of the panel had been selected - Jack P. Ruina, professor of
electrical engineering at MIT and an alumnus of several defense think tanks, was the titular head, of the
eight other members Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez, Wolfgang Panofsky of Stanford, and Richard Garwin of
the Thomas Watson Research Center at IBM were the key players.

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The administration succeeded in keeping the detection secret until 25 October 1979, when ABC television
reporter John Scali broadcast the story after having been briefed by contacts at the Pentagon.

From the outset the panel was given guidelines tailored to help give the Carter administration cover - they
were tasked to investigate whether the detection had been a false alarm including the possibility that it "was
of natural origin, possibly resulting from the conincidence of two or more natural phenomena...". Given this
mandate and focus it was perhaps inevitable that the result of the panel's work would be the most plausible
possible way to explain away the detection. It should be remembered that at the time of the panel first
convened, no reason to doubt the detection had been identified.

Problems were found with the Vela satellite data though - the two bhangmeter readings did not agree on the
flashes brightness, perhaps because the aged sensors were no longer equally sensitive. This discrepancy, and
the lack of confirming data from the inoperable EMP sensor, emerged as the chief reasons for casting doubt
on whether a nuclear test had actually occurred. Discrepancies had been observed in Vela signals from
previous confirmed atmospheric nuclear tests however [LANL Daily News Bulletin 1997].

During the panel's months of deliberations, concluded in July 1980, a variety of pieces of corroborating
evidence surfaced.

P>One of the clearest indications was from ocean acoustic waves detected by hydrophones. The hydrophone
data indicated signals both from a direct path originating near Prince Edward Island and from a reflection of
Scotia Ridge in the Antarctic and the Antarctic ice shelf. Analyses of these signals conducted by the Naval
Research Laboratory (NRL) confirmed that they had been generated at a time and location consistent with
the Vela 6911 detection and that their intensity was consistent with a small nuclear explosion on, or slightly
under, the ocean's surface. This evidence alone, if accepted as valid, should be sufficient to confirm the
accuracy of the detection [LANL Daily News Bulletin 1997]; [Albright 1994b].

The radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico detected an anomalous traveling ionospheric disturbance (that
is, an upper atmosphere wave) moving southeast to northwest during the early morning hours of 22
September 1979, something researchers had never before witnessed. Powerful explosions create ionospheric
disturbances from the direct transmission of the upward propagating shock wave to the ionosphere. But Los
Alamos space scientist Lew Duncan, one of the researchers who originally connected the ionospheric
disturbance to the event that night, said in 1994 that he was still not fully convinced that what the dish at
Arecibo detected was a nuclear test [Albright 1994b].

Frank Barnaby cites additional ionospheric data collected later by NRL, and confirmation from Air Force
early warning radar signals made on 22 September, that was not considered by the Ruina Panel though he
does not describe the evidence in greater detail [Barnaby 1989; pg. 17-18].

Unfortunately efforts to detect the one completely unambiguous "smoking gun" signature of a nuclear
explosion, guaranteed to silence skeptics, namely radioactive fallout, failed. The U.S. government quickly
launched a major effort to collect samples of the fallout cloud, but Air Force attempts to sample the fallout
failed to enter the low-pressure air mass that had been over the detonation site at the time of the explosion
(what the problem was I do not know). However Dr. Van Middlesworth detected low levels of iodine-131, a
short-lived radioactive fission product, in sheep thyroids in the states of Victoria and Tasmania in western
Australia soon after the event. Studies of wind patterns confirmed that fall-out from an explosion in the
southern Inidian Ocean could have been carried there [Barnaby 1989; pg. 17].

An summary of the panel's deliberations and conclusions is provided by one its most distinguished members
- the Nobel winning physicist Luis Alvarez:

The two ways to read the one good satellite record from which the explosive yield was determined didn't
agree as well as usual. Drawing on my bubble chamber experience, I asked to see a selection of the satellites'
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"zoo-ons", events so strange they belonged in a zoo. This idea was new to the DIA, but since their records
were stored on computer tape they needed only a week to put their zoo together. Rich [Richard Muller],
Dick [Richard Garwin], and I found a steady degradation in record quality among these zoo-ons from
confirmed explosions to events at which no one would look twice. Although the event we were studying had
some of the characteristics of a nuclear explosion, only one of the two satellite sensors recorded it.
Moreover, there was no indication from earlier or later records that the sensor that failed to record the event
was malfunctioning. Both sensors looked at a large area of the Earth's surface, so it was hard to believe that
one sensor could see a nuclear blast and the other could not.

Someone on the committee proposed that a micrometeorite might have struck the satellite and dislodged a
piece of it skin. Reflecting sunlight into the optical system of one sensor but not into that of its neighbor, the
debris might have caused the questionable event. We constructed a believable scenario based on the known
frequency of such micrometeorite impacts that reproduced the observed light intensity and pattern.

I doubt that any responsible person now believes that a nuclear explosion occurred because no one has
broken security, among South Africans or elsewhere. U.S. experience teaches that secrets of such import
can't be kept long. After the United States tested its first megaton-scale thermonuclear weapon, which
completely evaporated the small Pacific island of Elugelab, stories about a disappearing island reached U.S.
newspapers as soon as the task force steamed into Pearl Harbor and sailors had time to call home.

Many people think that solving a scientific puzzle is an exercise in logic that could be carried out equally
well by a computer. To the contrary, a scientific detective's main stock-in-trade is his ability to decide which
evidence to ignore. In out DIA briefings we were shown, and quickly discarded, confirming evidence from a
wild assemblage of sensors: radioactive Australian sheep thyroids, radiotelescopic ionospheric wind
analyses, recording from the Navy's sonic submarine-detection arrays that supposedly precisely located the
blast from patterns of sound reflected from bays and promontories on the coast of Antarctica.

Inevitably, then, I had a real sense of deja vu when the House subcommittee's [on the Kennedy-assassination
police-radio recordings] acoustics experts pinpointed the location of the open mike by triangulating the
reflections of supposed gunshot sounds from the building in Dealey Plaza. The National Academy of
Sciences committee showed conclusively that the motorcycle with the open mike wasn't even in Dealey
Plaza at the time the tape was recorded.

[Alvarez 1987, Chapt. 14]

Alvarez's discovery that Vela detections were part of a continuum of detections of variable quality, and that
this detection was less clear cut than others, provided a defensible rationale for dismissing it as a real
detection. It showed that there existed a class of ambiguous detections, that could include false events, and
perhaps real ones as well. Any event in the lower range of "good" detections could be treated as suspect.

Alvarez's account here that only one sensor detected the test is at variance with other accounts ([LANL
Daily News Bulletin 1997]; [Albright 1994b]) that state a difference in the recorded intensities, but not
complete non-detection. This is an important point, because a complete failure by one sensor would
seriously weaken the case of a nuclear test, while similar signals from both sensors (even though they
differed in strength) would make the micrometeroid theory much more difficult to credit. It is perhaps
relevant to point out that Alvarez is mistaken in his implication that the House subcommittee hearings were
held after the Ruina Panel, when in fact they were held several years before. This raises questions about how
reliable his memory of this affair is overall.

A feature that stands out from Alvarez's account is the apparent summary dismissal of all corroborating
evidence, one which he offers no real rationale for (other than to suggest that this is how real science its
done). Although Alvarez proposed a statistical model (the micrometeoroid theory) to explain away the
detection, he does not seem to consider another type of statistical model that tends to support the possibility
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of a nuclear test. This is a causal model in which a hypothesized cause is evaluated by considering the
likelihood of each of a set of ambiguous evidences is a consequence of it, none of which is a "smoking gun".
Each piece of evidence may have an alternate explanation, or a background rate of occurrence, unconnected
with the the hypothesized cause, but taken together the hypothesis may be a far more likely explanation for
the whole set, than assuming that each is an independent and uncorrelated red herring. Dismissing each
piece one at a time, as the panel seems to have done, is a suspect procedure.

Another argument that Alvarez makes - that the absence of decisive revelations (known to him) by 1987 was
conclusive evidence against its occurrence - is clearly flawed.

First, not all mysteries are ever resolved or resolved quickly. The disappearance of Judge Crater, to pick one
hoary example, was never explained. The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the last
Romanovs remained unexplained for 75 years; the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg for 50. There are
specific reasons that make these things possible - only limited groups of people knew the truth, and they had
a variety of strong motivations not to reveal what they knew, and perhaps serious obstacles to doing it. In
particular, Alvarez's experience with the Ivy Mike thermonuclear test was hardly similar to the situation in
Israel, or in South Africa at the time. For starters - no story could ever have reached any Israeli newspaper,
for the entire Israeli press is under military censorship which bans any reference to the Israeli nuclear
program. The United States has never had any similar censorship regime, even at the height of involvement
in world wars. Further, Israel has demonstrated willingness to resort to kidnap operations on foreign soil,
secret arrests and incarceration, and intimidation to maintain secrecy, and perhaps would not cavil at
resorting to assassination. In the 70s and early 80s South Africa was also a repressive nation with de facto
censorship, and extra-legal hit teams to enforce social order.

Second, if the existence of stories supporting the hypothesized test are taken as a requisite for believing that
it occurred then this condition was well satisfied by 1991 when Hersh recounted detailed stories about an
Israeli-South African test collaboration in The Samson Option [Hersh 1991; pg. 271-272]. In his treatment
Hersh takes the reality of the test as a given, a matter beyond dispute. He refers to former Israeli government
officials who indicated that the flash was a test of a low yield nuclear artillery shell, and was actually the
third such test in the area. At least two Israeli navy ships had sailed to the site and a contingent of Israelis,
and the South Africa navy was observing the test. The tests were conducted under cover of bad weather, but
a gap in the clouds allowed the detection.

Similarly Barnaby claims that South African naval ships were operating in the area the night of the test,
citing an African Educational Fund study on the incident [Barnaby 1989; pg. 17].

Hersh reports interviewing several members of the Nuclear Intelligence Panel (NIP), which had conducted
their own investigation of the event. Those interviewed included its leader Donald M. Kerr, Jr. and eminent
nuclear weapons program veteran Harold M. Agnew. The NIP members concluded unanimously that it was
a definite nuclear test. Another member - Louis H. Roddis, Jr. - concluded that "the South African-Israeli
test had taken place on a barge, or on one of the islands in the South Indian Ocean archipelago" [Hersh
1991; pg. 280-281]. He also cite internal CIA estimates made in 1979 and 1980 which concluded that it had
been a test.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory conducted a comprehensive analysis, including the hydroacoustic data,
and issued a 300-page report concluding that there had been a nuclear event near Prince Edward Island or
Antarctica [Albright 1994b].

The failure of the panel to affirm the existence of the test seems to reflect the nature of the panel and its
mandate more than a failure of the evidence. Dave Simons of Nonproliferation and Arms Control Research
and Development (NIS-RD) said that similar discrepancies had been observed in Vela signals from earlier
confirmed atmospheric tests and is quoted as saying: "The whole federal laboratory community came to the
conclusion that the data indicated a bomb," [LANL Daily News Bulletin 1997].

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Claims and Speculation: 1981 To The Present

The principle question that has hung in the air for the last 20 plus years has been more along the lines of
"whose test was it?" than "was it really a test?". The choices were basically:

 it was a South African test,

 it was an Israeli test,
 it was a joint South African-Israeli test.

But attempting to decide on one of these hypotheses is necessarily based either on guesswork or reliance on
one or more hearsay or anonymous reports of uncertain (or outright suspect) reliability.

The possible theories of responsibility remain the same as in 1979, although more information is now
available to flesh them out.

By the time of the Vela detection it was universally believed that Israel had a sophisticated nuclear weapons
program (this was well before the Vanunu revelations in 1986). South Africa was known to be pursuing a
weapons program, but the status of their effort was unknown to the outside world, although the US had
detected preparations for a nuclear test site in the Kalahari desert in 1977, [Burrows and Windrem, 1994]).

During the years following the Vela detection unsourced reports periodically surfaced ascribing the test to
one of the above possibilities.

As described above, in 1991 Seymour Hersh in The Samson Option quoted a number of source Israeli
sources as saying that the test was a joint Israeli and South African operation [Hersh 1991]. If it was an
Israeli test, one must speculate exactly how it was done. Hersh claims Israeli navy ships were sent - but
Israeli has a small blue water Navy most of which is based in the Mediterranean. It would require a very
unusual extended deployment out of the area to reach the Indian Ocean for a test - and the whereabouts of
Israel's navy ships around the time of the test would provide a means for evaluating its plausibility. I do not
know whether anyone has publicly documented information about this - although I have been told by
someone convincingly representing himself as a former South African naval intelligence officer that in fact
Israel's ships were not unaccountably absent around this time. Even if so, the possibilities exist of staging the
test using commercial ships - operated by Israeli crews possibly under a front company, as an all-airborne
operation using air-to-air refueled transports, or by using South African platforms.

Barnaby reports an account from African Educational Fund study that U.S. reconaissance planes operating
in the area around the time of the test were intercepted by South African military aircraft and forced them to
land. Also cited is circumstantial evidence like a literature search done by the U.S. National Technical
Information Service (NTIS) at the request of a South African representative "on nuclear explosions and the
seismic detection of nuclear explosions, including the flight plans, predicted orbit plans and operations of
the Vela satellite", the only such request ever received [Barnaby 1989; pg. 18-19].

On the other hand Waldo Stumpf, of the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa, argues that South
Africa did not have the means to conduct a test at that time, but also states that "South Africa was certainly
not responsible and was also not involved with anybody else, in this incident [Stumpf 1995].

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. The information that was made available tended to
disconfirm the hypothesis that South Africa conducted the test. The IAEA has apparently been able to
confirm that whatever discrepancies exist between South Africa's HEU inventory and its production records
(and some are inevitable) the amount is too small to hide the HEU required for a test. Further, South Africa's
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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. This first device was an experimental one named "Melba" which was
said to be kept for research and demonstration purposes throughout the program (which ended in 1989).

In 1994 another claim surfaced:

Contradicting these statements is 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". Gerhardt, who said he was
not yet ready to reveal the full facts, stated that although he was not directly involved in planning or carrying
out the operation, he had learned of it unofficially.

Gerhardt was quoted in the February 20, 1994 City Press: "The explosion was clean and was not supposed
to be detected. But they were not as smart as they thought, and the weather changed - so the Americans were
able to pick it up."

Gerhardt told me in a March interview that no South African ships were involved in the event. He declined
to provide any more details."

[Albright 1994b; pg. 42].

It is impossible to assess whether Dieter Gerhard's account has any basis in fact. Some parts of his
statements are interesting. The assertion that "The explosion was clean ..." suggests that it was a neutron
bomb (which has been alleged before about this event) which is the only kind of low yield device to have
reduced fallout. His statement that weather pattern changes caused its detection is interesting, since
conclusive detection by this means has never been made public - the Australian fallout report (and a New
Zealand one before it) were both subject to dispute. By his own admission of course, he had no direct
connection with the project.

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.

Initially this seemed to conclusively decide the nature of the Vela incident, at least as far as its participants
went (the possibility of undisclosed Israeli participation remained). Pahad's office later responded that his
remarks were taken out of context. His press secretary told the Albuquerque Journal in an article dated 11
July that Pahad had said only that there was a "strong rumor" that a test had taken place, and that it should
be investigated. In other words - Pahad was not commenting on actual knowledge of a test, but was
repeating rumors that had been circulating for many years.

Alvarez's point about the absence of evidence being evidence of absence in the case of South Africa today
holds much more weight than it did in 1987. South Africa has not only revealed its formerly secret nuclear
arsenal and weapons program, but has dismantled both, and the apartheid regime that built them is no more.
In the era after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has unearthed many hidden and unpleasant truths
regarding the National Party government (and crimes authored by the same), it is increasingly difficult to
believe that all participants in nuclear testing, or those with authoritative knowledge of it, would all still
remain silent.

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If the test was a South African nuclear device then at least some of the information earlier released by the
South African government would have to have been falsified. In particular, the information provided to the
IAEA that South Africa did not construct its first nuclear explosive device until November 1979, two
months after the mysterious flash, and that the first batch of highly enriched uranium was kept in an
experimental device until 1989. IAEA investigations of detailed Valindaba production records, and
inventories of its highly enriched uranium, appear to support the claim that any inventory irregularities could
not hide enough HEU to fashion a bomb.

Whether the device was South African or Israeli in origin, Gerhard's account (if true) 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. But nothing has come from the South African
government indicating direct Israeli involvement in the testing of a nuclear device, and certainly not the lead
role implied by Gerhard's assertion that 'no South African ships were involved'.

NB: An LASL (now LANL) study of physical phenomena possibly related to the Vela detection is available
on-line in Acrobat (.pdf) format. This document appears to have been prepared prior to the availability of the
Arecibo data mentioned earlier. A description and abstract of the document is given below. The downloaded
file is 1.4 megabytes.

Download LA-8672

NTIS No: LA-8672/HDM

Title: Evaluation of Some Geophysical Events on 22 September 1979
Author(s): Hones, Jr., E. W. ; Baker, D. N. ; Feldman, W. C.
Performing Organization: Los Alamos Scientific Lab., NM.
Sponsoring Organization: Department of Energy, Washington, DC.
Contract No: W-7405-ENG-36
Date: Apr 81 Pages: 20p

Abstract: TIROS-N plasma data and related geophysical data measured on

22 September 1979 were analyzed to determine whether the electron
precipitation event detected by TIROS-N at 00:54:49 universal time could
have been related to a surface nuclear burst (SNB). The occurrence of
such a burst was inferred from light signals detected by two Vela
bhangmeters approx. 2 min before the TIROS-N event. The precipitation
was found to be unusually large but not unique. It probably resulted
from passage of TIROS-N through The precipitating electrons above a pre-
existing auroral arc that may have brightened to an unusually high
intensity from natural causes approx. 3 min before the Vela signals.
On the othe hand, no data were found that were inconsistent with the SNB
interpretation of the 22 September Vela observations. In fact, a patch
of auroral light that suddenly appeared in the sky near Syowa Base,
Antarctica a few seconds after the Vela event can be interpreted (though
not uniquely) as a consequence of the electromagnetic pulse of an SNB.