During the 1950s, the Pentagon Played War Games With Troops and Nukes

By JOSEPH TREVITHICK

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After the Soviet Union set off its first nuclear weapon in 1949, the U.S. military quickly envisioned a new type of war full of nuclear missiles,artillery and even recoilless rifles.

But with little information and no actual experience of this terrifying new battlefield, the Pentagon was desperate to find out what would really happen if its troops got nuked.

So in 1951, the Pentagon, the U.S. Army and the Atomic Energy Commission teamed up for what eventually became a series of nuclear war games—blandly nicknamed Desert Rock—in the Nevada desert. For the next seven years, technicians, scientists and academics poured over both practical and psychological data from the various exercises.

“Exercise Desert Rock I marked the first time that … troops have had the opportunity to receive realistic training in the tactical aspects of atomic warfare,” a now-declassified Army report on the test stated.