Armed Forces Special Weapons Project

Armed Forces Special Weapons Project

The AFSWP was a joint organization, staffed by the United States Army, United States Navy and United States Air Force. Major General Leslie R. Groves, the former head of the Manhattan Project, was its first chief. The agency gradually shifted its emphasis away from training assembly teams, and became more involved in stockpile management and providing administrative, technical and logistical support.

About Armed Forces Special Weapons Project in brief

Summary Armed Forces Special Weapons ProjectThe Armed Forces Special Weapons Project was a U.S. military agency responsible for the maintenance, storage, surveillance, security and handling of nuclear weapons. The AFSWP was a joint organization, staffed by the United States Army, United States Navy and United States Air Force. Major General Leslie R. Groves, the former head of the Manhattan Project, was its first chief. The agency gradually shifted its emphasis away from training assembly teams, and became more involved in stockpile management and providing administrative, technical and logistical support. It supported nuclear weapons testing, although after Operation Sandstone in 1948, this was increasingly in a planning and training capacity rather than a field role. In 1958, the AfsWP became the Defense Atomic Support Agency, a field agency of the Department of Defense. The nuclear weapons that were developed were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. After the war ended, the Manhattan project supported the nuclear weaponsTesting at Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads in 1946. The Atomic Energy Commission was created on 1 January 1947 to take over the responsibilities of the wartime Manhattan Project. It was under the direction of Major General Groves from 1942 to 1946, of the US Army Corps of Engineers. It created a network of production facilities, most notably for uranium enrichment at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, plutonium production at Hanford, Washington and weapons research and design at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico.

The act that created the United. S.W.P. was signed by President Harry S. Truman on August 1, 1946, but passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 through Congress took much longer than expected. The Act gave civilian control of nuclear development, production and control of the weapons to the military with respect to the proper role of the military in the development and production of weapons. It also provided a framework for the development of a civilian nuclear weapons program in the post-World War II era, which was to take place in the 1950s and 1960s. The first civilian agency to be created was the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which took over the responsibility for the production of nuclear arms in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s, the U.N. Atomic Energy Agency was created to take charge of the production, production, storage and surveillance of all nuclear weapons, and to provide a range of support for the civilian nuclear weapon program. It has since been renamed the International Atomic Weapons Agency (IAEA) and is based in New York City, New York and Washington, D.C. It is the world’s largest nuclear weapons agency, with a staff of more than 2,000 people. It provides a wide range of services, including training, maintenance, surveillance and security, as well as the production and storage of nuclear warheads, missiles, launchers and other nuclear weapons and other materials. The Agency was established by the President Harry Truman on 1 August 1946, and was led by Major GeneralGroves, Jr. from 1942 until 1946.