The chilling document that traces nuclear weapons back to Britain – and the threat we now face

Published

3 months ago

August 6, 2025

admin

Eighty years ago today, an American B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

It was the dawn of the atomic age, but the birth of the bomb can be traced beyond the deserts of New Mexico to Britain, five years earlier.

A copy of a hand-typed document, now in the Bodleian library in Oxford, is the first description of an atom bomb small enough to use as a weapon.

The Frisch-Peierls Memorandum was written by two nuclear physicists at the University of Birmingham in 1940.

Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls don’t feature in the film Oppenheimer, but their paper is credited with jump-starting the Manhattan Project that ultimately built the bomb.

Both Jewish scientists who had both fled Nazi Germany, they built on the latest understanding of uranium fission and nuclear chain reactions, to propose a bomb made from enriched uranium that was compact enough to be carried by an aircraft.

The document, so secret at the time only one copy was made, makes for chilling reading.

Not only does it detail how to build a bomb, but foretells the previously unimaginable power of its blast.

“Such an explosion would destroy life in a wide area,” they wrote.

“The size of this area is difficult to estimate, but it will probably cover the centre of a big city.”

Radioactive fallout would be inevitable “and even for days after the explosion any person entering the affected area will be killed”.

Both lethal properties of the bombs that would subsequently fall on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing around 100,000 instantly and more than 100,000 others in the years that followed – most of them civilians.

‘The most terrifying weapons ever created’

Those bombs had the explosive power of around 16 and 20 kilotonnes of TNT respectively – a force great enough to end the Second World War.

But compared to nuclear weapons of today, they were tiny.

“What we would now term as low yield nuclear weapons,” said Alexandra Bell, president of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which campaigns for nuclear disarmament.

“We’re talking about city destroyers…these really are the most terrifying weapons ever created.”

Many of these “high yield” nuclear weapons are thermonuclear designs first tested in the 1950s.

They use the power of nuclear fission that destroyed Hiroshima to harness yet more energy by fusing other atoms together.

Codenamed “Mike”, the first test of a fusion bomb in 1952 yielded at least 500 times more energy than those dropped on Japan.

Impractically devastating, but proof of lethal principle.

Variants of the W76 thermonuclear warhead currently deployed by the US and UK are around 100Kt, six times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

Just one dropped on a city the size of London would result in more than a quarter of a million deaths.

The largest warhead in America’s current arsenal, the B83 has the explosive equivalent of 1.2 megatonnes (1.2 million tonnes of TNT) and would kill well over a million instantly.

But modern intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are designed to carry multiple warheads.

Russia’s Sarmat 2, for example, is thought to be capable of carrying 10 megatonnes of nuclear payload.

They’re designed to strike multiple targets at once, but if all were dropped on a city like London most of its population of nine million would be killed or injured.

If that kind of power is incomprehensible, consider how many nuclear warheads there now are in the world.

Nine countries – the US, Russia, China, France, the UK, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – have nuclear weapons.

Several others are interested in having them.

The US and Russia have around 4,000 nuclear warheads each – 90% of the global nuclear arsenal and more than enough to destroy civilisation.

According to analysis from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China us thought to have around 600 warheads, but has indicated a desire to catch up.

Beijing is believed to be building up to 100 new warheads a year and the ICBMs to deliver them.

Five more nuclear powers, including the UK, plan to either increase or modernise their existing nuclear stockpiles.

The nuclear arms race that created this situation was one imagined by Frisch and Peierls in their 1940 memorandum.

Given the mass civilian casualties it would inevitably cause, the scientists questioned whether the bomb should ever be used by the Allies.

They wrote, however: “If one works on the assumption that Germany is, or will be, in the possession of this weapon… the most effective reply would be a counter-threat with a similar bomb.”

What they didn’t believe was that the bomb they proposed, and went on to help build at Los Alamos, would ever be used.

Devastated by its use on Japan, Peierls disavowed the bomb and later campaigned for disarmament.

But that work is now as unfinished as ever.

Non-proliferation treaties helped reduce the expensive and excessive nuclear arsenals of Russia and the US, and prevent more countries from building nuclear bombs.

‘Everything trending in the wrong direction’

But progress ground to a halt with the invasion of Ukraine, as nuclear tensions continued elsewhere.

“After all the extremely hard, tedious work that we did to reduce nuclear risks everything is now trending in the wrong direction,” said Alexandra Bell.

“The US and Russia refuse to talk to each other about strategic stability.

“China is building up its nuclear arsenal in an unprecedented fashion and the structures that were keeping non-proliferation in place stemming the spread of nuclear weapons are crumbling around us.”

‘New risks increasing the threat’

The world may have come closer to nuclear conflict during the Cuban missile crisis of 1963, but the fragmented and febrile state of geopolitics now is more dangerous, she argues.

Conflict regularly flares between nuclear armed India and Pakistan; Donald Trump’s foreign policy has sparked fears that South Korea might pursue the bomb to counter North Korea’s nuclear threat; some states in the Middle East are eyeing a nuclear deterrent to either nuclear-wannabe Iran or nuclear armed Israel.

Add to the mix the military use of AI and stressors like climate change, and the view of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is the situation is more precarious than in 1963.

“It’s more dangerous, but in a different way,” said Alexandra Bell. “The confluence of all these new existential risks are increasing the threat worldwide.”

World

Revealed: The plan for a ‘New Gaza’ – and the four militias Israel is backing to defeat Hamas

Published

15 hours ago

October 25, 2025

admin

Revealed: The plan for a 'New Gaza' - and the four militias Israel is backing to defeat Hamas

Israel may have agreed to stop fighting in Gaza, but it is backing armed groups that plan to fight Hamas to the bitter end.

Sky News has confirmed for the first time that four anti-Hamas militias are all backed by Israel, and consider themselves part of a joint project to remove Hamas from power.

The groups are all operating from areas still under Israeli control, behind what’s been called the “yellow line” – the boundary for Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troop deployments established by the ceasefire agreement.

“We have an official project – me, [Yasser] Abu Shabab, [Rami] Halas, and [Ashraf] al Mansi,” says militia leader Hossam al Astal, speaking to Sky News from his base in southern Gaza.

“We are all for ‘The New Gaza’. Soon we will achieve full control of the Gaza Strip and will gather under one umbrella.”

The footage below, shared with Sky News, shows troops from Hossam al Astal’s militia parading near its base.

We used the video to identify the location of the militia’s headquarters for the first time.

It is situated on a military road that runs along the yellow line, less than 700 metres from the nearest IDF outpost.

“I’m hearing the sound of tanks now while I’m speaking, perhaps they’re out on patrol or something, but I’m not worried,” says al Astal.

“They don’t engage us, and we don’t engage them […] We’ve agreed, through the coordinator, that this is a green zone, not to be targeted by shelling or gunfire.”

The New Gaza

This area, now a patchwork of rubble and military berms, was once a leafy suburb of Gaza’s second city, Khan Younis.

Al Astal says he grew up here, but was forced to flee in 2010 after being pursued by Hamas over his involvement in militant groups aligned with their rival, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA).

He spent the next 11 years abroad, working for the PA’s security services in Egypt and Malaysia.

Two months after he returned to Gaza, he was accused of involvement in the 2018 assassination of a Hamas member in Malaysia and sentenced to death.

“When the war started, they left us locked up, hoping the Israelis would bomb the prison and rid them of us,” he says. “Two months later, we broke down the doors and escaped.”

He says that his weapons, mainly Kalashnikov rifles, are purchased from former Hamas fighters on the black market.

Ammunition and vehicles, on the other hand, are delivered through the Kerem Shalom border crossing after coordination with the Israeli military.

This is the same border crossing used by another militia leader, Yasser Abu Shabab.

Sky News previously revealed that Abu Shabab’s militia was smuggling vehicles into Gaza with the help of the Israeli military and an Arab-Israeli car dealer.

Al Astal says he uses the same car dealer. One of his vehicles appears to have Hebrew writing on the side, which has been partially scratched out.

He says his militia also receives weekly deliveries of everyday items needed to support the civilians living at the camp.

“We currently provide basic medical and education support to roughly 30 families,” he says.

“Children can get apples and bananas, food and drink, chips and so on. By contrast, in the other area, in the tents, you find five-, 10- or even 15-year-olds surviving on little more than lentils and pasta.”

He says these supplies come in via weekly deliveries. In the video below, a cargo truck can be seen at the militia’s base.

A similar cargo truck can be seen in satellite imagery of the camp, taken on 14 October.

Sky News has also confirmed that the other two militias, which are operating in the north of Gaza, are receiving supplies from Israel.

The video below, filmed by a member of Ashraf al Mansi’s militia, shows a car loaded with supplies driving towards their base.

Sky News previously confirmed that this road leads either from an IDF outpost or from the Erez border crossing with Israel.

A member of the other militia operating in northern Gaza, which is led by Rami Halas, told Sky News that coordination with the IDF is done indirectly through the District Coordination Office.

It’s part of the Israeli defence ministry, but also includes officials from the PA – Palestine’s internationally recognised government, based in the West Bank.

This fits with what we were told by al Astal, by an Israeli soldier stationed at Kerem Shalom, and by a senior commander in Abu Shabab’s militia – that coordination with the military is managed indirectly, and that the PA plays a key role.

“I have people within my group who are still, to this day, employees of the Palestinian Authority,” says al Astal.

The PA did not respond to Sky’s questions, but has previously denied having any relationship to these militias.

“The Palestinian Authority can’t admit to having a direct relationship with us,” the militia leader says.

“It already has enough issues and doesn’t want to add to that burden. You know, if word got out that they had ties with militias or with the occupation forces, you can imagine how that would look.”

Military coordination

Although he acknowledges working with Israel to secure supplies, al Astal denies he has ever coordinated military operations with the IDF.

Sky News previously reported that Israeli aircraft had intervened in two battles fought by Abu Shabab’s militia.

We asked Abu Shabab whether these were due to coordination, but did not receive a response.

Hamas accused al Astal’s militia group of direct military coordination after several of its fighters were killed when Israel intervened during a battle between the two groups on 3 October.

The footage below, published by the IDF, shows the strikes that day.

“I don’t control Israeli airstrikes,” al Astal says. “The Israelis simply saw armed Hamas military groups and struck them.”

In April, two months before he founded the militia, al Astal’s own tent was hit by an Israeli bomb. The strike killed his 22-year-old daughter, Nihad, who was seven months pregnant.

“People accuse me of collaboration,” he says. “How can anyone speak about me like that? Were the Israelis ‘joking around’ with me with a missile?”

He believes the strike was intended for a Hamas member living nearby.

“If I listed every crime against children and women, the blame wouldn’t rest on Israel but on Hamas, which hid among the people.”

Support from outside powers

Multiple sources also told Sky News that the militias are also receiving support from outside powers.

The deputy leader of Abu Shabab’s militia, Ghassan al Duhine, has twice been photographed next to a vehicle with a UAE-registered licence plate.

Sky News also found that the logo of the group’s armed wing, the Counter Terrorism Service, is almost identical to that used by a UAE-backed militia of the same name operating in Yemen.

The logo used by al Astal’s militia, the Counter Terrorism Strike Force, similarly uses the same illustration as that used by a different UAE-backed militia, also based in Yemen.

The UAE did not respond to Sky’s request for comment.

When we asked al Astal whether he enjoyed the backing of the UAE, he smiled.

“God willing, in time everything will become clear,” he said. “But yes, there are Arab countries that support our project.”

That project, al Astal says, has a name: The New Gaza.

‘No war… no Hamas, no terrorism’

“Very soon, God willing, you will see this for yourselves; we will become the new administration of Gaza. Our project is ‘The New Gaza’. No war, at peace with everyone – no Hamas, no terrorism.”

Two days after Sky News spoke to al Astal, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, used the phrase himself while suggesting that Gaza could be split indefinitely along the yellow line.

“No reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls,” Kushner told reporters on Wednesday.

“There are considerations happening now in the area that the IDF controls, as long as that can be secured, to start the construction as a ‘New Gaza’ in order to give Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs.”

The IDF declined to comment on these findings. Hamas, the PA and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli agency which manages the Israel-Gaza border, did not respond to our requests for comment.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

World

US ramps up ‘drug boats’ operation by sending in aircraft carrier to region

Published

15 hours ago

October 25, 2025

admin

US ramps up 'drug boats' operation by sending in aircraft carrier to region

The US has announced it is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America as it ramps up an operation to target alleged drug smuggling boats.

The Pentagon said in a statement that the USS Gerald R Ford would be deployed to the region, including the Caribbean Sea, to “bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere”.

The vessel is the US Navy’s largest aircraft carrier. It is currently deployed in the Mediterranean alongside three destroyers, and the group are expected to take around one week to make the journey.

There are already eight US Navy ships in the central and South American region, along with a nuclear-powered submarine, adding up to about 6,000 sailors and marines, according to officials.

It came as the US secretary of war claimed that six “narco-terrorists” had been killed in a strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea overnight.

Pete Hegseth said his military had bombed a vessel which he claimed was operated by Tren de Aragua – a Venezuelan gang designated a terror group by Washington in February.

Writing on X, he claimed that the boat was involved in “illicit narcotics smuggling” and was transiting along a “known narco-trafficking route” when it was struck during the night.

All six men on board the boat, which was in international waters, were killed and no US forces were harmed, he said.

Ten vessels have now been bombed in recent weeks, killing more than 40 people.

Mr Hegseth added: “If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat al Qaeda. Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”

While he did not provide any evidence that the vessel was carrying drugs, he did share a 20-second video that appeared to show a boat being hit by a projectile before exploding.

Speaking during a White House news conference last week, Donald Trump argued that the campaign would help tackle the US’s opioid crisis.

“Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives. So every time you see a boat, and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough’. It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people,” he said.

Analysis: Is the US about to invade Venezuela?

It’s a question that’s got more relevant – and more urgent – over the last 24 hours.

The US government has just deployed the world’s largest aircraft carrier and its associated battleships to the Caribbean, just off the coast of Venezuela.

So: what’s going on?

Well, on the face of it, it’s a drugs war. For weeks now, the Trump administration has been using the US military to “dismantle transnational criminal organisations and counter narco terrorism in the defence of the homeland”.

Basically: stopping the drugs supply into America.

Dealing with the demand might actually be more effective as a strategy, but that’s another story.

Donald Trump’s focus is to hit the supply countries and to hit them hard – and this is what that has looked like: drones and missiles taking out boats said to be carrying drugs from places like Venezuela into the US.

We can’t know for sure that these are drugs boats or if the people are guilty of anything, because the US government won’t tell us who the people are.

But alongside this, something bigger has been going on: a massive build-up of US troops in the Caribbean, over 6,000 sailors and marines are there.

Here’s the thing: an aircraft carrier is not remotely suited to stopping drug smuggling.

However, it is a vital element of any planned ground or air war.

Trump is focused on stopping the drugs, yes, but is there actually a wider objective here: regime change?

He has been clear in his belief in spheres of influence around the world – and his will and want to control and dominate the Western hemisphere.

Influence domination over Venezuela could fix the drug problem for sure, but much more too.

The world’s largest oil reserves? Yes, they’re in Venezuela.

On Thursday, appearing at a press conference with Mr Hegseth, Mr Trump said that it was necessary to kill the alleged smugglers, because if they were arrested they would only return to transport drugs “again and again and again”.

“They don’t fear that, they have no fear,” he told reporters.

The attacks at sea would soon be followed by operations on land against drug smuggling cartels, Mr Trump claimed.

“We’re going to kill them,” he added. “They’re going to be, like, dead.”

Some Democratic politicians have expressed concerns that the strikes risk dragging the US into a war with Venezuela because of their proximity to the South American country’s coast.

Others have condemned the attacks as extrajudicial killings that would not stand up in a court of law.

Jim Himes, a member of the House of Representatives, told CBS News earlier this month: “They are illegal killings because the notion that the United States – and this is what the administration says is their justification – is involved in an armed conflict with any drug dealers, any Venezuelan drug dealers, is ludicrous.”

He claimed that Congress had been told “nothing” about who was on the boats and how they were identified as a threat.

World

Turkey urges US to act after accusing Israel of breaching Gaza ceasefire

Published

1 day ago

October 24, 2025

admin

Turkey urges US to act after accusing Israel of breaching Gaza ceasefire

Turkey has urged the US to take action after accusing Israel of violating the Gaza ceasefire deal.

The country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Washington and its allies should consider sanctions and halting arms sales to put pressure on Israel to abide by the agreement.

Turkey, a NATO member, joined ceasefire negotiations as a mediator, and increased its role following a meeting between Mr Erdogan and Donald Trump at the White House last month.

“The Hamas side is abiding by the ceasefire. In fact, it is openly stating its commitment to this. Israel, meanwhile, is continuing to violate the ceasefire,” Mr Erdogan told reporters.

“The international community, namely the United States, must do more to ensure Israel’s full compliance to the ceasefire and agreement,” he said.

Mr Erdogan was also asked about comments from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hinted that he would be opposed to any peacekeeping role for Turkish security forces in the Gaza Strip.

The Turkish president said talks on the issue were still underway, adding: “As this is a multi-faceted issue, there are comprehensive negotiations. We are ready to provide Gaza any form of support on this issue.”

Israel has accused Hamas of breaching the truce and previously said its recent military action in Gaza was designed to uphold the agreement.

Relations between former allies Israel and Turkey hit new lows during the Gaza war, with Ankara accusing Mr Netanyahu’s government of committing genocide, an allegation Israel has repeatedly denied.

Speaking during a visit to Israel on Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that a planned international security force for Gaza would have to be made up of “countries that Israel’s comfortable with,” but declined to comment specifically on Turkey’s involvement.

Around 200 US troops are working alongside the Israeli military and delegations from other countries, planning the stabilisation and reconstruction of Gaza.

The US is seeking support from other allies, namely Gulf Arab nations, to build an international security force to be deployed to Gaza and train a Palestinian security force.

Mr Rubio said many nations had expressed interest, but decisions had yet to be made about the rules of engagement. He added that countries need to know what they were signing up for.

“Under what authority are they going to be operating? Who’s going to be in charge? What is their job?” said Mr Rubio.

The secretary of state also reiterated his earlier warning to Israel not to annex the occupied West Bank, land that Palestinians want for part of an independent state.

A bill applying Israeli law to the West Bank won preliminary approval from Israel’s parliament on Wednesday.

“We don’t think it’s going to happen”, Mr Rubio said, adding that annexation “would also threaten this whole process”.

“If [annexation] were to happen, a lot of the countries that are involved in working on this probably aren’t going to want to be involved in this anymore. It’s a threat to the peace process and everybody knows it”, he added.