AOBA Essay Cold War

Faculty of Philosophy and Arts

University of West Bohemia

English for Anglo-American studies 1

Cold War

2nd year, full-time, Political Science, International Relations – Territorial Studies

Cold War was a forty five year long term of conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies, that started in 1946 and ended in 1991. Considering the length of the conflict, many weapons were created and with an ongoing threat of possible nuclear attack of one of the sides, both sides wanted to have an advantage against the other one. This essay deals with some of the most famous weapons used in the Cold War and with some interesting and maybe somewhat controversial weapons, as such a topic is not really discussed contrary to general facts about Cold War.

A new rifle came with the Vietnam War. New M16 rifle was five point fifty six calibre that replaced M14 rifle and became the US army´s standard service rifle. M16 went through a lot of changes bringing various types of M16, introducing forward assist, different types of scopes, barrels et cetera. Also, the semi-automatic M4 Carbine was later introduced with its three round burst firing modes, that were previously seen on M14 rifle.

Soviet Union on the other hand introduced assault rifle that is nowadays known around the whole world. The Avtomat Kalashnikova is lightweight and durable assault riffle also with many variations such as AK-47 that were later replaced by AK-74.

Next part of this essay is going to inform its reader about four interesting and slightly controversial weapons, that US Army or Soviet Union’s army made and also used some of them. As there was an enormous threat of nuclear attacks, both sides were trying to invent weapons that would put them in advantage. But because of this threat it was not possible to fight in the front lines as this method could have been devastating for one of the sides.

Because delivering supplies was hard, when the troops are separated from each other and cooperates with only several others, US Army thought of possible solution. The supply missile called “Lobber” was invented and with three meters in length and twenty five centimetres width was able to take up to twenty three kilograms of supplies in distance of thirteen kilometres approximately. This missile was very effective in delivering supplies to troops in combat and there was not a risk of supply drop falling into hostiles hands. This supply missile was never included in the US army weaponry due to absence of missile guide system even after their test runs were successful.

The weakest nuclear weapon ever held in history of US Army was nuclear weapon system named Davy Crockett. The M-28 or later M-29 model of Davy Crockett weapon system was a tactical recoilless gun, and it used the Mk-54 nuclear warhead. Weighting only about twenty kilograms signed itself as a weakest nuclear weapon in history of US Army.

Not to talk about infantry units only, US Army used submarine torpedo Mk 45 ASTOR where “ASTOR” stands as short for “Anti-Submarine Torpedo”. The torpedo was four hundred and eighty millimetres calibre and had nuclear warhead W34 that corresponded to more than ten kilotons of TNT.