Las Vegas will be the site of the anti-nuclear exercise on New Year’s Eve
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will use a specially equipped Bell 412 helicopter to fly low over Las Vegas in the next few days, according to a press release. The agency added that this is part of the preparations for the city's New Year celebrations.
A helicopter flying low over a populated area is often cause for concern. Not only does it annoy pets, but the noise generated by the blades is also annoying to humans. It is not uncommon for people to contact their local Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) office when they are concerned about a low-flying helicopter.
In reality, the NNSA has been carrying out control missions of this type since the 1970s. He recently accomplished a similar mission during the Super Bowl of Football.
Protection from nuclear threats
Because these control flights are being carried out at this very moment. In reality, the USA has received nuclear threats for practically the last fifty years, even if the news has always remained confidential so as not to create panic and ruin the celebrations.
According to this Forbes article , most of these threats didn't even make the news. Only when intelligence historian Jeffrey T. Richelson published his book Defusing Armageddon in 2009 did a picture of the situation emerge.
Some of these threats were hoaxes from kids as young as 14 who threatened, for example, to blow up a city like Orlando if they didn't get a million dollars. Other threats, however, appeared much more serious because they were linked, in some way, to the theft of radioactive material from US laboratories.
For this reason, the Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) was established within the NNSA, which has been protecting US cities ever since.
What do helicopter surveys do?
NEST uses low-flying helicopters to determine an area's background radiation, which can help investigators look for signs of anomalous radiation in case a terrorist organization manages to plant a "dirty" nuclear bomb. This would be an explosive device built to disperse radioactive material in solid, liquid or gaseous form in a localized area.
To determine background radiation, NEST members use a Bell 412 twin-engine helicopter equipped with radiation detection technology. Flying at an altitude of 45 m or slightly higher, the helicopter will fly over the area in a grid pattern during daylight hours.
The exercise is scheduled to run from Friday, December 29 to Sunday, December 31 and will take no more than two hours to complete, the press release said. During the exercise, the helicopter will zoom over the Las Vegas Strip at 80 miles (128 km) per hour. Recently the NNSA placed an order for two Leonardo AW 139 helicopters which will replace the Bell 412s for the control function.
The investigation is part of security and emergency preparedness activities and should not be interpreted as a reaction to a threat received to the area. The public announcement is intended to inform residents and visitors of the exercise and not to be alarmed by the activity.
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The article Las Vegas will be home to the anti-nuclear exercise on New Year's Eve comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/las-vegas-sara-sede-dellesercitazione-antinucleare-a-capodanno/ on Fri, 29 Dec 2023 21:04:11 +0000.