On 24 June 1980, the United States conducted the underground ‘Huron King’ nuclear test as part of ‘Operation Tinderbox’. This operation consisted of a series of 14 nuclear tests conducted in 1979-1980 at the Yucca Flats test range, which is part of the former Nevada Test Site. This unusual series of tests was aimed at ensuring that military satellites would be tough enough to withstand a nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack.





Both the United States and the Soviet Union had conducted a limited number nuclear tests aimed at testing the effects of nuclear weapons in high altitudes/lower outer space. One of these was the ‘Starfish Prime’ test of 9 July 1962, which was later found to have damaged and disabled many of the early satellites in orbit at the time, including Telstar, the first commercial communications satellite.





By the 1970s, scientists had developed technologies capable of ‘hardening’ satellites from the effects of EMP, but with the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) coming into effect on 10 October 1963, it was prohibited to conduct nuclear weapons tests anywhere except underground. Thus the need to find a way to use an underground nuclear explosion to test whether the satellites’ new shielding worked.