Outcome
The successful testing of the new cores in the Sandstone tests had a profound effect. Practically every component of the old weapons was rendered obsolete. Even before the third test had been carried out, Bradbury had halted production of the old cores, and ordered that all effort was to be concentrated on the Mark 4, which would become the first mass-produced nuclear weapon. The more efficient use of fissionable material would increase the nuclear stockpile from 56 bombs in June 1948 to 169 in June 1949. The Mark III bombs would be withdrawn from service in 1950. At the same time, new production plants were coming online, and the Wigner disease problem had been solved. By May 1951, plutonium production twelve times that of 1947, while uranium-235 production had increased eight-fold. The Chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, Major General Kenneth D. Nichols, saw clearly that the era of scarcity was over. He now "recommended that we should be thinking in terms of thousands of weapons rather than hundreds."
Read more about this topic: Operation Sandstone
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