Date

Dec 31, 1969

Description

Recent elections took Heath out of power and brought Labour’s Harold Wilson back in, so Kissinger and the new cabinet secretary, John Hunt, caught up with current business, including arrangements for the standard exchange of letters between Nixon and Wilson on nuclear use consultations. Hunt told Kissinger that the new government would continue work on Super Antelope and wanted the Lockheed company’s involvement to make it possible to integrate the British RV system into the missile. They also discussed the tests of the new warhead, with the first test of the Super Antelope primary, whose yield was about thirty-five kilotons, scheduled for 22 May 1974.[10] Later in the discussion, Kissinger mentioned that under the Threshold Test Ban, the upper limit would be 150 kilotons, which, Kissinger noted, protected the Super Antelope warhead, which was in that range.

Source

DNSA; from RG 59, Records of Henry Kissinger, box 7, Apr 1974 Nodis Memcons

Document published in following posting(s):

Concern About Future U.S. Reliability Influenced British Quest for Trident Missiles

Jul 16, 2021

Memorandum of Conversation: "Nuclear Release Agreement; Labour Government's Defense Review; UK Polaris Program; Diego Garcia; US-Soviet Threshold Test Ban; French Presidential Elections; Middle East; Washington Energy Conference," 26 April 1974, Secret