He graduated from West Point in 1945, was assigned to the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos in 1948, and received his MSc in physics from the University of Virginia in 1956.
Freeman Dyson commented on it in his 1984 book, Weapons and Hope: "The military doctrines summarised in FM 101-31 were valid... when tactical nuclear wars might have been small-scale and truly limited.
Only when the atomic bomb is recognized as useful insofar as it is an integral part of military operations, will it really be of much help in the fighting of a war, rather than in warning all mankind to avert it.
These tactics limit the risk of failure, and also reduce individual bomb yields, thus preventing any serious collateral damage to nearby civilian areas (heavy fallout, blast, or fires).
This theory was refuted by experience of the very rapid recovery on isolated islands exposed to close-in heavy fallout and other effects from massive hydrogen bombs at the Bikini Atoll and Eniwetok Atoll, as well as from smaller nuclear weapons in the Nevada Test Site and Australia (Montebello Islands, Maralinga and Emu Field).