On 15 August 1945, Hans Frick, a colonel in the Swiss military, sent a letter to Federal Councillor Karl Kobelt requesting that Switzerland study the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons in order to defend itself.

[7] On 8 June 1946, the Study Commission for Nuclear Energy (Schweizerische Studienkommission für Atomenergie – SKA) was created by the Swiss government under the leadership of Paul Scherrer, a physicist and professor at ETH Zurich.

[8][9][10] The activity of this group was low and only slow progress was made; however the events of the Cold War, especially the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the nuclear arms race of the mid-1950s, provided new impetus.

[11][12][7] The secret Study Commission for the Possible Acquisition of Own Nuclear Arms was instituted by Chief of General Staff Louis de Montmollin with a meeting on 29 March 1957.

[8] There were plans for 7 underground nuclear tests in "uninhabited regions" of Switzerland; a location with a radius of 2–3 kilometres (1.2–1.9 mi) "that can be sealed off completely.

[22] Besides having a main military goal of deterrence, strategists envisioned the Swiss nuclear strike capability as part of a preemptive war against the Soviet Union.

[23] Switzerland possessed 20 kg (44 lb) of separated plutonium coming from reprocessed spent fuel of the heavy water research reactor DIORIT.

[24] It was stored for several decades under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards at the Paul Scherrer Institute, but this supply was not directly suitable for building nuclear weapons.

[3][8][1] This, as well as a serious accident in 1969 which caused a partial meltdown in the small Lucens pilot reactor, strengthened opposition against the Swiss nuclear program.

[3][1][26] Switzerland signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) on 27 November 1969, and its process of ratification first met with the resistance of the Federal Department of Defence.

[30] On 1 November 1988, Federal Councillor Arnold Koller signed the dissolution order,[31] and the AAA ceased to exist on 31 December of that year,[32] thus ending the 43-year Swiss nuclear weapons program.

[38] In 1937, General Henri Guisan and the Swiss Army high command commissioned a secret program to develop and utilize chemical weapons.