A network of German research centers and defense contractors are working on specialized nuclear and shockwave physics projects.

According to Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, Berlin’s NATO allies think this work bears all the hallmarks of a covert atomic weapons program.

Thirty German universities have stepped up their work in specialized materials science, shock wave physics, and nuclear and neutron physics, Russia’s SVR intelligence agency said in a statement on Monday.

Practical experiments are being carried out on research reactors at six of these universities, named by the SVR as: Karlsruhe Institute of TechnologyRuhr University BochumLudwig Maximilian University of MunichRWTH Aachen UniversityTechnical University of Berlin According to the SVR’s agents, at least one NATO government has expressed “concern about the active research and development work being carried out in Germany that has a nuclear weapons focus.” NATO experts also believe that Berlin is capable “of independently producing the necessary fissile material within one to three months and constructing a working nuclear explosive device within a year, without conducting full-scale tests,” the agency added.

The SVR also claimed that NATO officials have noticed “Germany’s meticulousness and close interagency coordination” in producing high-energy explosives and electronic detonation systems – all vital in the potential construction of nuclear weapons.

Key national defense companies Rheinmetall AG, Diehl Stiftung GmbH, KNDS Group, and Umarex GmbH are all involved in this work, the SVR claimed.

Does Germany have nuclear weapons? Germany is a non-nuclear state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

However, Germany participates in NATO’s nuclear sharing program, and is believed to host around 20 American B61 tactical nuclear bombs at the Buechel Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate.

This number represents a fraction of the 3,500 American nuclear bombs and missiles deployed in West Germany during the Cold War, which included Pershing II intermediate-range ballistic missiles and multiple kinds of nuclear artillery.

The presence of American nuclear weapons on German soil was highly controversial.

Millions protested the deployment of the Pershing II missiles in 1983.

Nevertheless, the deployment was supported by Social Democrat Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and carried out....