RSS
Quote of the Day
What we are training for is all the threats that North Korea can throw at us.
--Army Gen. Walter Sharp, senior U.S. military official for South Korea, on a large-scale joint exercise that includes the participation of anti-WMD troops.
Full Issue
Pentagon Eyes More Than $800 Million for New Nuclear Cruise Missile
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
An AGM-86B Air Launched Cruise Missile. The Obama administration has budgeted more than $800 million for development of a new, nuclear-armed cruise missile to replace the weapon system (U.S. Air Force photo).
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Air Force plans to spend more than $800 million to build a new nuclear-armed cruise missile for its bomber aircraft, according to little-noticed details buried inside the Obama administration's fiscal 2011 budget request delivered last month to Capitol Hill (see GSN, Dec. 16, 2009).
A "Follow-on Long-Range Stand-off Vehicle," or LRSO for short, would replace 375 aging AGM-86B Air Launched Cruise Missiles, expected to retire from the fleet by 2030. The Defense Department has estimated the new effort could cost a total $1.3 billion, Global Security Newswire has learned.
"The current system is experiencing obsolescence of parts [and] components," the Air Force stated in one budget document. "Missile components and support equipment are becoming non-supportable."
Senior Lawmakers Question Obama’s Nuclear Security Goal
Thursday, March 11, 2010
A cask of Russian-origin highly enriched uranium is prepared for removal from Kazakhstan. Two ranking U.S. lawmakers yesterday expressed doubt that federal agencies can meet President Barack Obama's goal of securing all loose nuclear material within four years (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration photo).
WASHINGTON -- Leaders of a key congressional panel yesterday expressed skepticism that the U.S. government would be able to meet President Barack Obama's goal of securing all of the world's loose nuclear material within four years (see GSN, Feb. 26).
"Securing all vulnerable nuclear material is a laudable goal that this committee supports," House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee Vice Chairman Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) said in his opening statement during a hearing on the administration's nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
However, the "magnitude of the [funding] increase" for the programs involved -- about $550 million in total -- raises concerns over whether those dollars can be "effectively executed" in fiscal 2011, according to Pastor, who is overseeing the panel's work on the budget request.
Nuclear Smugglers Still at Work, Expert Says
Friday, March 12, 2010
Former top Pakistani nuclear scientist and proliferator Abdul Qadeer Khan steps out of a car in Karachi, Pakistan, last month. An international nuclear black market has endured despite the crackdown six years ago on a smuggling ring operated by Khan, an independent expert said (Rizwan Tabassum/Getty Images).
WASHINGTON -- Iran admits building a secret uranium enrichment facility in the religious hub of Qum. Pakistan's High Court releases nuclear black marketer Abdul Qadeer Khan from house arrest. Spy satellites reveal North Korea boring another tunnel in a remote mountainside. Israeli warplanes bomb a suspicious facility in the Syrian desert (see GSN, Aug. 17, 2009).
This drumbeat of seemingly unconnected news reports has prompted many experts to warn that the world is fast approaching a nuclear tipping point. Beyond that invisible mark, the proliferation of nuclear technologies gains an unstoppable momentum and leads to a cascade of new nuclear weapons states and an era of increasing global instability, with grave consequences for the United States.
The common thread running through those disparate reports is a secret, global smuggling network that traffics in nuclear technologies, materials, and know-how. Few experts have spent more time studying that illicit nuclear trade than David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former weapons inspector in Iraq. National Journal Staff Correspondent James Kitfield recently spoke with Albright. Edited excerpts follow.
Obama Faces Decision on Nuke Policy
Monday, March 8, 2010
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, speaks with Defense Secretary Robert Gates in January. Obama and Gates have reportedly disagreed over some elements of U.S. nuclear weapons policy (Saul Loeb/Getty Images).
U.S. President Barack Obama has to make a choice shortly on the exact role of U.S. nuclear weapons, the Washington Post reported Saturday (see GSN, March 3).
In the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review, Obama could adopt a policy that says the "primary purpose" of the U.S. nuclear stockpile is to deter a nuclear attack. That stance has the support of some ranking military officials.
Or Obama could embrace a more radical posture that says the "sole purpose" of the country's strategic weapons is deterrence. That choice would give nuclear weapons a lesser role in U.S. policy and could lead to more significant arms reductions and some nuclear warheads being removed from a high-alert status.
No START Deal Needed by April Nuclear Summit, White House Says
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Russian Foreign Ministry official Anatoly Antonov, shown last year, has led Russian negotiators in talks aimed at replacing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The latest round of negotiations began this week (Alberto Pizzoli/Getty Images).
The Obama administration said yesterday it hopes to reach agreement with Russia on a new strategic arms control treaty "in short order," but suggested there is no pressing need to conclude negotiations ahead of the U.S. Global Nuclear Security Summit next month, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, March 9).
"If it takes, quite frankly, many more weeks past April to get something that we believe is in our best interest, then we're not looking to rush the negotiations," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, pledged last July to cut their nations' respective strategic arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 deployed nuclear warheads under a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December. Negotiators have reportedly also agreed to reduce each state's arsenal of nuclear delivery vehicles -- missiles, submarines and bombers -- to between 700 and 800, down from the 1,100-vehicle limit set by the leaders.
WMD Disposal Forces Take Part in U.S.-South Korea Drill
Thursday, March 11, 2010
A member of the U.S. Marine Corps' Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team Pacific, left, speaks with South Korean marines during a U.S. naval base defense drill today. U.S. military experts in WMD response are taking part in a major exercise with South Korea, a U.S. official said yesterday (Kim Jae-hwan/Getty Images).
U.S. soldiers trained in dealing with weapons of mass destruction are taking part in a large-scale military exercise with South Korea, the senior U.S. military official in the South said yesterday (see GSN, March 10).
"They are here for this exercise and if we ever went to war, they would naturally come also," U.S. Army Gen. Walter Sharp told journalists in Seoul, the Associated Press reported.
He said the anti-WMD troops were running through simulations with South Korean military personnel on finding, securing and disposing of North Korea's stockpile of unconventional weapons.
Iran, North Korea Seen Collaborating on Rocket Launchpad
Monday, March 8, 2010
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other officials pose beneath Iran's Simorgh space launch vehicle at its unveiling last month. The rocket and a new Iranian launch site appear to have been built with North Korean assistance, an analysis group said (Rohollah Vahdati/Getty Images).
Iran appears to have worked with North Korea in preparing a new rocket launchpad under construction east of Tehran, an independent defense analysis firm asserted Friday (see GSN, June 12, 2009).
Iran seems poised to do additional work on the launch site, located near the city of Semnan, the group IHS Jane's stated. With about 30 feet in additional scaffolding, the facility could be used for the Middle Eastern nation's recently announced Simorgh space launch vehicle, Agence France-Presse quoted the organization as saying.
Gulf Nations Urged to Press China on Iran Penalties
Friday, March 12, 2010
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, left, speaks today with UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan in Abu Dhabi. Gates this week encouraged Middle Eastern nations to seek Chinese endorsement of new U.N. sanctions against Iran (Jim Watson/Getty Images).
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates must exert greater pressure on China to back a fourth U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran over its disputed nuclear activities, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday (see GSN, March 11).
Beijing has rebuffed calls by Washington and other Western governments to endorse additional U.N. penalties against Iran, a nation the West fears could develop a nuclear weapon with help from its current atomic activities. Tehran has maintained it is only interested in pursuing peaceful nuclear enterprises.
Japan Acknowledges Nuke Agreement With U.S.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada speaks to reporters today after the release of a report on undisclosed agreements Japan had reached with the United States. The report acknowledges that Tokyo secretly permitted nuclear-armed U.S. warships to stop at Japanese ports (Yoshikazu Tsuno/Getty Images).
Japan today acknowledged signing an agreement with the United States decades ago to allow stopovers at the island nation's ports by U.S. military vessels carrying nuclear weapons, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, March 5).
The announcement was Tokyo's first formal confirmation of the pact's existence. A coalition government led by the left-of-center Democratic Party of Japan launched an investigation of undisclosed agreements with outside powers last year, after the coalition took power from the nation's long-entrenched Liberal Democratic Party.
The secret pact was believed to a contravene a decades-old, self-imposed ban on manufacturing, possessing or permitting the presence of nuclear weapons on Japanese territory.
Arms Control Advocates Call for Nuke-Free Arctic Zone
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Polar bears examine the now-retired U.S. attack submarine USS Honolulu, shown about 280 miles from the North Pole in 2003. A recent report calls for the creation of a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Arctic region (U.S. Navy photo).
Amid growing military interest in the Arctic, a new report urges nations that border the North Pole region to declare it a nuclear weapon-free zone, the Canwest News Service reported today (see GSN, Feb. 2, 2009).
The report's authors, Michael Wallace and Steven Staples of the Canadian Pugwash Group, argue that in light of anticipated future competition over the Arctic's territory and resources, establishing the zone now would be a sensible precautionary measure that would also protect the area's environment from possible nuclear mishaps.
There are five nuclear weapon-free zone treaties covering Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Africa (see GSN, Aug. 17, 2009). The Antarctic is also considered a zone, as are the seabed, space and the moon, according to the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.