Russian Sub Test Fires Ballistic Missile: Navy Spokesman
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, MOSCOW Dec 17, 2007
A Russian submarine on December 17 successfully test-fired a new ballistic missile from the Barents Sea to the far east of the country, a navy spokesman said.
The Sineva missile was launched from the submerged submarine "towards the Kura test ground in Kamchatka," navy spokesman Igor Dygalo told AFP.
"The head section of the missile reached the test ground on time," he said.
Russian television showed the missile thrusting out of the sea at the start of its trajectory.
The Sineva, which has the NATO classification Skiff SS-N-23 and a range of 8,900 kilometers (5,500 miles), was brought into service by Russia’s navy this July.
It is designed to carry four individually targeted warheads, according to the Interfax news agency.
Our reader comments:
I was ready to issue kudos when it occurred to me that SS-N-23 (R-29RM) is not a new missile.
The people at GlobalSecurity.org state that: The R-29RM is a three-stage liquid-propellant missile carrying four or ten MIRV. Compared to the R-29R the missile has a larger launch weight (40.3 to 35.5 Tons) providing a heavier payload (2800 kg to 1650 kg) to a greater maximum range (8300 to 8000 km). The R-29M incorporates a number of significant design changes relative to the predecessor R-29R. Flight tested in 1983...deployed in 1986.
To some, it is considered the best in the world in terms of energy-mass ratio and provides better modernization potential compared to the "really, really new" Bulava SLBM. Because it is not new, does not make it unsuccessful, just not a new success.
"Power to the People" is what I say...Thanks to reader BD for the gouge.
The U.S. Air Force's next-generation bomber will be used to launch nuclear payloads - a requirement that will affect the design and cost of the program, says the service's top civilian leader.
The extra cost of adding nuclear weapons delivery to the aircraft's missions could also complicate efforts to gain financial support by Pentagon leadership and Congress as they deal with a budget dominated by current operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. One defense analyst suggests the nuclear requirement can add as much as 50% to a program's price because nuclear delivery systems require a high level of redundancy in communications, command and control, and hardening against various electromagnetic pulses.
The next-generation bomber is expected to be fielded in 2018. To meet that deadline, the Air Force plans to begin a competition for a final design in Fiscal 2009. Although the B-2 remains a highly stealthy aircraft, war planners worry that the proliferation of advanced, integrated air defense systems will limit its ability to penetrate into potentially troublesome regions, such as China or Iran. The new system will incorporate stealth technologies refined after designing the F-22 and F-35, making it the stealthiest aircraft ever fielded, says Maj. Gen. David Clary, vice chief of Air Combat Command.
Candidate technologies must be mature to be considered for use on the aircraft, and - although requirements are far from refined -- senior Air Force leaders say they are placing a high priority on the system's low-observable attributes.
Going nuclear also indicates that a pilot will be on board for at least the first variant of the future system, USAF Secretary Michael Wynne acknowledges. Though the Air Force has had success adding a strike capability to its Predator unmanned aerial systems, policy makers appear hesitant to trust delivery of weapons of mass destruction to a pilotless aircraft. Wynne made his comments during a Nov. 28 speech at a conference here hosted by Credit Suisse and Aviation Week.
This squelches the hopes of unmanned vehicle advocates, who had expected the bomber to be remotely piloted at the outset. But this doesn't rule out an unmanned variant of the bomber, according to Wynne.
He says the entire bomber fleet will likely include the hardening necessary for the nuclear mission. A later variant that would be remotely piloted could handle a separate mission. This option is attractive to Air Force planners because it offers the ability to cycle through multiple pilots at remote bases, extending mission endurance two- or threefold.
One of the missions envisioned for the future bomber is to loiter without detection behind enemy lines and pick off targets or collect intelligence as needed. This, however, would require endurance and a high degree of stealth at all angles.
A helpful Defense Tech reader sent this item along to me. Now, I’m a bit of a dim bulb, as many of you know, and on this, I think the light was entirely out.
It’s been a long time since I’ve thought much about intercontinental ballistic missiles – especially nuclear-tipped ones. But a knowledgeable reader – and helpful tipster - tells me this item is significant.
[From Lockheed Martin]
D5 Fleet Ballistic Missile Launched in Navy Test in the Pacific
SILVERDALE, Wash., November 29th, 2007 -- The U.S. Navy conducted a successful test launch today of a Trident II D5 Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) built by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT). The Navy launched the unarmed missile from the submerged submarine USS HENRY M JACKSON (SSBN 730) in the Pacific Ocean.
The Trident II D5 missile now has achieved 120 consecutive successful test launches since 1989 – a record unmatched by any other large ballistic missile or space launch vehicle.
The missile launch was part of the Demonstration and Shakedown Operation (DASO) to certify USS HENRY M JACKSON for deployment, following a shipyard overhaul period and conversion from Trident I C4 to Trident II D5 configuration.
First deployed in 1990, the D5 missile is currently aboard 12 Trident II Ohio-class submarines and four British Trident II Vanguard-class submarines. The three-stage, solid-propellant, inertial-guided ballistic missile can travel a nominal range of 4,000 nautical miles and carries multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles.
If you’re like me, I was sort of wondering why our intrepid source sent me this story. O.K., so another successful test firing of an SLBM. Big deal, right?
I’ll respect my source’s privacy, but his points make a lot of sense. Here’s what he told me:
The significance of the 120th successful launch of the D5 screams volumes as:
1. Successful Defense Program - that is unmatched by other industrialized competitors (for example the Russian Buluva SLBM has failed 7 of its last 10 tests). This is not a Russian hit piece. It’s that this success is unmatched even among US systems.
2. Reliable strategic deterrence – most countries have a mix of solid and liquid fueled ballistic inventory. So if the US has 18 Ohio’s, 8 on station all the time. Possibly one within range of your country with 24 tubes with 8 independent targeting warheads that are delivered from a system that is extremely reliable. Even in the mind game world - which is the only one that matters - this is quite a deterrent.
3. If you also think about the fact that the original Trident Missile design, implementation and deployment to the fleet was somewhere close to 2 years, I’d say this is an example of a successful defense technology application.
So when this really makes a difference is when you combine it with a better than hokey BMD.
I am inclined to agree. I’ve always believed that as the Cold War ended, we could relegate the ground-based missile leg of the strategic triad to the salvage yard of history. Missile silos were used for measurement during the cold war, they could be assessed by satellites to compile strategic accountability, as could bombers to some degree. The Soviets had them, so we had to have them.
But what good do they really do us in this strategic environment? It seems to me at least that you need to keep strategic nuclear bombers because, they’re recallable. But they’re still vulnerable – but not as vulnerable as missile silos which can’t move.
Sub-based missiles, however, are nearly invulnerable. Few navies in the world have the sophistication or deployment ratio to track U.S. boomers so risk of their discovery and destruction is minimal. I understand that communicating with the subs can be tough, so giving them urgent launch orders may not be as responsive as a ground-based deterrent.
But it’s tough to think of a scenario where America would need to launch a an all-out strategic strike in response to a nuclear attack on the U.S. – particularly in conjunction with a missile defense system.
A B-52 bomber was mistakenly loaded with five nuclear warheads during a flight from North Dakota to Louisiana, a military newspaper reported Wednesday.
The bomber carried advanced cruise missiles as part of a Defense Department program to retire 400 of the missiles, the paper said, quoting three officers who spoke on condition they remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.
The officers said the nuclear warheads should have been removed before the missiles were mounted onto pylons under the bomber's wings for the Aug. 30 flight from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
A Minot Air Force Base spokeswoman, Sgt. Marelise Wood, referred questions by The Associated Press to the Air Force secretary's office in Washington. A spokesman there was out of the office Wednesday morning and not immediately available for comment.
An Air Force spokesman, Lt. Col. Ed Thomas, said that the weapons were in Air Force control at all times and the missiles were safely transferred.
Air Force policy does not permit officials to say whether nuclear warheads were involved, Thomas said.
However, he said all nuclear weapons at Minot were accounted for.
"Air Force standards are very exacting when it comes to munitions handling," Thomas said. "The weapons were always in our custody and there was never a danger to the American public."
He said an investigation was launched and the crews involved in loading the missiles were decertified pending corrective action or training.
I wish we could make this stuff up. And did Col. Thomas keep a straight face when he made those statements?
I'm sorry, but at times like these, only one video excerpt will do:
Just a historical reminder: The atomic bomb named "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber, at 8:15 in the morning of August 6, 1945 - 62 years ago yesterday.
If you’re feeling down, depressed, tired, bored or just all together dreary today, buck up…things could be worse.
A lot worse.
Just consider if you were all those things and next to, nearby, within eyesight, hearing range or even watching one of these on television.
I know it’s a little on the macabre side of things, but Amazing Filtered Things blog has put together a collage of detonated nuke pictures that are just wild. It almost gives you a headache looking at them – that is, of course, unless one of them is of your boss’s office or [?INSERT ANOTHER DESERVING TARGET HERE?].
Pakistan test fired a nuclear-capable cruise missile today reportedly with stealth capabilities. The Hatf VII, or “Babur” as it is known in Pakistan military circles, “is a terrain-hugging, radar-avoiding cruise missile, whose range has now been enhanced to 700 kilometres. It is a highly maneuverable missile with pinpoint accuracy,” a Pakistani military statement said.
The test comes as protests over the firing of Pakistan’s supreme court chief justice by the country’s leader, Pervez Musharraf, continue to grow. The general’s hold on power has always been tenuous – with al Qaeda-linked tribal groups in the west agitating for a Taliban-style government. So this latest missile test could be an attempt to demonstrate his military prowess with angry crowds teeming in the streets.
This is the third test of the Hatf VII missile since 2005, and with its relatively short range, it’s only a threat to neighboring India. Given the raging opposition to Musharraf’s rule, however, a nuclear-tipped Babur in the hands of a fundamentalist government could pose a major threat to U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
The AGM-129A Advanced Cruise Missile (ACM) is being retired by the US Air Force, according to a March 7 post on the Strategic Security Blog by the Federation of American Scientists.
Add the AGM-129A to the growing list of weapons the Air Force is divesting or seeking to divest, which also include the F-117 and the U-2.
The decision also brings an ignominious end to the brittle AGM-129A, the first nuclear-tipped cruise missile designed with stealth as an overriding factor. It was conceived in 1983 in the same generation as the B-2 stealth bomber and RAH-66 Comanche stealth helicopter in an age when stealth -- perhaps like information and networking today -- was still viewed and hyped as its own revolution in military affairs.
The original plan was to deliver 1,500 AGM-129A missiles at a rate of 40 missiles per year after full-rate production in 1993. The weapon would still be coming off the assembly line today!
But the original manufacturer, General Dynamics, was beset by flawed software, shoddy manufacturing and testing mishaps. Congress stepped in to zero-out funds for the program in 1989 and the air force invited McDonnell Douglas to qualify as an alternative source. McDonnell Douglas accepted the invitation, only to regret it later when the Bush I regime decided to stop production of the missile after building about 460.
The remaining inventory is now being retired after less than 20 years of service. Other non-stealthy cruise missiles with conventional warheads -- such as the AGM-86B Air Launched Cruise Missile and the UGM-109 Tactical Tomahawk -- are known to have been fired in combat.
The concept of a nuclear cruise missile now appears to be out of fashion. US Strategic Command is demanding a capability for prompt global strike -- like the kind delivered by a hyper-mach ballistic missile, not a subsonic cruise missile. Conventional (read: non-nuclear) warheads are seen as the proper kill mechanism of a cruise missile, stealthy or otherwise.
To wit: production of the nuclear AGM-129A was curtailed just as the military started pouring cash into the development of stealthy, non-nuclear cruise missiles.
The initial investment in the Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile fell apart, but the replacement -- the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile -- is in the inventory today. The JASSM and the AGM-129A are not equivalent even as conventional weapons -- the AGM-129A has an enormous range advantage.
The AGM-129A never really found its niche in the arsenal despite its reportedly $6.4 billion price tag. If there is any return for the taxpayer's investment, it may be as an object lesson for the dangers of taking the fads of military technology to their unjustified extreme.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration selected a design for a new generation of atomic warheads, taking a major step toward building the first new nuclear weapon since the end of the Cold War two decades ago.
The military and the Energy Department selected a design developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California over a competing design by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, according to government sources who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of a formal announcement.
The decision to move ahead with the warhead, which eventually would replace the existing arsenal of weapons, has been criticized as sending the wrong signal to the world at a time when the United States is assailing attempts at nuclear weapons development in North Korea and Iran and striving to contain it.
But military and Energy Department officials have argued that the new U.S. warhead will not add to the nuclear arsenal. They maintain the new design will make the weapons stockpile more secure and reliable without the need for actual underground testing.
The warhead has been the focus of an intense competition between Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore, the government's two premier nuclear weapons labs.
The conventional Trident may be dead, but nuclear Tridents have sparked a heated debate over the future of the UK's nuclear weapons.
Submarine-launched Trident missiles have been Britain's only nuclear option for almost a decade – the UK never had independent ground-launch capabilities, and all the British air-delivered nuclear weapons were dismantled by 1998. The missiles are built, maintained, and serviced in the U.S., but Britain insists that it maintains operational independence.
Today, the British Tridents are based on four Vanguard-class submarines, which are aging and due to be decommissioned in the 2020s. Since the government believes that new subs will take 17 years to design and build, a decision needs to be made. If Britain does not build new subs, it will lose its independent nuclear deterrent force.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's government could have made the decision on its own, but opted instead to open the issue for debate and let Parliament decide – a vote is scheduled for March 2007.
Supporters of renewing the Trident say that 1) no other nuclear states are considering eliminating their arsenals, 2) the number of nuclear states is increasing, 3) the world is a risky place, 4) it is impossible to predict whether the Tridents will be needed, so it is better to retain them. These arguments together seem to say, essentially, that in an uncertain, dangerous world, it is better to have nukes than not (shhh – don't tell Iran!).
Opponents argue that the weapons are 1) unnecessary (Britain's role in the world no longer requires nukes), 2) ineffective (deterrence is an "unproven theory" that is "essentially flawed," especially when it comes to terror), 3) expensive (roughly £20 billion that could be better spent elsewhere), 4) illegal (in violation of Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty, which obligates each signatory to work towards nuclear disarmament), and 5) immoral.
The Scots have been particularly virulent in their criticisms – this is partially tied up in British regional politics but also stems from the fact that the Trident submarines' only base is located in Scotland. Scottish officials have drafted two provocative but doomed-to-fail bills: one would criminalize "supporting the threat of the UK’s nuclear deterrent;" the other would charge the British government £1 billion (almost $2 billion) for each nuclear warhead transported through Scottish territory.
Churches and NGOs across the country have voiced their opposition, as well, and polls consistently show a majority of the British public opposed to Trident renewal. Blair has only offered minor concessions – he "wants to" reduce the number of subs and warheads slightly but says the issue needs more study.
If the Trident debate remains binary – renewal vs. no renewal – Blair has more than enough votes to push his proposal through Parliament. There may be a third option, though: delay the decision. U.S. nuclear experts Dick Garwin, Philip E. Coyle (disclosure: my boss), Theodore A. Postol, and Frank von Hippel recently argued that the Vanguard subs can last up to 15 years longer than the government said, with refurbishments and light use. They argue that putting the decision off would be the best way to maintain "a variety of options." It is unclear whether the government is interested in this option, but over 100 MPs (out of 646) have called for the decision to be delayed.
This will be a debate to watch – if the disarmament advocates succeed, Britain may become the first of the big five nuclear powers to give up its weapons. It looks unlikely in the near future, though.
Great news. According to the Times, "The United States and four other nations reached a tentative agreement to provide North Korea with roughly $400 million in fuel oil and aid, in return for the North’s starting to disable its nuclear facilities and allowing nuclear inspectors back into the country."
But here's the weird thing. "We almost certainly could have gotten this deal before the North Koreans tested a missile and a nuke," the Arms Control Association's Paul Kerr notes. In a way, I agree with this statement from John Bolton:"
This is the same thing that the State Department was prepared to do six years ago. If we going to cut this deal now, it’s amazing we didn’t cut it back then.
Not that the deal is entirely set. As Slate observes, "any agreement with North Korea should be met with some skepticism because the country has changed its mind in the past, and leader Kim Jong-il still has to give his blessing."
Nuke Stoppers: "Hidden" Detectors?
One of the biggest homeland security nightmares is a nuke, smuggled aboard a shipping container. Today, port authorities "scan containers for illicit radioactive materials ashore," New Scientist notes. But "to avoid delaying shipments... detectors generally have no longer than 1 minute to do their work, which is not always long enough."
One possible solution, from MIT's Richard Lanza: hide radiation detectors "inside ordinary shipping containers and sent [them] around the world with other cargo. These covert detectors would spot high-energy gamma rays given off by plutonium or HEU, which cannot easily be shielded."
Lanza proposes using detectors consisting of inorganic crystal scintillators that emit photons when hit by gamma rays. Each emitted photon has a different energy level depending on the isotope the gamma rays come from, allowing the isotope to be identified.
Lanza has made a detector with an array of scintillators behind a mask pierced with holes. Gamma rays passing through a hole would excite one of the scintillators, causing it to emit a photon. He has shown that this can be used to generate an image of a radiation source, allowing the source to be located.
"The technology certainly has merit," one radiation detection specialist, working for the government, tells Defense Tech. And "the Coast Guard, [along] with Customs and Border Patrol, has been considering the use of 'sticky pagers': small boxes that would clamp on a container out of, say, Antwerp, and would take a continuous 1-week reading of the contents of the container as it's shipped across the ocean."
Obviously, you'd be able to get a very good reading of the half of the container nearest the detector, but the minimum detectable activity might be pretty bad near the far side.
I don't know of any specific "sticky pager" development programs going on within DHS [Department of Homeland Security] (including the Coast Guard) right now, but just because I don't know about it doesn't mean it isn't happening. There is interest, though -- there were a few presentations on this type of thing (mostly out of LANL [Los Alamos]) at the winter meeting of the American Nuclear Society.
Our expert does have a small, geeky quibble with the New Scientist story, however. The article keeps talking about "U-232" and how its radiation would "penetrate 22 metres of cargo on average." First of all, U-232 isn't really used in nuclear weapons -- that'd be another isotope, U-235. And U-232's penetration? More like 22 centimeters. Plus, New Scientist: note the spelling of "meters," ok? That's an American-built Internet you're publishing to. We expect things to be spelled our way.
Second Nork Nuke Test Coming?
I was skeptical when I heard the news last week, that "senior defense officials" now think North Korea has "put everything in place to conduct a [second nuclear] test without any notice or warning." After all, wasn't the first Nork test a total dud?
In early December 2006, intelligence sources indicated activities were underway at the Mount Mant’ap nuclear test site near the village of Punggye-ri in North Hamgyŏng Province. The activities were first disclosed by South Korean National Assemblyman Chŏng Hyŏng-gŭn of the Grand National Party (GNP or “Hannaradang”) on December 21. Chŏng’s disclosure followed South Korean Defense Minister Kim Chang-su’s December 15th admonition to 30 senior military commanders “to be thoroughly prepared to counter the possibility of a second or third nuclear test by North Korea.” According to National Assemblyman Chong, North Korea had prepared two tunnels under Mount Mant’ap, and the October 9, 2006 test was conducted in a tunnel on the eastern side of the mountain while recent activities have been at the western tunnel. According to a South Korean government source, the movement of people and vehicles has been detected at the site, and the activities are similar to those that preceded the first test.
National Assemblyman Chong revealed that in December 2006 an unidentified object was moved to the western tunnel entrance and up to 15 people were observed moving about the area. Chong said that the North Koreans were seen constructing a temporary building 10 meters from the tunnel entrance and it is very likely the North Koreans were preparing the tunnel for a nuclear test. Chong also claimed that after the October 9th test in the eastern tunnel, the North Koreans removed the three temporary support buildings near that tunnel entrance and excavated and subsequently filled in a 95-meter long ditch between the buildings and the tunnel, which indicates they could be preparing the eastern tunnel for a future test as well.
Nuke Grenade: Indestructable
If you're standing near Sharon Weinberger, be careful. Her head may explode, after reading this post.
Despite her best efforts -- including a whole freakin' book -- to explain to folks that a nuclear hand grenade violates science's most basic principles, the idea just won't die. The latest example: OK, OK... it's from Maxim, not the New Republic or Foreign Policy. But still, the fact that the nuke grenade (also known as the "hafnium bomb") survives a basic fact-check -- from any magazine -- says something about the imaginary weapon's durability.
Get ready for an adrenaline-pumping international game of dodgeball. For years - and to the tune of $10 million so far - the Department of Energy has been pursuing the idea of nuclear grenades, handheld weapons that could yield kilotons of destructive power thanks to one central ingredient: superexcited elements called isomers. A golf ball holding the energy of just one halfnium 178 isomer- the element being considered for use in the weapon - would contain the equivalent of 10 tons of explosives. The moment researchers discover the best way to trigger the release of that energy...we're all screwed!
Step off, Al Gore. I, with a little help from an eager group of atmospheric scientists, have found a quick fix to global warming. All we need is a handful of nuclear weapons! They can even be small ones!
You’re probably thinking that the heat is messing with my mind. A slewofstudies released in the past few months, though, has confirmed that using nuclear weapons could significantly -- perhaps even catastrophically –- cool the planet.
This phenomenon was first studied towards the end of the Cold War, in the early 1980s. The idea was that the smoke and carbon particles released by fires (in turn caused by nuclear attacks on cities, where much of the world's fuel is stored) could have similar cooling effects to those known to be caused by the ash released in major volcanic eruptions –- only worse (due to physical and chemical differences between ash and smoke). A seminal study in 1983, often called TTAPS (after its authors), confirmed this hypothesis and coined the term "nuclear winter."
Even using extremely crude modeling, TTAPS projected that a massive nuclear exchange between Russia and the U.S. could cause catastrophic cooling in the continental interiors –- a change of as much as -35 degrees C (-63 degrees F). For comparison, the last global ice age, at its peak, saw average global cooling of only -5 degrees C (-9 degrees F) –- though the cooling at continental interiors would have been more drastic. Later studies concluded that these changes would persist for around 3 years.
Nuclear winter studies continued until 1990 and then ceased abruptly (presumably the end of the Cold War sucked the urgency out of the issue). This fall, however, Alan Robock of Rutgers University and some of his colleagues have published several new studies on nuclear winter –- the first such studies in almost 20 years.
Climate models today –- and the computers to run them –- are considerably more sophisticated than those of the early 1980s. Using these improved models, Robock et al. confirmed that the nuclear winter theory holds, in general. The temperature effects for a massive nuclear exchange should actually be slightly less extreme than originally predicted, but according to the new model they would last for over a decade, rather than just for a few years.
Taking a completely new approach, one study also examined a scenario no one bothered to consider during the Cold War: a regional nuclear conflict. They found that massive, superpower-style nuclear exchanges are not required to force major climate change. Even a relatively small nuclear exchange between, say, India and Pakistan, could cause average global surface cooling of over 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) and peak cooling at continental interiors of around 4 degrees C (7 degrees F).
Interestingly, the studies found that the persistence of the climate changes did not depend on the size of the nuclear exchange. In other words, the climate effects from a regional nuclear war would last just as long as those from a global nuclear war, though they would be less extreme.
Recent modeling has also confirmed that nuclear exchanges will drastically reduce global precipitation, by as much as -45% for a massive superpower exchange and -10% for a regional exchange. In the former case, for instance, Northern Hemisphere monsoon seasons would disappear entirely.
These studies have weaknesses –- for instance, they assume nuclear weapons will only target cities, where most smoke-generating fuel is gathered, rather than isolated military installations –- but collectively they are a reasonable step towards updating the science of nuclear winter. After such a long hiatus, with nuclear proliferation looming in Asia and the Middle East, and even though nuclear winter itself is rather terrifying, I find it reassuring that long-neglected effects of nuclear weapons are being studied anew.
UPDATE 7:10 PM: Russell Seitz says the whole nuclear winter thing has been oversold.
UPDATE 01/05/06 4:25 PM: Eric rebuts the rebuttal, here.
So Where Are All The Dirty Bombs?
I've never been one to fully understand the great fear that many state and federal emergency response managers seem to have over dirty bombs, given the many training exercises that seem to include the threat as the main hazard. This USA Today article talks about the issue of loose and stolen radioactive material.
Annual incidents of trafficking and mishandling of nuclear and other radioactive material reported to U.S. intelligence officials have more than doubled since the early 1990s, says the director of domestic nuclear detection at the Department of Homeland Security.
Also up: scams in which fake or non-existent nuclear or radioactive material is offered for sale, often online, says Vayl Oxford, nuclear detection director at the department.
"We sense that people have recognized the value of nuclear material as a useful way of making money," Oxford said. "Nuclear material is becoming a marketable commodity."
The incidents tracked by the department, based on its reporting and information from foreign diplomatic and intelligence sources, average about twice the number made public each year by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Oxford said reports of nuclear and radioactive materials trafficking have ranged from 200 to 250 a year since 2000, up from about 100 a year in the 1990s.
But here's the thing ,Vayl. When you look at the amount of materials stolen or lost (some data are shown in the article's sidebar), we're talking about ounces and a few pounds at best of gamma emitters. No one's tracking the alpha/beta radioactive material out there (polonium anyone?). Still, not exactly enough for an improvised nuclear weapon, maybe enough to scare unknowledgable people.
You might have seen the last season's "Sleeper Cell" that only reinforced some of these fears. I enjoyed watching the terrorist cell use americium 241 to "test" their lead-lined cooler container for radiation leaks (except that americium isn't a strong gamma emitter), talk about how exploding an aircraft holding one nuclear fuel rod over Los Angeles would "cover the city in nuclear fallout" (ah, not really), and how the authorities "got a hit from the radioactive sniffers" on the lead-lined cooler on its way to the last target. Yeah, it's only a drama, but I'll bet people believe this stuff. Maybe it was just disinformation for the real terrorists... yeah, that's the ticket.
UPDATE 12/29/06 11:36 AM: David Hambling writes in to say: "Also, the UK police are ordering some 12,000 CBR [chemical-biological-radiological] suits -- looks like they're expecting those famous/mythical dirty bombs too."
UPDATE 12/29/06 12:05 PM: J here. Great conversation in the comments, especially the cool-headed plugger noting that "dirty bombs" are hazards, not life-threatening events. Many of the comments seem to go to the question of "what's your point?" Without getting too academic (hey, I'm not the ArmsControlWonk, after all), my point is simply this. While there's lots of radioactive hazards out there, the really bad ones aren't being moved in great quantities to cause a mass casualty incident. Given that "dirty bombs" of whatever flavor - alpha, beta, gamma - are largely more of a clean-up job, and while costly to clean up, government goes on. The anthrax letters didn't shut down the USPS, but it did slow things down on the east coast. The polonium poisoning didn't shut down Heathrow Airport for a minute.
They're hazards, they are low-probability events, they're not mass casualty events. Given that basis, what's the appropriate federal response? I suggest that it is not to put rad detectors in every port and every border crossing into the United States and within every major metropolitan area, as DHS's DNDO has suggested (which would cost billions of dollars to implement plus annual sustainment and training costs). The appropriate response is to lock down the bad rads (cesium, uranium, and plutonium), get the terrorists before they attack, and be prepared (like our UK brethern) to clean it up if it happens. Simple. Smart. Efficient. But not the course of action being implemented by the government.
Pentagon Plan: Hit Anywhere on Earth, in an Hour
I've had sources ask to meet me in some pretty odd places. But there was one meeting last year that had to be just about the strangest request yet. It wasn't just that this very-recently retired Defense Department strategist wanted to meet at the Pentagon City Mall -- that's a pretty common place to grab an off-the-record cup o' joe. It was where in the mall he had in mind: at the Nordstrom's coffee shop, tucked all the way in the far reaches of the store, just past the little kid's clothes section.
So I walk past the rows of toddlers' jumpers, past the blue-haired ladies ordering around their grandkids. I sit down with my source. And he begins to tell me about a Pentagon plan that's even odder that the place where we're meeting.
Sounds... ummm, ambitious, right? So how do you pull off that kind of mission, now known as "Prompt Global Strike?" Well, that's the subject of my cover story in this month's Popular Mechanics.
Now, of course, the American military has weapons that can destroy just about anything on the planet in a matter of minutes: nuclear missiles. Which might have been the right answer for containing our Soviet adversaries. But as the Cold War receded into memory, U.S. strategists began to worry that our nuclear threat was no longer credible. That we were too muscle-bound for our own good. Were we really prepared to wipe out Tehran in retribution for a single terrorist attack? Kill millions of Chinese for invading Taiwan? Of course not. The weaker our enemies grew, the less ominous our arsenal became. Military theorists called it "self-deterrence." "In today's environment, we've got zeros and ones. You can decide to engage with nuclear weapons, or not," Navy Capt. Terry Benedict told me. "The nation's leadership needs an intermediate step – to take the action required, without crossing to the one."
Benedict's option -- one of two I explore in the article -- is Trident ballistic missiles, armed with conventional warheads instead of nukes. For lots of good reasons (like the better-than-average chance the missiles could start World War III) Congress has negged the idea. But, in the military establishment, there's still a great deal of interest in using ballistic missiles for the hour-or-less mission. How exactly the nuclear holocaust issue is supposed to be resolved is, at this point, unclear.
Which brings us to option #2. It's a long-term play. And a long-shot, too. The military's research divisions are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into exotic, high-speed weapons like the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile, illustrated on the cover. If it works out as planned, the X-51 will go Mach 5 (roughly 3600 mph) -- much, much faster than any equivalent in the U.S. arsenal. Some Pentagon planners see the X-51 as part of a suite of futuristic weapons that can almost-instantly threaten American adversaries everywhere, without threatening the entire planet in the process. But it's way off in the distance; the X-51's first test flight isn't until 2008. I'm expecting several more trips to Nordstrom's Cafe before then.
UPDATE 11:40 AM: If you want to learn how the Prompt Global Strike concept got started -- and how it's being put into early development, today -- I strongly recommend this chronology, from the Federation of American Scientists' Hans Kristensen.
When the State Department recently asked the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement in a clandestine nuclear weapons program, the agency refused, citing a large workload and a desire to protect its sources and tradecraft.
Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior Foreign Service officer to find the names another way—by using Google. Those with the most hits under search terms such as “Iran and nuclear,” three officials said, became targets for international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United Nations.
[snip]
In the end, the CIA approved a handful of individuals, though none is believed connected to Project 1-11—Iran’s secret military effort to design a weapons system capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The names of Project 1-11 staff members have never been released by any government and doing so may have raised questions that the CIA was not willing or fully able to answer. But the agency had no qualms about approving names already publicly available on the Internet.
This actually makes sense: You have what you think is the real list, but you only nail people for whom you can make a public case. But woe unto the poor schmoe who has to push a bunch of google search terms on skeptical foreign diplomats.
Come to think of it, the Project 111 name comes from the laptop of death (more) —so what’s the big secret?
This raises so many questions: Is unknown electro-folkie Johnny Burroughs, who records under the name Project 111, now on every no-fly list ever?
Update: I asked about the hyphen in Project 111. D-linz e-mailed me to say:
I decided to add it yesterday because that is how U.S. intelligence officials pronounce the project, with the 1 first and then the 11. Like the way you say nine-eleven for Sept. 11, rather than 9-1-1- for emergency help or one hundred and eleven. IC folks say “project one-eleven”
Later Update: Noah points out that I totally avoided the big revelation, that "none of the 12 Iranians that the State Department eventually singled out for potential bans on international travel and business dealings is believed by the CIA to be directly connected to Iran’s most suspicious nuclear activities.”
I guess that would mean the sanctions are kind of pointless, no?
Even later update: Noah here. At Defense Tech HQ, we're all bigfans of open source intelligence -- information that's out there in the public sphere -- to nail potential bad guys. But only if it actually nails legitimately bad dudes, not just the random Joes who are unlucky enough to show up at the top of a Google search.
Nuke Missiles' Coordinates Plotted
The other day, we looked at the Google Earth map showing the nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal. This website goes a couple of steps further, giving the latitude and longitude of every Minuteman nuclear missile silo in the country.
(Big ups: DD)
Google Earth Tracks Nukes
The lovely Elizabeth and I spent the better part of the last week driving across country, to set up the winter Defense Tech HQ in Los Angeles. We didn't realize how many nuclear weapons we passed along the way: the old warheads at the Pantex facility, just outside Amarillo; the 1,914 doomsday devices at Kirtland Air Force Base, in Albuquerque.
The satellite map - drawn from this Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistsstudy -- "offers a fresh accounting of the extensive U.S. nuclear inventory, and its dynamic graphics let site users 'fly' onscreen across a sprawling network of military facilities in 12 states and in Europe," a press release reads.
The researchers emphasize that none of the locations is secret. All have been known for years to house nuclear weapons and are highly secure military facilities that do not pose a direct security risk to surrounding communities...
The U.S. nuclear arsenal currently is housed at 18 military facilities in 12 states and six European countries. The highest concentration is at the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific in Bangor, Washington, which is home to more than 2,300 warheads – probably the most nuclear weapons at any one site in the world. At any given moment, nearly half of these warheads are aboard ballistic-missile submarines in the Pacific...
Over the past decade, the United States has removed nuclear weapons from three states – California, Virginia and South Dakota – and one foreign country, Greece. And during that time, the estimated number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile dropped from approximately 12,500 to just below 10,000. At its height, in the mid-1960s, the U.S. stockpile boasted some 32,000 warheads...
[Today], more than two-thirds of the warheads are stored at bases for operational ballistic missiles and bombers. Only about 28 percent of the warheads have been moved to separate storage facilities, such as the massive underground vault at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which stores more than 1,900 warheads – the second largest cache in the arsenal.
Hmmm... maybe we'll take the Northern route home.
Los Alamos Getting Sloppy (Updated)
Why should we bother putting radiological detectors in the ports when it's easier to get the stuff within the United States? The AP has this article on a drug raid at a New Mexico trailer park, which turned up classified documents from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
Local police found the documents while arresting a man suspected of domestic violence and dealing methamphetamine from his mobile home, said Sgt. Chuck Ney of the Los Alamos, N.M., Municipal Police Department. The documents were discovered during a search of the man's records for evidence of his drug business, Ney said.
Police alerted the FBI to the secret documents, which agents traced back to a woman linked to the drug dealer, officials said. The woman is a contract employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to an FBI official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.
The official would not describe the documents except to say that they appeared to contain classified material and were stored on a computer file.
According to unconfirmed sources, the information was classified as Secret Restricted Data which means it would involve nuclear weapons data and may have concerned detection of underground nuclear weapons testing. Also unconfirmed, the person in possession of the information worked either in Technical Area 55 where all of the Lab’s plutonium is stored or in the X Division which handles nuclear weapons design data for a maintenance subcontractor of the Lab.
POGO also notes six previous security incidents at LANL since 9/11. No wonder that many of the DHS exercises feature dirty bomb scenarios - they must be worried about domestic terrorists getting too much National Lab material...
UPDATED 10:20 AM: It should be noted that this isn't Los Alamos' first drug-related incident. Back in 2004, local authorities evicted a man who had lived for years in a cave on lab property. from a cave on Los Alamos National Laboratory land where they say he apparently lived for years with the comforts of home — a wood-burning stove, solar panels connected to car batteries for electricity and a satellite radio. Ten marijuana plants were found outside the cave, and the fellow inside was charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
UPDATED 4:15 PM: Whatever you do, be sure to check in regularly at the POGO blog, where they've got all kinds of funrumors floating in. Police docs, too.
UPDATED 10-26: J. here - let me clarify that I believe the combination of classified LANL documents and potential theft of radioactive isotopes from domestic sources (universities, medical labs) is what ought to get people excited about this incident. Obviously we don't know what's in the documents that makes them classified, and I am not suggesting that LANL might be the source of loose plutonium material. But unless LANL tightens up their security procedures and trains/screens its employees and contract support better, its leadership ought to be on notice.
Condi's Rad Detectors: Not So Fab?
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is pushing North Korea's neighbors to use more radiation detectors, to keep Kim & Co. from smuggling nuclear materials into or out of the country.
Of course, that assumes that the sensors can actually handle the job. In many cases, they can't.
Unlike plutonium, which emits... high-energy gamma rays that are almost impossible to shield, HEU emits only low-energy gamma rays... If the uranium is shielded by just a thin layer of lead, or even wood, the detectors miss it.
There are better sensors in the works, Homeland Security Watch's Christian Beckner says. They use "germanium instead of sodium iodide, or [rely on] active detection technologies, where you bombard the container with high-energy particles that create new signatures which are easier to detect." Unfortunately, they cost a ton -- seven times more than the current sensors. And they "haven't been proven yet in the field." Not here. And certainly not in China or South Korea, where they would do the most good to contain the current crisis.
But not all is lost. Two U.S. government programs -- the Container Security Initiative (CSI) and the Megaports Initiative -- are helping foreign inspectors get advanced x-ray machines which are better at seeing through shielding. The machines can pick up fishy-looking shapes, if not radiation signatures.
CSI also puts American customs officers at "foreign ports to liaison with officials there and get them to inspect [potentially risky] containers," Beckner says. It's not a perfect program, relying "too much on the personal relationship between the American officers and the foreign port officials; the former don't have the authority to force foreign ports to comply, and Senate investigators have found that in many cases these foreign ports aren't fully responsive."
But, overall, Beckner thinks "it's been a relatively effective program." And for right now, it's really all we've got.
Nuke Spaceship Docs Revealed
In the late 1950's, the U.S. government began research into an interplanterary spacecraft that relied on nuclear detonations for propulsion. The effort, dubbed "Project Orion," died quietly ater a few years. But many of the documents surrounding the atomic spaceship have remained hidden or classified for more than four decades.
Boing Boing has a bunch of 'em up, now -- as well as an interview with tech historian George Dyson, who's dad worked on Orion. Check it out.
UPDATE 11:15 AM: "Orion is interesting from a military technology point of view, partly because it was literally a 'space battleship' with a large stock of nuclear warheads it could deliver anywhere on the planet," says David Hambling. "In particular, there is a program mentioned in [Dyson's] book called 'Casaba Howitzer' which is a nuke with highly directional blast, suitable for attacking buried installations etc. Casaba Howitzer is still, as far as I know, highly classified with no details anywhere."
Real Korea Worry: Chem-Bio
North Korea's newly-tested nuke is bad news, for sure. But the bigger worry, says Popular Mechanics is the "huge arsenal of mass casualty weapons" that Kim & Co. have been assembling for 45 years: biological and chemical arms.
While it would be foolish not to be gravely concerned about North Korea's purported development of an offensive nuclear capability, the actual threat for the foreseeable future is, arguably, minimal. North Korea's threadbare economy (it has a GDP of $40 billion - compare that to California's gross state product on $1.55 trillion per year) is incapable of maintaining an effective nuclear weapons program. Its nuclear science is at best second rate and, certainly, is second hand.
In contrast, as one North Korea expert explained to me, CBW is mass destruction on the cheap. "Biological and chemical weapons are very inexpensive, many, many times cheaper than nuclear." Another expert gave this grim assessment: "The use of anthrax is a distinct possibility for this nation [North Korea]..."
The consensus among weapons inspectors, intelligence analysts, academics and others I have interviewed—–which is backed up by the available open source material—-is that North Korea has developed anthrax, plague and botulism toxin as weapons and has extensively researched at least six other germs including smallpox and typhoid. It is also believed to have 5,000 tons or more of mustard gas, sarin nerve agent and phosgene (a choking gas). The Center for Nonproliferation Studies says North Korea ranks "amongst the largest possessors of chemical weaponry in the world." South Korea's military estimates half of North's long-range missiles and 30 percent of its artillery are CBW capable...
Yet the West's myopic obsession with North Korea's nuclear efforts has allowed this far more real and equally lethal threat to escape into the shadows: a WMD program, backed by in excess of 13,000 specially trained troops, capable of devastating its southern neighbor, attacking U.S. troops in Asia and disrupting the regional economy in ways that could see the U.S. and other western nations plunged into crisis.
Yes, the new [United Nations] resolution 1718(2006) includes a reference to biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, but only as an afterthought, and the resolution exists only because of the nukes and their perceived threat. Unfortunately, in this case, as with others, the world is overly focused on a potential retina-searing nuclear detonation, without properly appreciating the very clear-and-present CBW killer that exists just a virtual button's push away from Kim Jong Il's perfectly manicured fingernails.
If the whole thing sounds a little hysterical to you, chem-bio guru Jason Sigger says: get real. The story is "100 percent right in regards to N. Korea. And you can extend that argument to China, Iran, Syria, Israel, Pakistan, and India, and potentially in the near future (because of Iran), Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others."
Seriously, I see this all the time in the "combating WMD" community. The arms control and counterproliferation people talk "WMD" but the subtext is "nuke." Even the majority of the consequence management tasks are now "dirty bomb" or "improvised nuclear device" scenarios... [the] mentality is [that] nukes are the only thing that can drastically affect US military power in any region of the world.
But there are other threats, too.
Nork Test: No Big Whoop?
"There is no question that the political and security implications of the [recent North Korean nuclear] test are huge and almost entirely negative," writes Ivan Oelrich, over at the Strategic Security Blog. "The technical significance of the test is somewhat less than meets the eye."
[A week ago,] the outside world knew that the North Koreans had plutonium available from fuel rods that had been removed from the reactor at Yongbyon. We knew that at least some of the plutonium had been separated out of the fuel rods and, since separation is a fairly straightforward process, it was a fair assumption that most or all of the plutonium had been separated. So we knew about their plutonium supply (and the test tells us nothing more about that), but another key question remained: Could they fashion the plutonium into a bomb?
...Before the test, we did not know whether the North Koreans could build an implosion bomb or not. Had the test been successful, we would now know that they could, although we would still not know how close they were to a useable weapon; their test device might have weighed tons and been a once off, rigged up, laboratory experiment. But the test was not successful, so we still don’t know whether the North Koreans can build a workable implosion bomb. Presumably the North Koreans learned something from the test so the probability of the next test being successful is somewhat higher than the probability that the first test would have been successful. This is not much of difference, leaving us in pretty much the same position we were in before the test...
Why might the test have failed? An implosion bomb uses conventional high explosives to compress plutonium until it becomes “critical,” that is, it will sustain a run-away chain reaction. The pressure from the conventional explosives has to be carefully controlled, for example, it must be symmetric or else it is like squeezing a ball of putty: pressure on one side doesn’t compress the plutonium, it just squirts it out the other side. The most likely reason for the failure is some problem with the compression and there is any number of reasons why the compression might not be adequate. If the test were carefully instrumented (which is not necessarily the case), the North Koreans should be able to narrow down the cause, which will give them a much improved chance for success with their next test.
UPDATE 10/14/06 11:20 AM: "Initial environmental samples collected by a U.S. military aircraft detected signs of radiation over the Sea of Japan, possibly confirming North Korea's nuclear test," the Washington Post reports.
UPDATE 10/15/06 7:06 PM: "The proposition that the apparently low yield of the test is a failure is not self evident," says Defense Tech pal John Pike, pointing to thisWeekly Standard piece. After all, Pike notes, the yield on the American B61 nuke can range anywhere from a third of a kiloton to more than 350 kt.
UPDATE 10/15/06 7:23 PM: No excerpt will do justice to this epic retelling of North Korea 50-year quest for the Bomb. So just go and read the whole thing.
Nork Fallout: Asia Arms Race?
So here we are, 36 hours later, and everybody is still talking about North Korea's nuclear test. But despite all the nervous chatter, not much has changed, at least in the short term. (Down the road is a much different story.)
Condemnations of the North’s brazen act aside, China is no more willing now than they were last week to risk a collapsed regime on their border - it almost assures a flood of refugees and a US military ally sharing a border with China. The US’s options are similarly limited – even if we know where all their nuclear sites are, it’s unlikely we’d be willing to bet that the unpredictable Kim regime wouldn’t retaliate against Seoul. That leaves us to do what we’ve gotten good at with North Korea: issuing a strong condemnation and then hoping that CNN switches back over to coverage of Jon Benet Ramsey.
The only big potential short term implication is if the international community demonstrates that this test was a fake, or a dud. Then the North will be forced to up the ante to compensate for the embarrassment (just as the nuke test was to compensate for the humiliating failure of the July long range missile test).
The real impact of the Kim's nuclear trial is in the long term. That's when things have the potential to get extremely scary. Not only do you get the possibility of the Norks throwing a nuclear yard sale for terrorists. But for Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, it energizes his push to strengthen Japan’s security capacity like nothing else could have. Abe had already appointed a number of fellow conservatives in Foreign Ministry and Defense positions in the cabinet, he’s declared his intent to modify the constitution’s limitations on Japanese military capacity, and he mooted the possibility for a Japanese pre-emptive strike against North Korea in
The conventional Trident may be 
One possible solution, from MIT's 
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Step off, 
Climate models today –- and the computers to run them –- are considerably more sophisticated than those of the early 1980s. Using these improved models, Robock et al. 
So I walk past the rows of toddlers' jumpers, past the blue-haired ladies ordering around their grandkids. I sit down with my source. And he begins to tell me about a Pentagon plan that's even odder that the place where we're meeting.
Linzer has to be 
When we drive back in the Spring, we'll know. Because the wonks at the 
Of course, that assumes that the sensors can actually handle the job. In many cases, they can't.
In the late 1950's, the U.S. government began research into an interplanterary spacecraft that relied on nuclear detonations for propulsion. The effort, dubbed "Project Orion," died quietly ater a few years. But many of the documents surrounding the atomic spaceship have remained hidden or classified for more than four decades.
