Nuclear War, Germ War, Bio War, Chem War, WMD

[ccp]

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/state-letter-reveals-plan-u-s-legal-commitment-unratified-nuclear-treaty/

[Crafty_Dog]

Please post in Sovereignty thread as well.

[Crafty_Dog]

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test Friday, following three missile tests on Monday and about 20 so far this year. The accelerating pace of the Kim Jong Un regime’s nuclear and missile testing shows its determination to threaten Japan, South Korea and the U.S. homeland with nuclear weapons. The question is whether the West is capable of a more determined response.

Every nuclear test leaves forensic clues, and analysts are suggesting this was Pyongyang’s most successful, with an apparent yield of 10 kilotons. This is the North’s second test this year, suggesting it has an ample supply of nuclear material from its restarted plutonium reactor and enriched uranium.

The North said it tested a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could be placed on a missile. True or not, we know its scientists had access to a Chinese design for a partially miniaturized weapon through the proliferation network of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. The U.S. believes the North already has small enough warheads to fit on short-range missiles aimed at South Korea.

The North’s workhorse Nodong missile now has a range of more than 600 miles. In June it launched a medium-range Musudan missile from a road-mobile launcher, which makes it hard to detect and destroy. North Korea recently launched a missile from a submarine into the Sea of Japan at a range of 300 miles. This means Pyongyang now has a second-strike capability if the world tried a preventive attack to destroy its nuclear weapons.

A growing worry for the U.S. is the North’s new KN-08 intercontinental missile with the range to hit Chicago. In February the North used a similar rocket to launch a small satellite into space. Significant challenges remain, including a warhead that could withstand the vibration and temperature changes of a long-range missile flight. But the North has repeatedly solved technical problems more quickly than expected.

All of this means the window to prevent the North from becoming a global nuclear menace is closing while the proliferation risks are growing. The North has cooperated with Iran on missile development in the past and may share its nuclear secrets.

Right on cue, the world’s powers condemned the missile launch. And President Obama promised “additional significant steps, including new sanctions to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions.”

Yada, yada, yada. Why should Kim and company fear such words?

Sanctions get passed as a ritual but are never enforced enough to matter. Earlier this year China began to enforce new sanctions, but Beijing let trade with the North resume after Seoul decided in July to deploy the U.S. Thaad missile-defense system. Only sanctions that imperil the regime will force the North to freeze its nuclear program, and Beijing has never been willing to risk undermining its client state.

Meanwhile, the U.S. won’t even use secondary sanctions against Chinese entities trading with the North. A February U.N. report identified dozens of Chinese firms linked to blacklisted North Korean entities and detailed how the Bank of China allegedly facilitated $40 million in deceptive wire transfers for a Pyongyang-linked client. Cutting off such firms from the global financial system could deter others from trading with the North.

But for that to happen Mr. Obama would have to behave differently than he has for eight years. The result is that the next American President will inherit one more grave and growing threat to Western security.

[Crafty_Dog]

I have repeatedly banged the table around here that one of the worst things that Obama has done is to bring an end to the era of nuclear non-proliferation.

Though I find the following unfair in some respects to Trump, on the whole it is an intelligent discussion of a matter of profound importance to our national security.  I was unaware of just how bad our trajectory is viz the Chinese and Russians is.

Also, I would note that there is no discussion of the Iran and North Korea.  I would note that as Iran develops its' ICBMs, it continues to move forward with its nuke program.  Even if it should turn out it is sort of respecting the Obama-Kerry deal (which expires in what, 12 years?) it seems logical to me to assume they are off-shoring their efforts to a joint venture with North Korea.

--------------------------------------------------------

by Mark Helprin
Sept. 23, 2016 6:11 p.m. ET
189 COMMENTS

Even should nuclear brinkmanship not result in Armageddon, it can lead to abject defeat and a complete reordering of the international system. The extraordinarily complicated and consequential management of American nuclear policy rests upon the shoulders of those we elevate to the highest offices. Unfortunately, President Obama’s transparent hostility to America’s foundational principles and defensive powers is coupled with a dim and faddish understanding of nuclear realities. His successor will be no less ill-equipped.

Hillary Clinton’s robotic compulsion to power renders her immune to either respect for truth or clearheaded consideration of urgent problems. Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of state once said that he was “pure act” (meaning action). Hillary Clinton is “pure lie” (meaning lie), with whatever intellectual power she possesses hopelessly enslaved to reflexive deviousness.

Donald Trump, surprised that nuclear weapons are inappropriate to counterinsurgency, has a long history of irrepressible urges and tropisms. Rather like the crazy boy-emperors after the fall of the Roman Republic, he may have problems with impulse control—and an uncontrolled, ill-formed, perpetually fragmented mind.

None of these perhaps three worst people in the Western Hemisphere, and few of their deplorable underlings, are alive to the gravest danger. Which is neither Islamic State, terrorism, the imprisoned economy, nor even the erosion of our national character, though all are of crucial importance.

The gravest danger we face is fast-approaching nuclear instability. Many believe it is possible safely to arrive at nuclear zero. It is not. Enough warheads to bring any country to its knees can fit in a space volumetrically equivalent to a Manhattan studio apartment. Try to find that in the vastness of Russia, China, or Iran. Even ICBMs and their transporter-erector-launchers can easily be concealed in warehouses, tunnels and caves. Nuclear weapons age out, but, thanks to supercomputing, reliable replacements can be manufactured with only minor physical testing. Unaccounted fissile material sloshing around the world can, with admitted difficulty, be fashioned into weapons. And when rogue states such as North Korea and Iran build their bombs, our response has been either impotence or a ticket to ride.

Nor do nuclear reductions lead to increased safety. Quite apart from encouraging proliferation by enabling every medium power in the world to aim for nuclear parity with the critically reduced U.S. arsenal, reductions create instability. The fewer targets, the more possible a (counter-force) first strike to eliminate an enemy’s retaliatory capacity. Nuclear stability depends, inter alia, upon deep reserves that make a successful first strike impossible to assure. The fewer warheads and the higher the ratio of warheads to delivery vehicles, the more dangerous and unstable.

Consider two nations, each with 10 warheads on each of 10 missiles. One’s first strike with five warheads tasked per the other’s missiles would leave the aggressor with an arsenal sufficient for a (counter-value) strike against the now disarmed opponent’s cities. Our deterrent is not now as concentrated as in the illustration, but by placing up to two-thirds of our strategic warheads in just 14 submarines; consolidating bomber bases; and entertaining former Defense Secretary William Perry’s recommendation to do away with the 450 missiles in the land-based leg of the Nuclear Triad, we are moving that way.

Supposedly salutary reductions are based upon an incorrect understanding of nuclear sufficiency: i.e., if X number of weapons is sufficient to inflict unacceptable costs upon an enemy, no more than X are needed. But we don’t define sufficiency, the adversary does, and the definition varies according to culture; history; the temperament, sanity, or miscalculation of leadership; domestic politics; forms of government, and other factors, some unknown. For this reason, the much maligned concept of overkill is a major contributor to stability, in that, if we have it, an enemy is less likely to calculate that we lack sufficiency. Further, if our forces are calibrated to sufficiency, then presumably the most minor degradation will render them insufficient.

Nor is it safe to mirror-image willingness to go nuclear. Every nuclear state has its own threshold, and one cannot assume that concessions in strategic forces will obviate nuclear use in response to conventional warfare, which was Soviet doctrine for decades and is a Russian predilection now.

Ballistic missile defense is opposed and starved on the assumption that it would shield one’s territory after striking first, and would therefore tempt an enemy to strike before the shield was deployed. As its opponents assert, hermetic shielding is impossible, and if only 10 of 1,500 warheads were to hit American cities, the cost would be unacceptable. But no competent nuclear strategist ever believed that, other than protecting cities from accidental launch or rogue states, ballistic missile defense is anything but a means of protecting our retaliatory capacity, making a counter-force first strike of no use, and thus increasing stability.

In a nuclear world, unsentimental and often counterintuitive analysis is necessary. As the genie will not be forced back into the lamp, the heart of the matter is balance and deterrence. But this successful dynamic of 70 years is about to be destroyed. Those whom the French call our “responsibles” have addressed the nuclear calculus—in terms of sufficiency, control regimes, and foreign policy—only toward Russia, as if China, a nuclear power for decades, did not exist. While it is true that to begin with its nuclear arsenal was de minimis, in the past 15 years China has increased its land-based ICBMs by more than 300%, its sea-based by more than 400%. Depending upon the configuration of its missiles, China can rain up to several hundred warheads upon the U.S.

As we shrink our nuclear forces and fail to introduce new types, China is doing the opposite, increasing them numerically and forging ahead of us in various technologies (quantum communications, super computers, maneuverable hypersonic re-entry vehicles), some of which we have forsworn, such as road-mobile missiles, which in survivability and range put to shame our Minuteman IIIs.

Because China’s nuclear weapons infrastructure is in part housed in 3,000 miles of tunnels opaque to American intelligence, we cannot know the exact velocity and extent of its buildup. Why does the Obama administration, worshipful of nuclear agreements, completely ignore the nuclear dimension of the world’s fastest rising major power, with which the United States and allies engage in military jockeying almost every day on multiple fronts? Lulled to believe that nuclear catastrophe died with the Cold War, America is blind to rising dragons.

And then we have Russia, which ignores limitations the Obama administration strives to exceed. According to its own careless or defiant admissions, Russia cheats in virtually every area of nuclear weapons: deploying missiles that by treaty supposedly no longer exist; illegally converting anti-aircraft and ballistic missile defense systems to dual-capable nuclear strike; developing new types of nuclear cruise missiles for ships and aircraft; keeping more missiles on alert than allowed; and retaining battlefield tactical nukes.

Further, in the almost complete absence of its own “soft power,” Russia frequently hints at nuclear first use. All this comports with historical Soviet/Russian doctrine and conduct; is an important element of Putinesque tactics for reclaiming the Near Abroad; and dovetails perfectly with Mr. Obama’s advocacy of no first use, unreciprocated U.S. reductions and abandonment of nuclear modernization. Which in turn pair nicely with Donald Trump’s declaration that he would defend NATO countries only if they made good on decades of burden-sharing delinquency.

Russia deploys about 150 more nuclear warheads than the U.S. Intensively modernizing, it finds ways to augment its totals via undisguised cheating. Bound by no numerical or qualitative limits, China speeds its strategic development. To cripple U.S. retaliatory capability, an enemy would have to destroy only four or five submarines at sea, two sub bases, half a dozen bomber bases, and 450 missile silos.

Russia has 49 attack submarines, China 65, with which to track and kill American nuclear missile subs under way. Were either to build or cheat to 5,000 warheads (the U.S. once had more than 30,000) and two-thirds reached their targets, four warheads could strike each aim point, with 2,000 left to hold hostage American cities and industry. China and Russia are far less dense and developed than the U.S., and it would take more strikes for us to hold them at risk than vice versa, a further indictment of reliance upon sufficiency calculations and symmetrical reductions.

Russia dreams publicly of its former hold on Eastern Europe and cannot but see opportunity in a disintegrating European Union and faltering NATO. China annexes the South China Sea and looks to South Korea, Japan and Australasia as future subordinates. Given the degradation of U.S. and allied conventional forces previously able to hold such ambitions in check, critical confrontations are bound to occur. When they do occur, and if without American reaction, China or Russia have continued to augment their strategic forces to the point of vast superiority where one or both consider a first strike feasible, we may see nuclear brinkmanship (or worse) in which the United States—startled from sleep and suddenly disabused of the myth of sufficiency—might have to capitulate, allowing totalitarian dictatorships to dominate the world.

Current trajectories point in exactly this direction, but in regard to such things Donald Trump hasn’t the foggiest, and, frankly, Hillary Clinton, like the president, doesn’t give a damn.

The way to avoid such a tragedy is to bring China into a nuclear control regime or answer its refusal with our own proportional increases and modernization. And to make sure that both our nuclear and conventional forces are strong, up-to-date, and survivable enough to deter the militant ambitions of the two great powers rising with daring vengeance from what they regard as the shame of their oppression.

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, is the author of “Winter’s Tale,” “A Soldier of the Great War” and the forthcoming novel “Paris in the Present Tense.”

[ccp]

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/pentagon-studied-future-japan-nuclear-arsenal-war-china/

[Crafty_Dog]

For the record, I do not think this piece describes Trump's position fairly or accurately.  That said, he does need to get clearer in his thinking and articulation than he has been so far.  This is quite important.


With Trump, Asia’s Nuclear Crisis Expands
Next to North Korea and fearing U.S. abandonment, South Korea and Japan weigh their own options.
In this June 23, 2016, file photo, people watch a TV news channel airing an image of North Korea's ballistic missile launch published in North Korea's Rodong Sinmun newspaper at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea. ENLARGE
In this June 23, 2016, file photo, people watch a TV news channel airing an image of North Korea's ballistic missile launch published in North Korea's Rodong Sinmun newspaper at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea. Photo: Associated Press
By David Feith
Nov. 10, 2016 12:10 p.m. ET
4 COMMENTS

Seoul

The nuclear crisis in Northeast Asia was bound to be one of the most dangerous challenges facing the next U.S. president, no matter who won on Tuesday. With Donald Trump’s surprise victory, though, it could metastasize in dramatic ways: If you thought North Korea’s nuclear march was disconcerting, consider that South Korea and Japan may now pursue nuclear programs of their own, raising the risks and stakes of war not only with North Korea but China too.

Mr. Trump repeatedly endorsed such a nuclear proliferation cascade on the campaign trail. “At some point we have to say—you know what?—we’re better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea, we’re better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself,” he said. This was a corollary to his threats to pull U.S. troops from Japan and South Korea, where they’ve helped secure peace for more than six decades, if those countries don’t start spending dramatically more on their own defense.

It’s possible Mr. Trump will drop his enthusiasm for South Korean and Japanese nuclearization upon entering the Oval Office. His campaign advisers tended to ignore the subject in public statements, likely a reflection of the decades-old bipartisan consensus against nuclear proliferation in Washington. But as with other issues, the approach of President Trump will depend on who he brings into the White House for advice, and whether he listens to them.

Cheong Seong-chang will be calling for South Korean nuclearization either way. Speaking in Seoul last week, before America voted, the soft-spoken scholar and former government advisor argued that his country needs nukes to defend itself, that a majority of his countrymen agree, and that skeptics in government will embrace the view sooner or later. Sooner if a Trump administration backs it, he says, but within a decade regardless.

Two months ago Mr. Cheong and other security, diplomatic and engineering experts launched the Nuclear Research Group for Korea to study Seoul’s options. A similar group was established in the early 1990s, he says, but disbanded within a few years “under heavy social pressure” because it was “politically incorrect” to broach the nuclear issue. Today that taboo is gone.

Since January North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests, its fourth and fifth overall, and likely moved closer to a hydrogen-bomb capability that threatens to “wipe out all of Seoul,” Mr. Cheong notes. It has also tested more than 20 ballistic missiles, at least one of which could threaten the U.S. homeland, and completed its first successful submarine and road-mobile launches. Analysts figure it could have 100 bombs by 2020, before the first Trump term is up.

Mr. Cheong argues that at this point North Korea won’t let its nuclear program be rolled back diplomatically, “no matter how many sanctions we impose.” China’s policy of protecting its ally from collapse “will remain unchanged.” And when Pyongyang inevitably acquires a credible capability to hit the U.S. with nuclear-tipped missiles, “the U.S. will have no choice but to come to the negotiating table” and sue for peace.

This will yield, “if not a total abandonment of South Korea,” then a bargain aimed at mere containment: “If North Korea has 50 nuclear weapons, and promises not to build any more, and to suspend missile tests, the U.S. will strike a deal.” Tensions between Pyongyang and Washington may cool, he says, “but South Korea will continue to be held hostage.”

Hence the need to go nuclear. South Korea’s civilian nuclear infrastructure—24 plants providing 30% of the country’s energy—could be used to produce 5,000 bombs worth of fissile material, Mr. Cheong says, dwarfing Pyongyang’s capability. Embracing the necessary technologies, including plutonium reprocessing, could be “the game-changer that will enable South Korea to manage North Korean problems.”

It would also “be consistent with U.S. security interests,” Mr. Cheong says, and “contain the nuclear issue within the boundary of the Korean Peninsula.” These are the claims that put him most at odds with longstanding thinking in Washington, where leaders generally fear that South Korea going nuclear could shatter the U.S.-South Korean alliance, spark a war with the North and trigger follow-on nuclearization in Japan and maybe Taiwan—developments China is liable to protest with military force.

Mr. Cheong thinks certain compromises can make it all work. Seoul would go nuclear but also engage Pyongyang economically and diplomatically, assuring Kim Jong Un that no one seeks his demise. Seoul would build only as many bombs as needed to have an edge (“if the North has 30, we have 40, for example”). And Seoul would ask the U.S. to “co-manage” its arsenal, preserving the bilateral alliance while assuring China and Russia that South Koreans have ultimate control over the weapons.

Japan may indeed seek to go nuclear, Mr. Cheong acknowledges, but it too could placate its rivals by keeping its arsenal small and co-managed. “The U.S. should assure China that Japan will not build more than a certain number of nuclear weapons large enough to counter the North Korean threat,” allowing China to “maintain its nuclear advantage over other Asian countries.” Taiwan, for its part, has to sit on its hands.

Such prescriptions seem rather tidy given all the uncertainties and dangers involved, and for years Seoul and Washington could dismiss them as non-starters. Even as majorities of South Koreans have told pollsters since the 1990s that they support nuclearization, policy makers in both capitals have been overwhelmingly opposed. That may no longer be so.

Several potential candidates in South Korea’s looming presidential election back nuclearization, including former National Assembly floor leader Won Yoo-cheol and Nam Kyung-pil, governor of the country’s most populous province. Mr. Cheong, who acknowledges that “experts and technocrats have tended to be against going nuclear,” says that officials have privately expressed greater interest since Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test in September. Once Pyongyang completes a hydrogen bomb, he says, “many experts will switch their views.”

Then there’s Donald Trump. If he sticks to supporting South Korean and Japanese nuclearization, he might as well hold a bonfire of traditional U.S. nonproliferation dogmas on the White House lawn.

Even if he reverses course, though, his record of denigrating U.S. allies has already made South Koreans and others more fearful of abandonment and therefore more likely to hedge their bets and consider going nuclear, despite the costs. Mr. Trump reportedly had a good phone call with South Korea’s president Wednesday night, but it’s no surprise that headlines this week in Seoul are blaring about “shock” and “panic.”

As Mr. Cheong predicted last week: A Trump presidency “will reshape the security landscape of Northeast Asia.”

Mr. Feith is a Journal editorial writer based in Hong Kong.

[Crafty_Dog]

Summary

A long-embattled arms control pact signed by Moscow and Washington in 1987 took its biggest hit yet this month. On Feb. 14, allegations emerged that the Russians had deployed operational units equipped with missiles that violate the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). In response, three U.S. senators introduced the INF Preservation Act, which among other measures calls for the United States to develop its own prohibited missiles. The precarious state of the treaty adds urgency to questions about the potential consequences of its demise, particularly since both countries have growing incentives to abandon the pact. Withdrawal by either Moscow or Washington would compel a rapid buildup of short- and medium-range missiles by both militaries, a surge of investment in missile defense, and a boost to U.S. capabilities in the Western Pacific.

Analysis

When the Soviet Union and the United States signed the INF treaty, it effectively ended a destabilizing buildup of ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with short to intermediate ranges, defined as 500-5,500 kilometers (311-3,418 miles). Since then, nearly 3,000 missiles have been eliminated — most of which would have been deployed on the European continent — making the INF a foundational arms control agreement credited with slowing the arms race between Russia and the United States. Outright withdrawal from the treaty by either government would severely hamper future arms control efforts and accelerate an already-intensifying arms race focused on nuclear modernization.

The Treaty Hampers Russia More

For all the problems that would arise with the treaty's demise, Russian and U.S. defense planners have some reasons to look forward to its end. For example, a buildup of land-based intermediate-range missiles would enhance Russian defenses against an increasingly powerful Chinese military on the China-Russia border. It would also give Russia options in the event that the United States expands its already substantial advantage in the development of hypersonic weapons, which travel at least five times the speed of sound. Perhaps most important, boosting its arsenal of short- to intermediate-range missiles based on land could help Russia redress its considerable airpower disadvantage relative to the United States and NATO.
 
Indeed, the INF has hampered Russia's long-range conventional strike capabilities more than the United States'. This is because Washington has built up a sizable arsenal of long-range land-attack missiles over the past decades. These air- and sea-launched missiles, when combined with the U.S. stealth bomber and fighter advantages, give Washington a much greater capability to conduct long-range strikes, including deep inside Russian territory. Development of land-based intermediate-range missiles would help Russia narrow this imbalance. For example, given the range and punching power of the missiles, Russia could threaten NATO air bases across Europe — just as China's missile program has given it the ability to strike U.S. bases in the Western Pacific.
 
Withdrawal from the INF would also boost Russia's nuclear deterrence capabilities. Ever since Washington withdrew from the U.S.-Russia Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, Moscow has become increasingly concerned about U.S. missile defense development. Building an arsenal of nuclear-tipped intermediate-range missiles would allow the Russians to retarget practically all their intercontinental ballistic missiles — which are limited in number by New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) — against the continental United States. This would help guarantee Russia's ability to respond in the event of a nuclear strike.
 
However, any surge in Russian and U.S. development of land-based intermediate range missiles would be accompanied by greater investment in missile defense. With an eye on potential threats from countries such as Iran and North Korea, the United States has already been pouring substantial resources into the development of systems including the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system (THAAD) and various variants of the SM-3 interceptor missiles. This would intensify if Russia began a rapid buildup of short- and intermediate-range missiles — especially since ballistic missile defenses are significantly more effective against shorter-range weapons.

The U.S. Eyes the Western Pacific

Though the INF treaty limits Russia more than the United States, Washington has its own problems with the pact — particularly in the Western Pacific. Long-range land-attack cruise and ballistic missiles are critical to any U.S. war-fighting scenario in East Asia, particularly given the vast distances that would be involved in regional operations. While the INF treaty has limited the United States to fielding air- and sea-launched missiles of short to intermediate range, the Chinese have been free to build up a vast arsenal of land-based versions of the missiles. From launching points across the Chinese mainland, Beijing could concentrate crippling strikes on the sparse number of available U.S. airfields in the region — an asymmetric advantage the Chinese have focused heavily on exploiting over the past decades to make up for U.S. superiority in other areas. If the INF treaty were to be abandoned, the United States would likely move quickly to build up its own land-based missile batteries to redress this disadvantage.
 
The fate of the INF treaty has not yet been sealed. In fact, the United States and Russia could leverage the arms control portfolio to further talks on other issues, as they have done with arms control talks in the past. But the factors threatening the treaty have been gaining strength in both countries for decades.
 
Today, Washington is unlikely to seriously consider halting its ballistic missile development, and the U.S. Congress will not easily agree to curtail ongoing nuclear modernization programs — two areas where continued U.S. progress will heighten Moscow's interest in abandoning the INF treaty. Meanwhile, the rise of China has similarly complicated the fate of a treaty, which was designed with a bipolar Cold War framework in mind. Beijing will be exceedingly reluctant to limit development of its own land-based short- and intermediate-range missiles, given its heavy reliance on the arsenal.
 
Thus, at minimum, the INF treaty will be violated more frequently, but its demise is a very real possibility. The consequences would be vast, affecting everything from future arms control efforts to technological investments and weapons buildups.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/russias-nuclear-missile-death-train-arriving-2019-19581

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/24/obama-iran-nuclear-deal-prisoner-release-236966
 
Obama’s hidden Iran deal giveaway
www.politico.com
By dropping charges against major arms targets, the administration infuriated Justice Department officials — and undermined its own counterproliferation task forces.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4440812/Obama-dropped-charges-against-arms-smugglers-Iran-deal.html

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000005063944/syria-chemical-attack-russia.html?emc=edit_ta_20170427&nl=top-stories&nlid=49641193&ref=cta

[Crafty_Dog]

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/intel-report-iran-refining-nuke-delivery-system-flagrant-violation-ban/

[G M]

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/intel-report-iran-refining-nuke-delivery-system-flagrant-violation-ban/

http://insider.foxnews.com/sites/insider.foxnews.com/files/styles/780/public/sailors.jpg?itok=ERjTHM45

Who is going to stop them?

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/05/15/un-agency-helps-north-korea-with-patent-application-for-banned-nerve-gas-chemical.html

 

[G M]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/05/15/un-agency-helps-north-korea-with-patent-application-for-banned-nerve-gas-chemical.html

 

Shocking!   

Not!!!

[ccp]

http://aevnmont.free.fr/SACH-BOOKS/Petrochemistry/Handbook%20of%20Hazardous%20Materials%20Spills%20Technology/Part%20VIII.%20Perspectives%20on%20Specific%20Chemicals/39.%20Sodium%20Cyanide.pdf
I recall from my forensic science days potassium cyanide smells to some people like bitter almonds and sodium is odorless and more dangerous

Of course Kim is using to mine for gold.   

How much did UN officials get pain?  bunch of slobs......

[Crafty_Dog]

By Asher Orkaby
June 4, 2017 3:37 p.m. ET
34 COMMENTS

When Syrian forces launched a chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun two months ago, no one was watching more closely than Israel’s military elite. Of all the existential threats their country fears, chemical weapons rank high on the list. In 1967 Israeli fear of a chemical attack helped spark the Six Day War, the most transformative conflict in the modern history of the Middle East. Continued use of chemical weapons in Syria poses a similar threat to Israeli security—and may foreshadow another regional war.

The first country to use chemical weapons in the Middle East was Egypt. During the 1960s, President Gamal Abdel Nasser deployed poison-gas bombs during the North Yemen Civil War. Unknown to the Egyptians, Israel had obtained a front-row seat to study their military capabilities.

The conflict involved the Yemen Arab Republic, founded in 1962 after a coup d’état deposed the country’s religious monarch, Imam Muhammad al-Badr. Egypt took the republican side, sending mechanized and heavily armed battalions to aid the revolutionaries.

The monarchist northern tribal militias, aided by a cadre of British and French mercenaries, took shelter in the country’s mountainous highlands. The problem was finding a way to resupply their position. After concluding that an air resupply was vital, the mercenaries began searching for an ally willing to orchestrate airlifts into hostile and unfamiliar territory. In the end they turned to Israel, the only country with something substantial to gain from an extended guerrilla war against Egypt.

Between 1964 and 1966, the Israeli Air Force flew 14 missions to Yemen, airlifting vital weapons and supplies to beleaguered tribal outposts. Although the identity of the supplier was a closely guarded secret, these airlifts constituted an important physical and psychological lift for the tribal militias.

In exchange, Israel received well-informed intelligence from its own pilots and British mercenaries on the ground. The Israelis’ main contact was Neil McLean, a former Special Air Service soldier and member of the British Parliament. McLean passed to Israel details of Egypt’s military activity, even samples of its chemical weapons.

The Egyptian Air Force had been dropping the poison-gas bombs, targeting militias hiding in a network of caves, with increasing frequency and precision. This news alarmed Israelis, many of whom had lost family and friends to Hitler’s poison-gas chambers only two decades earlier. They were haunted by the prospect of a similar fate befalling them in a gas attack on Tel Aviv or another Israeli city. A sense of looming existential threat pervaded Israeli society, down to the local school district. In one emergency meeting in May 1967, teachers debated security protocols. In the event of an air-raid siren, should students be ushered into the basement bunkers? Or would climbing to the rooftops be better for escaping poison gas?

The fear of a chemical attack undoubtedly factored into Israel’s decision to attack Egypt’s air force pre-emptively on June 5, 1967. Over five hours Israel destroyed 300 Egyptian planes and disabled 18 airfields, eliminating the short-term threat of chemical warfare. But the long-term danger has remained.

There is a clear parallel to the current conflict in Syria. What made the 1960s crisis in Yemen so dangerous was that the international community did not respond to Egypt’s use of chemical weapons. The Yemeni civil war was waved off as merely an intra-Arab conflict. Without visible international assurances that chemical warfare would not be tolerated, Israel in 1967 felt compelled to eliminate the threat before it arrived.

In the barrage of Tomahawk missiles President Trump launched against Syria in April, the U.S. provided some response to the latest chemical attack. Failure to follow up this show of force with collective international action—making clear to Israel that further chemical warfare is off the table—may push the Middle East toward another destructive regional war.

Mr. Orkaby, a research fellow at Harvard’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department, is the author of “Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68,” out next month from Oxford University Press.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-missile-defense-imperative-1498425131

[Crafty_Dog]

Looks like we have another lurker on the forum 

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/238409/north-korea-and-iran-weapons-of-mass-destruction?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=02ea17d165-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_06_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-02ea17d165-207194629

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/25/if-a-nuclear-bomb-explodes-nearby-heres-why-you-should-never-get-in-a-car/22109354/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00001389&a_dgi=aolshare_facebook

[Crafty_Dog]

second post:





The Terrible Magic of Atomic Weapons
Aug 2, 2017
By George Friedman

On Aug. 2, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The U.S. remains the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons. As part of our project to review major World War II battles, I will examine the reasoning on both sides that led to the use of this weapon.

The Japanese had entered the war because of the effectiveness of U.S. economic sanctions imposed after the Japanese had invaded Indochina. As an industrial power devoid of its own resources, Japan had to import nearly all of its resources, mostly from Indochina and the Dutch East Indies.

The United States feared that Japan, after dominating the Western Pacific, would soon threaten its interests in the central and eastern Pacific. Japan had treaty agreements with France and the Netherlands guaranteeing shipments of commodities. When both were overrun by Germany, it became uncertain who would control their Pacific colonies, and Japan could not live with that uncertainty. When the U.S. tried to restrict Japan’s access to certain resources in order to limit Japanese expansion, Japan had a choice: It could continue expanding and face war with the United States, or it could allow itself to become completely dependent on the United States for access to minerals.

The United States saw Japan as an international outlaw that needed to be heeled by peaceful sanctions. The Japanese saw the United States as using sanctions to crush Japan’s economy. The result was war.

U.S. and Japanese Goals

The United States had two strategic goals. The first was to disrupt Japanese access to Southeast Asia supplies without invading the Dutch East Indies or Indochina. This meant intense submarine warfare. The second goal was to bring itself into range of Japan so that it could conduct a strategic bombing campaign. By 1945, the submarine campaign had dramatically reduced the flow of supplies, and the capture of Saipan and Tinian had brought B-29s within range of Japan.

The Japanese strategy strategic goal in 1945 was to prevent the occupation of the Japanese homeland and retain the existing regime, particularly the position of the emperor. The primary strategy for this was to create a defensive system that would potentially impose unacceptable casualties on the United States.

During the Pacific campaigns, the Japanese had learned that American pre-invasion bombing and bombardment were of limited value. The U.S. succeeded by forcing land battles that had high casualty rates but low casualty totals, relative to other battles in World War II, since these battles were comparatively small. This worked in the Gilberts, the Marianas and the Marshalls. What this proved, however, was that the U.S. would incur a high casualty rate in an invasion of Japan, which would require a substantially larger force.

The U.S. Navy suffered the greatest casualties due to the kamikazes. The Japanese strategy therefore focused on using the kamikazes to attack the Navy and on forcing battles of attrition by layering forces, including civilians, into the interior. Although this imposed catastrophic casualties on the Japanese – estimates say a quarter million died in Okinawa – American troops also suffered severe casualties.

 
(click to enlarge)

The Japanese were betting on asymmetry of interest. They were fighting for their homeland and for a regime that was far from delegitimized. The Americans were fighting for an increasingly marginal goal – dismantling the Japanese regime. The Japanese believed that the U.S. would give up first and agree to a truce rather than requiring Japan’s unconditional surrender.

This was a reasonable assumption given that the United States’ most experienced troops were already exhausted from war in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany, and its most seasoned Marines had been fighting since Guadalcanal. If the U.S. did invade Japan, the troops that would be sent were the draftees from 1944 and 1945 who were inexperienced and not yet blooded. Instead, the U.S. hoped that bombing and submarine warfare would have forced capitulation.

It hadn’t. Most cities were devastated, and the condition of the economy had reduced the country to penury. But the Japanese wouldn’t capitulate. While they did send out peace feelers, they didn’t include an offer to surrender – merely an offer to negotiate a settlement. The agreement among the Allies was that only unconditional surrender was acceptable, since the U.S. did not want a repeat of Versailles after World War I. They wanted to end Japanese expansion, and a prolonged negotiation would have exacerbated the ongoing bloodshed in China. Besides, Japan had already lost credibility with respect to peace negotiations, as it had previously been engaged in such talks while its fleet was preparing for Pearl Harbor. The argument for a negotiated settlement was not nearly as obvious then as it is now.

The Atomic Project

Still, the U.S. was caught in a bind. It couldn’t afford the potential costs of invading, and it also couldn’t accept anything less than total capitulation, which the Japanese weren’t willing to offer. It was this strategic situation that led to the use of atomic bombs. The atomic project was driven by German scientists and those who feared that Germany would develop a nuclear weapon. But the Germans didn’t have the resources necessary to both define the concept and create the weapon; only the U.S. was capable of such a massive undertaking during the war. But the Americans were unaware of the limitations of the German program and therefore launched the Manhattan Project, the U.S program to develop an atomic bomb.

Years later, some would argue that the United States dropped the bomb to frighten the Soviets or keep them out of Japan. But the Soviets couldn’t have invaded Japan anyway; they lacked the capability to send a massive number of troops there. The Soviets, moreover, already knew about the bomb, although the U.S. didn’t realize that at the time. If the U.S. wanted to impress the Soviets, it had many ways to do it that didn’t involve bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
 
A boy floats a candle-lit paper lantern on the river in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome during 70th anniversary activities, commemorating the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 2015. Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images

The first test of the bomb took place in July 1945, in the midst of the American strategic conundrum. Would the country accept the cost of occupying Japan when it would turn out that there was a potential alternative to massive American casualties? It’s unclear what Harry Truman would have done if the bomb wasn’t an option, but he would have been pilloried had he invaded or had he not. The country, the troops included, was tired of war and wasn’t willing to pay the cost of invasion. But a peace treaty that allowed the Japanese regime to stay intact would have left the fundamental issues that started the war unsettled. This is not an argument as to which side was more just. It is simply to say that a peace treaty wouldn’t have been a conclusive end to the war.

It was clear that the Japanese leadership was prepared to accept the destruction of cities, and that the population was not prepared to rise against the regime. The Americans therefore believed that the Japanese were not prepared to surrender, which in retrospect was true. The Japanese view was that the U.S. either wouldn’t invade or, if it did, would face casualties that would cause it to accept a peace treaty.

But the atomic bomb presented another potential scenario. Although Japanese cities had faced devastating attacks before, this threat was different because a single bomb could do the damage of a thousand. Moreover, the extent of the casualties from an atomic bomb was still unclear, in part due to the uncertainty of injury caused by nuclear fallout. But the Americans were focused on the psychological effect it would have. While the Bombing of Tokyo had a devastating impact, the means of death was not a mystery.

The atomic bomb worked terrible magic. The suddenness and totality of the strike created a unique sense of helplessness. It was instantaneous, and it came from nowhere. There were some in the pro-war faction who argued that the bomb used on Hiroshima was simply another massive air attack and not a new weapon. The deaths and destruction were, from their point of view, bearable because it was part of a known pattern.

They refused to surrender. Some even attempted a coup, which came close to success. But for some leaders, Hiroshima immediately tipped the balance to surrender. But capitulation only came after Nagasaki and after the U.S. acknowledged that the emperor would remain as a figurehead, causing him to shift his position.
Ultimately, the atomic bomb ended the war, partly because of the psychological shock and partly because Japan realized that the bomb could be used against Japanese defensive forces massed to face a potential invasion. We can only speculate how many American casualties or how many more Chinese casualties this move prevented.

A Sobering Effect

Eight other nations have acquired nuclear weapons: the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and South Africa. (South Africa has subsequently given up these weapons.) North Korea has developed nuclear devices but it’s unclear whether it has a deliverable nuclear weapon. None of these countries has used their weapons, though some have found themselves in circumstances where using them would have made sense. Some, particularly Mao’s China, raved about what they would do with nuclear weapons once they had them. But they didn’t end up doing what they said they would do. In a sense, they aren’t weapons designed to fight armies. (Tactical nukes might be an exception, although they have also not been used.) They seem to have a sobering effect.

The question today is whether the magic of these weapons might sober North Korea or Iran. Some argue that it would sober North Korea, the more immediate and more important case. Human history, and specifically the 20th century, are filled with nations that committed acts of political depravity – but not, even in the case of Stalin or Mao, nuclear depravity. The problem is that it’s hard to build a national policy on the assumption that nuclear weapons moderate the depraved.

In making the decision to use a nuclear weapon, the U.S. faced some tough choices. It had to balance its moral responsibility to American troops and those who were still being slaughtered by the Japanese against the lives of those who would be killed in a nuclear attack. But the idea that Japan was ready to surrender is a myth. It was ready to negotiation a peace deal; it wouldn’t accept unconditional surrender. This could have opened the door to another war, allowing the slaughter of Americans who had already fought and survived a long war.

But it did deeply sober the United States. It opened an abyss the U.S. and all the other nuclear powers looked into and recoiled from. Their use may well have prevented a global nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But will the sobering effect of nuclear weapons extend to other countries like North Korea? Or will a nuclear North Korea embrace the abyss? This is not a geopolitical question as much as a psychological one.

The post The Terrible Magic of Atomic Weapons appeared first on Geopolitics | Geopolitical Futures.

[ccp]

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/08/06/the-secret-history-of-hiroshima-supports-trump-on-nuclear-weapons/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/08/04/surviving_a_nuclear_attack_111968.html

[Crafty_Dog]

I have pounded the table around here for identifying that the Iran deal also meant an end to the era of nuclear non-proliferation:

Nuclear Missiles Over Tokyo
Accepting a nuclear North Korea probably means a nuclear Japan.
A South Korean watches a broadcast on North Korea's latest ballistic missile launch in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 2.
A South Korean watches a broadcast on North Korea's latest ballistic missile launch in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 2. Photo: heon-ky/epa-efe/rex/shutterstock/EPA/Shutterstock
By The Editorial Board
Aug. 29, 2017 7:09 p.m. ET
46 COMMENTS

Residents of northern Japan awoke Tuesday to sirens and cellphone warnings to take cover as a North Korean rocket flew overhead. The intermediate-range missile test will further roil the politics of security in Northeast Asia and is another prod toward Japan acquiring its own nuclear deterrent.

Pyongyang tested long-range missiles over Japan in 1998 and 2009, claiming they were satellite launches. The first shocked Japanese and led to cooperation with the U.S. on theater missile defense. After the second, Tokyo curtailed the North’s funding sources within Japan’s ethnic Korean community. Tuesday’s launch is even more threatening because U.S. and allied intelligence agencies assess that North Korea now has the ability to hit Japan with a miniaturized nuclear warhead mounted on a missile.

Much of Japan is protected by its own missile defenses as well as systems operated by U.S. forces in the region. Japan also recently deployed four Patriot PAC-3 missile-defense batteries to the west of the country, but these didn’t cover the northern island of Hokkaido overflown by Tuesday’s missile.

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Japan’s ultimate security is the U.S. defense and nuclear umbrella, with its treaty guarantee that the U.S. will respond if Japan is attacked. But the logic of deterrence depends on having a rational actor as an adversary, and rationality can’t be guaranteed in North Korea. Its recent development of an ICBM capable of hitting the U.S. mainland also changes the equation. If North Korea attacked Tokyo and the U.S. responded with an attack on Pyongyang, U.S. cities might then be endangered.

Japanese leaders have long resisted building their own nuclear arsenal, but that could change if they conclude America isn’t reliable in a crisis. Or Japanese may simply decide they can’t have their survival depend on even a faithful ally’s judgment. Some Japanese politicians are already talking about their own nuclear deterrent. And while public opinion currently opposes nuclear weapons, fear could change minds. Japan has enough plutonium from its civilian nuclear reactors for more than 1,000 nuclear warheads, and it has the know-how to build them in months.

This prospect should alarm China, which would suddenly face a nuclear-armed regional rival. The U.S. also has a strong interest in preventing a nuclear Japan, not least because South Korea might soon follow. East Asia would join the Middle East in a new era of nuclear proliferation, with grave risks to world order. This is one reason that acquiescing to a North Korea with nuclear missiles is so dangerous.

Yet this is the line now peddled by former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who says the U.S. must begin “accepting it and trying to cap it or control it.” Having said for eight years that a nuclear North is unacceptable, they now say that President Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had better get used to it.

But “control it” how? North Korea has made clear it won’t negotiate away its nuclear program. The U.S. can threaten mutual-assured destruction, but Tuesday’s missile test over Japan shows how North Korea will use its nuclear threat to coerce and divide the U.S. and its allies. Accepting a nuclear North Korea means accepting a far more dangerous world.

Appeared in the August 30, 2017, print edition.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/North-Koreas-ultimatum-to-America-504213

[Crafty_Dog]

Give Japan And South Korea The Bomb
By DICK MORRIS
Published on DickMorris.com on September 20, 2017
On May 6, 1981, New York Times columnist Drew Middleton explained the rationale behind French president Charles de Gaulle's decision to develop France's own nuclear weapons rather than rely on those of the U.S. or U.K.  He wrote that "General de Gaulle believed that the United States would not use its nuclear weapons if faced with a choice between the destruction of Western Europe and a Soviet-American missile exchange. His argument was that the United States would not risk New York or Detroit to save Hamburg or Lyons."

The same logic, of course, applied to Russia.  The Kremlin could have no clear idea of whether an American president would trade New York for Lyons, but clearly a French president wouldn't think twice before pushing the button in retaliation for a nuclear strike on Lyons.

The logic of deterrence relies on mutually ASSURED destruction (MAD).  Any doubt or ambiguity will fuel the megalomania and delusions of a Hitler or a Kim Jong-un.
 
Now, we must apply de Gaulle's logic to the dilemma of how to deter North Korea.  Again, we come to the question: Will an American president strike North Korea with nuclear weapons in retaliation for an attack on Seoul or Tokyo?  We don't know the answer and Kim certainly doesn't.  And so, it now makes abundant sense to arm his two likely targets -- Japan and South Korea -- with the capacity to retaliate with nuclear weapons whatever the American president decides to do.  Only then will Kim know that if he uses his atomic weapons against either country, he has literally bought into assured destruction of him and his own nation.

When Donald Trump proposed this solution during the campaign, he was hooted down.  But circumstances have now come around to the point where we have to give his proposal a green light.

Some argue that giving the bomb to non-nuclear countries opens the door for everybody to get a bomb.  As a practical matter, that door may already be open.

But why do we only allow our enemies to get the bomb and keep our friends from getting it?

Seventy years into the nuclear age, we have learned two things:

1.  Any nation that wants to get the bomb badly enough will be able to get it.

2.  Only mutually assured destruction can guarantee that the bomb is never used.

How much more evidence do we need?

Neither Japan nor South Korea will be thrilled to get nuclear weapons.  Understandably, Japan's experience in having been attacked twice with atomic weapons makes it averse to such armament.  And South Korea just voted for a "peace" candidate whose politics are founded in wishful thinking.

But eventually, both nations will likely see the logic and arm themselves with our assistance.

And, when both have nuclear weapons, we can expect a radical de-escalation in Kim's wild threats and rhetoric.  We can also rest secure the nuclear weapons will not be used.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.askaprepper.com/nuclear-protection-supplies/

[Crafty_Dog]

NATO Launches its Main Nuclear Drill, Showcasing Its Defenses
‘Steadfast Noon’ takes place at air bases in Germany and Belgium where the U.S. stores nukes
By Julian E. Barnes
Oct. 16, 2017 8:07 a.m. ET


BRUSSELS—NATO kicked off its annual nuclear exercise on Monday with drills in Germany and Belgium, as the alliance seeks to showcase its nuclear deterrent but avoid accusations of saber rattling.

The exercise, called “Steadfast Noon,” is taking place at two air bases where the U.S. stores nuclear weapons in Europe: Kleine Brogel in Belgium and Büchel in Germany.

In the face of North Korean tests and Russian drills, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been highlighting its nuclear defenses, with a visit by alliance ambassadors to a U.K. ballistic missile-armed submarine base in September. NATO has also taken a strong stance against the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty, saying it will remain a nuclear-armed alliance as long as these weapons exist elsewhere.

NATO’s nuclear drills remain sensitive; the alliance omits Steadfast Noon from many lists of its exercises. NATO officials won’t publicly confirm the nature of the exercise, but privately acknowledge it is the main nuclear deterrent drill.

An official said nuclear exercises remained a “delicate balancing act among allies,” with some countries uncomfortable with public discussions and others wanting acknowledgment of the deterrent’s importance. The official said continuing these annual preparations was vital, especially as geopolitical concerns increase.

Russia conducted a nuclear exercise at the end of its Zapad military drills in September, which included the test firing of a ballistic missile. North Korea’s nuclear threats have also prompted NATO ambassadors to condemn Pyongyang’s actions.

Uncertainty in Europe over U.S. President Donald Trump’s commitment to NATO, as well as the coming British withdrawal from the European Union, has generated concern among some security experts about the future of western nuclear deterrence.

“This is why it is so important that NATO continues with its classic nuclear planning structure, including these exercises,” said Jan Techau, director of the Holbrooke Forum for the Study of Diplomacy in Berlin. “It is important to send out the message of continuity and reliability, because that is what deterrence is based on.”

NATO officials would only say the exercise involved aircraft from across the alliance. In addition to Belgium and Germany, Poland has participated in Steadfast Noon since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

A NATO military official said the scenario involves a “fictional scenario.”

Both the U.S. and NATO have a policy of not commenting on their nuclear weapons. According to a Congressional Research Service report, the U.S. keeps about 150 B61 nuclear weapons at six bases in five European countries. The B61 is a 700-pound unguided gravity bomb that has a variable yield of up to 340 kilotons that can be carried by both tactical fighter aircraft and strategic bombers.

The U.S. deployed nuclear weapons to Europe during the Cold War to offset the conventional military superiority of the Soviet Union. While NATO now has the conventional edge over Russia, the weapons remain a deterrent and are meant as a visible reminder of the U.S. commitment to the alliance, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Military officials say nuclear weapons carried by aircraft remain an important part of deterrence, because the U.S. and its allies can show unity and resolve by prepping aircraft for a nuclear mission, raising the defense readiness condition, but stopping short of using the weapons.

The Obama administration said further cuts to the B61 arsenal in Europe would only come if Russia cut its stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons and removal of the weapons requires the agreement of all NATO allies.

[G M]

http://gatesofvienna.net/2017/10/a-bang-followed-by-whimpering-and-silence/

A Bang Followed by Whimpering… and Silence
Posted on October 18, 2017 by Dymphna
EMP blast

Gotta love The Swamp. Now that North Korea (probably) has the capability to fire a missile into our airspace, TPTB have shut down the one governmental organization with the ability to do anything testicular to deter the Fat Boy driving the looming disaster.

Did you think NoKo is going to do something fissionable with its missiles and is going to simply try to “bomb” us? Well, it would seem that’s the intention, but the real problem is the payload on their missiles. All they need is one EMP detonated in our skies (over the East Coast, where lies most of our outdated electrical infrastructure) to send the continent back to say, 1850…and that will mean ninety percent of our population gone within six months or less. One can envision the follow-up: a leisurely walk-through by China. It would be easy-peasy to sort through the pieces of what remained of Canada and the United States.

From The Center for Security Policy [with my emphases — D]:

Inexplicably, just when we need the country’s most knowledgeable and influential minds advising about how to protect against a potentially imminent, nation-ending peril, the Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse Threat Commission is being shut down.

For seventeen years under the leadership of President Reagan’s Science Advisor, Dr. William Graham, this blue-ribbon panel has warned that we had to protect our electric grid from just the sorts of EMP attacks North Korea is now threatening to unleash upon us. Successive administrations and the electric utilities have shamefully failed to heed those warnings and take corrective action.

Consequently, we could experience on a national scale the sort of devastating, protracted blackouts now afflicting Puerto Rico. President Trump should give Dr. Graham and his team a new mandate as a presidential commission to oversee the immediate implementation of their recommendations.

This disaster happened at the end of September, while the MSM dithered away on their fiddles about the eeevil Trump. Meanwhile, two men who served on the panel appeared in front of this subcommittee to get the views of the panel into the permanent record, i.e. the Congressional Record. If/when it all goes down, their warnings will still exist, if anyone can access them after an EMP explosion:

STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD
DR. WILLIAM R. GRAHAM, CHAIRMAN
DR. PETER VINCENT PRY, CHIEF OF STAFF
COMMISSION TO ASSESS THE THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES FROM
ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE (EMP) ATTACK
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND MANAGEMENT EFFICIENCY HEARING
“EMPTY THREAT OR SERIOUS DANGER:
ASSESSING NORTH KOREA’S RISK TO THE HOMELAND”

Here is an excerpt from that “Statement For the Record” [any emphases are mine — D. The footnotes, which have been omitted here, can be found in the pdf linked at the end of this post]:

During the Cold War, major efforts were undertaken by the Department of Defense to assure that the U.S. national command authority and U.S. strategic forces could survive and operate after an EMP attack. However, no major efforts were then thought necessary to protect critical national infrastructures, relying on nuclear deterrence to protect them. With the development of small nuclear arsenals and long-range missiles by new, radical U.S. adversaries, beginning with North Korea, the threat of a nuclear EMP attack against the U.S. becomes one of the few ways that such a country could inflict devastating damage to the United States. It is critical, therefore, that the U.S. national leadership address the EMP threat as a critical and existential issue, and give a high priority to assuring the leadership is engaged and the necessary steps are taken to protect the country from EMP.

By way of background, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack was established by Congress in 2001 to advise the Congress, the President, Department of Defense and other departments and agencies of the U.S. Government on the nuclear EMP threat to military systems and civilian critical infrastructures.The EMP Commission was re-established in 2015 with its charter broadened to include natural EMP from solar storms, all manmade EMP threats, cyber-attack, sabotage and Combined-Arms Cyber Warfare. The EMP Commission charter gives it access to all relevant classified and unclassified data and the power to levy analysis upon the Department of Defense.

On September 30, 2017, the Department of Defense, after withholding a significant part of the monies allocated by Congress to support the work of the EMP Commission for the entirety of 2016, terminated funding the EMP Commission. In the same month, North Korea detonated an H-Bomb that it plausibly describes as capable of “super-powerful EMP” attack and released a technical report “The EMP Might of Nuclear Weapons” accurately describing what Russia and China call a “Super-EMP” weapon.

Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Homeland Security has asked Congress to continue the EMP Commission. The House version of the National Defense Authorization Act includes a provision that would replace the existing EMP Commission with new Commissioners. Yet the existing EMP Commission comprises the nation’s foremost experts who have been officially or unofficially continuously engaged trying to advance national EMP preparedness for 17 years.

And today, as the EMP Commission has long warned, the nation faces a potentially imminent and existential threat of nuclear EMP attack from North Korea. Recent events have proven the EMP Commission’s critics wrong about other highly important aspects of the nuclear missile threat from North Korea:


Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea’s nuclear arsenal was primitive, some academics claiming it had as few as [six] A-Bombs. Now the intelligence community reportedly estimates North Korea has [sixty] nuclear weapons.
Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea’s ICBMs were fake, or if real could not strike the U.S. mainland. Now the intelligence community reportedly estimates North Korea’s ICBMs can strike Denver and Chicago, and perhaps the entire United States.
Just six months ago, most experts thought North Korea was many years away from an H-Bomb. Now it appears North Korea has H-Bombs comparable to sophisticated U.S. two-stage thermonuclear weapons.
Just six months ago, most experts claimed North Korean ICBMs could not miniaturize an A-Bomb or design a reentry vehicle for missile delivery. Now the intelligence community reportedly assesses North Korea has miniaturized nuclear weapons and has developed reentry vehicles for missile delivery, including by ICBMs that can strike the U.S.
After massive intelligence failures grossly underestimating North Korea’s long-range missile capabilities, [its] number of nuclear weapons, warhead miniaturization, and proximity to an H-Bomb, the biggest North Korean threat to the U.S. remains unacknowledged — a nuclear EMP attack.

North Korea confirmed the EMP Commission’s assessment by testing an H-Bomb that could make a devastating EMP attack, and in its official public statement: “The H-Bomb, the explosive power of which is adjustable from tens of kilotons to hundreds of kilotons, is a multi-functional thermonuclear weapon with great destructive power which can be detonated even at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP attack according to strategic goals.”

As noted earlier, Pyongyang also released a technical report accurately describing a “Super-EMP” weapon.

Just six months ago, some academics dismissed EMP Commission warnings and even, literally, laughed on National Public Radio at the idea North Korea could make an EMP attack.

Primitive and “Super-EMP” Nuclear Weapons are Both EMP Threats

The EMP Commission finds that even primitive, low-yield nuclear weapons are such a significant EMP threat that rogue states, like North Korea, or terrorists may well prefer using a nuclear weapon for EMP attack, instead of destroying a city: “Therefore, terrorists or state actors that possess relatively unsophisticated missiles armed with nuclear weapons may well calculate that, instead of destroying a city or military base, they may obtain the greatest political-military utility from one or a few such weapons by using them — or threatening their use — in an EMP attack.”

The EMP Commission 2004 Report warns: “Certain types of relatively low-yield nuclear weapons can be employed to generate potentially catastrophic EMP effects over wide geographic areas, and designs for variants of such weapons may have been illicitly trafficked for a quarter-century.”

In 2004, two Russian generals, both EMP experts, warned the EMP Commission that the design for Russia’s Super-EMP warhead, capable of generating high-intensity EMP fields over 100,000 volts per meter, was “accidentally” transferred to North Korea. They also said that due to “brain drain,” Russian scientists were in North Korea, as were Chinese and Pakistani scientists according to the Russians, helping with the North’s missile and nuclear weapon programs. In 2009, South Korean military intelligence told their press that Russian scientists are in North Korea helping develop an EMP nuclear weapon. In 2013, a Chinese military commentator stated North Korea has Super-EMP nuclear weapons.

Super-EMP weapons are low-yield and designed to produce not a big kinetic explosion, but rather a high level of gamma rays, which generates the high-frequency E1 EMP that is most damaging to the broadest range of electronics. North Korean nuclear tests, including the first in 2006, whose occurrence was predicted to the EMP Commission two years in advance by the two Russian EMP experts, mostly have yields consistent with the size of a Super-EMP weapon. The Russian generals’ accurate prediction about when North Korea would perform its first nuclear test, and of a yield consistent with a Super-EMP weapon, indicates their warning about a North Korean Super-EMP weapon should be taken very seriously.

EMP Threat From Satellites

While most analysts are fixated on when in the future North Korea will develop highly reliable intercontinental missiles, guidance systems, and reentry vehicles capable of striking a U.S. city, the threat here and now from EMP is largely ignored. EMP attack does not require an accurate guidance system because the area of effect, having a radius of hundreds or thousands of kilometers, is so large. No reentry vehicle is needed because the warhead is detonated at high-altitude, above the atmosphere. Missile reliability matters little because only one missile has to work to make an EMP attack against an entire nation.

North Korea could make an EMP attack against the United States by launching a short-range missile off a freighter or submarine or by lofting a warhead to 30 kilometers burst height by balloon. While such lower-altitude EMP attacks would not cover the whole U.S. mainland, as would an attack at higher-altitude (300 kilometers), even a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could blackout the Eastern Electric Power Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of U.S. electricity.

Or an EMP attack might be made by a North Korean satellite, right now.

A Super-EMP weapon could be relatively small and lightweight and could fit inside North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 (KMS-3) and Kwangmyongsong-4 (KMS-4) satellites. These two satellites presently orbit over the United States, and over every other nation on Earth–demonstrating, or posing, a potential EMP threat against the entire world.

North Korea’s KMS-3 and KMS-4 satellites were launched to the south on polar trajectories and passed over the United States on their first orbit. Pyongyang launched KMS-4 on February 7, 2017, shortly after its fourth illegal nuclear test on January 6, that began the present protracted nuclear crisis with North Korea.

The south polar trajectory of KMS-3 and KMS-4 evades U.S. Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars and National Missile Defenses, resembling a Russian secret weapon developed during the Cold War, called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) that would have used a nuclear-armed satellite to make a surprise EMP attack on the United States.

Ambassador Henry Cooper, former Director of the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative and a preeminent expert on missile defenses and space weapons, has written numerous articles warning about the potential North Korean EMP threat from their satellites. For example, on September 20, 2016, Ambassador Cooper wrote:

U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) interceptors are designed to intercept a few North Korean ICBMs that approach the United States over the North Polar region. But current U.S. BMD systems are not arranged to defend against even a single ICBM that approaches the United States from over the South Polar region, which is the direction toward which North Korea launches its satellites…This is not a new idea. The Soviets pioneered and tested just such a specific capability decades ago — we call it a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS)…So, North Korea doesn’t need an ICBM to create this existential threat. It could use its demonstrated satellite launcher to carry a nuclear weapon over the South Polar region and detonate it…over the United States to create a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP)…The result could be to shut down the U.S. electric power grid for an indefinite period, leading to the death within a year of up to 90 percent of all Americans — as the EMP Commission testified over eight years ago.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
This is the link to the whole report, fourteen pages long, which was read into the Congressional Record. Takes about twenty minutes to skim.

Here’s the website for The Oversight and Management Efficiency Subcommittee. Scroll down the list of members to see if your Congressman is on that committee. Better yet, write your own Congressman and tell him to get going on this critical issue. He doesn’t have to be a member of that subcommittee to nudge it forward. While you’re at it, send a tweet to Trump.

That commission was extant and active for seventeen years. Yet for some strange reason, it’s been disbanded now that we have two irrational actors on the world stage capable of bringing us to a neck-breaking halt.

At least Maine seems to be aware and active about the problem. Whether it’s past the initial stages of deciding what to do is hard to say, but its preliminary actions show the way forward for other states. States don’t have to wait for the Federal behemoth to move toward safety. They could even act regionally in a co-operative. This is especially important for our vulnerable northeastern corridor.

Here’s where you can find the contact information for your Congressional representative. It would be a good idea to lean on your state representatives, too. Send their assistants the pdf.

This time we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.askaprepper.com/usaf-developed-new-bomb-creates-general-darkness-champ/

Electromagnetic pulse attacks are one of the most alarming threats facing the western world.

There are two reasons for that:

#1. The damage the attack would actually do, would be extreme. Look around you at all the things you use every day. How many of them contain electronics? An EMP attack would destroy them all – and it would also destroy most of the infrastructure you rely on. Utilities, traffic signals, the railways and much more would all be wrecked by electromagnetic pulse. So, using such a weapon against the aging and overly-taxed United States power grid could quickly wreak havoc and ultimately cause millions of deaths in America.

Related: 5 Things You Need to Do When There’ll Be No Rule of Law

#2.  The second reason is that, politically, they’re a weapon that’s very easy to use for blackmail. After all, an EMP attack on the USA wouldn’t directly kill anyone. As the famous Don Cheadle noted in the ever-relevant Ocean’s 11, this new weapon “is a bomb — but without the bomb”.

So, sure, thousands of people would die as transportation, medical and water purification systems failed, but nobody would be killed by the actual weapon. Would the USA be able, politically, to retaliate with a nuclear strike when the enemy had “only” detonated a weapon in space, a couple of hundred miles above the country? After all, the explosion wouldn’t even be in US airspace – that ends at an altitude of 50 miles. Would Congress agree to incinerate North Korean cities in reply to a “soft” attack like an EMP? In a sane world they would, because a big EMP would do more damage to the USA than actually nuking a single decent-sized city would, but the indirect nature of an EMP attack makes it a gray area.

Related: Affordable Vehicles That Can Survive an EMP

Unfortunately the risk of an EMP attack by a rogue state, especially North Korea, is increasing fast. In fact Pyongyang announced in September that they’ve developed a weapon that’s suitable for using as a high-altitude EMP, and they’ve made enough technological progress recently that this claim has to be taken seriously.

Now, experts reporting to the House Committee on Homeland Security are urging the federal government to develop its own EMP capability as a deterrent. If the USA could reply in kind to an EMP attack, instead of having to escalate to nuclear strikes on actual ground targets, a potential attacker will know that a counterstrike is almost inevitable.

What’s caused this is the realization that, when it comes to North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, most people have been seriously underestimating the threat. The Pentagon now think the Stalinist regime already has around 60 nuclear warheads, and can reach the USA with them. So far, North Korea doesn’t have a missile capable of reaching the contiguous states, and even if they developed one it wouldn’t have the accuracy to hit even a large target like a city. The problem is, if they opted for an EMP attack, that doesn’t matter.
emp military manual

DoD Technical Report – EMP Handbook for Air Force Communications Service

To devastate a huge chunk of the USA with an EMP, all the North Koreans have to do is get a warhead to detonate somewhere in a target area hundreds of miles across. That doesn’t need much in the way of technology to achieve. Building a rocket capable of carrying the warhead is a brute-force problem; it’s just a matter of packing enough fuel into a big enough steel tube, and there’s no need for sophisticated guidance systems. As long as the rocket can be relied on to go in the right direction, a clockwork timer is literally good enough.

Even worse, they wouldn’t necessarily even need a big rocket. A nuclear-armed satellite could be launched into low Earth orbit, then commanded to detonate as it passed over the USA. Alternatively, weapons could be suspended from balloons and released so high-altitude winds would carry them across North America. Warheads could even be launched by SCUD-type missiles from commercial ships off the US coast, to explode at high altitude several hundred miles inland. There are lots of options; what matters is that, however the attack was launched, it would be devastating.

Related: Emergency Bag to Keep in Your Car in Case of an EMP

It wouldn’t be hard for the USA to develop its own EMP capability, allowing any country that attacked in this way to get a rapid dose of its own medicine. In fact, a software edit would probably allow current strategic weapons – Trident II sub-launched missiles or Minuteman-III ICBMs – to detonate a warhead at high altitude. Modifying warheads to create a much greater EMP effect wouldn’t be much harder; the USA already knows how to do that. It’s most likely that modified weapons would be launched by Trident, which can carry up to twelve warheads – that would allow an attacker to be blanketed with relatively small weapons, each devastating electronics and power cables over a radius of hundreds of miles.

If the Pentagon decides to build this capability the chances of a hostile nation launching an EMP attack at the USA go way down; it might be politically risky for a president to nuke another country in response to a “non-lethal” attack on infrastructure, but nobody can complain if the USA retaliates like for like.

The problem is, it might take years for even the simplest weapons program to work its way through the Washington bureaucracy, so even if a decision was made tomorrow there isn’t much chance of the capability existing before about 2023 at the earliest – and a deterrent doesn’t work until the weapons actually exist. But it might come to life sooner than everyone expects. Keep reading…

If the North Koreans know that the USA can’t retaliate with EMP weapons now, but will be able to in a few years, they might just be tempted to get their attack in before America can reply to it. That’s quite a low risk strategy; if they launch a successful EMP it’s going to delay the US program by years, or maybe kill it off altogether – it depends how much damage their attack does. This isn’t a reason to not build an American EMP weapon; the risk exists already, and the USA has to be able to deter it. What it does mean is that there’s a trade-off; the USA has to accept a higher risk of EMP attack for a few years, in exchange for it dropping sharply once the country is able to reply in kind.

Related: How To Make A Tin Can Directional WiFi Antenna to Extend your Communication after an EMP

What the US government has to do is identify the simplest way to build an EMP capability – even if it’s not perfect – and get it into service as fast as possible. Then a better one can be developed, if necessary. What we have to do is take another look at the precautions we’ve taken against EMP and make sure they’re up to the job – because the risk of an attack looks like it’s quite a bit higher than it seemed to be just a few months ago.

But given the last few years’ international and national rise of turmoils, the US together with the private company Boeing, had decided to “bring to life” such an weapon that would make an EMP attack actually a preventable homeland security catastrophe. So, after years of discussions and failed experiments, Boeing has announced that it successfully tested an electromagnetic pulse missile capable of disabling electronics without affecting structures. The Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) was tested by a Boeing Phantom Works/U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate team on October 16 at the Utah Test and Training Range. This American military project is an attempt to develop a device with all the power of a nuclear weapon but without the death and destruction to people and infrastructure that such a weapon causes. Theoretically, the new missile system would pinpoint buildings and knock out their electrical grids, plunging the target into darkness and general disconnectedness.

[Crafty_Dog]

War, Nuclear War and the Law

Nov. 20, 2017 Senators are asking the right questions but of the wrong people.

By George Friedman

The U.S. Senate held hearings last week on the president’s authority to use nuclear weapons. The trigger for the hearings was the North Korea situation, and the fear among some that President Donald Trump might launch a reckless nuclear attack against the North Koreans. The question senators were asking was what the power of the president was to initiate nuclear war unilaterally.

This has long been a burning question, but one that has been intentionally ignored for decades. But this question involves not only the use of nuclear weapons, but the president’s authority to initiate all kinds of war without congressional approval. The Constitution states that the president is commander in chief of the armed forces. It also says that Congress has the power to declare war. On the surface, this seems a fairly clear system. The president is in command of the military; however, the authority to go to war rests with Congress.

But throughout U.S. history, presidents have taken it upon themselves to initiate conflicts, particularly minor ones. And since World War II, this has even extended to major conflicts. During this time, the United States has engaged in some conflicts without issuing a formal declaration of war – which must be approved by Congress. Without this formal declaration, congressional approval is unnecessary. The first major war that the U.S. fought without a declaration of war was Korea. President Harry Truman argued that U.S. engagement in the war was a police action authorized by the United Nations. The United States joined the United Nations by a treaty that had been approved by Congress; therefore, he argued, Congress had given its approval to engage in war in Korea by agreeing to join the United Nations, which authorized military action.

Sen. Bob Corker (C) (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, confers with Sen. Ron Johnson (R) (R-WI) during a committee hearing on Nov. 14, 2017, in Washington. WIN MCNAMEE/Getty Images

The logic seems to me a bit tortuous, but the judiciary and Congress accepted it. This opened the door for U.S engagement in undeclared wars that were not authorized by the United Nations. Vietnam was fought without a declaration of war, although Congress passed a resolution after the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin that President Lyndon Johnson interpreted as congressional authorization for U.S. involvement. The resolution authorized the president to use any means necessary to protect U.S. forces from attack in Southeast Asia. (It should be noted that U.S. forces had been deployed in the area and were engaged in combat before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.) In addition, no declaration of war was issued in the war in Afghanistan, the wars in Iraq, or any of the lesser wars that have been fought in recent years, from Libya to Syria to Niger and so on.

The argument in all of these operations was that the Constitution is vague on the requirement of a declaration of war, and that the president’s position as commander in chief gives him the power to wage war; congressional approval of funding for these operations was sufficient. Presidents didn’t want declarations of war because, in general, they did not want the public to think of a minor intervention as war. Johnson wanted to minimize the significance of what he was doing for political reasons. By the time President George W. Bush decided to invade Afghanistan, declarations of war seemed obsolete. The courts deemed this a political matter between the other two branches of government; Congress didn’t call a vote to declare war, which was its prerogative; and the public seemed to accept it.

Nuclear weapons added to the complexity of the situation. During the Cold War, there would have been no more than 30 minutes’ warning before a Soviet missile would land in the U.S., so asking for a declaration of war was impossible. If the president felt he had to launch a pre-emptive attack, going to Congress first would obviously remove the element of surprise. The president therefore had sole authority to respond to a nuclear attack or to initiate an attack. During the Cuban missile crisis, the president did not ask for authorization from Congress to initiate a nuclear strike, which might have been necessary depending on intelligence about Soviet intentions. It was simply assumed he had that power.

The president has had the practical authority since World War II to send troops into combat at his discretion and to use nuclear weapons at will. Last week’s congressional inquiry was odd in that the senators were asking questions of military men that should be asked of Congress. They asked generals if they would obey an illegal order given by the president, implying that a presidential decision to act militarily might be illegal. And this raises another important question: What actions ordered by the president would be considered illegal? It should be the role not of generals but of Congress to define what is legal and what isn’t.

The situation they are addressing has been in place for over 70 years, but Congress has consistently acquiesced, setting precedent after precedent. This is not a question about Donald Trump’s suitability to make decisions about war, but rather about Congress’ lack of insistence on declarations of war as prerequisites for engagement in combat. In the case of nuclear war, Congress could have required that congressional leaders be informed that nuclear weapons might be used and that these leaders must authorize the launch of such weapons.

In any case, the hearings are skirting the real issue, which is that since World War II the president has usurped Congress’ responsibility for war making, or, to put it another way, Congress has been abdicating its responsibility. At this point, the long practice has been that the president can act militarily at will. And the military must obey the commander in chief in any legal order. It’s hard to see that a president’s order as commander in chief can be illegal, unless it would represent a war crime. Is striking a North Korean nuclear facility a war crime? Congress should answer that question.

All the strategies that Congress has adopted to avoid or minimize its role in going to war emerge from the narrow question of who may order a nuclear attack. The Constitution specifically mentions declarations of war, and these declarations have an authority and unmistakable significance that mere resolutions lack. But then Congress enjoyed the ambiguity involved in resolutions and in avoiding responsibility for nuclear war. Its interest in the subject now is appropriate, but Congress’ desire to shift responsibility for war to the president is the issue that ought to be the focus of the hearings.

[Crafty_Dog]

America’s Alarmingly Archaic Arsenal

The U.S. nuclear deterrent has kept the peace for years. If it withers, it will keep the peace no longer.
America’s Alarmingly Archaic Arsenal
Mark Helprin

Jan. 3, 2018 7:04 p.m. ET




The Trump administration’s recently unveiled National Security Strategy is an excellent and overdue statement of intent. But unless it is ruthlessly prioritized, political and budgetary realities will make it little more than a wish list. And in regard to nuclear weapons, it hardly departs from the insufficient Obama -era policy of replacing old equipment rather than modifying each element of the nuclear triad to meet new challenges.







National survival depends on many factors: the economy, civil peace, constitutional fidelity, education, research, and military strength across the board. Each has a different timeline and resiliency. Nuclear forces, on the other hand, may have a catastrophically short timeline combined with by far the greatest immediate effect.




Alone of all crucial elements, the failure of America’s nuclear deterrent is capable of bringing instant destruction or unavoidable subjugation, as the deterrent’s unarrested decline will lead to either the opportunity for an enemy first strike or the surrender of the U.S. on every foreign front and eventually at home.




Believers in total nuclear abolition fail to recognize that if they are successful, covert possession of just a score of warheads could mean world mastery. And though they, like everyone else, are routinely deterred (from telling off the boss or driving against the flow of traffic), they fail to extend their understanding to nuclear deterrence. They seem as well not to grasp that whereas numerical reduction from tens of thousands of warheads would reduce the chances of accident, below a certain point it would tempt an aggressor by elevating the potential of a successful first strike. Nor do they allow that Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—which have through their conduct of war and in suppressing their populations callously sacrificed more than 100 million of their own people—subscribe to permissive nuclear doctrines and thresholds radically different from our own.




The Obama administration understood nuclear rejuvenation to mean merely updating old systems rather than changing the architecture of the deterrent to match Russia’s and China’s programs, as well as advances in technology. Given that short of abject surrender the sole means of preventing nuclear war is maintaining the potential to inflict unacceptable damage upon an enemy and/or shield one’s country from such damage, what are our resources, and against what are they arrayed?







The “nuclear triad” commonly referred to is rather a pentad, its land, air, and sea legs joined by missile defense and the survivability of national infrastructure. America’s land leg comprises static, silo-based missiles, which (other than in the potentially catastrophic launch-on-warning posture) are vulnerable not only to nuclear strike, but, with soon-to-come millimeter accuracy, even to conventional warheads. Russia, China, and North Korea have road-mobile missiles (and Russia, additional rail-based ones), making their land legs more survivable and in the case of tunnel systems—of which we have none and China has 3,000 miles—unaddressable and uncountable.




The U.S. air leg consists of ancient bombers and outdated standoff cruise missiles, both vulnerable to Russian and Chinese air defense, along with only 20 penetrating bombers, the B-2. To boot, the planes are concentrated on only a handful of insufficiently hardened bases.




Our sea-based nuclear force, the least-vulnerable leg, for many years included 41 ballistic-missile submarines, SSBNs. These dwindled to 18, then 14, and, with the new Columbia class set to enter service beginning only in 2031, a planned 12. A maximum of six at sea at any one time will face 100 Russian and Chinese hunter-killer subs. At the same time, the oceans are surrendering their opacity to space surveillance and Russian nonacoustic tracking. Even a deeply running sub disturbs the chemical and sea-life balance in ways that via upwelling leave a track upon the surface.




Russia is moving to 13 SSBNs with high-capacity missiles that carry many maneuverable warheads; China, with 4 SSBNs, is only beginning to build. A possible new dimension is Russia’s announced, but as yet unseen, autonomous stealth undersea nuclear vehicle, capable of targeting the high percentage of U.S. population, industry, and infrastructure on the coasts. We have no such weapon and Russia presents no similar vulnerability.




American ballistic-missile defense is severely underdeveloped due to ideological opposition and the misunderstanding of its purpose, which is to protect population and infrastructure as much as possible but, because many warheads will get through, primarily to shield retaliatory capacity so as to make a successful enemy first strike impossible—thus increasing stability rather than decreasing it, as its critics wrongly believe. Starved of money and innovation, missile defense has been confined to midcourse interception, when boost-phase and terminal intercept are also needed. Merely intending this without sufficient funding is useless. As for national resilience, the U.S. long ago gave up any form of civil defense, while Russia and China have not. This reinforces their ideas of nuclear utility, weakens our deterrence, and makes the nuclear calculus that much more unstable.




Beyond these particulars are the erosion of the American nuclear-weapons complex and the larger defense-industrial base; the dangerous mismatch of nuclear doctrines and perceptions; the sulfurous fuse of North Korea and Iran; Russian “tactical” nuclear weapons that outnumber U.S. counterparts 10 to 1; Russian programs suggesting that it is working toward the capacity for nuclear “breakout”; 2,600 currently deployed Russian strategic warheads as opposed to America’s 1,590; and consistent and brazen Russian treaty violations.




The addition of China as a major nuclear power now presents an analogy to the three-body problem in physics, in which three variables acting upon one another create an unpredictable and unstable system. That is but one reason why China must either be brought into an arms-control regime with the U.S. and Russia or forced by its refusal to show its hand for all the world to see. It is inexplicable that the U.S. government and arms-control enthusiasts have both failed to address the fact that China, the third major nuclear power, is totally unconstrained.




All the above is only a précis of a long-developing peril that, though difficult to see upon the surface, day by day strengthens the chances of Armageddon or capitulation. The only way to face it is objectively and without fear, and the only solution (requiring just a tiny fraction of gross domestic product) is to correct the shortcomings and right the balances.




America’s powerful deterrent has kept the nuclear peace all these years. If it withers, it will keep the peace no longer. The nuclear problem has no adequate superlatives. As great as all other concerns may be, they must yield to it. For the force to be confronted is the breaker of nations and the destroyer of worlds.




 Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, is author of “Paris in the Present Tense” (Overlook, 2017).

[ccp]

for now

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455454/why-trump-extended-iran-nuclear-deal-timing-north-korea

[Crafty_Dog]

On Saturday, Hawaiians were startled and frightened by a civil defense warning that missiles were on the way and that it was not a drill but the real thing.

After 38 minutes of frantically trying to find safe cover (some families on Oahu drove to the opposite side of the island to seek shelter in caves in order to try to survive the expected nuclear blast), Hawaiians were told the whole thing was a mistake, and there was no imminent missile attack.

Of course, Hawaiians were furious at their state government for this frightening accident.

Much attention was paid to the one state employee who mistakenly selected the wrong computer option during a routine drill following a shift change.   Washington was glad that Hawaiian Governor David Ige took responsibility at the state level. 

However, all this blame casting and acceptance misses the real warning inherent in this accidental event: Imagine that the warning had been real.  Imagine that there had been one or more missiles equipped with nuclear warheads on the way.

Are we confident we could defend Oahu, the U.S. Pacific Command, and all the people on the Hawaiian Islands?

Current ballistic missile defense involves launching ship- or land-based interceptor missiles to shoot down a ballistic missile in flight. This has been likened to shooting a bullet with a bullet.

I fear that our defense system could handle no more than two or three missiles before becoming saturated.

In fact, we would need three or four defensive anti-missile launches per each incoming offensive to have reasonable confidence that Honolulu would be safe.   To make this defensive challenge even more complex, the North Koreans, like the Chinese and the Russians, are working to develop a submarine-launched missile.   

So while the fact that Hawaiians were frightened by a false alarm is upsetting, our real concern should be ensuring we can keep American cities from being hit by nuclear missiles.   Today, our anti-ballistic missile systems are much too weak, and our anti-cruise missile systems are virtually non-existent.

We have been trapped by political timidity, the liberal fantasy that space can be kept free of weapons, and a defense bureaucracy-large corporation-lobbyist complex that wants to focus spending on obsolete programs, using outmoded technologies.

I am extremely worried that we are going to lose one or more American cities in the next decade or two, if we do not improve our defensive capabilities.   The loss of life will be almost unendurable.  The loss of our freedoms in a very dangerous world will be horrifying.

The requirement that we retaliate forcefully and with comparable nuclear weapons will compound the loss of lives horrendously.

Having an effective defense against any attack has become one of the highest national priorities; however, we have neither a visionary proposal, a practical implementation system, nor a communications program to get the public and the Congress to support such an enormous undertaking.   Yet, the failure to act boldly and decisively could eventually lead to the loss of millions of American lives.   

We have a precedent for thinking boldly about missile defense.  President Ronald Reagan proposed a comprehensive missile defense system, which included a space-based missile defense system, in his 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative. At the time, our current ballistic missile defense system was in the developmental phase.

Today, we have the potential to build a substantial missile defense system that would dramatically increase the safety of the American people.

In the three and a half decades since President Reagan offered a bold, visionary way to break out of the nuclear nightmare, the technologies have improved dramatically.

The Cray-2, which was released two years after Reagan’s proposal and was believed to be the fastest machine in at the time, had the processing power of an iPhone 4.

With this exponential increase in computing power and the emergence of reusable launch vehicles for space, the potential to field a space-based system is real and eminently rational.   However, the military procurement system and current missile defense bureaucracy are incapable of rapid development and innovation at the speed we need to offset threats from North Korea, Iran, and other dangerous regimes.

President Trump should propose a Space Defense Implementation Command with lean procurement rules and entrepreneurial hiring and firing capability. It should operate like Silicon Valley, rather than K Street.   The President should make an Oval Office address describing the genuine threat and the horror of what would have occurred if the Hawaiian alert had been real.

He should challenge members of Congress to fully fund a multiyear space combat missile defense system precisely as they would a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

To save American cities, we need stability in funding, reliability in management, and consistent political support built around saving millions of American lives.   Additionally, the Air Force should establish a Space Combat Command designed to wage and win wars in space.

It is abundantly clear that our potential adversaries know how much we rely on space-based assets for communications and intelligence.  It is also clear that if we entered a war with any of these regimes, they would intend to kill or cripple our systems while protecting and – if necessary – renewing their own.
 
It took only 15 years to go from the Wright Brothers’ first airplane flight to massive military use of air power in World War I.

For the last 61 years (dating from the Soviet launch of Sputnik), we have avoided confronting the reality that space is a domain which will inevitably become an arena for conflict fully as much as land, sea, air, or cyber.   We need to bring security-focused thinking, doctrines, war games, and technologies to bear to defend American interests in space and Americans wherever they are.

Millions of lives could be at stake.

The loss of 2,996 lives on September 11, 2001 launched a series of wars which have left 6,948 Americans dead and more than 52,000 wounded over 16 years. At the same time, the United States has spent $7.6 trillion.   If fewer than 3,000 casualties galvanized this explosion of effort, what should we be prepared to do to save Oahu’s more than 953,000 residents, the U.S. military personnel assigned there, and the thousands of visiting tourists?

This is what would have been at risk if the Hawaiian alert had been real. Next time it may be.

The time to act is now – before a disaster.

Your Friend,
Newt

[Crafty_Dog]

Israel vs. Iraq's reactor:
https://www.israelvideonetwork.com/the-crazy-story-how-israel-stopped-saddam-husseins-nuke-program/?omhide=true


Strong rhetorical point about the Nork reactor in Syria was located in territory later controlled by ISIS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=40&v=zizjv2UDpYo

[Crafty_Dog]

To Counter Russia, U.S. Signals Nuclear Arms Are Back in a Big Way

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROADFEB. 4, 2018

When President Trump called on Congress to modernize the nuclear arsenal, he did not mention the rationale: that Russia has accelerated a dangerous game. Credit Al Drago for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A treaty committing the United States and Russia to keep their long-range nuclear arsenals at the lowest levels since early in the Cold War goes into full effect on Monday. When it was signed eight years ago, President Barack Obama expressed hope that it would be a small first step toward deeper reductions, and ultimately a world without nuclear weapons.

Now, that optimism has been reversed. A new nuclear policy issued by the Trump administration on Friday, which vows to counter a rush by the Russians to modernize their forces even while staying within the treaty limits, is touching off a new kind of nuclear arms race. This one is based less on numbers of weapons and more on novel tactics and technologies, meant to outwit and outmaneuver the other side.

The Pentagon envisions a new age in which nuclear weapons are back in a big way — its strategy bristles with plans for new low-yield nuclear weapons that advocates say are needed to match Russian advances and critics warn will be too tempting for a president to use. The result is that the nuclear-arms limits that go into effect on Monday now look more like the final stop after three decades of reductions than a way station to further cuts.

Yet when President Trump called on Congress to “modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal” in his State of the Union address last week, he did not mention his administration’s rationale: that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has accelerated a dangerous game that the United States must match, even if the price tag soars above $1.2 trillion. That is the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, one that many experts think is low by a half-trillion dollars.

Mr. Trump barely mentioned Mr. Putin in the speech and said nothing about Russia’s nuclear buildup. His reluctance to talk about Russia and its leader during his campaign and first year in office — and his refusal to impose sanctions on Russia mandated by Congress — has fueled suspicions about what lies behind his persistently friendly stance toward Mr. Putin.


In the State of the Union speech, the president focused far more on North Korea and on battling terrorism, even though his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, had announced just days ago that “great power competition — not terrorism — is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”

In contrast to the president’s address, the report issued on Friday, known as the Nuclear Posture Review, focuses intensely on Russia. It describes Mr. Putin as forcing America’s hand to rebuild the nuclear force, as has a series of other documents produced by Mr. Trump’s National Security Council and his Pentagon.

The report contains a sharp warning about a new Russian-made autonomous nuclear torpedo that — while not in violation of the terms of the treaty, known as New Start — appears designed to cross the Pacific undetected and release a deadly cloud of radioactivity that would leave large parts of the West Coast uninhabitable.

It also explicitly rejects Mr. Obama’s commitment to make nuclear weapons a diminishing part of American defenses. The limit on warheads — 1,500 deployable weapons — that goes into effect on Monday expires in 2021, and the nuclear review shows no enthusiasm about its chances for renewal.

The report describes future arms control agreements as “difficult to envision” in a world “that is characterized by nuclear-armed states seeking to change borders and overturn existing norms,” and in particular by Russian violations of a series of other arms-limitation treaties.

“Past assumptions that our capability to produce nuclear weapons would not be necessary and that we could permit the required infrastructure to age into obsolescence have proven to be mistaken,” it argues. “It is now clear that the United States must have sufficient research, design, development and production capacity to support the sustainment and replacement of its nuclear forces.”

The new policy was applauded by establishment Republican defense experts, including some who have shuddered at Mr. Trump’s threats to use nuclear weapons against North Korea, but have worried that he was insufficiently focused on Russia’s nuclear modernization.

“Obama’s theory was that we will lead the way in reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons and everyone else will do the same,” said Franklin C. Miller, a nuclear expert who served in the George W. Bush administration and was an informal consultant to Pentagon officials who drafted the new policy. “It didn’t work out that way. The Russians have been fielding systems while we haven’t, and our first new system won’t be ready until 2026 or 2027.”


“This is a very mainstream nuclear policy,” Mr. Miller said of the document, arguing that new low-yield atomic weapons would deter Mr. Putin and make nuclear war less likely, rather than offer new temptations to Mr. Trump. “Nothing in it deserves the criticism it has received.”

A senior administration official, who would discuss the policy only on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Trump had been briefed on the new nuclear approach, but was leaving the details to Mr. Mattis and to his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster. The president, the official said, was primarily concerned about staying ahead in any nuclear race with Russia, and to a lesser degree with China.

Even Mr. Trump’s harshest critics concede that the United States must take steps as Russia and China have invested heavily in modernizing their forces, making them more lethal. The administration’s new strategy describes the Russian buildup in detail, documenting how Moscow is making “multiple upgrades” to its force of strategic bombers, as well as long-range missiles based at sea and on land. Russia is also developing, it adds, “at least two new intercontinental-range systems,” as well as the autonomous torpedo.


Russia has violated another treaty, the United States argues, that covers intermediate-range missiles, and is “building a large, diverse and modern” set of shorter-range weapons with less powerful warheads that “are not accountable under the New Start treaty.” Yet Mr. Trump has not publicly complained about the alleged treaty violation or the new weapons.

Though members of the Obama administration were highly critical of the Trump administration document, there is little question that Mr. Obama paved the way for the modernization policy. He agreed to a $70 billion makeover of American nuclear laboratories as the price for Senate approval of the 2010 New Start.

The new document calls for far more spending — a program that at a minimum will cost $1.2 trillion over 30 years, without inflation taken into account. Most of that money would go to new generations of bombers and new submarines, and a rebuilding of the land-based nuclear missile force that still dots giant fields across the West.

While those systems are the most vulnerable to attack, and the most decrepit part of the force, they are also among the most politically popular in Congress, because they provide jobs in rural areas.

In some cases, Mr. Trump’s plan speeds ahead with nuclear arms that Mr. Obama had endorsed, such as a new generation of nuclear cruise missiles. The low-flying weapons, when dropped from a bomber, hug the ground to avoid enemy radars and air defenses.

Other weapons, though, are completely new. For example, the policy calls for “the rapid development” of a cruise missile that would be fired from submarines, then become airborne before reaching its target. Mr. Obama had eliminated an older version.

It also calls for the development of a low-yield warhead for some of the nation’s submarine ballistic missiles — part of a broader effort to expand the credible options “for responding to nuclear or non-nuclear strategic attack.” But critics of the low-yield weapons say they blur the line between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, making their use more likely.

Andrew C. Weber, an assistant defense secretary during the Obama administration who directed oversight of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, called the new plan a dangerous folly that would make nuclear war more likely.

“We’re simply mirroring the reckless Russian doctrine,” he said. “We can already deter any strike. We have plenty of low-yield weapons. The new plan is a fiction created to justify the making of new nuclear arms. They’ll just increase the potential for their use and for miscalculation. The administration’s logic is Kafkaesque.”

One of the most controversial elements of the new strategy is a section that declares that the United States might use nuclear weapons to respond to a devastating, but non-nuclear, attack on critical infrastructure — the power grid or cellphone networks, for example.

All of the new or repurposed warheads would come from the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Energy Department that officials say is already stretched thin.

“We’re pretty much at capacity in terms of people,” Frank G. Klotz was quoted as saying after retiring last month as the agency’s head. “We’re pretty much at capacity in terms of the materials that we need to do this work. And pretty much at capacity in terms of hours in the day at our facilities.”

[G M]

Funny how Trump keeps doing things that aren't in Russia's best interest.

To Counter Russia, U.S. Signals Nuclear Arms Are Back in a Big Way

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROADFEB. 4, 2018

When President Trump called on Congress to modernize the nuclear arsenal, he did not mention the rationale: that Russia has accelerated a dangerous game. Credit Al Drago for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A treaty committing the United States and Russia to keep their long-range nuclear arsenals at the lowest levels since early in the Cold War goes into full effect on Monday. When it was signed eight years ago, President Barack Obama expressed hope that it would be a small first step toward deeper reductions, and ultimately a world without nuclear weapons.

Now, that optimism has been reversed. A new nuclear policy issued by the Trump administration on Friday, which vows to counter a rush by the Russians to modernize their forces even while staying within the treaty limits, is touching off a new kind of nuclear arms race. This one is based less on numbers of weapons and more on novel tactics and technologies, meant to outwit and outmaneuver the other side.

The Pentagon envisions a new age in which nuclear weapons are back in a big way — its strategy bristles with plans for new low-yield nuclear weapons that advocates say are needed to match Russian advances and critics warn will be too tempting for a president to use. The result is that the nuclear-arms limits that go into effect on Monday now look more like the final stop after three decades of reductions than a way station to further cuts.

Yet when President Trump called on Congress to “modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal” in his State of the Union address last week, he did not mention his administration’s rationale: that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has accelerated a dangerous game that the United States must match, even if the price tag soars above $1.2 trillion. That is the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, one that many experts think is low by a half-trillion dollars.

Mr. Trump barely mentioned Mr. Putin in the speech and said nothing about Russia’s nuclear buildup. His reluctance to talk about Russia and its leader during his campaign and first year in office — and his refusal to impose sanctions on Russia mandated by Congress — has fueled suspicions about what lies behind his persistently friendly stance toward Mr. Putin.


In the State of the Union speech, the president focused far more on North Korea and on battling terrorism, even though his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, had announced just days ago that “great power competition — not terrorism — is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”

In contrast to the president’s address, the report issued on Friday, known as the Nuclear Posture Review, focuses intensely on Russia. It describes Mr. Putin as forcing America’s hand to rebuild the nuclear force, as has a series of other documents produced by Mr. Trump’s National Security Council and his Pentagon.

The report contains a sharp warning about a new Russian-made autonomous nuclear torpedo that — while not in violation of the terms of the treaty, known as New Start — appears designed to cross the Pacific undetected and release a deadly cloud of radioactivity that would leave large parts of the West Coast uninhabitable.

It also explicitly rejects Mr. Obama’s commitment to make nuclear weapons a diminishing part of American defenses. The limit on warheads — 1,500 deployable weapons — that goes into effect on Monday expires in 2021, and the nuclear review shows no enthusiasm about its chances for renewal.

The report describes future arms control agreements as “difficult to envision” in a world “that is characterized by nuclear-armed states seeking to change borders and overturn existing norms,” and in particular by Russian violations of a series of other arms-limitation treaties.

“Past assumptions that our capability to produce nuclear weapons would not be necessary and that we could permit the required infrastructure to age into obsolescence have proven to be mistaken,” it argues. “It is now clear that the United States must have sufficient research, design, development and production capacity to support the sustainment and replacement of its nuclear forces.”

The new policy was applauded by establishment Republican defense experts, including some who have shuddered at Mr. Trump’s threats to use nuclear weapons against North Korea, but have worried that he was insufficiently focused on Russia’s nuclear modernization.

“Obama’s theory was that we will lead the way in reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons and everyone else will do the same,” said Franklin C. Miller, a nuclear expert who served in the George W. Bush administration and was an informal consultant to Pentagon officials who drafted the new policy. “It didn’t work out that way. The Russians have been fielding systems while we haven’t, and our first new system won’t be ready until 2026 or 2027.”


“This is a very mainstream nuclear policy,” Mr. Miller said of the document, arguing that new low-yield atomic weapons would deter Mr. Putin and make nuclear war less likely, rather than offer new temptations to Mr. Trump. “Nothing in it deserves the criticism it has received.”

A senior administration official, who would discuss the policy only on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Trump had been briefed on the new nuclear approach, but was leaving the details to Mr. Mattis and to his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster. The president, the official said, was primarily concerned about staying ahead in any nuclear race with Russia, and to a lesser degree with China.

Even Mr. Trump’s harshest critics concede that the United States must take steps as Russia and China have invested heavily in modernizing their forces, making them more lethal. The administration’s new strategy describes the Russian buildup in detail, documenting how Moscow is making “multiple upgrades” to its force of strategic bombers, as well as long-range missiles based at sea and on land. Russia is also developing, it adds, “at least two new intercontinental-range systems,” as well as the autonomous torpedo.


Russia has violated another treaty, the United States argues, that covers intermediate-range missiles, and is “building a large, diverse and modern” set of shorter-range weapons with less powerful warheads that “are not accountable under the New Start treaty.” Yet Mr. Trump has not publicly complained about the alleged treaty violation or the new weapons.

Though members of the Obama administration were highly critical of the Trump administration document, there is little question that Mr. Obama paved the way for the modernization policy. He agreed to a $70 billion makeover of American nuclear laboratories as the price for Senate approval of the 2010 New Start.

The new document calls for far more spending — a program that at a minimum will cost $1.2 trillion over 30 years, without inflation taken into account. Most of that money would go to new generations of bombers and new submarines, and a rebuilding of the land-based nuclear missile force that still dots giant fields across the West.

While those systems are the most vulnerable to attack, and the most decrepit part of the force, they are also among the most politically popular in Congress, because they provide jobs in rural areas.

In some cases, Mr. Trump’s plan speeds ahead with nuclear arms that Mr. Obama had endorsed, such as a new generation of nuclear cruise missiles. The low-flying weapons, when dropped from a bomber, hug the ground to avoid enemy radars and air defenses.

Other weapons, though, are completely new. For example, the policy calls for “the rapid development” of a cruise missile that would be fired from submarines, then become airborne before reaching its target. Mr. Obama had eliminated an older version.

It also calls for the development of a low-yield warhead for some of the nation’s submarine ballistic missiles — part of a broader effort to expand the credible options “for responding to nuclear or non-nuclear strategic attack.” But critics of the low-yield weapons say they blur the line between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, making their use more likely.

Andrew C. Weber, an assistant defense secretary during the Obama administration who directed oversight of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, called the new plan a dangerous folly that would make nuclear war more likely.

“We’re simply mirroring the reckless Russian doctrine,” he said. “We can already deter any strike. We have plenty of low-yield weapons. The new plan is a fiction created to justify the making of new nuclear arms. They’ll just increase the potential for their use and for miscalculation. The administration’s logic is Kafkaesque.”

One of the most controversial elements of the new strategy is a section that declares that the United States might use nuclear weapons to respond to a devastating, but non-nuclear, attack on critical infrastructure — the power grid or cellphone networks, for example.

All of the new or repurposed warheads would come from the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Energy Department that officials say is already stretched thin.

“We’re pretty much at capacity in terms of people,” Frank G. Klotz was quoted as saying after retiring last month as the agency’s head. “We’re pretty much at capacity in terms of the materials that we need to do this work. And pretty much at capacity in terms of hours in the day at our facilities.”

[ccp]

"Funny how Trump keeps doing things that aren't in Russia's best interest."

yes and bizarre logic comparing Trump to McCarthy when it is the *LEFt* accusing him or anyone near him of colluding with Putin anytime they are within a mile of anyone or anything Russian!

Yet the media runs with this nonsense

[DougMacG]

"Funny how Trump keeps doing things that aren't in Russia's best interest."

yes and bizarre logic comparing Trump to McCarthy when it is the *LEFt* accusing him or anyone near him of colluding with Putin anytime they are within a mile of anyone or anything Russian!

Yet the media runs with this nonsense

-------------------------------------------------------------------
That's right.  They are the accusers.  All we have seen of collusion so far is evidence that Democrats were working with foreign agents, the intel community and media to interfere with the results of an election.

Projection:  Of what the Left accuses, assume they are doing it.

[Crafty_Dog]

Putin Unveils Nuclear Weapons He Claims Could Breach U.S. Defenses
Russian leader sharpens rhetoric against West, raising prospect of a new arms race with the U.S.
By Thomas Grove and
James Marson
Updated March 1, 2018 9:43 a.m. ET
80 COMMENTS

MOSCOW—Russia has developed new nuclear weapons capable of penetrating U.S. air-defense systems, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, sharpening rhetoric against the West and raising the prospect of a new arms race with Washington.

In his annual state of the union address, Mr. Putin boasted that Russia possesses newly developed intercontinental-ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and even underwater drones. In tones recalling the Cold War, the Russian president made his case that the country deserves a place among the world’s military superpowers.

“Efforts to contain Russia have failed,” he said to Russia’s political elite gathered in the Kremlin’s St. George’s Hall, speaking before a large screen displaying images of the new weapons.

Mr. Putin has reasserted Moscow’s presence on the world stage in recent years by invading and annexing part of Ukraine and sending his military to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, steering Russia into its deepest confrontation with the West since the end of the Cold War. The U.S. has placed sanctions on Russia over its military interventions in Ukraine and alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election. Russia denies such meddling.

Russia has angered the West most recently by its airstrikes in Syria, which have continued despite a cease-fire mandated by the United Nations. Opposition activists and Western officials have accused Russia of indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, which Moscow denies.

Mr. Putin, who is almost certain to be elected to another six-year term in a presidential ballot on March 18, started his speech Thursday by talking up plans to improve the country’s economy, saying Russia needed to improve average life expectancy and raise people out of poverty.

He then launched into a half-hour presentation of Russia’s new weapons systems, peppered with criticism of the West’s purported lack of respect toward Russia.

The U.S., he said, had exploited Russia’s economic, political and military weakness after the collapse of the Soviet Union to ignore Moscow’s views, including by moving the North Atlantic Treaty Organization closer to Russia’s borders.

“No one listened to us. Listen to us now,” he said.

Mr. Putin said the Syria campaign had allowed the military to show off the results of a modernization program he launched in 2011. “The whole world knows the names of our newest airplanes, submarines, air-defense systems,” he said.

Among the weapons displayed on screens behind him was a new Sarmat intercontinental-missile system that Mr. Putin said is capable of reaching any point on the globe and will be introduced into Russia’s arsenal as soon as next year. He said the weapons would defeat a U.S. missile-defense system that has been the target of frequent criticism by Moscow.

Mr. Putin said that Russia had carried out a successful test launch at the end of last year of cruise missile with a nuclear-powered engine that gave it unlimited range. Amid applause from the audience, a video showing a computerized image of a missile fired from northern Russia flying south across the Atlantic Ocean while evading air defenses, then circling the southern tip of South America before heading north toward the U.S.

Mr. Putin said that Russia would consider any nuclear attack on its allies an attack on Russia and would launch an immediate response.

“We’re not threatening anyone,” Mr. Putin said. “Russia’s growing military might is a reliable guarantee of peace on our planet because it ensures the strategic balance in the world.”

Ivan Konovalov, an independent defense analyst in Moscow, said the speech demonstrated how quickly Russia’s arms industry is developing.

“It is developing some of the best weapons in the world, and the United States, if they want to maintain parity, has to answer the challenge quickly,” he said.

The Trump administration had warned in a review of U.S. nuclear posture in February that Russia, along with China, was moving to modernize and expand its nuclear weapons program in a bid to “return to Great Power competition.”

“Russia’s strategic nuclear modernization has increased...and provides Russia with the ability to rapidly expand its deployed warhead numbers,” the Pentagon report said.

It noted improvements to “legacy” nuclear systems as well as newer warheads and launchers, including the drones, which the report termed a “new intercontinental, nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered, undersea autonomous torpedo.”

The U.S. in the report outlined possible diplomatic, economic and military responses, saying the U.S. is reviewing “military concepts and options for conventional, groundlaunched, intermediate-range missile systems.”
=========================================
GPF:

Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a fiery State of the Nation address on March 1 in which he acknowledged Russia’s socio-economic issues but highlighted Russian military technological advances. Among the many new weapons Putin claims Russia has produced, the one that caught our attention is the intercontinental hypersonic missile. The most recent data available suggests Russia’s defense budget was about 4.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2017, hardly enough to make the kind of military and technological advances Putin claims to have made. We need to look into which weapons Putin talked about and what, if any, evidence there is that these weapons exist. What is the price for each of these systems?

[Crafty_Dog]

second post

The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First
Does the necessity of self-defense leave ‘no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation’?
By John Bolton
Feb. 28, 2018 6:59 p.m. ET
45 COMMENTS

The Winter Olympics’ closing ceremonies also concluded North Korea’s propaganda effort to divert attention from its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs. And although President Trump announced more economic sanctions against Pyongyang last week, he also bluntly presaged “Phase Two” of U.S. action against the Kim regime, which “may be a very rough thing.”

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in January that Pyongyang was within “a handful of months” of being able to deliver nuclear warheads to the U.S. How long must America wait before it acts to eliminate that threat?

Pre-emption opponents argue that action is not justified because Pyongyang does not constitute an “imminent threat.” They are wrong. The threat is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times. Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute. That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation.

In assessing the timing of pre-emptive attacks, the classic formulation is Daniel Webster’s test of “necessity.” British forces in 1837 invaded U.S. territory to destroy the steamboat Caroline, which Canadian rebels had used to transport weapons into Ontario.

Webster asserted that Britain failed to show that “the necessity of self-defense was instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation.” Pre-emption opponents would argue that Britain should have waited until the Caroline reached Canada before attacking.

Would an American strike today against North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program violate Webster’s necessity test? Clearly not. Necessity in the nuclear and ballistic-missile age is simply different than in the age of steam. What was once remote is now, as a practical matter, near; what was previously time-consuming to deliver can now arrive in minutes; and the level of destructiveness of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is infinitely greater than that of the steamship Caroline’s weapons cargo.

Timing and distance have long been recognized as surrogate measures defining the seriousness of military threats, thereby serving as criteria to justify pre-emptive political or military actions. In the days of sail, maritime states were recognized as controlling territorial waters (above and below the surface) for three nautical miles out to sea. In the early 18th century, that was the farthest distance cannonballs could reach, hence defining a state’s outer defense perimeter. While some states asserted broader maritime claims, the three-mile limit was widely accepted in Europe.

Technological developments inevitably challenged maritime-state defenses. Over time, many nations extended their territorial claims, but the U.S. adhered to the three-mile limit until World War II. After proclaiming U.S. neutrality in 1939, in large measure to limit the activities of belligerent-power warships and submarines in our waters, President Franklin D. Roosevelt quickly realized the three-mile limit was an invitation for aggression. German submarines were sinking ships off the coast within sight of Boston and New York.

In May 1941, Roosevelt told the Pan-American Union that “if the Axis Powers fail to gain control of the seas, then they are certainly defeated.” He explained that our defenses had “to relate . . . to the lightning speed of modern warfare.” He scoffed at those waiting “until bombs actually drop in the streets” of U.S. cities: “Our Bunker Hill of tomorrow may be several thousand miles from Boston.” Accordingly, over time, Roosevelt vastly extended America’s “waters of self defense” to include Greenland, Iceland and even parts of West Africa.

Similarly in 1988, President Reagan unilaterally extended U.S. territorial waters from three to 12 miles. Reagan’s executive order cited U.S. national security and other significant interests in this expansion, and administration officials underlined that a major rationale was making it harder for Soviet spy ships to gather information.

In short, both Roosevelt and Reagan acted unilaterally to adjust to new realities. They did not reify time and distance, or confuse the concrete for the existential. They adjusted the measures to reality, not the reverse.

Although the Caroline criteria are often cited in pre-emption debates, they are merely customary international law, which is interpreted and modified in light of changing state practice. In contemporary times, Israel has already twice struck nuclear-weapons programs in hostile states: destroying the Osirak reactor outside Baghdad in 1981 and a Syrian reactor being built by North Koreans in 2007.

This is how we should think today about the threat of nuclear warheads delivered by ballistic missiles. In 1837 Britain unleashed pre-emptive “fire and fury” against a wooden steamboat. It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current “necessity” posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons by striking first.

Mr. Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

[Crafty_Dog]

Third post

y Ian Talley
Updated Feb. 27, 2018 5:00 p.m. ET
131 COMMENTS

WASHINGTON—North Korea shipped 50 tons of supplies to Syria for use in building what is suspected to be an industrial-scale chemical weapons factory, according to intelligence information cited in a confidential United Nations report.

A Chinese trading firm working on behalf of Pyongyang made five shipments in late 2016 and early 2017 of high-heat, acid-resistant tiles, stainless-steel pipes and valves to Damascus, the report said, citing them as evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is paying North Korea to help his country produce chemical arms.

The shipments are part of a steady stream of weapons-related sales by Pyongyang to Syria and to Mr. Assad’s patron, Iran, estimated by some experts to be worth several billion dollars a year.

U.S. officials recently warned Syria of a possible military response to the regime’s increased use of chemical weapons against civilians. The Syrian American Medical Society, a relief organization, says the regime has launched at least three such attacks so far this year. Damascus denies using chemical weapons.

Even as an international-sanctions noose tightens around North Korea, Syria’s conflict has been a windfall for its leader, Kim Jong Un. Such illicit revenues undercut Washington’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against North Korea with the aim of thwarting its nuclear-weapons program.

Trump administration officials say if sanctions don’t get Mr. Kim to denuclearize, the U.S. may resort to military action.

The U.N. report, which hasn’t been publicly released, detailed evidence and intelligence from several member states. Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center, or SSRC, the Assad-backed group responsible for developing chemical and other weapons of mass destruction, paid Pyongyang’s primary arms dealer, Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation, for the materials through a series of front companies, according to the confidential report, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

One of those firms works for an SSRC-controlled entity that the U.S. Treasury says has been used in the past to buy missile and rocket propellants and parts for Syria’s SCUD missile program.

China told the U.N. investigators it had no evidence that one of its companies was doing business with North Korea’s primary arms dealer. It didn’t deny the sales to Syria in the U.N. report, however, and said it was open to investigating those alleged connections to North Korea if investigators provided more evidence.

Pyongyang, which has resorted to a range of sanctions-evasion strategies, likely makes the largest chunk of its illicit money from proliferation, according to Bruce Bechtol, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency officer specializing in northeast Asia. Sales have long been concentrated in the Middle East, especially Iran and Syria, and Africa, he said.
A U.N. chemical-weapons expert holding a plastic bag containing samples from the site of an alleged chemical-weapons attack in the Ain Tarma neighborhood of Damascus in August 2013.
A U.N. chemical-weapons expert holding a plastic bag containing samples from the site of an alleged chemical-weapons attack in the Ain Tarma neighborhood of Damascus in August 2013. Photo: stringer/Reuters

While Washington has secured more stringent policing of North Korea’s sanctions evasion in many areas of the world, including China, it has struggled to shut down North Korea’s proliferation of weapons.

Larry Niksch, a former U.S. Congressional Research Service expert on Asia, estimates North Korea’s revenue from cooperation with Tehran on nuclear and missile technology, arms sales and provisions to Iran-backed terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah totaled $2 billion to $3 billion a year in the last decade.

The Syrian war has been a particular boon for North Korea, said Mr. Bechtol and others. Some analysts question, however, whether it is possible to put a dollar figure on North Korean arms sales, saying so little is known about production costs and the terms of illicit contracts.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

Iran isn’t only a primary buyer of North Korean arms and weapons technology, analysts say, but is also bankrolling Syria’s purchases.

Steady oil prices and a wind-down in sanctions against Iran since the 2015 nuclear deal have given the country’s clerical government a fresh influx of revenue—cash that U.S. officials say Tehran is funneling toward its allies throughout the region.
A Syrian boy holding an oxygen mask over the face of an infant at a makeshift hospital following a reported gas attack last month on the rebel-held town of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus.
A Syrian boy holding an oxygen mask over the face of an infant at a makeshift hospital following a reported gas attack last month on the rebel-held town of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. Photo: hasan mohamed/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Besides Syria, Mr. Bechtol cites evidence of North Korean arms sales to the insurgent Houthi militia in Yemen, as well as interdicted shipments destined for Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Pyongyang also sells to a host of other countries, including sub-Saharan dictatorships, and to Myanmar’s ballistic-missile program, according to U.S. and U.N. reports.

The latest details of the North Korean-Syrian military venture reflect decadeslong ties between Pyongyang and Damascus, dating to their shared Cold-War patronage under the Soviet Union. Pyongyang helped build the Syrian nuclear reactor that was destroyed by Israeli midnight strikes in September 2007. That facility was thought to be a near duplicate of North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor.

In their confidential report, U.N. investigators identified more than 40 shipments of material for use in arms production and other banned weapon programs from North Korea to Syria’s unconventional weapons group. The last one was sent just a few weeks ago, the investigators wrote.
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North Korean technicians with specialized knowledge of chemical and ballistic-missile technology have repeatedly visited Syria over the last two years, according to intelligence reports provided to the U.N. In August 2016, a North Korean technical delegation to Syria discussed the procurement of special valves and thermometers known to be used in chemical-weapons programs, according to those reports. A range of technicians with expertise in long-range radar, missiles, tanks and other military equipment also have been found operating over the last two years in Sudan, Mozambique, Uganda, and Myanmar.

“DPRK technicians continue to operate at chemical weapons and missile facilities at Barzeh Adra and Hama” in Syria, the U.N. investigators say, using an abbreviation for North Korea’s official name.

Syria told U.N. investigators there were no North Korea technicians in the country, adding that the only North Koreans present were working in the fields of gymnastics and athletics.

Mr. Niksch says North Korea is likely also selling Iran the technical data from its recent missile tests. Such consulting services—including weapons training, extending the lifespan of its missiles and improving guidance systems—“indicates that North Korea continues to earn huge sums of money from its proliferation activities in the Middle East,” Mr. Niksch said.

While it earns billions from the Middle East, North Korea’s estimated costs for intercontinental-ballistic missile tests are much lower. Vipin Narang, a top nuclear expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says each launch likely costs less than the $30 million India pays for each of its launches.

“There‘s no question that broad sanctions are not going to reduce their liquidity to fund this program,” Mr. Narang said. “They are sitting on a pile of cash, where each missile is a drop in the bucket.”

Given North Korea’s advances in weapons technology, many question whether the Trump administration’s pressure campaign can succeed.

“The bar is now so much higher to convince North Korea to roll things back,” said Anthony Ruggiero, a former U.S. Treasury official now at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Mr. Ruggiero has long advocated a stronger sanctions regime against Pyongyang. “Now I don’t know if it will work,” he said.

Write to Ian Talley at ian.talley@wsj.com

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/dubowitz-mark-the-pyongyang-tehran-axis/

[Crafty_Dog]

    Demographic, climatic, economic and technological pressures over the next several decades will force key countries in the Middle East and North Africa to gradually expand and diversify their electric power grids.

    Advances in competing technologies and high costs will put nuclear power at a disadvantage compared with other electricity-generating options. Even so, countries in the region will continue to pursue nuclear power given its accompanying political prestige.

    The window for regional powers to develop unrestricted nuclear programs is closing fast. Economic realities will weaken their arguments for civilian nuclear power, allowing global powers to justify asserting more control over the expansion of nuclear programs in the region.

The Middle East and North Africa sit at a crucial intersection of energy economics and security concerns. The region's growing populations and economies are using more electricity, and some key countries are seeking to diversify their electrical grids by reducing their reliance on generation fueled by oil and natural gas. Nuclear power factors in as a prominent part of the region's strategy to move away from fossil fuel. But advances in other energy technologies and the controversies surrounding Iran's nuclear program are complicating the regional pursuit of nuclear power. The U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and reinstated sanctions could push Tehran toward resuming its enrichment of nuclear fuel, sharpening questions about the justifications that other countries in the region use for pursuing nuclear power. While the desire to develop nuclear power in the Middle East and North Africa is alive and well, the associated costs, the rise of more affordable renewable alternatives, and security and proliferation concerns mean the window for the widespread development of nuclear energy there is slowly closing.

The Big Picture


For nuclear power in the Middle East and North Africa, the implications of the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the regional responses to Iran's potential re-emergence as a nuclear power cannot be ignored. As regional powers seek to establish their own nuclear programs, the influence of alternative technologies will bring the political and security concerns associated with nuclear technology to the forefront.

See The Future of Energy

A Tale of Two Uses

Nuclear technology has always had a civilian side and a military side. Clearly, there's a difference between a peaceful, civilian-led nuclear energy program and one used to develop nuclear weapons. But the civilian and military sides share processes that inextricably link them and that have profound security and proliferation implications. Countries with end-to-end nuclear programs — that is, programs that include processing, enrichment and reprocessing capabilities — may insist their intentions are peaceful, but the dual-use nature of the technology puts them closer to producing enough nuclear material to build a weapon should they decide to take that route.

Throughout much of the world, nuclear power is struggling to compete economically; the capital costs are high, and lengthy construction delays plague most ongoing nuclear projects. As storage technologies improve, and as the use of smart and distributed power grids increases, the argument countries make for why they want to develop a civilian nuclear program becomes weaker, raising questions about motives and making it even more difficult for them to justify to global powers the need for them to develop an end-to-end nuclear program. Political control over nuclear proliferation may be slipping as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty weakens, but economic realities will help limit nuclear expansion just the same.

A graphic showing projected population growth in the Middle East and North Africa

Demand on the Rise

The demand for electricity in the Middle East and North Africa is climbing, driven by rising population, economic growth, the increasing use of energy-intensive water desalination technologies and other factors. The German engineering and manufacturing conglomerate Siemens estimates that power demand in the Middle East will increase by more than 3 percent annually through 2035 and that the region will need to add more than 275 gigawatts of capacity — more than double what is now installed. To meet the rising demand, many nations in the region are undertaking expansion and modernization of their electrical grids with plans that stretch well into the second half of the century. The need to add electricity production capacity is coming at a time of technological flux and as a number of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Lebanon, seek to diversify their power sectors away from oil-fueled generation as part of their own long-term efforts to ensure their future energy security.

A graphic showing current and projected power generation capacity in the Middle East.


While natural gas will remain the largest fuel source for electricity in the region, generation powered by renewables and nuclear is poised to play a more prominent role. Those two modes of power production don't directly compete in a traditional electrical grid, but advancing technology and changes in grid makeup will bring them into closer proximity.

When both capital costs and variable costs such as fuel are factored in, nuclear power generally struggles to compete economically with natural gas, wind and solar power — though it might make sense in some cases. Nuclear power's advantage is its ability to provide baseload power — it produces electricity at a constant, continuous level. Some other forms of generation — renewables, in particular — would need to be paired with storage or a baseload plant to meet demand on a constant basis.
A chart showing power plant generation capacities by fuel type in select countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Improvements in efficiency technologies, the declining cost of energy storage, the development of smart grids and the increased use of decentralized grids (especially in the developing world) will combine to minimize baseload requirements, leaving traditional nuclear power behind. While new technology, such as small, modular reactors, could play a role in making nuclear energy more competitive, the industry likely will be forced to play catch-up to some degree.

And though nuclear power's contribution to regional electrical grids is expected to rise over the next 20 years, its declining economic competitiveness means there is a narrow window for countries to exploit nuclear power's role in diversifying energy grids to support the development of domestic nuclear programs that may have a more nefarious dual use.

Renewables' Gain Could Mean Nuclear's Loss

As in much of the rest of the world, renewable energy in the Middle East and North Africa is becoming more affordable. In fact, some of the lowest solar energy costs in the world are in the Middle East. Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have ambitious solar power programs and are seeking to develop the industry domestically. Morocco, with cooperation from some Saudi companies, is also pursuing solar. Wind power also remains cheap for the region as a whole. Nuclear power programs, or at the very least the construction of nuclear power plants, are another way that many nations in the region are using to move their electricity production away from oil. Nuclear power projects are at various stages of development throughout the region, including in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The United Arab Emirates is the furthest along; though delays have plagued its construction, the country's first nuclear power plant is moving toward a start-up date in late 2019 or early 2020.

A chart comparing the cost to generate electricity by different energy options.

Resource-rich Saudi Arabia is also taking steps toward building out its own nuclear program. Many energy experts have identified it as the country in the region to watch with regard to nuclear development. As part of its sweeping reform program, Riyadh is experimenting with changing its energy mix, which overwhelmingly relies on burning natural gas and oil to generate electricity. Saudi Arabia is worried about its relationship with the United States as its oil influence declines. At the same time, the United States wants to keep a lever of influence over Riyadh, and nuclear aid is one way to do this. However, concerns over security motives are unlikely to abate, and once the nuclear-friendly administration of U.S. President Donald Trump leaves office, the nuclear power lever may not remain as attractive. As the economic argument for nuclear development loses its punch over the next 10 to 20 years, ultimately the breadth of the Saudi program will be a key indicator of U.S. willingness to accept the justification of peaceful programs.

Economic Viability

At present, the nonproliferation treaty, which promotes the peaceful use of nuclear technology, appears to be weakening. With China and Russia willing to export nuclear technology and perhaps aid in the development of nuclear programs, and with the current White House supportive of nuclear development, countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are seizing the moment to build their own programs. But as the viability of renewables and accompanying storage rises, nuclear's economic competitiveness is poised to decline. As the economic case for civil nuclear programs weakens, they will become politically more difficult to justify for purely peaceful purposes, especially if there are plans to privatize the grid.

Inherent security threats and proliferation risks will prompt close scrutiny of nuclear programs in the Middle East and North Africa. Countries that want to develop their own programs face a closing window of opportunity to do so, with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia best positioned to take advantage of the fading moment. While Egypt, Jordan and other countries may choose to pursue nuclear power on select occasions, they likely would do so by seeking help from Russia, China, the United States, Japan or South Korea, but any attempts to develop their own programs will face limits. As nuclear power's economic viability decreases, so will the effectiveness of a country's argument that it be allowed to pursue a nuclear program without the threat of international repercussions. And those repercussions likely will fall along already established lines of the great power competition. Looking beyond the next decade, the United States will be more likely to use the economic argument to push against the development of new nuclear programs, while China and Russia will fall back on highlighting the national prestige that nuclear programs can bestow on a country.

Regardless of the economics, nuclear power as status symbol will retain its allure.

[DougMacG]

If the developed world was serious about CO2 emissions, they would make greater use of nuclear power.  Where non-proliferation is the concern and in third world countries, a foreign contractor could construct and operate the plant.

"Nuclear power's advantage is its ability to provide baseload power — it produces electricity at a constant, continuous level."

And solar and wind are not; they are useful only as a supplement above baseload when there is sun or wind.

You can't economically run a factory or an air conditioner or a refrigerator off of battery stored or unreliable power.

If solar and wind are cheaper or no more expensive (a lie), why do electric rates keep going up with their implementation?

[Crafty_Dog]

By George Friedman
The US Threatens Russia Over Missiles
Washington claims Moscow violated an arms control treaty.


The United States has threatened to pre-emptively strike Russian missiles aimed at Europe. Its stated justification is that the missiles in question are medium range and thus in violation of a 1987 anti-missile treaty. They were initially singled out in the treaty because they could be rapidly prepared for launch and arrive on target with minimal or no warning time. That meant that it could knock out European retaliatory capability, undermining the deterrent effect of Europe-based systems.
Washington’s ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, said the U.S. remained committed to finding a diplomatic solution but was prepared to consider a military strike if Russian development of the medium-range system continued. She made it clear that the onus of diplomacy would fall on Washington’s European allies. Presumably, this means Germany, which has a somewhat functional relationship with Russia. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said he would address the issue with his NATO counterparts tomorrow.

The U.S. has expressed concern about these missiles before, but this is the first time it has threatened to destroy them. It’s unclear what a pre-emptive strike would involve, but it’s safe to assume Russia would consider it an act of provocation and could escalate conflict accordingly.

Our initial reaction is that it is a test of NATO. Most of the U.S. comments appear to be directed not at Russia but at its European allies, many of which, Washington believes, have been overly permissive about Russian missiles. If NATO is content to allow what the U.S. claims are violations of a Russian treaty commitment, then it says a lot about NATO. The U.S. has made military action contingent on the failure of the diplomatic route. And here, the U.S. expects the Europeans to take the lead. In a sense, the U.S. is trying to force Europe to take this seriously. And it’s reminding its allies that it won’t shrink from unilateral action, however unlikely the prospect may be.
Russia’s intentions are difficult to parse. The threat posed by these missiles does change the balance of power in Europe somewhat. Russia seemed to think that apart from the expected rhetoric from the U.S., and absent anachronized notions of nuclear deterrence, nothing would happen. From the American point of view, a treaty violation is significant. But the incident raises perhaps an even more important question: If the Russians see the nuclear balance as archaic and threats to Europe as outmoded, then why is it deploying this missile? The development of the missile likely indicates that the Russians do not see this as archaic. For the U.S., threatening to strike the Russian sites is meant to galvanize the Europeans and drive home the fact that in geopolitics, nothing is archaic.

[Cruces]

Back in the low energy prior administration, referring to missile defenses in Europe a Russian commander said: "A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens," and "The deployment of new strike weapons in Russia's south and northwest – including of Iskander systems in Kaliningrad – is one of our possible options for destroying the system's European infrastructure,"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9243954/Russia-threatens-Nato-with-military-strikes-over-missile-defence-system.html

Tit for tat.

[Crafty_Dog]

What Happened

In a speech on Oct. 2 in Brussels, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison demanded that Russia return to complying with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty or else the United States would be forced to develop its own non-INF-compliant weapons to match Russian capabilities. In response, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that "It seems that people who make such statements do not realize the level of their responsibility and the danger of aggressive rhetoric."
Some Background on the INF

The INF Treaty is a key arms control pact between the United States and Russia that halted a destabilizing buildup of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe during the 1980s. The pact served as a cornerstone in efforts to end the Cold War. Recently, however, the United States has accused Russia of developing, testing and deploying a type of cruise missile that violates the limits set by the INF, and Moscow in turn has accused Washington of deploying drones and missile launchers that violate the terms of the treaty.

Over the past year, the United States has tried various tactics to get Russia to comply with the treaty. Washington has sanctioned Russian officials and tried to pressure Moscow by deploying tactical nuclear weapons aboard its submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The U.S. Congress has also passed legislation that would pave the way for the development of a missile that, if fielded, would violate the INF treaty. None of these measures appear to have worked yet; the United States and its NATO allies insist that the Russians are still in violation of the treaty.
Why It Matters

Hutchinson's statements show that the White House is clearly determined to follow Congress' lead in considering the deployment of U.S. missiles that violate the INF. The first open INF violations from both the United States and Russia will likely lead to many more violations that could kill the already fragile treaty. The demise of the INF would further catalyze a budding and potentially highly destabilizing arms race between the United States and peer competitors Russia and China. It would also be deeply alarming to Washington's European allies, who would once again sit between Russian and U.S. intermediate range nuclear missile arsenals, just as they did during the Cold War.

An additional concern is that an ugly fight over the status of the INF could spill over into negotiations for the renewal of the other big global nuclear arms control treaty: the New START treaty, which limits the number of U.S. and Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons and launchers. Unlike the INF, New START is nominally on much surer ground, as Russia and the United States both already have so many strategic nuclear weapons that there are few major incentives to violate it. However, mistrust from the demise of the INF could potentially erode New START anyway. This outcome, although unlikely for now, would lead to a far more serious arms race than is currently taking place.

[G M]

What Happened

In a speech on Oct. 2 in Brussels, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison demanded that Russia return to complying with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty or else the United States would be forced to develop its own non-INF-compliant weapons to match Russian capabilities. In response, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that "It seems that people who make such statements do not realize the level of their responsibility and the danger of aggressive rhetoric."
Some Background on the INF

The INF Treaty is a key arms control pact between the United States and Russia that halted a destabilizing buildup of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe during the 1980s. The pact served as a cornerstone in efforts to end the Cold War. Recently, however, the United States has accused Russia of developing, testing and deploying a type of cruise missile that violates the limits set by the INF, and Moscow in turn has accused Washington of deploying drones and missile launchers that violate the terms of the treaty.

Over the past year, the United States has tried various tactics to get Russia to comply with the treaty. Washington has sanctioned Russian officials and tried to pressure Moscow by deploying tactical nuclear weapons aboard its submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The U.S. Congress has also passed legislation that would pave the way for the development of a missile that, if fielded, would violate the INF treaty. None of these measures appear to have worked yet; the United States and its NATO allies insist that the Russians are still in violation of the treaty.
Why It Matters

Hutchinson's statements show that the White House is clearly determined to follow Congress' lead in considering the deployment of U.S. missiles that violate the INF. The first open INF violations from both the United States and Russia will likely lead to many more violations that could kill the already fragile treaty. The demise of the INF would further catalyze a budding and potentially highly destabilizing arms race between the United States and peer competitors Russia and China. It would also be deeply alarming to Washington's European allies, who would once again sit between Russian and U.S. intermediate range nuclear missile arsenals, just as they did during the Cold War.

An additional concern is that an ugly fight over the status of the INF could spill over into negotiations for the renewal of the other big global nuclear arms control treaty: the New START treaty, which limits the number of U.S. and Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons and launchers. Unlike the INF, New START is nominally on much surer ground, as Russia and the United States both already have so many strategic nuclear weapons that there are few major incentives to violate it. However, mistrust from the demise of the INF could potentially erode New START anyway. This outcome, although unlikely for now, would lead to a far more serious arms race than is currently taking place.

Strange, I was told that Trump and Putin were BFF’s! How can there be tension?

[Crafty_Dog]

Like hitting a bullet with a bullet (in space). The U.S. military conducted its second successful test in as many months of the new SM-3 Block IIA missile interceptor on Tuesday, shooting down an intermediate-range ballistic missile from an Aegis Ashore battery in Hawaii. Two previous tests in 2017 and 2018 failed, and the SM-3 Block IIA could substantially bolster U.S. missile shields in Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific. (The interceptor is being jointly developed with Japan.) But the implications of advancements in missile defense are difficult to gauge for two reasons: One, missile defense is expensive and extremely difficult, especially against longer-range missiles, and these tests are typically conducted in conditions optimized for success. Two, missile defense systems don’t always lead to stability, and they certainly don’t put an end to costly arms races. Rather, they’re just as likely to convince the countries they’re intended to contain (such as China, North Korea and Russia) to double down on developing missiles that are harder to shoot down. Moscow, for example, is citing U.S. missile defense installations on its periphery as justification for its continued testing of new missiles that violate the beleaguered Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

[Crafty_Dog]

What Happened: The Russian military presented its 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile — the weapon at the center of a dispute between Moscow and Washington — to a crowd of Russian and foreign officials on Jan. 23. With the show and tell, the Kremlin is aiming to demonstrate that the missile is not, as the United States has claimed, in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Russian officials said the 9M729 cruise missile, also known as the SSC-8, has a range of just 500 kilometers, which is within the restrictions imposed by the INF Treaty.
(VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP/Getty Images)

Why it Matters: Russia made the presentation of the 9M729 after the country's negotiators offered to provide the United States with more details as to why the missile did not infringe upon the INF Treaty, only for the United States to politely decline. Russia's case rests on a single number on an infographic that claims the range of the missile is less than 500 kilometers, but the United States has claimed that the missile traveled beyond this distance — which would violate the INF Treaty — during initial tests in 2010-2011.

The presentation appears to be part of Russia's broader information operations campaign geared toward the U.S. public and European states. The gambit also follows a joint session at the Russia-NATO contact group earlier this week, as well as conversations between delegates from Moscow and European leaders, to convince everyone that the Russian military are not, in fact, breaking INF rules.

The 9M729, produced by Russian arms manufacturer NPO Novator, has been central to Washington's argument that Russia is not playing by the rules of the INF Treaty. If Russia doesn't meet a February deadline to comply with U.S. demands, the United States will pull out of the agreement.
(VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP/Getty Images)

Background/Context: As a result of alleged Russian violations of the INF Treaty, the United States has threatened to pull out of the pact unless Moscow fully adheres to the agreement by a Washington-imposed deadline in February. With negotiations so far proving to be unsuccessful, it appears that Washington will finally abandon the pact come next month.