Writing on ACW 2004–2026 · 2,079 posts
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Is anybody else noticing the buzz around conventionally-armed ICBMs? Lance Lord told a National Defense University Foundation Congressional breakfast seminar that he was exploring “future uses” for ICBMs and called for “changing the professional mind-set.” The conventionally-armed ICBM debate started…
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Newsweek follows up on its October 2004 report that Tony Blair personally requested that John Bolton be removed from negotiations with Libya.
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The Lost Angeles Times reports some old news—that a shipment of components for advanced centrifuges, bound for Libya, may have been diverted to an unknown country. Speculation continues about the identity of AQ Khan’s “fourth customer.”
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NASA’s DART satellite may have bumped into the MUBLCOM satellite during a proximity operation.
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In May 2004, I blogged that the Air Force “exercised an option order for a Minotaur space launch vehicle … to launch a classified payload in 2005.” Given that the Minotaur’s other payloads include XSS-11 and NFIRE, I was pretty…
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North Korea has shut down its 5 MWe reactor at Yongbyon, probably to unload spent fuel rods that will be reprocessed to recover plutonium for North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Senior North Korean officials recently informed Selig Harrison of the…
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My article about the Chinese nuclear force—“The Ambiguous Arsenal”—is available in the May/June 2005 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The Table of Contents accurately summarizes the larger article: Analysts tend to grossly exaggerate China’s nuclear arsenal, thanks to…
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The IAEA Board of Governors will hold a closed-door meeting on 27 April 2005 to decide whether Mohamed ElBaradei will recieve a third term as IAEA Director General. ElBaradei’s supporters are pushing for a meeting before Bob Joseph can be confirmed as John Bolton’s successor, but most observers expect the 27 April meeting will simply defer a decision on ElBaradeis future until June.
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Steve Rademaker, at the Arms Control Association, whined that arms control advocates treat the Bush Administration unfairly when it comes to the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP): And particularly with regard to the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, I have to…
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Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could make Caligula (right) blush. Jason Sherman of Inside Defense reports that Undersecretary of Defense Michael Wynne has signed the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the Defense Science Board Nuclear Capabilities Task Force. I notice…
