456 posts
David Ruppe at Global Security Newswire got ahold of the Senate Approprations report. The NFIRE Kill Vehicle is ba-aaaaack: The Ballistic Missile Defense System [BMDS] Interceptor program element consists of the NFIRE program and the KEI program. Because these programs…
“Remember: The Soviets are the competition. Los Alamos is the enemy.” Statement Attributed to a Weapons Designer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Stephen Schwartz on the RRW program Congress imagined the Reliable Replacement Warhead program as an effort to “improve…
Regular readers know that Iran’s uranium conversion facility (UCF) at Esfahan (Isfahan) stinks—a fact Paul first reported in the October 2004 edition of Arms Control Today and which forms the basis for IC judgements about Iran’s proximity to a nuclear…
Middle East News Line (via GSN) cites Russian officials describing technical difficulties with Bushehr arising from changes to design specifications: Russia’s effort to complete Iran’s first nuclear plant continues to be hampered by technical difficulties. Russian officials said that despite…
The Six Party Joint Statement calls on North Korea to “abandon”—not “dismantle”—it’s nuclear pograms. A few days ago, I observed that Glenn Kessler and Edward Cody missed this distinction in an otherwise outstanding article. Still, I felt like I was…
In a pair of recent posts (12 JUN 2005 and 20 JUL 2005), I speculated the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) would scale back testing, largely to save itself embarrassment. Image of an intercept during from IFT-7. You won’t be seeing…
The IAEA Board of Governors has voted in favor of a resolution that finds Iran’s noncompliance with its NPT obligations to be “within the competence of the Security Council,” but does not appear to refer the issue the Security Council…
Read “The Next Killer Flu” by National Geographic’s Tim Appenzeller with photographs by Lynn Johnson. Some analysts claiming to be “tough” on security are just “stupid” on security. One class of wonks define “security” narrowly, restricting threats to the deliberate…
STP-R1 is a DARPA satellite called Streak. Space.com has the details. Air Force launch officials say it will take about nine minutes for the Minotaur to haul the STP-R1 mission to the desired orbit tonight. The satellite, dubbed Streak by…
You really have to read the foreign press if you want to understand the diplomacy surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. Case in point: What was impact of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech to the UN? The US press, led Carol Giacomo…
