DF-31 Launch Site at Nanyang
I often observe that I am a lousy imagery analyst. Sean O’Connor, it seems to me, is a very, very good one. After an earlier post on my blog, he’s gone out and, in a very nice piece of research,…
March 2008
23 posts
DEPSECDEF Deeply Confused
I was reading some recent RRW testimony, when I noticed that Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England was not aware that nuclear weapons programs were largely funded out of the Department of Energy budget. I often mistake esoteric facts for…
MNAs in Vienna
I’ve been away for the last week or so—hence the absence of any posting from me. Ironically, a long weekend in Paris precluded me from blogging about Sarkozy’s remarks on disarmament—but more about that (the background specifically) tomorrow or Monday.…
Iran's Shrinking CW Program
I really love WMD Insights. I’ve been meaning to link to a recent article by Markus Binder tracking how the IC has toned down its assessment of Iran’s CW capabilities: In the Sec. 721 report covering the first half of…
Nothing Like This Can Happen
Er, again. Another nuclear weapons related incident: The U.S. military has regained control of four non-nuclear nose cone assemblies for a Minuteman missile mistakenly sent to Taiwan in 2006, Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne said during a news conference…
French Nuclear Reductions
Click on the image for the AFP story, which has the best images, including Sarko talking and, my favorite, Sarko climbing down into a hatch. Launching Le Terrible, France’s new SSBN, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced reductions in France’s arsenal.…
Strategic Posture Commission Announced
And the nominees are … The following individuals have been nominated to the Commission by the House Armed Services Committee: • William Perry, Commission Chairman, former Secretary of Defense; • John Foster, Director Emeritus of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; •…
Disarmament and Deterrence
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month or so on planes to disarmament conferences and planes to non-proliferation conferences, and on one of those journeys (to Geneva, in fact!) I (re)read something that made a very deep…
Bullsh*t Gag Order on India
Want to know one reason that I hate the US-India nuclear deal? The House Committee on Foreign Affairs asked 40 questions about the US-India Nuclear Deal, to which the State Department provided unclassified answers that it refuses to release to…
Jane's on Iranian Weaponization
A potentially interesting development in the whole Iran thing… The next issue of Jane’s International Defence Review (available from here for subscribers) contains an article by Mark Harrington in which he says: Documents shown exclusively to Jane’s indicate that Iran…