Years · 2008

December 2008

24 posts

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Urs Walks

Urs Tinner, alleged Khan middleman, is free — according to AP: A Swiss man suspected of involvement in the world’s biggest nuclear smuggling ring has been released from prison after more than four years of investigative detention, his family said…

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Why do we test things?

I remember having a conversation with a missile engineer some time ago about the North Korean Nodong missile; he said “no one in their right mind would field a missile that has only been successfully tested once!” At the time,…

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More Pabian on Iran, Syria

Frank Pabian sends along a response to the comments on his presentation. Regarding the comments posted so far regarding my Youtube briefing, first, I would first like to thank all the commenters for their questions and comments on the various…

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Space—Not So Big or Empty After All

Jeffrey writes in his recent post about BX-1 being a Rorschach test and he appears to be right on so many levels. I thought I’d riff off of his excellent post and focus in on one aspect that has been…

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BX-1 Panic

You can see an animation of the BX-1 companion satellite at 1:57 into the clip. Anybody remember that really boring paper I wrote, in 2004, calling for “rules of the road” regarding autonomous proximity operations? (That’s when satellites maneuver around…

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Britain's Independent Deterrent

Sorry for the light blogging of late. I got a chuckle out of this story: US firms now control UK’s nuclear weapons plant LONDON (AP) — Britain’s government said Friday that a state-owned nuclear group has sold its stake in…

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SBIRS—Two Heads are Better than One

click on the image for a larger version The currently active US early warning satellites, SBIRS and DSP: each satellite is removed one at a time to highlight its individual coverage. Orbits have been determined by the amateur satellite observer…

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Posture Commission Interim Report

The Strategic Posture Commission has released its interim report. For what it is worth, I think Hans K has it backward. The report doesn’t “reinstate Russia at the center of U.S. nuclear thinking” as he suggets, so much as it…

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SBIRS HEO 2 Checkout Picture

The image on the left is a simulation of the Delta II powered trajectory in GoogleEarth, the red portion is the solid rocket boosters; the image on the right is the actual SBIRS photo with the outline of Florida highlighted.…