UK Trident Yield
Back in January 2008, Michael Bilton in the Sunday Times had a very interesting article on the UK Trident force that I somehow missed. Sort of a UK-version of Doug Waller’s excellent, Big Red. The most intriguing part, to me,…
2009
377 posts
Collision at Sea
A few days ago, CNN reported that a Chinese submarine had collided with the towed sonar array of a USN destroyer. The AP now reports confirmation of the incident by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The American side has yet to…
Pinkston on NORK Goodies
The International Crisis Group, to my mind, is a very uneven operation. It also annoys me that they never sign their reports. But Dan Pinkston, out in Seoul, has a trio of very good reports on North Korea’s Chemical and…
Nuclear Sesame Street
I’ve been reading “Caging the Dragon” on the flight to London and it reminded me of a little song from Sesame Street that goes: One of these things is not like the others One of these things is just not…
K. Sundarji and India's Bomb
Very few military men figure prominently in the story of India’s Bomb. This is partly due to civilians who jealously guard their prerogative to make national security policy, and partly due to New Delhi’s practice of relying on seniority to…
Sagan on No First Use
Scott Sagan argues very convincingly in the pages of Survival that the United States should adopt a declaratory policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons (Scott D. Sagan, “The Case for No First Use,” Survival 51:3, June–July 2009, pp.…
Practicalities of Interdicting WMD—Part 3
Click on the image for a larger version In a typical one hour period, five US low earth orbit satellites pass over the Port of Rajin Yesterday, I pointed out that the only way for the West to tell the…
Practicalities of Interdicting WMD—Part 2
The Ports of North Korea Yesterday, we started to get some ballpark numbers relevant to interdicting WMD shipments. Today, we are going to continue to try to get a feel for the problem of determining whether or not there is…
Did North Korea Test a Nuke?
I’d bet on it. But a recent statement by the ODNI is raising all sorts of eyebrows: The U.S. Intelligence Community assesses that North Korea probably conducted an underground nuclear explosion in the vicinity of P’unggye on May 25, 2009.…
DPRK: Practicalities of Interdicting WMD
UNSC Resolution 1874: 12. Calls upon all Member States to inspect vessels, with the consent of the flag State, on the high seas, if they have information that provides reasonable grounds to believe that the cargo of such vessels contains…