Secretary of State Clinton’s remarks from Morocco yesterday seemed to represent a harder line on the LEU–TRR deal than the United States had taken previously: “Acceptance fully of this proposal which we have put forth and which we are unified…
Lots of good stuff coming in the next couple of days, so stay tuned. I noticed that that GoogleEarth now has a June 2008 image of Mianyang, home to China’s weapons design and fabrication facilities, and which I visited in…
click on the image for a larger version There has probably never been a discussion on ACW that has aroused as much animated technical discussion as the thrust vector control (TVC) for Sejil. This is almost entirely due to the…
Update | 12:42 November 3, 2009 As if on cue, Michael Wines in the New York Times ledes Qian’s obituary with the grossly inaccurate statement that Qian “single-handedly led China’s space and military rocketry efforts.” No, he didn’t. Not single-handedly,…
From the 2010 wall calendar, “Scenic Missile Tests of Iran.” (Just kidding.) Confusion surrounds the names used for ballistic missiles in Iran, where designators seem to come and go unpredictably. But a just smidgen of linguistic information may clarify the…
Much has been said about the various nosecones Iran uses on its missiles. In particular, the tri-conic or baby bottle nose cone of the Kavoshgar and Ghadr is one of the primary ways of distinguishing the various Shahab-3 variants. That’s…
It can be surprising just how strongly people tend to feel about nuclear weapons declaratory policy. The entire idea of declaratory policy, after all, comes down to words. It controls no instruments, makes no irrevocable commitments, and lacks the binding…
Adam Stulberg and Bill Potter, with the support of Carl Robichaud at the Carnegie Corporation of New York — three of my favorite people — have created something called the Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation or POSSE. POSSE will bring…
In late 1983, well before Mikhail Gorbachev’s elevation as General Secretary of the Communist Party, the Reagan administration switched gears in dealing with the Soviet Union, moving from a policy of confrontation to the alleviation of the Politburo’s deep anxieties.…
One of the unique features of the AlKibar (Dair Alzour) probable-reactor site is that it is located near a (somewhat offbeat) tourist attraction. I even joked that a visit “seems like a good use of my grant money.” I didn’t…
