Build New or Buy Old?
Up until about a year ago, potential home owners in the US had to ask themselves “Do I want to buy new or go with an existing home?” (Now, of course, there aren’t any potential home buyers.) Missile proliferators have…
Arms Control Wonk
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WaPo on Nuclear Tourism
On Sunday, WaPo ran an article about visiting Oscar Zero, a missile silo in North Dakota. (See the State Historical Society of North Dakota website and an article in the Bismarck Tribune.) You can’t actually visit it yet. And the…
Norks May Have Shipped Syria U Fuel
I haven’t been blogging much recently but I hope to make up for that today with some remarkable material on Syria that Jeffrey and I were given in the last 24 hours. A source summarized for us some of the…
Heritage's Missile Defense Infomercial
A trailer for the Heritage Foundation’s forthcoming video on “the very real threat that hostile nations and rogue dictators now pose to every one of us” is available. Heritage bills the video, scheduled to come out in February 2009, as…
Sejil Reconsidered
Many people have written in objecting to my theory that the Sejil uses liquid propellant steering engines for thrust vector control and, I have to admit, that they have had some very good arguments. Perhaps the most persuasive arguments have…
Estimative Language, Then and Now
Of the many reasons I have a soft spot for the intelligence community, one is this: imagine how hard it is to produce a document that is both precise and readable. That’s the same challenge I face on the blog,…
Clustering Engines, Adding Up the Weights
In an unfortunately title article in Jane’s Intelligence Review (“Safir When Ready: Iran sets its sights on long-range capability”; sorry, its subscription only) I discussed why I interpreted pictures of the test-stand version of a Safir second stage as indicating…
Chinese-English Nuclear Security Glossary
The National Academies is having a release party (ok, release event) for the English-Chinese, Chinese-English Nuclear Security Glossary. I saw Ben Rusek and Wu Jun give a joint talk on the subject in Qingdao. Be there or B 2 Sorry,…
Moving ‘em Out to Move Them Up
Yesterday, I discussed the possibility that Iran was learning techniques that might help them utilize higher energy fuels such as UDMH and nitric acid. However, the evidence for such use is rather minimal. The case we examined yesterday was not…
IAEA Reports on Iran, Syria
Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008) and 1835 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, GOV/2008/59 (November 19, 2008). Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the…