Arms Control Wonk

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Common Aero Vehicle Restrictions

In my August 6 post regarding the award of a contract to develop a hypersonic technology vehicle under DARPA’s FALCON/Common Aero Vehicle program, I neglected to mention the restrictions on the Common Aero Vehicle program that emerged from conference. The…

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CD Update

Despite the recent announcement that the United States supports a fissile material cut-off treaty, the United States is still blocking adoption of a work program that would allow negotiations to begin. The new President of the Conference on Disarmament in…

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NFIRE Status Update

Looks like MDA is just as confused by the brackets around the $68.0 M for NFIRE as anybody else. Here’s what I can figure out: MDA will remove the Kill Vehicle (KV) from NFIRE satellite, leaving just the Tracking Sensor…

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Out-wonked/with a little help from my friends

Josh Marshall points out a discrepancy in a recent speech by John Bolton that adds to the list of “repeated, public mistatements, exaggerations and distortions of intelligence about Iran” offered by the Bush Administration: … Bolton said that the Iranians…

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The Politics of Space Weapons

Sumitra Rajagopalan, a freelance writer and Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at the University of Montreal, has an opinion piece in the Toronto Star entitled, “The politics of space weapons.” I get a shout out, though I am quoted as…

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Secretary Rumsfeld meet Dr. Freud

While criticizing missile defense opponents, Secretary Rumsfeld invoked a favorite platitude–“weakness is provocative”–and, apparently inadvertantly, implied the President’s policy in Iraq has weakened the country and encouraged terrorist attacks: “History has taught us that weakness is provocative,” Rumsfeld said. “To…

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Porter Goss, Crazy Man

Michael Levi recently pointed out a disturbing episode when Porter Goss’ partisanship interfered with his professional judgment: The congressman’s more disturbing remarks in that half-hour June call with the press addressed North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Goss said, “Clearly not…

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Chinese parasitic micro satellite 2

A Military Intelligence Failure? The Case of the Parasite Satellite (Gregory Kulacki and David Wright, Union of Concerned Scientists, 16 August 2004) is now on-line. Take a moment to read it, then imagine the humiliation for the person who wrote…

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Chinese parasitic micro satellite

The Washington Post (Bradley Graham, “Some Question Report On Chinese Space Arms,” August 14, 2004, A14) details a bit of research by my friends Gregory Kulacki and David Wright at the Union of Concerned Scientists that should be highly embarassing…