As regular readers know, there’s something of a dispute in the wonk world over the nature and origins of the North Korean missile program. Basically, it comes down to two issues: First, did a team of Russian scientists and engineers from the Makeyev design bureau in Miass help the North Koreans duplicate the SS-N-6 SLBM, …
Morality and the Bomb
by | 2009-07-31 | 26 Comments
The 1980s were a time of recreational shopping, “morning in America,” and a rare, public debate in the United States over the morality of nuclear deterrence. A high-octane confluence of events contributed to this intense moral debate — the first since the use of nuclear weapons to end World War II. The Reagan administration embraced …
The Kyl Amendment
by | 2009-07-30 | 13 Comments
Lots of debate in the blogosphere among the kids about the Kyl Admendment and modernization. Allow me to recap. Senator Kyl proposed an amendment that would have prohibited any reductions under START Follow-on until the Administration did a bunch of stuff he liked. A much-watered down amendment passed, along with some other provisions including reauthorization …
Monitoring or Intelligence Gathering?
by | 2009-07-27 | 6 Comments
The infrasound signals from North Korea’s 4 July 2006 missile launch. Infrasound has become an accepted CTBT monitoring technique in recent years with 60 infrasound stations world-wide as part of the CTBTO network. They also, however, detect a bunch of other atmospheric phenomena, as Bharath Gopalaswamy has illustrated. I am particularly interested in using these …
