Another entry from Michael Krepon’s shoebox, this one from Henry Kissinger — in his days as an academic — on the right mix of offensive and defensive strategic forces: The tensions between strategic offenses and defenses has been a constant thread in the history and arms control negotiations. In the late 1950s crude strategic missile …
DPRK: Why did the 2006 launch fail?
by | 2009-05-15 | 3 Comments
click on the image for a larger version The reconstructed flight path angle and the fitted pitch program are shown as a function of time after launch. The flight path angle is found using the fitted trajectory to provide a smooth curve. The start and stop of the fitted trajectory are marked with a square …
2009/2010 College Debate Topic
by | 2009-05-14 | 10 Comments
The 2009/2010 College Debate Topic is about nuclear weapons. The United States should decrease its reliance on nuclear weapons. I was asked for reading suggestions. Mine are: (1) John Steinbruner, Managing Deterrent Operations, Chapter 2 of Principles of Global Security (Brookings, 2000), and (2) Ivo Daalder and Jan Lodal, The Logic of Zero: Toward a …
Chilton Repeats the Vacuum Tube Myth
by | 2009-05-14 | 7 Comments
Global Security Newswire’s Elaine Grossman asked STRATCOM Command General Kevin Chilton about the Bulletin article in which Kingston Reif and I called him out for his misleading claim that the RRW program is needed to remove vacuum tubes from the US nuclear stockpile. (It isn’t.) Rather than correcting the record, he doubled down on the …
