I am about halfway through Richard Rhodes’ new book, Arsenals of Folly. I am enjoying it tremendously. My favorite moment, though, comes in the discussion of overkill in US nuclear strategy: Robert McNamara, for example, visited the Omaha offices of the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff for a briefing about the U.S. nuclear target list …
FIA Autopsy
by | 2007-11-23 | 3 Comments
Phillip Taubman recently had a masterful account of the death of the Future Imagery Architecture in the New York Times. Given the myriad myriad engineering and managerial disasters, the demise of FIA was probably overdetermined. If I had to pick just one cause, though, I suppose I would say the requirements were unrealistic given the …
A Thanksgiving Follow-Up
by | 2007-11-23 | 4 Comments
By the way, this whole Kitty Hawk visit fiasco just breaks my heart. Holding aside the bureaucratic bungling that led China to approve, then cancel, and then — too late — finally permit the Kitty Hawk to visit Hong Kong and the importance to international security of good relations between the United States and China, …
Preserving Reactor B at Hanford
by | 2007-11-22 | 1 Comment
As many of you know, I am a sucker for nuclear tourism. This summer, while at Los Alamos, I got a chance to see the“High Bay” building (above) — where the “Fat Man” implosion device was assembled. Los Alamos National Laboratory was able to restore the building with funds from the Department of Energy, National …
