Avatar photoForden and Thomson in JIR

Take a look at the article in Jane’s Intelligence Review (subscription only) by Geoff Forden and John Thomsen expanding on a proposal to develop a multinational consortium to operate a five million SWU-kg a year enrichment facility at Natanz. I wondered about the self-destruct mechanism, the longer article has an explanation. As I suspected, the …

Avatar photoOne *billion* dollars

Maybe that’s more impressive if you say it in Austin Powers’ voice. I realize that Capitol Hill’s attitude toward money is a billion here, a billion there – you add it up in order to start getting real money. But in certain cases, $1 billion can actually mean something. In the FY 2007 budget request, …

Avatar photoIran and the Shahab 3

A couple of weeks ago, Dafna Linzer had a long, detailed story (and online chat) on intelligence found by German intelligence on a laptop computer stolen by an Iranian citizen in 2004. I am writing a four-part series looking at the key pieces of information: a schematic of a shaft that might be for a …

Avatar photoMDA changes…not in the slightest

I know that a little bureaucrat-speak is endemic to most of the Pentagon (and a good chunk of Washington), but the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) must be one of the most fluent organizations when it comes to talking circles around its responsibilities. In MDA’s FY 2007 budget estimates overview, it proclaims that there is a …