Bill Broad has an article in the New York Times about the Reliable Replacement Warhead program: Worried that the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal is increasingly fragile, American scientists have begun designing a new generation of nuclear arms meant to be sturdier and more reliable and to have longer lives, federal officials and private experts say. …
RNEP Shuffle
by | 2005-02-06 | No Comments
The Defense Department will strongly support Administration requests for nuclear weapons initiatives like the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), reports Ian Hoffman in the Oakland Tribune (via John Fleck): [A]s the administration revives [new nuclear-weapons initiatives] Monday in the president’s 2006 budget request, civilian leaders at the Pentagon are expected to come out swinging, especially …
STRATCOM to lead DOD WMD efforts
by | 2005-02-05 | No Comments
Secretary Rumsfeld has signed a memorandum designating the Commander, US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) as the “lead combatant commander for integrating and synchronizing DOD in combatting WMD.” Choosing STRATCOM reflects a certain emphasis on preventive military action to combat the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons—counterproliferation. STRATCOM’s “first priority is to assess, advocate for the …
Hobson at ACA
by | 2005-02-05 | 1 Comment
The Arms Control Association posted the prepared remarks by Representative David Hobson (right) from lunch on Friday. Dave Ruppe summarizes of what he called a “scathing speech” in Global Security Newswire. One thing I would add to Dave’s excellent coverage—and that isn’t in Hobson’s prepared remarks—were a couple of references Hobson made to starting a …
