Is there any bet­ter indi­ca­tion that we’ve got to change the Cold War nuclear alert pro­gram we’ve still got in place than this awe­some story:

BISMARCK, N.D. — The Air Force dis­charged three North Dakota bal­lis­tic mis­sile crew mem­bers who fell asleep while hold­ing clas­si­fied launch code devices, the mil­i­tary announced Tuesday. Officials said the codes were out­dated and remained secure at all times.

The crew mem­bers were dis­charged last Thursday under orders from Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, said spokes­woman Laurie Arellano. They had been barred from work­ing around nuclear weapons and clas­si­fied mate­r­ial since the July 12, 2008 inci­dent, she said. 

Can some­one please tell me why we have guys sit­ting in a tube 24 hours per day ready for a bolt out of the blue nuclear attack from the Soviet Union … er, Russia? I can imag­ine the men­tal­ity of a nuke tube offi­cer these days who must be ask­ing him or her­self what the heck is all this redun­dant process and alert mumbo jumbo for…

Not that I’m into troops falling asleep on duty. That’s a major no-​​no and it seems from the story it was in a crew rest area. But these secret codes and keys and old-​​school 1980s processes have to be changed or more inci­dents like this are going to hap­pen and increas­ingly degrade the morale of an impor­tant seg­ment of our Air Force.

– Christian

The direc­tor of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Patrick OReilly, said dur­ing an oth­er­wise pretty dull hear­ing before the House Armed Services strate­gic forces sub­com­mit­tee that the threat to the United States has increased sub­stan­tially with the recent launch by Iran of a small satel­lite and the launch last week of a mid-​​range bal­lis­tic missile.

That caught the ears of the pro­fes­sional con­gres­sional staffers at the Thursday hear­ing, who won­dered what the impli­ca­tions might be, since they were not explored at the hearing.

Some pos­si­ble answers came from the ven­er­a­ble RAND Corporation. It came out with a report about Iran and its rela­tions with the US over the next decade. One of the key rec­om­men­da­tions of the May 19 report, Dangerous But Not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East, is that the US should back off de-​​escalate in the reports lan­guage on a bilat­eral basis and com­bine that with mus­cu­lar mul­ti­lat­eral efforts tar­geted at Iranian behav­iors that are not accept­able to the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity, such as ter­ror­ism and its devel­op­ment of nuclear weapons. Key to this mul­ti­lat­eral approach would be sup­port from Russia and China, which the report con­cedes is questionable.

One of the most inter­est­ing pol­icy rec­om­men­da­tions con­cerns how the US should com­mu­ni­cate its pol­icy goals. We must issue unam­bigu­ous state­ments about US inter­ests and inten­tions in the region, par­tic­u­larly regard­ing Iraq, the authors say, The mes­sages must be sim­ple and eas­ily under­stood, and the United States must stick to them long enough for them to be taken seri­ously. Among those state­ments should be a pledge that the US will say it has no long term inter­est in occu­py­ing Iraq or estab­lish­ing a per­ma­nent mil­i­tary pres­ence in Iraq.

The 230-​​page report, was com­mis­sioned by the U.S. Air Force in order to accu­rately gauge the strate­gic chal­lenges from Iran over the next decade. If the threat from Iran really has increased sub­stan­tially, as the MDA direc­tor told the sub­com­mit­tee, quickly find­ing answers and imple­ment­ing alter­na­tives to the poli­cies that have failed to deter Iran from devel­op­ing ICBMs and pur­su­ing nuclear weapons for much of the last decade is imperative.

– Colin Clark

I read Kipling because I love the poetry of empire and war. So if the fusion of art and war worked through the medium of rhythm and rhyme, why not extend it to say — haunt­ingly beau­ti­ful pho­tos of the US strate­gic arse­nal? Enter Martin Miller’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, a Visual Perspective –

Although the term, WMD, has become a part of our daily lex­i­con, it remains very much an abstrac­tion for most of us. This series of images offers a ret­ro­spec­tive look at some of these weapons. Most of my sub­jects are drawn from the Cold War period dur­ing which there was a very real threat to the sur­vival of civ­i­liza­tion itself. The last sixty years has seen a fren­zied tango between strat­egy and tech­nol­ogy that has left us with the chill­ing array of dooms­day machines seen here.

The shot above is of the now-​​canceled “Midgetman” ICBM, one of the Reagan pro­cure­ments that never sur­vived the fall of the USSR. Check out the rest of Mr. Miller’s gor­geous (and chill­ing) col­lec­tion here.
–John Noonan

From the head­lines at Military​.com:

Russia will deploy mis­siles near NATO mem­ber Poland in response to U.S. mis­sile defense plans, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday in his first state of the nation speech.

Medvedev also sin­gled out the United States for crit­i­cism, cast­ing Russia’s war with Georgia in August and the global finan­cial tur­moil as con­se­quences of aggres­sive, self­ish U.S. poli­cies.

He said he hoped the next U.S. admin­is­tra­tion would act to improve rela­tions. In a sep­a­rate telegram, he con­grat­u­lated Barack Obama on his elec­tion vic­tory and said he was hop­ing for “con­struc­tive dia­logue” with the incom­ing U.S. pres­i­dent.

Medvedev also pro­posed increas­ing the Russian pres­i­den­tial term to six years from the cur­rent four, a major con­sti­tu­tional change that would fur­ther increase the power of the head of state and could deepen Western con­cern over democ­racy in Russia.

The pres­i­dent said the Iskander mis­siles will be deployed to Russia’s Kaliningrad region, which lies between Poland and the ex-​​Soviet repub­lic of Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, but did not say how many would be used. Equipment to elec­tron­i­cally ham­per the oper­a­tion of prospec­tive U.S. mis­sile defense facil­i­ties in Poland and the Czech Republic will be deployed, he said.

He did not say whether the short-​​range Iskander mis­siles would be fit­ted with nuclear war­heads and it was not clear exactly when the mis­siles would be deployed.

“Mechanisms must be cre­ated to block mis­taken, ego­is­ti­cal and some­times sim­ply dan­ger­ous deci­sions of cer­tain mem­bers of the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity,” he said shortly after start­ing the 85-​​minute speech, mak­ing it clear he was refer­ring to the United States.

The pres­i­dent said Georgia sparked the August war on its ter­ri­tory with what he called “bar­baric aggres­sion” against Russian-​​backed South Ossetia. The con­flict “was, among other things, the result of the arro­gant course of the American admin­is­tra­tion, which did not tol­er­ate crit­i­cism and pre­ferred uni­lat­eral deci­sions.“

Medvedev also painted Russia as a coun­try threat­ened by grow­ing Western mil­i­tary might.

– Christian

Chin up kids — Strategic Air Command’s back!
Eh, kind of:

The Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Management rec­om­mended the Air Force put all its nuclear mis­sions under Air Force Space Command and call the whole thing Air Force Strategic Command.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates orga­nized the task force which was headed by for­mer Defense Secretary James Schlesinger after axing the Air Forces top two lead­ers last June due to its nuclear prob­lems.
The rec­om­men­da­tions Schlesinger announced Friday at the Pentagon also would mean that Air Combat Command would lose its nuclear bomber mis­sion.
The task force rec­om­mended assign­ing a group of bombers to a num­bered Air Force that would fall under AFSTRAT and have a sole nuclear mission.

Solid. And just in time to meet the chal­lenges of a newly aggres­sive Russia!
The big changes, as I see them, call for (1) Air Force Space Command to morph into Air Force Strategic Command (2) New bil­lets and career oppor­tu­ni­ties for the long-​​neglected nuclear offi­cer (3) Shifting the entire bomber force into Strategic Command.
That’s the largest orga­ni­za­tional shake up since the much-​​lamented days of Merrill McPeak. The times, they are a-​​changing. Or –depend­ing on how far Putin plans to take Russia’s nuclear revi­tal­iza­tion– could be return­ing to the old sta­tus quo.

I thought this was an inter­est­ing story in today’s Washington Post. It speaks to the extreme skep­ti­cism early on with reports that the Syrians were build­ing an illicit nuke plant that the Israelis blew up a few months ago. 

I remem­ber attend­ing a round­table lunch a few days after the attack where nuclear “experts” cast seri­ous doubt on the con­tention that the Syrian facil­ity that was bombed actu­ally was used for nuke fuel pro­cess­ing or any­thing else weapons related. 

But the Washington Post story today speaks to the cam­ou­flag­ing capa­bil­i­ties gov­ern­ments are now employ­ing to con­ceal their inten­tions. It’s an inter­est­ing look at the lengths to which gov­ern­ments will and can con­ceal their secret efforts from over­head sur­veil­lance and also it shows some of the labo­ri­ous tech­niques they’ll employ to send out red herrings.

Experience With Syria Exemplifies Challenge That Detection Presents

Syria went to extra­or­di­nary lengths to con­ceal its unde­clared con­struc­tion of a plutonium-​​producing nuclear reac­tor from spies in the sky and on the ground in recent years, accord­ing to a draft report by inde­pen­dent nuclear experts briefed by Bush admin­is­tra­tion officials. 

The effec­tive­ness of the cam­ou­flage effort raises new doubts about the prospects for cer­tain detec­tion of future clan­des­tine nuclear weapons-​​related activ­i­ties, the Institute for Science and International Security con­cluded in its report on the Syrian facil­ity. “This case serves as a sober­ing reminder of the dif­fi­culty of iden­ti­fy­ing secret nuclear activ­i­ties,” the report said.

(more…)

From an alert DT reader…

Russian Sub Test Fires Ballistic Missile: Navy Spokesman

By AGENCE FRANCE-​​PRESSE, MOSCOW Dec 17, 2007

A Russian sub­ma­rine on December 17 suc­cess­fully test-​​fired a new bal­lis­tic mis­sile from the Barents Sea to the far east of the coun­try, a navy spokesman said.

The Sineva mis­sile was launched from the sub­merged sub­ma­rine “towards the Kura test ground in Kamchatka,” navy spokesman Igor Dygalo told AFP.

“The head sec­tion of the mis­sile reached the test ground on time,” he said.

Russian tele­vi­sion showed the mis­sile thrust­ing out of the sea at the start of its trajectory.

The Sineva, which has the NATO clas­si­fi­ca­tion Skiff SS-​​N-​​23 and a range of 8,900 kilo­me­ters (5,500 miles), was brought into ser­vice by Russias navy this July.

It is designed to carry four indi­vid­u­ally tar­geted war­heads, accord­ing to the Interfax news agency. 

Our reader comments:

I was ready to issue kudos when it occurred to me that SS-​​N-​​23 (R-​​29RM) is not a new missile.

The peo­ple at GlobalSecurity​.org state that: The R-​​29RM is a three-​​stage liquid-​​propellant mis­sile car­ry­ing four or ten MIRV. Compared to the R-​​29R the mis­sile has a larger launch weight (40.3 to 35.5 Tons) pro­vid­ing a heav­ier pay­load (2800 kg to 1650 kg) to a greater max­i­mum range (8300 to 8000 km). The R-​​29M incor­po­rates a num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant design changes rel­a­tive to the pre­de­ces­sor R-​​29R. Flight tested in 1983…deployed in 1986.

To some, it is con­sid­ered the best in the world in terms of energy-​​mass ratio and pro­vides bet­ter mod­ern­iza­tion poten­tial com­pared to the “really, really new” Bulava SLBM. Because it is not new, does not make it unsuc­cess­ful, just not a new suc­cess.

“Power to the People” is what I say…Thanks to reader BD for the gouge.

– Christian

The U.S. Air Force’s next-​​generation bomber will be used to launch nuclear pay­loads — a require­ment that will affect the design and cost of the pro­gram, says the service’s top civil­ian leader.

[Image from Air Force Association Magazine]

The extra cost of adding nuclear weapons deliv­ery to the aircraft’s mis­sions could also com­pli­cate efforts to gain finan­cial sup­port by Pentagon lead­er­ship and Congress as they deal with a bud­get dom­i­nated by cur­rent oper­a­tions in Afghanistan and Iraq. One defense ana­lyst sug­gests the nuclear require­ment can add as much as 50% to a program’s price because nuclear deliv­ery sys­tems require a high level of redun­dancy in com­mu­ni­ca­tions, com­mand and con­trol, and hard­en­ing against var­i­ous elec­tro­mag­netic pulses.

The next-​​generation bomber is expected to be fielded in 2018. To meet that dead­line, the Air Force plans to begin a com­pe­ti­tion for a final design in Fiscal 2009. Although the B-​​2 remains a highly stealthy air­craft, war plan­ners worry that the pro­lif­er­a­tion of advanced, inte­grated air defense sys­tems will limit its abil­ity to pen­e­trate into poten­tially trou­ble­some regions, such as China or Iran. The new sys­tem will incor­po­rate stealth tech­nolo­gies refined after design­ing the F-​​22 and F-​​35, mak­ing it the stealth­i­est air­craft ever fielded, says Maj. Gen. David Clary, vice chief of Air Combat Command.

Candidate tech­nolo­gies must be mature to be con­sid­ered for use on the air­craft, and — although require­ments are far from refined — senior Air Force lead­ers say they are plac­ing a high pri­or­ity on the system’s low-​​observable attributes.

Going nuclear also indi­cates that a pilot will be on board for at least the first vari­ant of the future sys­tem, USAF Secretary Michael Wynne acknowl­edges. Though the Air Force has had suc­cess adding a strike capa­bil­ity to its Predator unmanned aer­ial sys­tems, pol­icy mak­ers appear hes­i­tant to trust deliv­ery of weapons of mass destruc­tion to a pilot­less air­craft. Wynne made his com­ments dur­ing a Nov. 28 speech at a con­fer­ence here hosted by Credit Suisse and Aviation Week.

This squelches the hopes of unmanned vehi­cle advo­cates, who had expected the bomber to be remotely piloted at the out­set. But this doesn’t rule out an unmanned vari­ant of the bomber, accord­ing to Wynne.

He says the entire bomber fleet will likely include the hard­en­ing nec­es­sary for the nuclear mis­sion. A later vari­ant that would be remotely piloted could han­dle a sep­a­rate mis­sion. This option is attrac­tive to Air Force plan­ners because it offers the abil­ity to cycle through mul­ti­ple pilots at remote bases, extend­ing mis­sion endurance two– or threefold.

One of the mis­sions envi­sioned for the future bomber is to loi­ter with­out detec­tion behind enemy lines and pick off tar­gets or col­lect intel­li­gence as needed. This, how­ever, would require endurance and a high degree of stealth at all angles.

Read more on the next bomber from our Aviation Week friends at Military​.com.

– Christian

A help­ful Defense Tech reader sent this item along to me. Now, Im a bit of a dim bulb, as many of you know, and on this, I think the light was entirely out.

Its been a long time since Ive thought much about inter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­siles espe­cially nuclear-​​tipped ones. But a knowl­edge­able reader and help­ful tip­ster — tells me this item is significant.

[From Lockheed Martin]

D5 Fleet Ballistic Missile Launched in Navy Test in the Pacific

SILVERDALE, Wash., November 29th, 2007 — The U.S. Navy con­ducted a suc­cess­ful test launch today of a Trident II D5 Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) built by Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT). The Navy launched the unarmed mis­sile from the sub­merged sub­ma­rine USS HENRY M JACKSON (SSBN 730) in the Pacific Ocean.

The Trident II D5 mis­sile now has achieved 120 con­sec­u­tive suc­cess­ful test launches since 1989 a record unmatched by any other large bal­lis­tic mis­sile or space launch vehicle.

The mis­sile launch was part of the Demonstration and Shakedown Operation (DASO) to cer­tify USS HENRY M JACKSON for deploy­ment, fol­low­ing a ship­yard over­haul period and con­ver­sion from Trident I C4 to Trident II D5 configuration.

First deployed in 1990, the D5 mis­sile is cur­rently aboard 12 Trident II Ohio-​​class sub­marines and four British Trident II Vanguard-​​class sub­marines. The three-​​stage, solid-​​propellant, inertial-​​guided bal­lis­tic mis­sile can travel a nom­i­nal range of 4,000 nau­ti­cal miles and car­ries mul­ti­ple inde­pen­dently tar­geted reen­try vehicles. 

If youre like me, I was sort of won­der­ing why our intre­pid source sent me this story. O.K., so another suc­cess­ful test fir­ing of an SLBM. Big deal, right?

Ill respect my sources pri­vacy, but his points make a lot of sense. Heres what he told me:

The sig­nif­i­cance of the 120th suc­cess­ful launch of the D5 screams vol­umes as:

1. Successful Defense Program — that is unmatched by other indus­tri­al­ized com­peti­tors (for exam­ple the Russian Buluva SLBM has failed 7 of its last 10 tests). This is not a Russian hit piece. Its that this suc­cess is unmatched even among US systems.

2. Reliable strate­gic deter­rence most coun­tries have a mix of solid and liq­uid fueled bal­lis­tic inven­tory. So if the US has 18 Ohios, 8 on sta­tion all the time. Possibly one within range of your coun­try with 24 tubes with 8 inde­pen­dent tar­get­ing war­heads that are deliv­ered from a sys­tem that is extremely reli­able. Even in the mind game world — which is the only one that mat­ters — this is quite a deterrent.

3. If you also think about the fact that the orig­i­nal Trident Missile design, imple­men­ta­tion and deploy­ment to the fleet was some­where close to 2 years, Id say this is an exam­ple of a suc­cess­ful defense tech­nol­ogy application.

So when this really makes a dif­fer­ence is when you com­bine it with a bet­ter than hokey BMD.

I am inclined to agree. Ive always believed that as the Cold War ended, we could rel­e­gate the ground-​​based mis­sile leg of the strate­gic triad to the sal­vage yard of his­tory. Missile silos were used for mea­sure­ment dur­ing the cold war, they could be assessed by satel­lites to com­pile strate­gic account­abil­ity, as could bombers to some degree. The Soviets had them, so we had to have them.

But what good do they really do us in this strate­gic envi­ron­ment? It seems to me at least that you need to keep strate­gic nuclear bombers because, theyre recallable. But theyre still vul­ner­a­ble but not as vul­ner­a­ble as mis­sile silos which cant move.

Sub-​​based mis­siles, how­ever, are nearly invul­ner­a­ble. Few navies in the world have the sophis­ti­ca­tion or deploy­ment ratio to track U.S. boomers so risk of their dis­cov­ery and destruc­tion is min­i­mal. I under­stand that com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the subs can be tough, so giv­ing them urgent launch orders may not be as respon­sive as a ground-​​based deterrent.

But its tough to think of a sce­nario where America would need to launch a an all-​​out strate­gic strike in response to a nuclear attack on the U.S. par­tic­u­larly in con­junc­tion with a mis­sile defense system.

Wed love to hear our read­ers thoughts on this.

(Gouge: BD)

– Christian

This just showed up on the AP wire:

A B-​​52 bomber was mis­tak­enly loaded with five nuclear war­heads dur­ing a flight from North Dakota to Louisiana, a mil­i­tary news­pa­per reported Wednesday.

The bomber car­ried advanced cruise mis­siles as part of a Defense Department pro­gram to retire 400 of the mis­siles, the paper said, quot­ing three offi­cers who spoke on con­di­tion they remain anony­mous because they were not autho­rized to dis­cuss the inci­dent.

The offi­cers said the nuclear war­heads should have been removed before the mis­siles were mounted onto pylons under the bomber’s wings for the Aug. 30 flight from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

A Minot Air Force Base spokes­woman, Sgt. Marelise Wood, referred ques­tions by The Associated Press to the Air Force secretary’s office in Washington. A spokesman there was out of the office Wednesday morn­ing and not imme­di­ately avail­able for com­ment.

An Air Force spokesman, Lt. Col. Ed Thomas, said that the weapons were in Air Force con­trol at all times and the mis­siles were safely trans­ferred.

Air Force pol­icy does not per­mit offi­cials to say whether nuclear war­heads were involved, Thomas said.

However, he said all nuclear weapons at Minot were accounted for.

“Air Force stan­dards are very exact­ing when it comes to muni­tions han­dling,” Thomas said. “The weapons were always in our cus­tody and there was never a dan­ger to the American pub­lic.”

He said an inves­ti­ga­tion was launched and the crews involved in load­ing the mis­siles were decer­ti­fied pend­ing cor­rec­tive action or train­ing.

I wish we could make this stuff up. And did Col. Thomas keep a straight face when he made those statements?

I’m sorry, but at times like these, only one video excerpt will do:

(Gouge– ED)

– Ward