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 Officials said the codes were outdated and remained secure at all times.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