Issue No. 1329 24 August 2018

Issue No. 1329 24 August 2018

// USAF CSDS Outreach Journal Issue 1329 //

twitter.com/USAF_CSDS | au.af.mil/au/csds // 2

Feature Report

“Restoring U.S. Power Projection Capabilities: Responding to the 2018 National Defense Strategy”. By David Ochmanek. Published by RAND Corporation; Aug. 16, 2018

https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE260.html

The 2018 National Defense Strategy recognizes that the capabilities of U.S. military forces have been eroding vis-à-vis those of key adversaries, especially China and Russia. As a consequence, the United States' ability to deter aggression and intimidation, to assure allies, and to influence events in East Asia and Europe is being undermined. Unless steps are taken to reverse these trends, the United States could find itself playing a greatly diminished role internationally.

The passage by Congress of a budget agreement for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 that substantially increases funding for the U.S. Department of Defense opens up the possibility of making investments in new capabilities and regional postures that can improve the ability of the United States to deter and defeat large-scale aggression by the most-threatening adversary states. This Perspective is intended to help inform decisions to enable future U.S. forces to meet operational challenges. It addresses four aspects of the problem: What are the most important challenges that U.S. forces face today and in the future? What sort of armed force is appropriate for the United States, and why? How and in what ways do U.S. forces fall short of that standard? What sorts of measures are called for to fix the problem, and how feasible is it to implement these?

In order to restore their ability to defeat aggression by these adversaries, U.S. forces will need to devise new approaches to power projection. This Perspective offers three elements of a new approach and identifies priority investment areas.

Issue No. 1320 22 June 2018

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https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE260.html



TABLE OF CONTENTS NUCLEAR WEAPONS

How Can We Stop Russia’s Apocalypse Nuke Torpedo? (Popular Mechanics) If this nuclear-powered terror gets through, you can kiss entire cities goodbye.

More Plutonium Approved for Lab Facility (Albuquerque Journal) The building’s allowable radioactive “material-at-risk” inventory will go from the 38.6 grams of

“plutonium equivalent material” to 400 grams.

China, Close to Establishing Its Own ‘Nuclear Triad,’ Has Practiced Targeting US (Military Times) While the Defense Department annually reports on the rapid growth in capabilities of China’s air, land and

sea forces, the 2018 report is the first to acknowledge the direct threat to U.S. territory.

Managing Pakistan’s Bomb: Learning on the Job (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) The lives and well-being of Pakistan’s 200 million citizens and countless millions in India and elsewhere

depend on how well he [Imran Khan] deals with the doomsday machine Pakistan’s Army and nuclear

complex have worked so hard to build.

US COUNTER-WMD

Camp Ravenna Still in Running for Missile Site (Tribune Chronicle)

The [Missile Defense Review] is expected to outline whether the country needs an East Coast site to shoot

down enemy missiles, in addition to sites on the West Coast.

Simulated Smallpox Pandemic Reveals Global Preparedness, Response Challenges (Homeland

Preparedness News)

Experts determined during a recently completed hypothetical bioterrorism scenario, which imagines a

smallpox outbreak originating in Fiji, that ample preparedness and response capabilities dictate whether a

local outbreak is containable or more likely to become a global pandemic.

TOTE Services Contracted for SBX-1 Ballistic Missile Tracking Radar (UPI) The SBX-1 is a large sea-based radar system designed for mobile long-range detection of ballistic missiles

by the Missile Defense Agency.

US ARMS CONTROL

The U.S. Is Developing a New Way to Weaken Iran (The Atlantic)

The State Department’s Iran Action Group will mostly focus on “nukes, terrorism, and the detention of

American citizens.”

Terrorists Potentially Target Millions in Makeshift Biological Weapons ‘Laboratories’, UN Forum

Hears (UN News) Although the potential impact of a biological weapons attack could be huge, the likelihood is not currently

believed to be high.

Japan Holds Firm against Nuclear Ban Treaty on Anniversary of Nuclear Bombings (The

Diplomat) Shinzo Abe insists that the treaty is unrealistic, but civil society is pushing back.





COMMENTARY

Nuclear Weapons Are Making a Comeback — and Making the World More Dangerous (The Hill) Signs are multiplying that nuclear weapons are making a comeback, making the world more dangerous.

The Pros and Cons of a Korean War Peace Treaty (The National Interest) Trump needs to think through how a peace treaty would work and what would be gained or lost from it.

Bolster American Missile Defense until Russia Proves Itself in Treaty (The Hill) Russia is anxious to extend the New Start Treaty, but the United States should not be.

A Nuclear Armed Germany Would Be a Mistake (The National Interest) It was a mistake to consider it in 1957 under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and it is a mistake to consider it

now in 2018.





NUCLEAR WEAPONS Popular Mechanics (New York, N.Y.)

How Can We Stop Russia’s Apocalypse Nuke Torpedo?

By Kyle Mizokami

Aug. 16, 2018

If this nuclear-powered terror gets through, you can kiss entire cities goodbye.

The world is still processing the sheer awfulness of Russia’s new Poseidon long range torpedo. The multi-megaton weapon, like something from a science fiction film, is designed to attack coastal targets, creating radioactive tsunamis and rendering entire regions uninhabitable. Once thought a possible hoax, we now know Poseidon is very real, prompting the question: How do you stop it?

Poseidon was first noticed outside of western intelligence in November 2015, when a picture of it was “accidentally” shown on Russian state television. The weapon is 65 feet long and 6.5 feet wide. Nuclear powered, it can travel thousands of miles at speeds of up to 70 knots. Poseidon’s thermonuclear warhead is designed to destroy coastal locations such as ports, cities, and economic infrastructure. The resulting explosion would create tsunamis of radioactive water and debris, carrying the devastation farther inland and rendering large areas unlivable for generations.

The sheer destructive potential of Poseidon—the thermonuclear warhead is variously estimated at 2 to 100 megatons—means a torpedo attack must be stopped at all costs. An attack on New York City, for example, would kill at least 2.5 million people outright, injure another 5 million more, and spread radiation as far north as Quebec.

“Poseidon was met with a measure of incredulity when first revealed but it is now accepted fact that Russia has been testing the new weapon and is building the submarines which will launch it,” Undersea warfare authority H.I. Sutton told Popular Mechanics. Sutton, the author of World Submarines: Covert Shores Recognition Guide and the Covert Shores web site, has written extensively on Poseidon. “So the question shifts from 'Is it real?' to 'How can we defend against it?'”

According to Sutton, Poseidon will be a challenging target. “Poseidon is fast and can dive deeper than regular submarines. Fortunately it is likely to be noisy enough that well positioned sensors will be able to detect it. The problem will be how to actually neutralize it. New weapons will need to be developed.”

Sutton says stopping Poseidon won’t be easy. “I have a problem with people over-simplifying the solution; it's tempting to believe that NATO can *just* drop a nuclear depth charge in front of it.” Sutton says. “But you don't *just* do anything in underwater warfare, everything is difficult and every new capability costs a lot of money to develop and deploy.” Sutton proposes several countermeasures to halt Poseidon dead in its tracks.

The first is a network of both fixed and air-droppable underwater hydrophone arrays, much like the Cold War’s SOSUS network, to listen for signs of an approaching Poseidon. These listening posts would have their own torpedo mines—encapsulated homing torpedoes anchored to the seabed and launched on command—to intercept the apocalypse torpedo.

Poseidon is such a dangerous weapon that multiple options will probably be necessary to ensure stopping an attack. Sutton believes that hypersonic weapons launched from Virginia-class submarines could provide a speedy means of intercepting a Poseidon. Traveling at speeds in excess of Mach 5, a hypersonic weapon could act quickly on a Poseidon sighting. The Poseidon’s high speed





should also prompt the development of a new generation of western torpedoes. Future heavyweight torpedoes could carry payloads of multiple smaller torpedoes. After all, Poseidon itself is smaller than a conventional submarine and wouldn’t need much of an explosive charge against its hull to neutralize it, and the more hunters hunting the better.

Stopping Poseidon would also mean going after the launch platforms, and when it enters service in 2027 the giant torpedo will be carried by at least two submarines, the Sarov and Belgorod. Sutton warns that complicating matters, “Poseidon could be launched from under the ice cap, making the launch platform harder to neutralize before launch.” The U.S. Navy’s three Seawolf-class nuclear attack submarines, designed to operate under pack ice, will be especially suited to destroy these Russian submarines before they can launch their torpedoes.

One system that won’t work against Poseidon? Existing U.S. and NATO missile defenses and proposed space-based defenses. “The Poseidon nuclear torpedo is likely a response to missile defenses. The development of space based missile defense might not have been on their radar when they started development twenty years ago, but Poseidon will be immune to that also.”

A nuclear war is bad enough, but Poseidon turns the awful knob to 11 and breaks it off. It is not an invincible weapon and can be stopped—with the right tech.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a22749605/how-can-we-stop-russias-apocalypse-nuke-torpedo/

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Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.)

More Plutonium Approved for Lab Facility

By Mark Oswald

Aug. 17, 2018

SANTA FE – The federal government has found that a 10-fold increase in the amount of “at risk” radioactive material at one of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s buildings will have no significant environmental impact on or around the lab campus.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous wing of the U.S. Department of Energy, formalized the findings of its environmental assessment late last month.

The action clears the way for operational changes at LANL’s Radiological Laboratory/Utility/Office Building, known as RLUOB or the Rad Lab.

The building’s allowable radioactive “material-at-risk” inventory will go from the 38.6 grams of “plutonium equivalent material” to 400 grams. The change would recategorize the facility from a “radiological facility” to a “hazard category 3 nuclear facility.”

NNSA rejected calls from groups and individuals who opposed the change for safety reasons during a public comment period.

Opponents said the agency should undertake development of a much broader environmental impact statement that would include the issue of expanded production at Los Alamos of the plutonium cores of nuclear weapons called “pits.”

But NNSA insisted in its findings that the change at RLOUB is not “directly” tied to plans to ramp up pit-making at LANL. The building’s plutonium capacity is a separate matter, NNSA said.







“NNSA acknowledges that there is opposition to the nuclear weapons mission,” it said.

Greg Mello, of the Albuquerque-based Los Alamos Study Group, said NNSA is “stonewalling.”

“NNSA’s ideas about national security apparently do not include protecting the environment, obviously a trend across the whole of this (presidential) administration,” he said in a statement.

“NNSA has abandoned true National Environmental Policy Act compliance in favor of a post-hoc ‘CYA’ substitute. The Pentagon is calling most of the shots now, and proper environmental review is a low priority.”

NNSA says in documentation for its July 25 “finding of no significant impact” that expanded capabilities at RLOUB “are required to ensure NNSA’s ability to safely maintain and manage the Nation’s nuclear stockpile.”

The change is an “opportunity for NNSA to improve efficiency and reduce costs without adding risk to the public, facility workers, or the environment,” it added.

Performing more operations at RLUOB and fewer in the lab’s much older major plutonium facility, known as PF-4, “entails minor impacts and low risks, and does not constitute a major Federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment …,” NNSA said

NNSA acknowledged that over the past several years, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent oversight agency, has expressed safety concerns “similar to those raised by commenters (during the public comment period) related to a range of safety issues associated with plutonium operations at LANL.”

“These concerns which include seismic concerns at PF-4, criticality concerns at PF-4, safety management and safety culture, have been addressed in ongoing actions at LANL,” NNSA said. “Criticality” refers to potential runaway nuclear reactions. There hasn’t been a criticality event at LANL since the 1950s, but the lab has been cited recently for safety issues in this area.

“As a part of the Integrated Safety Management systems at LANL, the safety lessons learned from concerns at PF-4 are applied to RLUOB, LANL and the rest of the DOE complex,” NNSA said.

“Thus, NNSA has full confidence that RLUOB can continue to be operated safely and that moving additional … activities to RLUOB would contribute to overall safety at LANL.”

The lab has been penalized and cited in recent years for various safety lapses, including an improperly packaged radioactive waste drum that leaked and shut down the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant at Carlsbad with contamination, and sending plutonium across the country via a commercial air shipping service.

NNSA is under orders from Congress to ramp up production of plutonium pits to 30 annually over the next several years and to 80 pits a year by about 2030, part of a huge and costly modernization of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Under NNSA’s plan, pit production would be divided between LANL and NNSA’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, but legal and political obstacles might stop use of the South Carolina site. No new pits have been made in the U.S. since 2011, when LANL completed a small set.

https://www.abqjournal.com/1209857/more-plutonium-approved-for-lab-facility-ex-nnsa-says-the-move-poses-no-environmental-risks.html

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Military Times (Vienna, Va.)

China, Close to Establishing Its Own ‘Nuclear Triad,’ Has Practiced Targeting US

By Tara Copp

Aug. 17, 2018

The Pentagon, for the first time, has publicly reported what commanders in the Pacific have known about, and kept a wary eye on, for some time: China is practicing long-range bombing runs against U.S. targets.

While the Defense Department annually reports on the rapid growth in capabilities of China’s air, land and sea forces, the 2018 report is the first to acknowledge the direct threat to U.S. territory.

Recent developments on China’s H-6K variant of its Badger bomber give the bomber “the capability to carry six land-attack cruise missiles, giving the PLA a long-range standoff precision strike capability that can range Guam,” the report said. It also acknowledged frequent bombing practice runs that U.S. commanders at the newly renamed U.S. INDOPACOM in Hawaii have watched expand in numbers and distance.

During a trip to the command last October, defense officials described to Military Times the frequent incursions to test Guam’s air-defense zone as one of the many changes in China’s behavior in the Pacific that create worry. Compared to North Korea, which officials said they still view as “a fight we can win,” with China they “worry about the way things are going."

The $716 billion defense budget for FY2019 is largely focused on getting U.S. forces ready again for a great power fight, with investments in new fighters, bombers and ships to keep the U.S. at pace with — and ahead of — the Chinese investments.

“The PLA has been developing strike capabilities to engage targets as far away from China as possible. Over the last three years, the PLA has rapidly expanded its overwater bomber operating areas, gaining experience in critical maritime regions and likely training for strikes against U.S. and allied targets,” the 2018 report found.

More worrisome, the report found, “the PLA Air Force has been re-assigned a nuclear mission. The deployment and integration of nuclear-capable bombers would, for the first time, provide China with a nuclear “triad” of delivery systems dispersed across land, sea and air.”

The unclassified version of the annual report to Congress on China’s military and security developments was released Thursday; a separate classified version was also prepared for the Hill.

The Pentagon emphasized that even as it is monitoring and re-calibrating its own defense strategies and investment priorities to be prepared for a potential great power fight in the future with China, “the Department of Defense’s objective is to set the military relationship between our two countries on a path of transparency and non-aggression," the report said.

For years the U.S. has reported on the closing gap between U.S. and Chinese capabilities. The Chinese air force totaled more than 2,700 aircraft in 2018 and, of those, 2,000 were combat aircraft. More than 600 of those combat aircraft were 4th-generation fighters and the country is rapidly fielding its fifth generation J-20 and FC-31 jets, the report said.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/08/17/pentagon-china-close-to-nuclear-triad-has-practiced-targeting-us/

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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Chicago, Illinois)

Managing Pakistan’s Bomb: Learning on the Job

By Pervez Hoodbhoy, Zia Mian

Aug. 17, 2018

On Saturday, Imran Khan will be sworn in as the next prime minister of Pakistan. His has been a sudden and rapid rise to power; he first came into politics in the late 1990s with no experience and has never held any government office. In his first public address to the nation after winning the July election, with Pakistan’s economy near bankruptcy, Khan said, “The biggest challenge we are facing is the economic crisis.” While this may well be the most pressing issue, the biggest and most important challenge Imran Khan will confront as prime minister is something he did not mention at all in his speech—how to manage the Bomb. The lives and well-being of Pakistan’s 200 million citizens and countless millions in India and elsewhere depend on how well he deals with the doomsday machine Pakistan’s Army and nuclear complex have worked so hard to build.

To be fair, it is not clear that Imran Khan will have much choice regarding nuclear policy. For Pakistani politicians, the options largely come down to either support the Bomb, or keep quiet about it. Like other prime ministers before him, Imran Khan may go and have his picture taken with the missiles that will carry nuclear warheads and pose with the scientists and engineers that make them and the military units that plan and train to fire them.

Imran Khan’s two-decade-long political career overlaps with the creation of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, but he has had very little to say about the Bomb. When he has spoken, it has been as a Bomb supporter. In 1998, as India and Pakistan tested their Bombs, Imran Khan told the BBC, “The test had to be done to tell India that Pakistan had a Bomb, because there was a lot of ambiguity on whether we had the Bomb. My party was clear that we had to tell India that we had a deterrent.” He claimed the Bomb as proof of Pakistan’s possibilities, telling the BBC that “[i]f it can have scientists that develop nuclear bombs then we can develop our own country.”

Imran Khan also has courted the support of Abdul Qadeer Khan (no relation), the man most closely identified in Pakistani minds with the country’s Bomb. This was after A.Q. Khan admitted publicly in 2004 to selling Iran, North Korea, and Libya the uranium enrichment centrifuge technology he had earlier stolen from European companies and copied for Pakistan and sharing nuclear weapon designs with other countries. He was quickly pardoned and placed under house arrest, but released in 2009.

This history suggests that Imran Khan may be likely to support the continued build-up of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. It is estimated that the arsenal now is on the order of 150 nuclear weapons, with Pakistan being able soon to deliver these weapons from airplanes (either via bombs or cruise missiles), on land-based ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, and on cruise missiles launched from submarines.

Few knowledgeable observers now doubt that Pakistan’s Army helped bring Imran Khan victory in the 2018 elections by stifling other political parties and silencing key voices in the media. Given the debt he owes to those who made his election possible, it is unlikely he will now try to assert himself and push for some kind of democratic civilian control in nuclear matters and in foreign policy generally. More likely, the Army will expect Imran Khan’s government to be cheerleaders in support of its next military adventure. All the pieces are in place.

Military crises have occurred in the subcontinent with awful frequency in recent decades, despite the Bomb, and perhaps because of it. Pakistan and India have survived at least five since 1987, giving both sides misplaced confidence that they will survive the next, too. This, in turn, leads to a





lessening of political restraints on the militaries of both countries and greater nuclear brinksmanship.

As Pakistan discovered during the 1999 Kargil crisis, the combination of the Army, the Bomb, and pliant politicians leads to big mistakes. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the chosen political tool of the Army in those days, was led to believe by General Pervez Musharraf, the head of Pakistan’s Army, that he had a plan for the liberation of Kashmir. General Musharraf’s foray over the Line of Control—the effective border between India and Pakistan in the Kashmir region—at first took the Indians by surprise then slowed, stalled, and finally crashed. Indian air power and artillery began decimating Pakistani forces, leaving Pakistan with a stark choice: withdrawal, a wider war, or brandishing nuclear weapons.

The world watched and judged. Pakistan was deemed the aggressor. The belief that China would bail out Pakistan was proven false. Musharraf and Sharif each visited China seeking support; both returned empty handed. Then, on July 3, 1999, Sharif made a desperate, uninvited dash to Washington for help. He eventually was willing to challenge the wisdom of his generals, but only when the situation had become desperate and nuclear war appeared to be terrifyingly close—and when the Americans were on his side.

Strobe Talbott, then US deputy secretary of state, records that “on the eve of Sharif’s arrival, we learned that Pakistan might be preparing its nuclear forces for deployment. There was, among those of us preparing for the meeting, a sense of vast and nearly unprecedented peril.” Faced with a situation where he did not know what his own army was up to, a shocked and subdued Sharif signed the withdrawal document. The prime minister was overthrown three months later in a military coup led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

Not long afterwards, Islamist militants backed by Pakistan attacked India’s Parliament, triggering massive military deployments by both countries and an intense military crisis that lasted until October 2002. In July 2006 and again in November 2008, Islamist militants believed to be linked to Pakistan attacked the Indian city of Mumbai, killing and wounding hundreds of people and again raising the prospect of a military response. Since then, the focus of conflict has shifted back to the Line of Control dividing Kashmir. India and Pakistan blame each other for hundreds of violations of the ceasefire agreed in 2003, with hundreds of military and civilian casualties and India citing hundreds of attempts each year by militants to cross over from Pakistan.

In Indian-occupied Kashmir demands for greater autonomy and independence have met with repression, which has fueled Kashmiri resistance. Human rights violations have become chronic. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in 2018 that in the past two years “Indian security forces used excessive force that led to unlawful killings and a very high number of injuries” while militant groups were held responsible for “a wide range of human rights abuses, including kidnappings and killings of civilians and sexual violence.” Some of the militant groups fighting in Kashmir are based in Pakistan and backed by the Army.

Peace does not seem to be in the cards. The Pakistan Army’s low-cost option is to keep the pot boiling in Kashmir and elsewhere in India, but not to let it boil over. It has secretly sponsored Islamist proxies to do its dirty work, and their footprint can be seen across Pakistan. Some Islamist groups have been supported to form political parties and successfully run candidates for elections. It is unlikely that Imran Khan will choose to move against these actors or rein them in; he has long demonstrated sympathy for the Taliban and other extremists. Any such action would be unwelcome to the Army and decried as a betrayal by his party base.

Whether triggered by Army action in Kashmir or by militant attacks, what happens if the next crisis comes on Imran Khan’s watch? To whom will he look for outside assistance, and will those allies





come to his aid? Will he run to Washington, ala Nawaz Sharif? Imran Khan built his political base initially on harsh anti-American rhetoric. For a while he was dubbed “Taliban Khan” for his vehement condemnation of drone strikes against Islamist militants. Still, the United States has forgiven worse and will likely talk to him in a crisis. The risk of escalation to nuclear war in South Asia is too grave a concern to be ignored.

What has changed since Kargil? All semblance of trust between Pakistan and the United States is gone. The United States after the 9/11 attacks went to war in Afghanistan, and found that despite receiving vast amounts of US aid, Pakistan continued to back the Taliban. In 2018, this led to a cutoff in US security aid to Pakistan. But the lack of trust works both ways; many in Pakistan, including in the Army, see the United States as waiting to pounce upon and seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons at the first opportunity.

Will Imran Khan then turn to China for support? His speech to the nation after the election suggests such a tendency, but before Pakistani military leaders conceive and implement another Kargil, they need to understand that China is not the new global superpower that has replaced the United States. A complex, four-way dynamic has emerged among India, Pakistan, China, and the United States. It is one that does not work in Pakistan’s favor.

China competes strategically with the United States and India, but it also trades heavily with both. There is no war talk and no visceral animosity among the members of this China-US-India triad. Pakistan touts China as an all-weather friend and expects protection, but the Kargil episode showed that these expectations were misplaced. India’s hawkish strategic elite sees Pakistan now as a Chinese proxy in the event of a Pak-India war, and India’s Army chief talks of fighting a two-front war. But in another crisis, China again may prove reticent to take Pakistan’s side and prefer to support de-escalation and an end to the crisis as quickly as possible.

Even the finest diplomacy may not work in the midst of a storm strong enough to knock over the pieces on the south Asian nuclear chessboard. With an emboldened army in Pakistan sooner or later seeking once again to push India to the brink—this time determined to escalate rather than back down if things go badly—staving off nuclear warfare on the subcontinent may be a race against time. Imran Khan needs to understand that the best way to handle a nuclear crisis is not to provoke one or try and use such a crisis for political advantage. Of course, an informed and organized public, able to keep political and military leaders in check and restrain them from brandishing nuclear weapons, would constitute a more enduring check on nuclear risk-taking. In Pakistan, however—with political leaders willing to let the military have effective control of key policies and stifle public discourse—this kind of active democracy seems a distant hope.

https://thebulletin.org/2018/08/managing-pakistans-bomb-learning-on-the-job/

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https://thebulletin.org/2018/08/managing-pakistans-bomb-learning-on-the-job/



US COUNTER-WMD Tribune Chronicle (Warren, Ohio)

Camp Ravenna Still in Running for Missile Site

By Renee Fox

April 22, 2018

WARREN — The head of the Youngstown Warren Regional Chamber said the president’s decision to sign a defense authorization bill of more than $700 billion in Fort Drum, N.Y. — one of three sites being considered for an East Coast missile defense site along with Camp Ravenna — is not an endorsement of that military installation for the site, which may or may not be pursued pending the outcome of a Missile Defense Review.

“That was just to support the congresswoman there in her re-election bid. This administration has an affinity for Northeast Ohio, for whatever reason. And we have a lot of persistence, a lot of resources and the workforce necessary to make this defense site work,” said James Dignan, president and CEO of the chamber.

The Missile Defense Review began early last year, ordered by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and was slated to be completed before the end of 2017 — and then by the end of February, and then by the end of May, but still has not been released. The last review was conducted in 2010. In June, during a delegation of local economic development and government affairs officials to Washington, D.C., Dignan said he was told it wouldn’t be long until the review was released and a decision made.

“They said we would hear something in the next few weeks. That was in the third week of June and this is the third week into August and we still haven’t heard anything,” Dignan said.

Voice messages and an email sent Tuesday afternoon to the U.S. Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency inquiring about the status of the Missile Defense Review were not immediately returned.

The review is expected to outline whether the country needs an East Coast site to shoot down enemy missiles, in addition to sites on the West Coast.

When President Donald Trump signed the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act on Aug. 13 in Fort Drum, Dignan said he received several phone calls from people concerned that Trump would announce Fort Drum would receive the site.

But, Dignan said, he believes Trump made the announcement there in order to support one of the Republican president’s supporters, Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican, who is running for re-election this year. The district, New York’s 21st, was held mostly by Democrats before Stefanik took office in 2015. The district went through several redirecting efforts, moving the boundaries of the district to include more rural parts of New York like the Adirondack Mountains, and eliminating the state’s more blue capital district in 2013.

Trump has many supporters in the area around Camp Ravenna that would benefit from the influx of jobs if it is selected for a missile defense site, Dignan said. He said Camp Ravenna is the ideal site, not just because of its sprawling acres in Trumbull and Portage counties, but because the area has a much larger pool of skilled laborers than the areas surrounding Fort Drum, or the Fort Custer Training Center operated by the Michigan Army National Guard.





“When you draw a 60-mile circle around Fort Drum in upstate New York, you have about a little over 1,000, maybe as many as 1,500, certified skilled trade people in a 60-mile radius to build this project that is going to take about two years to build. They are saying there will be about 2,000 total construction jobs there. You go into the western portion of Michigan, they can get about 15,000 skilled trade workers in that area. You draw a 60-mile circle around us, and that reaches up to Cleveland, that reaches into Akron, Canton, Youngstown, even the outer stretches of Pittsburgh, and you have nearly 60,000 skilled trade workers,” Dignan said.

The area around Camp Ravenna also has good accessibility to major thoroughfares, the port in Cleveland, solid infrastructure and dependable utilities, Dignan said.

If selected, it is estimated the project would bring in 600 to 800 “rocket scientists and engineers,” to the area, Dignan said.

It’s estimated the $3.6 billion project would support 2,300 jobs in the region during construction and the facility would employ up to 850 people full-time once the systems is operational. The chamber estimates the project would have a $4.5 billion economic impact on the state.

The bill Trump signed into law at Fort Drum authorizes other efforts to secure the country’s missile defense systems. It authorizes $140 million to the Missile Defense Agency for development space sensing projects and the acceleration of hypersonic defense capabilities, and directs the agency to establish a kinetic-energy missile intercept program and to develop a missile defense tracking sensor layer in space.

http://www.tribtoday.com/news/local-news/2018/08/camp-ravenna-still-in-running-for-missile-site/

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Homeland Preparedness News (Washington, D.C.)

Simulated Smallpox Pandemic Reveals Global Preparedness, Response Challenges

By Kim Riley

Aug. 22, 2018

Experts determined during a recently completed hypothetical bioterrorism scenario, which imagines a smallpox outbreak originating in Fiji, that ample preparedness and response capabilities dictate whether a local outbreak is containable or more likely to become a global pandemic.

“Smallpox is spread through the air and is more than twice as infectious as influenza or Ebola. In the case of a biowarfare event, our modeling shows that without a rapid and coordinated response, the epidemic would quickly spiral out of control and become a pandemic,” said Raina MacIntyre, professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at Australia’s University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, who designed the hypothetical smallpox exercise.

Professor MacIntyre, an international expert known for her research on the transmission and prevention of infectious diseases, particularly bioterrorism agents, respiratory pathogens and vaccine-preventable infections, told Homeland Preparedness News last week that pandemics by their very nature can’t be controlled or managed within geographic borders.

“So it is critical that all efforts and resources are focused on the source of the epidemic, and on areas of the world which are struggling to achieve control because an uncontrolled epidemic in one country will inevitably affect all other countries,” she wrote in an email.







“Even in the U.S., which has enough vaccine for its population, a pandemic of smallpox would affect critical supply chains to the country, to all industries and sectors, and travel and trade impacts would be substantial,” said MacIntyre, the principal research fellow at the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which is Australia’s expert body on public health standards.

MacIntyre also is director of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Integrated Systems for Epidemic Response (ISER) at UNSW Medicine’s School of Public Health and Community Medicine. ISER funded the August 16-17 simulated outbreak along with Gaithersburg, Maryland–based global life sciences company Emergent BioSolutions and the Denmark biotech company, Bavarian Nordic.

“There is very little immunity to smallpox in today’s population, so anyone who came into contact with smallpox would need to be vaccinated within three to four days of contact to reduce the risk of serious infection and death,” explained MacIntyre, who heads the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute.

“Our coordinated regional response should start within seven days of identifying the first case to ensure the best possible outcome and early termination of the epidemic,” she said.

But is that an impossible deadline to meet?

“There is not enough vaccine in the world — estimated to be about 700 million doses presently — to control a worst-case scenario pandemic,” MacIntyre told Homeland Preparedness News. “Manufacturing of vaccines will take another 12-18 months, which is a catastrophic delay.”

But she noted that “if there is a vaccine shortage, the vaccine can be diluted and used in lower doses. If the estimated 700 million doses in the world were distributed equitably and to areas of need rather than held domestically in countries which have stockpiles, there would be enough vaccines for the world.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) now has a stockpile of 35 million doses of smallpox vaccine, but the bulk of it comprises pledged doses from nation states, said MacIntyre.

In a pandemic, when all countries have domestic cases of smallpox, she said the smallpox simulation held at UNSW Sydney was designed to ask: Would countries release their pledged doses to another country in need?

Participants in the scenario included international representatives from health departments, foreign affairs, defense, law enforcement, non-government agencies, and vaccine manufacturers, among other stakeholders who were tasked with finding the answer to that question.

“We felt this was a potential weakness,” MacIntyre explained. “In addition, a pandemic of this scale would affect workforces and economies globally, with supply chains disrupted and high rates of absenteeism in all industries.”

Scenario participants uncovered that for a disease as infectious as smallpox, timing is crucial.

“We have seen in [this] exercise that safeguarding the population against public health threats, whether by accidental, intentional or naturally occurring causes, requires coordinated strategies at the national level,” said Dr. Kevin Yeo, director of clinical and medical affairs at Emergent BioSolutions, in a statement.

“Collaboration across stakeholders and input from experts from government, defense agencies, academia, industry, first responder groups, health care providers, community partners, vaccine manufacturers, and others are key to prepare for, prevent and protect against these threats,” Yeo said, adding that it’s “vitally important for all countries to have a preparedness plan for such untoward events.”





Yet, it’s a mammoth task to ensure health systems closely partner with all of these groups, said David Heslop, associate professor at UNSW Medicine’s School of Public Health and Community Medicine, who helped MacIntyre design the smallpox simulation.

“Whilst the probability of a smallpox attack may be low, the impact will be high, and so it is essential we prepare for these scenarios and know exactly what we can do to avoid the worst occurring,” said Heslop, who is also a senior medical advisor for the Australian Defence Force. “We looked at a worst-case scenario because the purpose of an exercise like this is to prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.”

Overall, scenario participants found that the most important determinants impacting a spread of the epidemic included finding and isolating people with smallpox, tracking their contacts so they could also be vaccinated, and the speed of response.

Detailed simulation outcomes

In an email to Homeland Preparedness News, MacIntyre explained that the simulated smallpox attack in Fiji, a Pacific Island nation with less than a million people, was followed by a hypothetical attack in a larger Asian country. The disease then spread worldwide.

In testing the global responses to the pretend smallpox pandemic, she said many preventable delays surfaced, including those for diagnosis and vaccination “because the vaccinators themselves need to be vaccinated before they commence vaccination.”

Hospital beds also ran out early in the simulated scenario. “Without immediate plans for large-scale isolation facilities (such as using school halls, sports stadiums or hotels), the epidemic can blow out,” she wrote.

Human resources also quickly depleted as health workers themselves succumbed to smallpox. “We would also need rapid plans to mobilize community volunteers to help find cases of smallpox and trace their contacts,” MacIntyre said.

“During eradication, community volunteers were trained for these roles, and also to vaccinate. We need rapid plans to communicate with, engage and work with affected communities in such an event,” she told HPN.

Professor MacIntyre’s hypothetical scenario coincided with new research from UNSW and the PLuS Alliance that shows how minimal genetic material could be used to quickly identify severity and find global transmission routes. Based on previous UNSW research that was adapted to Fiji and the Pacific Island region, the simulation also included lessons learned from real outbreaks.

“Even though the world successfully eradicated smallpox in 1980, the disease has been on the radar again since scientists used mail order DNA to create a virus very similar to smallpox in a lab in 2017,” MacIntyre said, pointing out that the modeled death rate for smallpox could be as high as 45 percent if it emerged today.

In the event of a global pandemic, first responders would need to isolate 70 percent of smallpox patients and track and vaccinate at least 70 percent of their contacts. If the rate dropped to less than 53 percent, bringing the epidemic under control would take over four years and two billion doses of vaccine.

And while the existing WHO stockpile of 35 million doses of vaccine could be diluted in such an emergency, resources to effect large-scale isolation and quarantine would remain the biggest challenges, MacIntyre said.

Counting up challenges





Another challenge would be the myriad situations that could result from such a pandemic, said participant Michael Baker, a professor at the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand.

“This has been a vivid reminder that bioterrorism threats are on the radar and has illustrated how a virus such as smallpox might behave in in a world where the population is immunologically vulnerable,” Baker said. “While we cannot prepare totally for all of them, by working through individual case studies, we can produce the concepts and understand the science of working with multidisciplinary teams to prepare for these kind of threats.”

Yet another challenge regarded the issue of surge capacity, according to participant Bill Rawlinson, director of the serology and virology division of the donor screening laboratory at South Eastern Area Laboratory Services, an NSW government initiative.

“Diagnosis can often get left behind, so it is vital that we understand that smallpox is one of many issues in which we must maintain capacity and knowledge around research and development because this is an area that is changing very quickly,” Rawlinson said.

“The other thing that has arisen here is that infrastructure must be tailored to address threats present in diverse circumstances, particularly the threat of a major health crisis in a resource-limited country,” he added.

Professor MacIntyre said certain terrorist groups have called for real biological attacks that could mirror her simulation. And along with their intent, she said there’s also capability for such an attack, although it’s difficult to ascertain who does or doesn’t have such capabilities.

“But we must prepare for the possibility,” MacIntyre said. “Advances in genetic engineering and synthetic biology have increased the risk of such an attack.”

Coordination among countries is essential “from every perspective, whether it be intelligence gathering to prevent a planned attack, to responding to an actual attack, or controlling an established pandemic,” she said.

The difference between terrorism and bioterrorism, the professor explained, is that in the latter, the weapon is invisible, and infection of one or a few people with a highly infectious pathogen could transmit to others, creating an epidemic without any further action required by the perpetrator.

“This can then spread around the world in weeks. We modeled a worst-case scenario, and in this case, the impact on the world would be worse than a nuclear attack and it would take over four years to control the epidemic,” MacIntyre said.

https://homelandprepnews.com/stories/30105-simulated-smallpox-pandemic-reveals-global-preparedness-response-challenges/

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UPI (Washington, D.C.)

TOTE Services Contracted for SBX-1 Ballistic Missile Tracking Radar

By Stephen Carlson

Aug. 16, 2018

Aug. 16 (UPI) -- TOTE Services of Jacksonville, Fla., has received an $11 million contract for operation and maintenance of the Sea-Based X-Band Radar vessel.

The contract, announced Wednesday by the Department of Defense, will last one year with four-and-a-half years worth of possible options, which could bring the cumulative value of this contract to $65.3 million, the Pentagon said.

Work will be conducted at sea-based positions across the world and is expected to be completed by September 2019. If the options are exercised, the program will continue through March 2024. Working capital funds will be issued for the contract depending on availability.

The SBX-1 is a large sea-based radar system designed for mobile long-range detection of ballistic missiles by the Missile Defense Agency. The MDA claims it could detect a baseball-sized object being launched into the stratosphere from thousands of miles away.

The radar is mounted on a modified oil exploration vessel more than an acre in size and has a height of more than 280 feet. It displaces more than 50,000 tons and is so large in cannot traverse the Panama canal.

Along with missile detection, it is used for tracking ballistic missile defense system tests. It is the most powerful sea-going radar in the world.

https://www.upi.com/TOTE-Services-contracted-for-SBX-1-ballistic-missile-tracking-radar/5771534435256/

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US ARMS CONTROL The Atlantic (Washington, D.C.)

The U.S. Is Developing a New Way to Weaken Iran

By Krishnadev Calamur

Aug. 17, 2018

The State Department’s Iran Action Group will mostly focus on “nukes, terrorism, and the detention of American citizens.”

Sixty-five years ago this week, a CIA-backed coup toppled Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran’s democratically elected prime minister. The goal of the coup was to strengthen the hand of the West’s ally Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the creation of a new Iran Action Group to coordinate U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear accord with Iran.

Brian Hook, whom Pompeo named head of the Iran Action Group, dismissed speculation that the new group’s creation during a week coinciding with the coup anniversary suggested that the United States was pursuing regime change in Iran, calling the timing “pure coincidence.” But Barbara







Slavin, the director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council and a critic of the Trump administration’s policy toward Iran, told me: “It’s just an example of the tone-deaf Iran policy of this administration.”

Announcing the group’s creation, Pompeo said: “The Iran Action Group will be responsible directing, reviewing, and coordinating all aspects of the State Department’s Iran-related activity.” He said the group will report directly to him. Hook declined to name any of the personnel on the group, saying only: “We have a team that’s assembled, and in time we’ll be happy to talk about it.”

Hook said the group’s work will center on the 12 demands made of Iran by Pompeo in a speech in May, adding that the focus will mostly be “around nukes, terrorism, and the detention of American citizens arbitrarily detained.” In that speech, Pompeo warned “of unprecedented financial pressure in the form of the strongest sanctions in history” if Tehran did not comply with the U.S. demands.

“The goal is to weaken Iran in the hopes that it will pull back in the region, suddenly become more amenable to the policies of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel,” Slavin said. That is unlikely to happen, however, as Iran views the region as part of its sphere of influence, just as the Saudis and Emiratis do.

The Trump administration and its supporters said the JCPOA did not adequately deal with Iran’s ballistic-missile program, its support for militant groups, and its involvement in regional politics. Supporters of the agreement said the accord was meant to deal with only the single-most problematic aspect of Iran’s behavior—its nuclear program—and argued that the agreement could serve as a starting point for talks on other issues. (Critics of the agreement say the JCPOA merely postpones Iran’s inevitable acquisition of nuclear weapons; the accord’s supporters dismiss that claim.) Donald Trump himself had initially said that he was open to talks with Iran with no preconditions, but officials in his administration have since walked that back. The United States now says it is open to talks with Iran—if the Islamic Republic changes its policies on a range of issues, including its political and military involvement in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq; its threats against Israel; its ballistic-missile program; and its dismal human-rights record. The Iranians have meanwhile signaled they aren’t interested.

“If the Iranian regime demonstrates a commitment to make fundamental changes in its behavior, then the president is prepared to engage in dialogue in order to find solutions,” Hook said Thursday. “But the sanctions relief, the reestablishment of full diplomatic and commercial relations with the United States, and economic cooperation with the United States can only begin after we see that the Iranian regime is serious about changing its behavior.”

But Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, shut the door this week on that prospect when he said that even permitting Iran’s foreign minister to talk to the Obama administration on what eventually became the JCPOA was a mistake. “It was a loss for us,” he said. Other Iranian officials say they will not talk to the United States either.

“Anyone who knows anything about Iran knows that there’s no way the government can agree to talk to the United States under these kinds of conditions,” Slavin said.

The other signatories to the JCPOA—China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union—remain in the agreement along with Iran. They acknowledge, however, that the economic benefits for Iran that the deal promised will not materialize as the biggest Western companies that entered Iran following the accord have announced they are leaving the country because of the threat of U.S. sanctions. The remaining signatories say they will continue to bring economic and political benefits to Iran, but any such gains will be limited in nature because only those companies that aren’t exposed to the U.S. market or that don’t carry out transactions in U.S.





dollars will be able to circumvent the U.S. sanctions on entities doing business in Iran. The true test will come in November when the U.S. sanctions that target Iran’s lucrative oil trade go into effect.

“They’re traveling around the world and they’re making various countries cut or eliminate their purchases of Iranian oil, and they’ve had some success,” Slavin said of the Trump administration’s efforts. “But a number of countries have also indicated they’re going to continue to buy Iranian oil.” Those include China, India, and Turkey. Hook said the United States would examine requests for waivers from countries that are seeking to reduce their oil imports from Iran on a case-by-case basis, but reiterated that “we are prepared to impose secondary sanctions on … governments that continue this sort of trade with Iran.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/us-iran/567751/

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UN News (Manhattan, N.Y.)

Terrorists Potentially Target Millions in Makeshift Biological Weapons ‘Laboratories’, UN Forum Hears

Author Not Attributed

Aug. 17, 2018

Rapid advances in gene editing and so-called “DIY biological laboratories”which could be used by extremists, threaten to derail efforts to prevent biological weapons from being used against civilians, the world’s only international forum on the issue has heard.

At meetings taking place at the United Nations in Geneva which ended on Thursday, representatives from more than 100 Member States which have signed up to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) - together with civilian experts and academics - also discussed how they could ensure that science is used to positive ends, in line with the disarmament blueprint set out by UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Although the potential impact of a biological weapons attack could be huge, the likelihood is not currently believed to be high. The last attack dates back to 2001, when letters containing toxic anthrax spores, killed five people in the US, just days after Al Qaeda terrorists perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

You could be talking of epidemics on the scale of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, or even a global pandemic that could result in millions of deaths - Daniel Feakes, UN Geneva

Nonetheless, the rise of extremist groups and the potential risk of research programmes being misused, has focused attention on the work of the BWC.

“There’s interest from terror groups and we’re also seeing the erosion of norms on chemical weapons,” said Daniel Feakes, head of the BWC Implementation Support Unit at the UN in Geneva.

“That could spread to biological weapons as well,” he said, adding that “at the worst, you could be talking of epidemics on the scale of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, or even a global pandemic that could result in millions of deaths.”

In a bid to stay on top of the latest biological developments and threats, the BWC’s 181 Member States hold a series of meetings with experts every year, traditionally in the summer. The reports that are discussed during these sessions are then formerly appraised in December.



https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/us-iran/567751/



At the eight-day session just ended, science and technology issues were debated for two days – a measure of their importance.

Among the developments discussed was the groundbreaking gene-editing technique CRISPR. It can be applied – in theory – to any organism. Outside the Geneva body, CRISPR’s use has raised ethical questions, Mr. Feakes said, but among Member States, security ramifications dominated discussions.

“Potentially, it could be used to develop more effective biological weapons,” he said, noting that the meetings addressed the growing trend of “DIY biological labs”. However, the meetings also focused on the promotion of "responsible science" so that "scientists are part of the solution, not the problem”.

In addition to concerns that the Biological Weapons Convention lacks full international backing, the body has also faced criticism that its Members are not obliged to allow external checks on any illegal stockpiles they might have.

The issue highlights the fact that the BWC lacks a strong institution, its handful of administrators dwarfed by larger sister organizations including the OPCW – the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The OPCW’s 500-strong staff - based in the Hague - have weapons inspectors training facilities, Feakes notes, explaining that the BWC’s focus is therefore much more “about what States do at a national level”.

Concern for the future

Looking ahead, and aside from the rapid pace of scientific change, the biggest challenge is keeping the Biological Weapons Convention relevant – which appears to still be the case today.

“There are no States that say they need biological weapons,” Mr. Feakes says. “That norm needs to be maintained and properly managed. You can’t ban CRISPR or gene editing, because they can do so much good, like finding cures for diseases or combating climate change. But we still need to manage these techniques and technologies to ensure they are used responsibly.” Gene editing, in simple terms, involves the copying of exact strands of DNA, similar to cutting and pasting text on a computer.

The latest BWC session in the Swiss city also involved key intergovernmental organizations, scientific and professional associations, academic institutions, think tanks and other non-governmental entities.

Formally known as the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, the BWC was the first multilateral disarmament treaty to ban an entire category of weapons.

It opened for signature in 1972 and entered into force in 1975. It currently has 181 States Parties, and six States that have signed but not yet ratified it.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/08/1017352

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https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/08/1017352



The Diplomat (Tokyo, Japan)

Japan Holds Firm against Nuclear Ban Treaty on Anniversary of Nuclear Bombings

By Daniel Hurst

Aug. 18, 2018

Shinzo Abe insists that the treaty is unrealistic, but civil society is pushing back.

Even as Japan recently marked the 73rd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reiterated the government’s opposition to joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

The stance came under renewed domestic scrutiny as Japan reflected once again on its history as the only country to have suffered wartime atomic attacks. Now, however, Japan relies on the nuclear-armed United States for its protection. In recent years, Japan has been particularly worried about the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

In a press conference, Abe argued that not a single nuclear power had joined the new treaty because it “was created without taking into account the realities of security.” He noted that the differences among various countries’ approaches had become evident in recent year and reaffirmed Japan’s position that it would seek to serve as a bridge between nuclear and non-nuclear states.

Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue, however, made an emphatic plea for the central government to “support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and fulfill its moral obligation to lead the world towards denuclearization.”

Delivering the Nagasaki Peace Declaration during the city’s memorial service on August 9, Taue noted that more than 300 local assemblies in Japan had voiced their desire to see the treaty signed and ratified. He also urged people around the world to “demand that the governments and parliaments in your countries sign and ratify” the treaty so that it could come into effect as early as possible.

The Hiroshima Peace Declaration of August 6 also touched on the issue. Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui noted that ICAN, the campaign group that was instrumental in promoting the treaty, had won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. “On the other hand,” he added, “certain countries are blatantly proclaiming self-centered nationalism and modernizing their nuclear arsenals, rekindling tensions that had eased with the end of the Cold War.”

World leaders “must strive to make the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons a milestone along the path to a nuclear-weapon-free world,” Matsui said. The Hiroshima mayor called on the Japanese government to play its proper role in “leading the international community toward dialogue and cooperation for a world without nuclear weapons.”

Japan is heavily engaged in diplomatic efforts related to nuclear weapons. According to Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) should be seen as the cornerstone of the international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime. Tokyo aims to work on “realistic and practical proposals to maintain and strengthen the NPT regime,” according to the Diplomatic Bluebook 2017. Tokyo also prioritizes early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

António Guterres, the first United Nations secretary-general to attend the Nagasaki peace memorial service, acknowledged disarmament processes had “slowed and even come to a halt.” During a press conference in Nagasaki, he suggested that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons had been motivated by “enormous frustration” at the lack of progress on disarmament.





Guterres said that as UN secretary-general he fully supported the treaty and hoped that it would enter into force. But he added that the treaty was “in itself not enough” and he paid tribute to the Japanese government’s efforts in a number of areas, including aiming for the success of the NPT review due to take place in 2020.

While in Japan, Guterres met with Abe and expressed gratitude for Japan’s support for multilateralism. The UN chief said he fully supported the U.S.-North Korea negotiations in order to meet the objective of “a total denuclearization that is verifiable, that is irreversible, to make sure that North Korea can be a normal member of the international community in this region.” Guterres further voiced support for Japan’s attempt to seek direct talks with North Korea, while noting he remained committed to implementation of relevant Security Council resolutions.

https://thediplomat.com/2018/08/japan-holds-firm-against-nuclear-ban-treaty-on-anniversary-of-nuclear-bombings/

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COMMENTARY The Hill (Washington, D.C.)

Nuclear Weapons Are Making a Comeback — and Making the World More Dangerous

By Stephen Blank

Aug. 21, 2018

Signs are multiplying that nuclear weapons are making a comeback, making the world more dangerous. The Pentagon reports that China is close to building a nuclear triad. Russia is working on 22 different short, intermediate, and long-range nuclear weapons. North Korea shows no sign of denuclearizing. Iran is bringing back its enriched uranium from Russia where it had been stored under the terms of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Agreement (JCPOA). And the Congress has recently approved a massive defense appropriation that includes provisions for new nuclear weapons.

Such developments reflect what many analysts call a new or second Cold War, which may be more dangerous. Multiple nuclear-armed actors create a more unstable international system than the bipolar world of the Cold War.

In this context, the occurrence of the International Day Against Nuclear Tests on August 29 should be an occasion for international sober reflection about nuclear arms control approaches that work, such as the merits of Kazakhstan’s nuclear policy. In fact, Kazakhstan moved to make this date, the anniversary of the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949, a holiday against nuclear weapons because it suffered horribly from the Soviet nuclear tests near the city of Semipalatinsk.

These tests led to leakages of radioactive gases xenon and krypton, caused spikes in thyroid cancer across Kazakhstan, and were indirectly or directly responsible for thousands of premature deaths or illnesses including genetic diseases and impotence.

Consequently, Kazakhstan’s enduring revulsion against nuclear tests has led it to become a staunch advocate of denuclearization and opponent of proliferation since it became independent in 1991. Kazakhstan regularly hosts disarmament and anti-proliferation forums, is home to the IAEA’s Low Enriched Uranium Bank that is an assured reserve of nuclear fuel supply to eligible member states.







Additionally, this bank also ensures that states do not have to build their own reactors, or use civilian energy programs as a pretext for covert nuclear weapons programs. In other words, states needing nuclear fuel can reliably approach Kazakhstan without having to build their own fuel cycles. Iran and potentially North Korea come to mind here as potential customers for Low Enriched Uranium if we can preserve Iranian denuclearization and obtain as similar outcome for North Korea.

A generation ago Kazakhstan willingly renounced the Soviet nuclear weapons that had been left on its territory and has instead steadfastly championed nonproliferation initiatives with other nuclear powers, removing excess nuclear fuel from its territory and sponsoring efforts to mediate security rivalries that can give rise to a desire for nuclear weapons.

Kazakhstan has used its national nuclear center as a host for international scientific cooperation. Scientists from Algeria and Japan are working with the center to learn how to eliminate radiation from soil. And U.S. scientists, who have just visited the center, are working with Kazakh scientists to eliminate the after-effects of nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk, results that could be used at other radioactive sites to prevent further damage to people or nature.

To be sure Kazakhstan’s commitment to international cooperation in denuclearization and anti-proliferation activities works to enhance its international influence and is not just altruism. Kazakhstan’s policies have contributed to keeping the peace in Central Asia and shown that new states do not need to go nuclear to be heard in international affairs.

As a leader of the non-proliferation movement, Kazakhstan serves as co-president of the CTBT Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Kazakhstan has also used its membership in the UN and its more recent membership in the UN Security Council to take a strong position on supporting UN Security Council Resolution 1540 enjoining all states to refrain from providing any form of support to non-State actors that attempt to develop, acquire, manufacture, possess, transport, transfer or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery, in particular for terrorist purposes.

Furthermore, it is a party to the five-state treaty establishing Central Asia as a nuclear weapons free zone. And in 2017 it awarded King Abdullah II of Jordan the First Nursultan Nazarbayev Prize for a nuclear free world and global security.

At the same time, Kazakhstan’s active commitment to denuclearization and non-proliferation also is the clear result of a national trauma. This trauma reminds us what is at stake globally if we go on adding nuclear weapons to governmental inventories even if they are never used.

The tremendous environmental and ecological risks of nuclear weapons to society and to nature should be sufficient to think about making the promise of August 29 into a reality — even if they are never used. We are bound to find other, safer ways of conducting our affairs, whether they pertain to energy sources or to the mediation of international rivalries.

http://thehill.com/opinion/international/402864-nuclear-weapons-are-making-a-comeback-and-the-world-more-dangerous

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The National Interest (Washington, D.C.)

The Pros and Cons of a Korean War Peace Treaty

By Abby Bard

Aug. 20, 2018

Trump needs to think through how a peace treaty would work and what would be gained or lost from it.

In the Panmunjom Declaration, South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un stated a goal of “declaring an end to the [Korean] War, turning the armistice into a peace treaty, and establishing a permanent and solid peace regime.” Rumors are intensifying that the two Koreas hope to declare an end to the Korean War at September’s United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York City. The United States has said that North Korea needs to make progress towards denuclearization before the war can end, while North Korea has stated that ending the war is the next step that must be taken. After the end of the war is declared, the next step will be developing a peace treaty to outline the conditions of a divided post-war Korean Peninsula.

With North Korea unlikely to change its position, the United States is weighing whether declaring an end to the war will support the U.S. goal of denuclearizing North Korea. Ultimately, a declaration is a confidence-building measure with huge symbolic meaning to the people of the Korean Peninsula, but it alone will not change the security situation and build sustainable peace on the peninsula. What really matters is the substance and implementation of the peace treaty that would follow the declaration.

Declaring the end of the war and enacting a treaty will not be a straightforward process. Here are critical questions the Trump administration must ask if it wants to make sure that a treaty contributes meaningfully towards the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula:

Who signs the treaty? Representatives of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, the Korean People’s Army, and United Nations Command (which was led by the United States) signed the armistice that ended the hostilities of the Korean War in 1953. South Korea is not party to the document as its then-leader Syngman Rhee refused to accept a divided Korean peninsula. Given this, South Korean president Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said in the Panmunjom Declaration that they would work with China and the United States to get a peace treaty. The UN Security Council and General Assembly could also be required signatories. Given that each party has a different view on what a peaceful Korean peninsula looks like, there is likely to be a drawn-out negotiating process.

What happens to the militaries? What a peace treaty means for the U.S. military presence in South Korea is the question keeping analysts and skeptics up at night. There is concern that North Korea will use the end of the war to demand that the U.S. withdraw or draw down its troops. However, ending the war does not mean that the threat is eliminated. Countries can have hostile relations without being at war—just look at India and Pakistan, or the United States and Iran. If there is to be sustainable peace, the North and South Korean militaries will also need to reevaluate their force posture.

What happens with North Korea’s nuclear program? A good peace treaty should reinforce North Korea’s commitment to denuclearization. North Korea’s production of fissile materials and nuclear warheads is a destabilizing behavior that undermines the security of the Korean peninsula and violates the spirit of a peace regime. If it ignores North Korea’s nuclear program, a peace treaty would end the war without changing the underlying security situation.





What happens with sanctions? Both Koreas have appealed to the United States for sanctions relief. South Korea cannot pursue some of its inter-Korea projects with sanctions intact, and President Moon has announced an ambitious economic integration plan for the Koreas. North Korea claims that sanctions violate the spirit of the Singapore summit. A peace treaty shouldn't affect the sanctions regime, since the end of the war is not the end of North Korea's illicit programs. However, to an unprepared diplomatic team, sanctions could easily end up entangled in the peace process.

What happens with inter-Korea relations? If both South and North Korea are recognized as valid signatories, a mutually agreed-upon treaty could be interpreted as acceptance of a two-state solution on the Korean peninsula. However, South Korea asserts its sovereignty over the entire peninsula and both Koreas have unification enshrined within their constitutions. North Korea has historically supported a federal system comprised of a North and South Korea. Furthermore, Pyongyang currently appears to support a unified Korea based on the one country, two-systems model, à la China and Hong Kong, with North Korea as China in this scenario. However, South Korea sees unification as a long-term goal built off of economic and ideological integration.

If the war ends and neither country can position the other as an illegitimate government, it will be important to track if their respective domestic policies begin acknowledging each other as sovereign nations. Will they amend their constitutions, or will unification remain a goal of both governments? If both governments still claim to seek unification, is the peace treaty a security guarantee that either Korea can accept? Is the United States also prepared to accept North Korea as its own nation and establish diplomatic ties?

Like the Panmunjom Declaration and the agreement reached in Singapore, a declaration of the end of war will mark the beginning, not the end, of a long process. However, given President Donald Trump’s instinctual approach to policy and his fondness for media attention, there is a concern that the president will rush to make any deal instead of working towards a good deal. The United States should seriously consider declaring an end to the Korean War, but it must keep its eye on the prize and make sure that any subsequent treaty isn’t just a photo-op. Rather, any treaty must contribute meaningfully to peace on the Korean peninsula, and go hand-in-hand with concrete measures towards North Korean denuclearization.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/pros-and-cons-korean-war-peace-treaty-29322

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The Hill (Washington, D.C.)

Bolster American Missile Defense until Russia Proves Itself in Treaty

By Rebeccah Heinrichs

Aug. 18, 2018

Russia is anxious to extend the New Start Treaty, but the United States should not be. Vladimir Putin had purportedly raised the issue at the Helsinki summit, but President Trump has denied reaching any deal. The agreement expires in 2021, so it would be wise not to rush.

President Trump has reportedly criticized the New Start Treaty, which does have significant flaws and verification loopholes. Most concerning, while the Senate considered it, members received classified intelligence that caused several to oppose it. In 2010, Christopher Bond (R-Mo.), who at the time was vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent around a classified letter to his colleagues outlining what he identified as the irredeemable problems and circumstances surrounding the New Start Treaty. The information Bond had has yet to be made public.



https://nationalinterest.org/feature/pros-and-cons-korean-war-peace-treaty-29322



Despite this, enough Republicans supported ratification. In a shrewd political move, now retired Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), perhaps calculating the inevitable ratification of the New Start Treaty, wrangled the Obama administration to commit billions of dollars to modernize the aging U.S. nuclear arsenal as it sought Senate support. These efforts to modernize missile defenses have continued under the Trump administration.

Additionally, the nuclear posture review of the Trump administration, unlike that of the Obama administration, unambiguously identifies Russia as a competitor with a concerning proclivity to threaten nuclear force. The report further calls for returning low yield nuclear warheads to submarine launched ballistic missiles and to develop a submarine launched cruise missile. These specific delivery systems would enable the United States to avoid the formidable Russian air defenses while providing a credible nuclear response option to the kinds of low yield nuclear weapons the Russians are brandishing vis-à-vis NATO allies.

By deploying these supplemental capabilities, the United States seeks to convince the Russians that it is wrong to presume that the Americans have neither an effective capability nor the will to employ a proportional response to an initial nuclear strike on a NATO ally, however small the yield. Barring any new information, such as the kind that senators received in 2010, and provided the Russians comply with the New Start Treaty and the United States bolsters the credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent force, then Washington should remain silent on what to do about the agreement. Of course, should any of these criteria change, there is little reason to stay in the New Start Treaty at all.

In the meantime, the United States should bolster its nuclear deterrent while also qualitatively improving U.S. missile defenses as the clock runs out until 2021. The Pentagon should follow through with its current plan to conduct research and development on the ground launched cruise missile. If deployed, this missile would violate the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The Russians continue to violate it, so while American diplomats attempt to persuade the Russians to comply, it makes sense to develop the weapon if the agreement falls apart.

Importantly, the United States must reject the notion that strategic stability is achieved by remaining vulnerable to Russian and Chinese nuclear weapons. In 2002, President George W. Bush withdrew the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but the United States has effectively remained tied to the spirit of that agreement. It has done so by deploying missile defenses designed to only defend against the kinds of missile threats from rogue nations like North Korea and by constantly reiterating to both the Russians and the Chinese that U.S. missile defenses are not meant to degrade their respective offensive forces.

But even if what those diplomats say is true, and it is regarding the spectrum of missile defense options today, making the argument has essentially conceded to the Russians ad the Chinese that the United States ought not to defend against their offensive missiles. But the United States is not obligated as a matter of stability or moral responsibility to expose our allies or American citizens to nuclear attack.

Decades after the Cold War, American technology has advanced such that the United States can deploy defenses that protect vulnerable U.S. assets that Russia and China can hold at risk. This would begin with rapidly deploying a sensor architecture in outer space that is necessary to track Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles, and then to begin work on an interceptor layer also in outer space that would give the United States the ability to intercept enemy missiles in the boost phase.

The Russians will oppose all of it but that is no reason not to do it. In various ways, the president and his officials have repeatedly said they wanted dominance over U.S. adversaries rather than





parity. Whether or not the United States extends the New Start Treaty must fit into this larger context. The agreement is a mere tool in the hands of the government. If the Trump administration deems it useful to extend it, it can do it closer to its deadline. Until then, the United States should strengthen its nuclear deterrent and its missile defense architecture, and let the Russians prove it can, for once, consistently comply with an agreement.

http://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/402485-bolster-american-missile-defense-until-russia-proves-itself-in

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The National Interest (Washington, D.C.)

A Nuclear Armed Germany Would Be a Mistake

By Tobias Fella

Aug. 18, 2018

It was a mistake to consider it in 1957 under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and it is a mistake to consider it now in 2018.

In German post-war mythology, the Federal Republic’s first chancellor Konrad Adenauer is synonymous with Western Integration and unshakeable trust in America. Yet, if push came to shove, he did not want to have to trust in U.S. nuclear protection. Thus, in a cabinet meeting in December 1956, he called for the Bundeswehr to equip with nuclear weapons—either through own efforts, ideally with the French and Italians , if necessary, in secret by deliberately leaving America in the dark. The ‘ Paris Agreements of 1954’ , where Germany agreed not to manufacture atomic weapons wouldn’t be much of an obstacle, French Defence Minister Jacque Chaban-Delmas declared. The prohibition of atomic weapons would only concern German state territory. Therefore, why not jointly produce them in France?

During the 1950s, Adenauer and his Minister of Defence Franz Josef Strauss noticed rapid changes in the security environment. In the Summer of 1956, rumors emerged that the British planned to shift much of its military capability from Germany to the Middle East. Also, it was reported that the United States would soon announce an 800,000-men cut in its forces, making Europe an easy target for Soviet aggression. Why not use atomic weapons to halt the Red Army rather than drench the battlefield of Central Europe with American blood? According to U.S. Admiral Radford , this would not only be less costly but pretty much make up for the loss of conventional deterrence capabilities. If this wasn’t enough for Germans to bear, there was the Sputnik-Crisis of October 1957. Now the U.S. homeland was within reach of Russian nuclear missiles— America’s age of invulnerability was coming to an end.

Would Americans defend Western Europe at the price of nuclear extermination? Did decision-makers in Washington value Bonn and Berlin as much as New York or Boston? Where would the defense be deployed —on the inner-German border, the Rhine riverside, in North Africa? Wouldn’t the United States try to limit a nuclear war to Germany to protect American soil, try to win a scaled-down nuclear exchange with the Soviets at the expense of the federal republic, not least to save a great amount of blood and treasure? Understandably, Adenauer didn’t want to go down that road. A ‘Bonn bomb,’ therefore would be the avenue of escape. And the window of opportunity seemed to be there. After all, Paris felt humiliated by Washington during the Suez Canal Crisis, was short of money and—at that period of history—did not possess the bomb. Though, why not join hands with the old hereditary enemy on the other side of the Rhine?







The idea never transformed into reality. The Algerian War and De Gaulle got in the way. France became a nuclear power on its own. Germany was ‘compensated’ with the ‘nuclear sharing agreement,’ was from now on involved in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s nuclear planning and in ‘warhead delivery’ in the event of their use. Strauss’ option about this is recorded in his memoirs : ‘The little puppet was allowed to run alongside the military band with his toy trumpet, believing he was the drum major.’ The German Foreign Office, however, breathed a sigh of relief—catastrophic political consequences had been averted, for the moment.

2018: Back to the Future?

Now, almost six decades later, Brooking’s Constanze Stelzenmueller , claims that Germany is facing ‘its worst security dilemma since the 1950s’. In the West, Donald Trump insists on ‘peace (only) through strength,’ on ‘unmatched American power,’ including a pre-eminence in nuclear capabilities. In the East, Vladimir Putin has announced ‘revolutionary weapons systems’ capable of out-maneuvering any defense and delivering nuclear warheads to every corner of the globe. And Germany lies in-between.

Today as then, Western solidarity is under considerable strain. This time, nuclear Great Britain is not only ordering its troops home but leaving the European Union, while France continues to think of the ‘Force de frappe’ as a national tool first. And on top of everything, the steadiness of NATO’s Article 5 guarantee is called into question, again. The country to be blamed for this, if voices out of the Trump administration are to be believed, is first and foremost mine: Germany , who is said to spend way too little on defense and to occasionally make common cause with Moscow—on Nord Stream 2 and beyond. Additionally, arms control and (nuclear) non-proliferation regime(s) are in severe trouble while nuclear weapons states are modernizing their arsenals. Similar to ‘ Atomic Annie ’ of 1953, an artillery cannon capable of delivering nuclear grenades up to twenty miles into enemy territory, today low-yield, high-precision nuclear weapons are planned to lower the deployment threshold, thus hardening ‘ soft spots ’ in defense and deterrence.

To make matters worse, the United States, China, and Russia are developing ‘ hypersonic gliders ’ of such speed (Mach 5 or more) that any effective response becomes next to impossible. As a result, in the future, most of the world’s nuclear arsenals might be rendered highly vulnerable to attack. When Trump then further announces a ‘space force’ and it becomes clear that early warning systems are constantly hackable via cyberspace, the Cold War doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction,’ the belief ‘whoever shoots first dies second’ almost sounds reassuring and stabilizing.

Nuclear Take-Off

A world, worse off than in 1957? Hasn’t the international system reached a ‘point of no return’ requiring nuclear weapons for state survival? How should Germany protect itself in this ‘New World Order’ if it can’t rely on anyone else? Aren’t tactical atomic weapons, as Adenauer emphasized back then , ‘basically nothing but the further development of artillery,’ anyway? This time it’s for real—German needs to go nuclear, alone! This is what Christian Hacke, a well-known German political scientist, and realist advocated for in ‘ Die Welt /EN.'

But then what? First, Germany’s plan to shut all its nuclear reactors by 2022, a decision taken after the Fukushima accident in 2011, has to be revoked. Thereafter, nuclear bombs could be technically built: URENCO has already made Germany one of the world's leaders in uranium enrichment. Strategically, things would be more difficult: When would the bombs be used, for and against whom? How would they be carried to the target? On land, on water, on air? Would tactical nuclear weapons be fabricated to be able to react flexibly and gradually, i.e., to a limited nuclear strike on an aircraft carrier in the Baltics? How about a German one that might almost certainly be already on patrol the ocean in this scenario? How would a German government balance lives and cities against





each other? Would (and should) it be in its power to sacrifice Berlin for Warsaw or vice versa? Who would accept a value judgment like that?

These are scary questions, especially for a German audience. However, nuclear weapons states ask and answer them all the time. To be aware of their existence is thus of utter importance, not due to agreeing to their rightness and necessity, but for mutual understanding and alliance cohesion.

German nuclear weapons? Not on Realist Grounds!

The prior discussion can only lead to one conclusion: A Germany armed with nuclear bombs would be a fatal signal and jarring break with a hard-won post-war identity, which includes renouncing weapons of mass destruction. It would put the ‘German question’ back on the international agenda. Not just any country would have chosen to acquire nuclear weapons and thus take another shot for ‘single-hegemony’ in Europe, but one whose recent austerity and migration policies weren’t praised by anyone, to say the least.

A German nuclear bomb must be prevented, today as in 1957. Far less provocative steps beyond the atomic threshold are possible: from strengthening conventional deterrence capabilities to promoting dialogue with European and other partners about the meaning and achievability of strategic stability in the twenty-first century. Reviving efforts for arms control and disarmament would be a viable supplement. All these steps are not a magic bullet. But neither is a German bomb.

If the Federal Republic would go nuclear, as Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, recently stated , it would not only ‘checkmate itself’ but also NATO and the process of European unification. In short—the country would hurt itself and facilitate balance-of-power dynamics to counter and tame its aspirations. A new age of unstable multipolarity on the continent would be the result. Especially realists like Hacked, who are always demanding a foreign policy to be based on self-interest and power, should know better—the atomic bomb is not in the German national interest.

Konrad Adenauer described the Nuclear-Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1967 as ‘Morgenthau Plan squared. ' Strauss referred to it as a ‘Versailles of cosmic proportions.’ Both men had little value for movements like ‘ Combating Nuclear Death’ uniting representatives of churches, trade unions and the Social Democratic opposition. Nor did they heed warnings about the dangers of nuclear war presented by eighteen leading German atomic scientists in their ‘ Göttingen Manifesto’ of 1957. Adenauer continued to believe that Germany needed a nuclear option until the day he died. This view was deadly then and still is today.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/nuclear-armed-germany-would-be-mistake-29047

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https://nationalinterest.org/feature/nuclear-armed-germany-would-be-mistake-29047



ABOUT THE USAF CSDS The USAF Counterproliferation Center (CPC) was established in 1998 at the direction of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Located at Maxwell AFB, this Center capitalizes on the resident expertise of Air University — while extending its reach far beyond — and influences a wide audience of leaders and policy makers. A memorandum of agreement between the Air Staff’s Director for Nuclear and Counterproliferation (then AF/XON) and Air War College commandant established the initial personnel and responsibilities of the Center. This included integrating counterproliferation awareness into the curriculum and ongoing research at the Air University; establishing an information repository to promote research on counterproliferation and nonproliferation issues; and directing research on the various topics associated with counterproliferation and nonproliferation.

In 2008, the Secretary of Defense's Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Management recommended "Air Force personnel connected to the nuclear mission be required to take a professional military education (PME) course on national, defense, and Air Force concepts for deterrence and defense." This led to the addition of three teaching positions to the CPC in 2011 to enhance nuclear PME efforts. At the same time, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, in coordination with the AF/A10 and Air Force Global Strike Command, established a series of courses at Kirtland AFB to provide professional continuing education (PCE) through the careers of those Air Force personnel working in or supporting the nuclear enterprise. This mission was transferred to the CPC in 2012, broadening its mandate to providing education and research on not just countering WMD but also nuclear operations issues. In April 2016, the nuclear PCE courses were transferred from the Air War College to the U.S. Air Force Institute for Technology.

In February 2014, the Center’s name was changed to the Center for Unconventional Weapons Studies (CUWS) to reflect its broad coverage of unconventional weapons issues, both offensive and defensive, across the six joint operating concepts (deterrence operations, cooperative security, major combat operations, irregular warfare, stability operations, and homeland security). The term “unconventional weapons,” currently defined as nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, also includes the improvised use of chemical, biological, and radiological hazards. In May 2018, the name changed again to the Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies (CSDS) in recognition of senior Air Force interest in focusing on this vital national security topic.

The Center’s military insignia displays the symbols of nuclear, biological, and chemical hazards. The arrows above the hazards represent the four aspects of counterproliferation — counterforce, active defense, passive defense, and consequence management. The Latin inscription "Armis Bella Venenis Geri" stands for "weapons of war involving poisons."

DISCLAIMER: Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air University, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government agency.



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Issue No. 1329 24 August 2018

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