Technicians last month installed a sixth missile interceptor at Fort Greely, Alaska, as part of U.S. missile defense efforts (U.S. Missile Defense Agency photo). Key U.S. Missile Defense Test Planned By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Following a two-year hiatus and repeated delays, the United States intends to conduct a key flight test of components of the national missile defense system before the end of the month, according to an official (see GSN, Nov. 3). “Mission readiness reviews are continuing and we expect to conduct the test within the next two weeks,” said Missile Defense Agency spokesman Richard Lehner in an e-mail, regarding Integrated Flight Test (IFT)-13C of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System...Full Story

European Nations to Begin Nuclear Talks With Iran as U.S. Plans to Increase Pressure on Tehran France, Germany and the United Kingdom are expected to resume negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program next week, a senior Iranian official said yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Dec. 6)...Full Story

Experts Discuss “Second Nuclear Age” By Jim Wurst Global Security Newswire NEW YORK — Proliferation dangers caused by vast arsenals of nuclear weapons and weapon-grade materials, and aggravated by U.S. policy, are increasing as more nations and nonstate actors see nuclear weapons as important to their goals, according to participants at a conference here Friday (see GSN, Nov. 8)...Full Story

	Wednesday, December 8, 2004

House Approves U.S. Intelligence Reform Bill By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday voted in favor of an intelligence reform bill that would create a national director to oversee the U.S. intelligence community (see GSN, Dec. 7). The House voted 336-75 to approve the bill, which would also create a national counterterrorism center to perform counterterrorism-related intelligence analysis and operational planning. While most House Democrats backed the bill, House Republicans were more split, voting 152-67 to support the legislation. “This is a solid piece of legislation in terms of intelligence reform,” said House intelligence committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.). “What we expect is that we are going to create a more aggressive, a more vibrant and a more organized intelligence community that is going to give policy-makers the information that they need to make the appropriate decisions. And it’s also going to give and continue to give very, very good information to our warfighters.” The bill, which seeks to implement two of the main recommendations put forward this summer by the Sept. 11 commission, was the result of weeks of work between House and Senate negotiators. While the compromise bill was completed last month, a vote in the House was delayed, due largely to the opposition of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.). Hunter had opposed the bill due to fears that the planned intelligence director would disrupt the military chain of command and jeopardize the ability of military commanders to receive battlefield intelligence. Hunter dropped his opposition, though, after language was added this week to the bill to resolve his concerns. Sensenbrenner, who was among those House Republicans to vote against the bill yesterday, had opposed the measure because of a lack of provisions concerning illegal immigration. According to reports, those issues are set to be taken up by the House in a separate bill next year. Along with creating the national intelligence director and counterterrorism center, the bill includes provisions setting priorities for intelligence collection, increasing the number of border-patrol agents by 10,000 over five years and improving luggage screening at airports. The U.S. Senate is expected later today to follow the House and vote in favor of the bill. The Senate passed its own version of the intelligence reform plan this summer by a vote of 96-2. Once approved by the Senate, the bill would be sent to President George W. Bush for final signature. Bush has been a staunch public supporter of the measure as it moved through Congress. “We have walked a long and winding road to get to this day, but ultimately we’ve gotten to exactly where we wanted to be, which is on the verge of adopting legislation that will reform America’s intelligence assets so that, to the best extent possible, we can feel that we are ready to prevent another Sept. 11 from happening,” said Senator Joseph Lieberman, one of the main Senate negotiators on the bill. Back to top

Guam to Conduct WMD Response Training Exercise Emergency personnel in Guam are scheduled to participate in a full-scale training exercise tomorrow on responding to attacks involving weapons of mass destruction, Pacific Daily News reported (see GSN, Nov. 23). The federally funded exercise is the first such drill since training began last December, said Lt. Eric Fisher of the Guam Police Department and training/exercise coordinator with Guam Homeland Security. “This office has put together a very robust training program in which our main goal is to first identify all the training needs of our emergency responders,” Fisher said. “Since December, we’ve had trainings on Guam for about every two weeks. Guam was recognized (by the Office for Domestic Preparedness) as having the most robust training program in the nation” (Gene Park, Pacific Daily News, Dec. 8). Back to top

European Nations to Begin Nuclear Talks With Iran as U.S. Plans to Increase Pressure on Tehran France, Germany and the United Kingdom are expected to resume negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program next week, a senior Iranian official said yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Dec. 6). The discussion was likely to take place in “one of Europe’s capitals,” said Hassan Rohani, Iran’s top national security official and nuclear negotiator. The Iranian official said he plans to meet with the foreign ministers from the three European powers, along with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Rohani added that International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei had also been invited. Talks are expected to cover details of the trade, security and technology incentives Iran is to receive from the European countries for suspending its uranium enrichment activities, AFP reported. The EU nations, meanwhile, are looking for guarantees that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons and they would like to see a permanent enrichment freeze. An EU official confirmed that a meeting would “in all likelihood” take place Monday or Tuesday, in Brussels or another European capital, according to AFP. “The Iranians have asked for the first meeting of the steering committee (overseeing the nuclear agreement with Iran) to take place at ministerial level” in order to give it “better visibility,” the source said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 7). The Bush administration, which has seen its hopes of referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council foiled by the EU negotiations, is looking to increase the pressure on Tehran, Knight Ridder reported today. Top U.S. officials are suggesting that the Bush administration wants to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq by mid-2005, partially to allow for greater flexibility in dealing with Iran. With most U.S. combat divisions deployed in Iraq, few good military options against Iran remain, according to Knight Ridder. Limited air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities might fail and could endanger U.S. troops in Iraq (Warren Strobel, Knight Ridder/TwinCities.com, Dec. 8). Rohani told the Al-Hayat newspaper that the United States is continuing to pressure Tehran because “the U.S. administration realizes that Iran’s possession of the nuclear fuel production cycle is not only technologically important for Iran and its independence but also gives this country a special political stature. They do not want Iran to have this capability and this stature.” Iran agreed to implement the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement to demonstrate that U.S. accusations that Tehran is developing a weapon under the guise of its civilian nuclear program are unfounded, said Ali Aqamohammadi, representative of the Revolution Guide as received in the Supreme National Security Council. “The protocol is the IAEA’s term of reference, and the IAEA inspectors are not Iranians but Americans and other nationals. They can come and check,” he said. He added that “all the sites that were doubted by the IAEA were inspected and proved to be used for peaceful purposes” (Al-Hayat/BBC Monitoring, Dec. 7). Back to top       Experts Discuss “Second Nuclear Age” By Jim Wurst Global Security Newswire NEW YORK — Proliferation dangers caused by vast arsenals of nuclear weapons and weapon-grade materials, and aggravated by U.S. policy, are increasing as more nations and nonstate actors see nuclear weapons as important to their goals, according to participants at a conference here Friday (see GSN, Nov. 8). The U.S. policy of pre-emptive war to stop nuclear proliferation has been “a spectacular failure. ... The effort to stop proliferation has actually promoted it,” said Jonathan Schell, the author of The Fate of the Earth and other books promoting nuclear disarmament. The Iraq war has already demonstrated that force is “a hopeless instrument” for nonproliferation, he said. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has been more effective in countering the spread of nuclear weapons, by establishing legal guidelines on controlling atomic technology, he said. The countries that presented the greatest proliferation dangers before the invasion were Pakistan, North Korea, Iran and Iraq, Schell said, but the United States exactly reversed the priorities because the desire to use force “trumped the actual dangers.” The only alternative to this “fundamental realignment” for preventing proliferation is the “unradical and sensible goal” of the abolition of nuclear weapons, he said. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States, the “Bush Doctrine” has followed “expanding circles,” Schell said:  First, the “war on terror” was declared without specific enemies or goals, so it becomes “a global and unending conflict”; next, the United States said any “regime” supporting terrorism was a legitimate target, so this justified the “regime change”; finally, war was declared on certain nations; WMD programs, with Iraq being the first case and, to date, only case. “The goal was disarmament and the means to achieve it was war,” Schell said. This is based, he added, on the “truly astonishing” belief that the United States should have “a global monopoly on the use of force.” The conference was called “The Second Nuclear Age: Nuclear Weapons, the New Terrorism, and the Culture of Fear,” and was sponsored by the Center on Terrorism at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.   Organizers consider this a “second” nuclear age because nuclear weapon policies have persisted after the end of the Cold War. “Proliferation has been built into the history of the nuclear age and into the genealogy of nuclear weapons. And yet, every country that’s made nuclear weapons has claimed that it was their own effort that that did this,” said Zia Mian, a lecturer at Prince University’s Science and Global Security program. An important proliferation danger continues to be the poorly secured stocks of former Soviet nuclear weapons and weapon-grade nuclear materials, said Sharon Weiner of the School of International Service at American University. Although there are “no confirmed cases of nuclear theft from the former Soviet Union,” she said, only 10 percent of those stocks are adequately guarded. “The scary story about proliferation from the former Soviet Union isn’t [the amount of nuclear materials], it’s the fact that the things within our own control within the United States government are the things that have hindered this agenda,” she said, referring to bureaucratic roadblocks to securing the weapons and materials and providing legitimate employment for Russia’s nuclear scientists. The United States has purchased the equivalent of 9,000 nuclear weapons worth of Russian highly enriched uranium Weiner said. The original plan was to spend $12 billion over 20 years, she added, but that has been reduced to $8 billion and the timeline has been lengthened, “not because of concerns over national security but because of concerns over price,” she said. Another force driving proliferation is the U.S. goal of developing an arsenal of new weapons — nuclear and otherwise — that would perpetuate U.S. military dominance, participants said. Andrew Lichterman of the Western States Legal Foundation called it a quest of “qualitative dominance” that would include more accurate intercontinental ballistic missiles, “hypersonic” missiles, “common aerial vehicles” — delivery systems for nuclear and conventional warheads that could be fitted on multiple launchers — and space-based lasers. Lichterman said the recent elimination from the fiscal 2005 U.S. defense budget of some weapon systems is “misleading” because “these cuts are largely a symbolic victory” (see GSN, Nov. 22). In some cases, he said, the money was just shifted to other designs, and the weapons laboratories still have large discretionary funds. “We are still looking at a resurgent nuclear weapons complex,” he added. Lichterman said some of these systems, such as the common aerial vehicle, “blur the distinction” between nuclear and non-nuclear, which “complicates” nuclear disarmament. Victoria Sampson of the Center for Defense Information made a similar point concerning ballistic missile defenses. Elements of the system, such as the intercept missile, will not work, she said (see related GSN story, today), but it does not matter because the real goal is “to break the taboo on placing weapons in space.” By framing it as a land-based defensive system, planners hope to “skip over a public debate” on the “highly destabilizing” issue of placing weapons in space, Sampson said. Missile defenses “create a fake sense of security,” she added. “The research and development does not merit deployment.”  The irony of deploying a destabilizing system that does not work is that money is being taken from useful projects and that other countries, in particular Russia and China, are using the deployment to justify some of their own military projects, Sampson said. Back to top       U.S. Envoy Urges China to Press North Korea for New Round of Six-Party Nuclear Talks U.S. special envoy Joseph DeTrani yesterday asked Chinese officials to redouble their efforts to persuade North Korea to resume multilateral talks on its nuclear program, a senior South Korean Foreign Ministry official said today (see GSN, Dec. 7). “While appreciating China's efforts that have been made so far, special envoy DeTrani expressed hope that Beijing make further efforts to persuade North Korea to return to dialogue,” said Cho Tae-yong, according to Agence France-Presse. DeTrani left China today for Seoul, where he gave Cho a 90-minute briefing on his meetings in Beijing. “Special Envoy DeTrani made it clear again that the United States, as well as its allies, are willing to take on anything on the table, including North Korea’s proposal, and have sincere talks,” Cho said (see GSN, June 24). “It seems that North Korea is now carefully studying the situation.  When it finishes this work, we expect the six-way talks to resume at an early date,” he added (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 8). “Hopefully, we will resume these talks very quickly,” Cho quoted DeTrani as saying during their meeting, according to the Associated Press. DeTrani was disappointed that no date has been set for the next round of talks, Cho said after their meeting (Soo-Jeong Lee, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Dec. 8). Back to top       U.S. Air Force Deactivates Peacekeeper Missiles The U.S. Air Force yesterday deactivated the Sierra Launch Control Center at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, leaving only 13 of its original 50 MX “Peacekeeper” missiles operational, the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle reported (see GSN, May 7). The Air Force began deactivating the Peacekeeper in October 2002 as part of U.S. reductions to its strategic nuclear arsenal. The Air Force is expected to complete deactivation of the missiles, which were activated in 1988 and can carry 10 independently targeted nuclear warheads, by October 2005, according to the Tribune-Eagle. Sierra is the first launch control center to be deactivated and five more are scheduled to follow suit, beginning with the Romeo Launch Control Center later this month, according to Lt. Col. Dave Bliesner, commander of the 400th Missile Squadron. F.E. Warren Air Force Base is expected to continue operating 150 Minuteman 3 missiles (Kelly Etzel Douglas, Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, Dec. 8). Back to top

Sandia National Laboratory Partners With Private Industry to Develop Water Monitoring System The Sandia National Laboratory has partnered with the U.S. engineering and construction firm CH2M Hill and Australian defense contractor Tenix Investments to develop a new monitoring system to detect possible biological agents in water supplies, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 29). The two companies have agreed to work over the next 10 years to convert a device developed by Sandia into a viable monitoring system that can be placed in water systems to monitor for biological contamination for up to a month. The two companies have agreed to develop and test a prototype within six months, and will have exclusive rights to the product for up to a year after the agreement ends, AP reported (Associated Press/SanLuisObispo.com, Dec. 7). Back to top

Proof of Prewar Iraqi Chemical Weapons Production May Have Been Found, Iraqi Prime Minister Says Documents have been found that may prove prewar Iraq produced chemical weapons, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told ITAR-Tass today (see GSN, Nov. 30). He said the documents were discovered near the city of Fallujah (ITAR-Tass, Dec. 8). Back to top

Pakistan Tests Medium-Range Ballistic Missile Pakistan today conducted a successful test of its medium-range, nuclear-capable Hatf 4 ballistic missile, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, Nov. 29). The missile, which is also known as the Shaheen 1 and has a range of up to 700 kilometers, was tested at an undisclosed location, a military spokesman said. Pakistan informed its neighbors ahead of time of the test, which was conducted to validate “additional technical parameters” of the missile, the military said. The missile is an existing part of Pakistan’s arsenal, AFP reported. The test was not intended as “a signal” to Pakistan’s nuclear-armed rival India, Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan said. “Maintaining our nuclear deterrence is a national priority,” he said (Agence France-Presse/TurkishPress.com, Dec. 8). Back to top       Japan Drops Plan to Study Ballistic Missile Japan has decided not to study the development of a long-range, surface-to-surface missile system, an official said today (see GSN, Dec. 3). The Japanese Defense Agency had planned the study because of growing concerns over China and North Korea, according to Agence France-Presse. The plan was dropped because of opposition from the Buddhist-oriented political party New Komeito, a member of the ruling coalition, a party official said (Agence France-Presse, Dec. 8). Back to top

Key U.S. Missile Defense Test Planned By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Following a two-year hiatus and repeated delays, the United States intends to conduct a key flight test of components of the national missile defense system before the end of the month, according to an official (see GSN, Nov. 3). “Mission readiness reviews are continuing and we expect to conduct the test within the next two weeks,” said Missile Defense Agency spokesman Richard Lehner in an e-mail, regarding Integrated Flight Test (IFT)-13C of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System. The system is being developed to intercept ICBM-launched enemy warheads in space as they approach the United States. Components are expected to be “activated” before the end of the year, as ordered by President George W. Bush in December 2002. There have been a dozen flight tests of the system. The previous test, in December 2002, did not successfully intercept the target. An interception is not the primary purpose of the upcoming test and success would be measured in other ways, Lehner said. The test could be important politically for the Bush administration, in light of doubts over the system’s capability, said Philip Coyle, the Pentagon’s former top testing official and now an analyst at the Center for Defense Information. “If IFT-13C is successful, the pressure will be on to use that as justification” for activating the system, he said by e-mail. Congressional appropriators in July called the test “an important milestone,” and directed that the Pentagon report to Congress “a detailed assessment of the results of IFT-13C” within 30 days of the test. Lehner said the test’s success or failure would not affect the expected decision to deploy the system this month. He said data from the test would be used to help develop rules and procedures for operating the activated system, “particularly with regard to command and control, battle management and communications, as well as booster and EKV [kill vehicle] performance against a challenging target.” The plan is “still to attain alert status by end of the year after Combatant Commands complete a wide variety of exercises to ensure proper system integration and operation but there is no deadline. [The] system will be placed on alert when it is ready,” the spokesman said in his e-mail message. New Challenges The test will differ from previous trials in several fundamental ways, providing new challenges and in some ways a closer representation of what the system might face in a real attack, Coyle said. “One of the criticisms of past flight intercept tests is that they have been low and slow, that is, at much shorter range than an intercept of a target coming from North Korea would be,” he said. This month’s test would for the first time in an integrated flight test use a three-stage booster for the missile interceptor that will significantly increase the closing speed between the kill vehicle and the target, giving the system less time to discriminate the target from decoys and to home in on it. The closing speed will be approximately 17,000 to 18,000 mph, which is 20 to 30 percent higher than previous tests, Lehner said. The interceptors scheduled for activation in Alaska and California have three-stage boosters. The target also will be launched from a new location: Kodiak Island, Alaska, as opposed to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, while the interceptor will fly from the Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific. The distance between the launch sites will be a few hundred miles shorter than the 4,800 miles of previous tests, which will further compress the interception timeline, and provide a new angle of attack. The interceptor and the target are expected to meet, though, at an even lower altitude than the previous 140 miles above the earth, according to Lehner. A higher altitude would have meant an even faster closing speed, Coyle said Also, the target will continue to carry a locating transponder, or beacon, to help guide the interceptor toward the area where it tries to hit the target. Radars and satellites are being developed to that job but are not yet ready and could take years. Measuring Success The test is not primarily intended to produce an interception of the target — it is only a “fly-by,” according to Lehner. He said though, “While not a primary objective, an intercept is possible if all elements perform as designed.” The success of the test will be measured by other factors, such as the performance of the numerous systems involved, as well as the closest distance achieved between the interceptor’s “kill vehicle” and the target. “We would like to get close enough to target to accumulate a wide range of target data,” he said. Coyle said fly-bys are “generally called successful if the various systems work pretty much as expected, and there are no glaring failures that might become public knowledge.” Lehner said a “quick look” at the test’s results could be completed two or three days after it takes place, and has said a more lengthy analysis could take a couple of weeks. Even if the test is successful, Coyle wrote in an e-mail, “The MDA should NOT use [that] to justify deployment and claim operational readiness.” “With the major systems elements missing [including major components for detecting and tracking enemy warheads], with prior information about the target used for targeting including the C-band beacon on the re-entry vehicle, with no demonstrated capability to defend against a realistic attack under realistic conditions, and without testing the system the way it is being deployed, it would be misleading to declare even “incremental” operational capability,” he said. Back to top

Ottawa Airport to Receive Dirty-Bomb Detectors Canada plans to install dirty-bomb detection equipment at the Ottawa International Airport over the next year, the Ottawa Citizen reported today (see GSN, Oct. 4). The project is part of a five-year, $138 million initiative aimed at bolstering Canadian border security against the threat of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The Canadian government’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Research & Technology Initiative will place sensors in the airport’s halls and on patrol vehicles. Sensors will monitor the air and airline passengers for radiation. Once the Ottawa pilot project is completed and studied, the technology is expected to be installed in other airports and cargo shipping docks throughout Canada, beginning as early as 2006, the Citizen reported. The Ottawa airport was chosen for the pilot project because of several high-priority targets in the area, including the U.S. Embassy, according to John Thompson, director of the Mackenzie Institute, which researches counterterrorism initiatives. “The Americans are especially worried about dirty bombs and we are catching the edge of that,” he said. “Especially since al-Qaeda was talking last spring about what they are calling their ‘Cave of Darkness’ operation. They implied that they had been working on a dirty bomb for some time.” This level of security is “the new reality,” Thompson added. “This is not just for a couple of years against al-Qaeda,” he said. “This is for the foreseeable future, all the time” (Vito Pilieci, Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 8).   Back to top

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