New Jersey National Guard members train in a simulated WMD attack last year. Treating children in such cases raises special challenges, according to doctors (William Thomas Cain/Getty Images). Hospitals Prepare to Treat Children for WMD Exposure By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Health and government officials from around the national capital region gathered Tuesday to dedicate an expensive new facility they hope never to use (see GSN, Jan. 17)...Full Story

U.S. Rebuffs Iran Talks Overture The United States announced yesterday that it would not consider direct nuclear talks with Iran until it halts uranium enrichment and reinstates intrusive international inspections, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, May 24)...Full Story

Layered Defense Needed Against Global Threat of Nuclear Terrorism, NNSA Chief Says Multiple layers of defense are needed to prevent an act of nuclear terrorism, National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks said last week in touting the array of U.S. security initiatives (see GSN, May 22)...Full Story

	Thursday, May 25, 2006

Hospitals Prepare to Treat Children for WMD Exposure By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Health and government officials from around the national capital region gathered Tuesday to dedicate an expensive new facility they hope never to use (see GSN, Jan. 17). The $6.5 million decontamination unit at Children’s National Medical Center would be used to cleanse young victims of a terrorist attack involving a biological, chemical or radiological agent. It is the first of its kind in the area. “It’s not something that is pleasant to think about, but 9/11 taught us we need to think about these kind of issues,” said Ned Zechman, hospital president and chief executive officer. This week’s dedication event allowed visitors to examine two of the three decontamination rooms and to watch hospital staffers in full protective gear shower off baby-sized dolls. Following an actual incident, victims would be brought into a triage area for an initial examination. They would be decontaminated and then moved into another examination room. From there, they could be taken to the emergency room or a nonemergency patient care room. Patients too stricken to be decontaminated would be taken directly to a hospital quarantine area that is to be ready in 2007. The decontamination area can hold up to 48 people at any time. While all patients brought to the hospital would receive care, regardless of age, the area is designed particularly for the treatment of children and families. “Shopping cart” carriers would be used to hold infants during decontamination and inhalers would be available for asthmatic children. The rooms are painted in “child-friendly” light pastels. About 100 hospital staffers have been trained to work in the decontamination rooms, and up to 50 more are expected to receive the necessary instruction, officials said. “We hope that it’s a model that not only serves the children of the Washington metropolitan area but is a model for how this could and should be done in pediatric hospitals around the country,” said Dick Snowdon, chairman of the hospital board. The facility is one component of a continuing, but still incomplete, nationwide effort to safeguard children against the effects of an unconventional weapon. The threat in recent years has spurred hospitals to provide their staffs with training and materials to treat young patients following an incident. Plans are being prepared at all levels of government, and pediatricians in private practice are educating themselves on the signs that a patient has been sickened by a deadly agent. Gaps in preparedness, meanwhile, include the 1.7-million-dose order of a child-friendly antiradiation drug that has yet to make its way into the national stockpile. It is too early to say the medical community is fully ready to treat children following a WMD attack, said Dr. Michael Shannon, director of the Children’s Hospital Boston Center for Biopreparedness. “I wouldn’t say that.  I would say they’re better prepared.” Dangers Their physical immaturity and youth mean children could suffer greater effects from exposure to a chemical, biological or radiological weapon, while potentially lacking the capacity to make good decisions to protect themselves in the aftermath of an attack. “They’re more likely to be exposed, they’re more likely to sustain an effect from this, and because they’re smaller it obviously doesn’t take as much chemical or poison or agent … to harm them than it would an adult,” said Dr. Michael Quinn, medical director for disaster preparedness at Children’s National in Washington. A March 2000 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics detailed the particular vulnerability of children to a chemical or biological agent. Young people — up to age 22 — breathe more rapidly than their elders, meaning they would inhale a larger amount of an agent such as sarin or anthrax in aerosol form. Gases such as sarin or chlorine tend to settle to earth, bringing them into a child’s breathing zone. Infants and children have a larger skin surface area relative to their weight than adults, more space for agents to be absorbed into the body. Youth also have less of the protein keratin in their skin, leaving them more vulnerable to corrosive agents, Shannon said. No children are immunized against smallpox, as vaccinations stopped after the disease was eradicated in its natural form in 1980. However, research samples remain in Russia and the United States and there are fears that the disease could be directed against civilians (see GSN, May 22). “Finally, children have significant developmental vulnerabilities,” the AAP report states. “Infants, toddlers and young children do not have the motor skills to escape from the site of a chemical-biological incident. Even if they are able to walk, they may not have the cognitive ability to decide in which direction to flee.” A 2003 academy policy statement on radiation disasters — either accidental or initiated by terrorists — states that breathing rate and size would again increase the risk to children exposed to a radioactive material from a nuclear power plant. That danger is compounded by the potential for breast or cow milk crucial to a child’s nutrition to become contaminated by radioactive material. Children are more susceptible to radiation-induced cancer, said Shannon, who served on the committee that prepared both papers. First, they can be expected to live longer than an adult, allowing the cancer more time to develop. Second, their cells are proliferating as they grow. “Anytime you have a situation of rapidly proliferating cells, it only takes one mutant, one aberration, to create a rapidly growing abnormal cell, which is what we call cancer,” he said. There were 577 cases of thyroid cancer reported between 1991 and 1997 among children and adolescents who lived in the fallout area of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, the AAP paper states. Only 59 cases were reported in the five years prior to the accident.   Radiation can be similarly disastrous to unborn children, as shown by studies of babies born to women who survived the atomic strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki while pregnant.  Even radiation doses that are too low to affect the mother can endanger a fetus, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fact sheet. “What we know from radiation disasters such as Hiroshima is that the most common adverse effect to the developing fetus is being smaller overall, having a smaller head size, which means less brain development, which means the risk of mental retardation and learning disabilities,” Shannon said. Responses The AAP chemical-biological and radiation papers — among several recommendations — urge pediatricians to become well informed about the medical responses to a WMD incident, and to participate in community preparation and training for an event. Government agencies, in turn, should involve pediatricians and children’s health facilities in their response planning. Shannon said he believes pediatricians and public health departments have been receptive to the academy’s recommendations. Pediatricians are learning to identify the characteristics and dangers of WMD agents, and offering their expertise to governmental disaster planning, he said. Biopreparedness Center staff members travel the country offering information on managing mass-casualty events to children’s and general hospitals, pediatricians and emergency department personnel, Shannon said. “They want to do the right thing and do exactly what we recommended,” he said. A full picture of child-protection initiatives could not be produced for this article. The U.S. Health and Human Services Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not respond to repeated requests for comment on their efforts. A number of state and local health agencies also did not return calls for information, along with several Washington-area pediatric offices. Interviews with other hospital and health professionals, however, indicated that the danger is being taken seriously around the country.  The Centers for Disease Control, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, prepared teams of pediatricians and equipment to supply medical and psychological responses to a major disaster, said Dr. Dana Best, an attending pediatrician at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. These teams have already been mobilized following Hurricane Katrina, the major earthquake in Pakistan last year and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, she said. The federal health agency in 2004 also developed specific recommendations for use of potassium iodide by children, young adults and women who are pregnant or breast-feeding in the event of a release of radiation from a nuclear power plant. “Before it was very unclear,” Best said, “which was a problem” if it became necessary to prepare doses. Doctors expressed less satisfaction with the federal government’s efforts to meet the AAP recommendation to prepare medical countermeasures that are effective and dose-appropriate for children exposed to a WMD agent. Pediatric antibiotic solutions have been removed from Strategic National Stockpile “push packages” of medical supplies that could be delivered to any location within 12 hours of a disaster, said Dr. John Talarico, medical director for the Los Angeles County Health Services Department bioterrorism preparedness program. That could cause a delay in arrival of those needed antibiotics, he said. “Now if we had to deal with a mass exposure to anthrax … we would have to sit down with pharmacists and take down solutions and prepare doses on the fly,” Talarico said. The AAP environmental health committee in the 2003 statement called for the federal government to press for production of a liquid form of potassium iodide. “Little babies don’t take tablets,” Shannon said. Health and Human Services ordered a total of 4.8 million units of the black-raspberry-flavored treatment. The initial order of 1.7 million doses is being finished, after which it would be distributed to 31 states with commercial nuclear power reactors, said George Love, legal and regulatory affairs director for manufacturer Fleming & Co. The schedule for distribution was not immediately available. “In our mind it was something that needed to be done yesterday, and here it is three years later and there’s still no product,” Shannon said. “But the FDA and agencies say, ‘We’re attentive to this, we’re waiting for the right proposal and all the safety testing and then it’s going to happen.’ So it’s not like anyone is turning a deaf ear, it’s just that the wheels of change and progress are sometimes slow.” The Food and Drug Administration has approved a number of drugs that would be appropriate for pediatric use, the agency said by e-mail. These include the liquid potassium iodide and lower-dosage forms of atropine autoinjectors to counteract nerve agents. Awareness of children’s needs in such an incident should encompass preparation of stocks of nonmedical items such as bottles and formula, said Dr. Sally Reynolds, medical director for the emergency department at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago. “You can’t feed a 3-month-old peanut butter,” she said. “I think we’re still urging the federal government to be responsive to children, to think about the needs of children, which might be different than adults,” Reynolds said. Hospital officials also noted, though, that federal funds have been crucial to their preparedness projects. For example, all but $1 million of the money for the Children’s National Medical Center decontamination unit came from Washington. Some pediatric hospitals around the nation are waiting for federal funds that would pay for preparedness efforts, Shannon said. These facilities would be on the front line for caring for children following an incident, and he argued that the hospitals should make improvements now rather than wait for the money. “The federal government has said, ‘Start your work, we’ll pay you back,” he said. Children’s Hospital Boston has spent millions on preparedness, he said. “We’re not going to wait for the check to come in the mail, we’re going to make the financial investment and get to work.” Children’s Memorial in Chicago two years ago bought a decontamination tent with money from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. The tent could be erected within 15 minutes outside the hospital to cleanse patients of lethal particles before they enter the emergency room for further treatment.   The emergency room itself has two hospital-funded negative pressure rooms in which infected patients can be placed to prevent contaminated air from flowing around the hospital, Reynolds said. Medical staffers at her hospital already deal frequently with children infected with natural illnesses, giving them useful experience in containing contagions. To complement that, they attend courses on recognizing biohazards, undergo training with mannequins that “exhibit” symptoms of an unnatural infection, and conduct live-patient drills The hospital’s pharmacy has been stocked with additional doses of drugs that could be used following a chemical, biological or radiation incident, and all hospital staff prepare generally for managing a disaster. Preparation extends past the hospital walls. Reynolds is the co-chairwoman of the Chicago Public Health Department’s pediatric preparedness subcommittee. The panel meets monthly to help the city prepare for a disaster, offering guidance to hospitals that treat few children on dealing with a surge of young patients following a natural event or intentional act. Support ranges from developing lists of supplies hospitals would need for children — from medication to diapers — to identifying pediatricians in private practice or experienced nurses who could help lead efforts. Quinn at the Washington children’s hospital said he hopes to pursue that sort of community planning for the capital area. “Where I think we need to go and what has not been strongly established is helping the local pediatrician and other community groups, the school system and local transportation systems as to what to do,” he said. “I suppose if there was a community-wide deficiency, that would be the place where we would want to focus a lot of our attention.” The hospital’s focus to date has been on preparing its own personnel and ensuring it can work with local emergency agencies during a crisis, Quinn said. Doctors and nurses in the emergency department have receiving training on recognizing and treating various forms of WMD-related injuries. The hospital also conducts internal disaster drills and participates in joint exercises with three nearby medical facilities and in citywide events. Health officials at other hospitals and health agencies said that they have undertaken similar efforts: — Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, the city’s second-largest pediatric provider, offers online training on treating children exposed to an unconventional weapon. The hospital also conducts a disaster course for medical personnel in the region and beyond. — Three New York City pediatric hospitals receiving federal funds through the city Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Program. The city’s Health and Mental Hygiene Department has funded formation of an advisory group to offer practical information to hospitals for the special needs of children during a disaster, and has sponsored tabletop exercises involving such issues. — Los Angeles County health officials have prepared triage procedures that addressing children’s needs, Talarico said. Medical personnel would work to keep families together and mental health professionals with experience working with children are prepared to respond. The county has also stockpiled child-friendly antibiotics and drug doses safe for children following a WMD incident. None of this promises a perfect response, officials conceded. Beyond the obvious life-saving measures following a disaster, there are numerous details that might seem small but must be considered when treating young patients, physicians said. Children must be kept warm following decontamination to ensure they do not become hypothermic. They are unlikely to carry identification and might not be able to speak, so hospitals must develop procedures for tracking the children and reuniting them with their parents. Emergency responders would have to balance protecting themselves from exposure while comforting their charges. “The decontaminators are dressed in these protective suits. Have you ever seen one of those suits?  They make you look like a space alien. Think about a child who’s already totally terrified being faced with someone in one of these space alien suits,” Best said. The need to prepare for a WMD event must also compete with the daily business of caring for sick children, which often already leaves pediatric hospitals at or near capacity, and of preparing for other disasters, officials said. “Frankly, this is not No. 1 on the list of emergencies. This is a pretty unusual event, and thankfully it’s unusual,” Best said.  Back to top

U.S. Rebuffs Iran Talks Overture The United States announced yesterday that it would not consider direct nuclear talks with Iran until it halts uranium enrichment and reinstates intrusive international inspections, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, May 24). “When that happens, all right, then there may be some opportunities,” said White House spokesman Tony Snow. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, meanwhile, confirmed that Iran has expressed interest in bilateral talks with the United States. He said the United States had not formally responded to the overtures. International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei yesterday appeared to indicate that he was one of the intermediaries conveying Iran’s interest in dialogue. ElBaradei said he met with Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani several days ago and later described to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “the Iranian point of view” (Brian Murphy, Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, May 25). ElBaradei also said yesterday that Iran is prepared to stop internal uranium enrichment for several years as a compromise move, Agence France-Presse reported. “The Iranians, as far as I know, agreed in principle that for a number of years enrichment should be part of an international consortium outside of Iran,” he said. He said Iranian officials also told him they were willing to ratify the Additional Protocol to the IAEA safeguards agreement, an addendum that allows for snap inspections of nuclear facilities. “There is still this issue of Iran doing R and D (research and development) with regards to enrichment and that's an issue still being discussed,” ElBaradei said. He renewed his call for U.S. security guarantees for Iran. “At a certain point, if the negotiations were to move in the right direction, particularly when the discussion of security issues were to start, I would hope that the U.S. will be able to join that,” said ElBaradei (Agence France-Presse I/IranMania.com, May 24). Diplomats in Vienna said Iran told ElBaradei that it wants talks with the West. “Larijani just said, ‘We want to talk but as equals, with no preconditions,’” a diplomat close to the agency told AFP (Robin Millard, Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, May 24). British Foreign Office official John Sawer said that world powers made “good progress” at a meeting yesterday in London on forging possible rewards and punishments for Iran, AP reported. “We made some good progress,” Sawer said after meeting of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany. “It was encouraging, but there is still further work to do.” The State Department also expressed satisfaction. “I don’t think you can say at this point that you have closure on every single issue, but it is coming to form both on the incentive side and the disincentive side,” McCormack said. Another diplomat said, “we are encouraged by the progress that was made” (George Jahn, Associated Press II/Miami Herald, May 25). One expert said yesterday that the development of an Iranian nuclear weapons capability is inevitable, the London Daily Telegraph reported today. “There is a consensus emerging that an Iranian nuclear capability is both inevitable, and certainly bad,” said, John Chipman, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He said Arab nations feel “the only thing worse than a nuclear-armed Iran is a U.S. military strike against the country, especially if it were still left with a nuclear option” (Anton La Guardia, Daily Telegraph, May 25). The world must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and contain it if that occurs, Chipman said (see GSN, May 19). “An Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would dramatically alter the regional balance of power and would inspire all sorts of potential diplomatic shifts,” he said. “Changing the cost-benefit analysis in Tehran, preventing a nuclear outcome, and controlling its consequences if it takes place will present the most difficult and classic strategic challenge in the months and years ahead,” he added. Chipman said Iran was unlikely to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for a “repackaged” set of incentives offered by the European Union in August 2005, he said. The “key timeline,” he said, was how soon Iran could produce enough weapon-grade uranium. “The IISS estimate of 2010 remains valid,” Chipman said. “Other estimates of 2009 and even 2008 are within the margin of error, given the number of unknowns.” “The IAEA’s limited access, it now can no longer monitor the centrifuge component facilities, inevitably requires policy-makers to rely on worst-case assumptions about Iran’s progress toward the bomb,” he said (Phil Hazelwood, Agence France-Presse III/IranMania.com, May 24). Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry yesterday warned that military strikes on Iran would lead to a devastating backlash, AFP reported. “We have dug a deep hole with Iran and North Korea and there are no attractive alternatives,” he said. Perry said a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear installations could not halt the program. “The unintended consequences of such a strike are horrific,” he said, warning of a “long and complicated and bloody war” (Agence France-Presse IV/IranMania.com, May 24). Back to top       Layered Defense Needed Against Global Threat of Nuclear Terrorism, NNSA Chief Says Multiple layers of defense are needed to prevent an act of nuclear terrorism, National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks said last week in touting the array of U.S. security initiatives (see GSN, May 22). “Our security assistance programs abroad dramatically reduce the risk of nuclear material theft,” Brooks said Friday at the Congressional Breakfast Club. “However, every security system ultimately depends on the people operating it — the so-called ‘human factor.’ Motivated by greed, coercion, or debt, facility insiders may successfully divert nuclear materials. This problem is compounded by the large number of nuclear facilities out there — each presenting a unique opportunity for material diversion.” “Established crime groups are operating on the periphery of many of these facilities,” he added. “These groups are often engaged in smuggling a variety of goods. If a single nuclear smuggling network materializes and operates successfully, even for a short period, a ‘goal quantity’ of nuclear material may reach our enemies. There is only one way to combat a threat this diverse and complex — a redundant and layered defense.” “If human error or corruption enables smugglers to bypass one layer, our only hope is to catch them at the next,” Brooks said.  He noted a number of U.S. initiatives. They include:  the 2005 Bratislava agreement to boost nuclear security efforts in Russia, which is expected to be finished in 2008; the Global Threat Reduction Initiative to lower the danger posed by radioactive material; the Megaports Initiative to place radiation detectors at foreign ports; and complementary Second Line of Defense efforts to use sensors at border crossings, airports and seaports that could be used to smuggle nuclear material (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release, May 19). The agency said in a release yesterday that the 2-year-old Global Threat Reduction Initiative has: removed more than 200 kilograms of weaponizable highly enriched uranium from facilities around the world; recovered and secured more than 2,700 surplus U.S. radiological sources; shifted three research reactors from HEU use to low-enriched uranium; and established and improved physical security at more than 400 locations globally that stored radiological material (NNSA release, May 24). Back to top       Russia Touts its Nukes over U.S. Missile Defense A senior Russian general yesterday blasted U.S. plans to place missile interceptors in Europe and reaffirmed Moscow’s belief that its nuclear weapons could overcome any defensive installations, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, May 24). “Already in the press they are naming concrete countries that could be the site of a so-called … forward region in the United States’ antimissile defense system,” said Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, head of the Russian military general staff, according to ITAR-Tass. “One of those states is Poland, and it is not excluded that another could be Romania.” “This is territory that is so close to our state that siting there of this forward region, which could include systems for detecting and hitting intercontinental ballistic missiles and their warheads, couldn’t fail to concern us,” he added. The United States has said that its missile defense efforts are intended to destroy missiles coming from China, Iran and North Korea.  “We can already say that current and future missile defense systems, created today, tomorrow and in the foreseeable future … will be successfully overcome by our intercontinental ballistic missiles and their warheads,” Baluyevsky said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, May 24). Back to top       Pakistan Expresses Concerns to Nuclear Suppliers Group About U.S-Indian Nuclear Technology Deal Pakistan has expressed concerns about the planned U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear technology cooperation agreement to members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which would have to sign off on the deal, Electricity Daily reported today (see GSN, May 23). Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam, however, denied that Islamabad had sent letters criticizing the deal to NSG countries. “The reports are incorrect and Pakistan has written no such letters to the NSG members,” she said. “We have (made clear) our position on the civilian nuclear energy (deal) and (are) holding talks with various member countries of the NSG on the issue,” Aslam added. “Pakistan has its energy requirements and it wants nondiscriminatory treatment. Our leadership has always repeated the same stance which is being maintained in interaction at all levels,” she said (Electricity Daily, May 25). Meanwhile, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei yesterday expressed support for the Indian-U.S. deal while meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington. “To me, this is a win-win agreement and I hope it will be also for Congress,” he said. “We also are trying to look to the big picture in making sure that we have innovative measures to ensure that sensitive proliferation technology, like enrichment or reprocessing, is contained” (U.S. State Department release, May 24). Back to top       China, U.S. Discuss Korean War Peace Talks U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and Chinese officials today discussed the potential for talks with North Korea on a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, May 24). A pledge to hold peace talks is mentioned in a statement issued in September by the six nations conducting negotiations on Pyongyang’s nuclear program. That document calls for “talks about doing it at an appropriate place with appropriate partners. We did have some discussion on that,” Hill said after meeting with Chinese officials in Beijing (Associated Press/Pravda, May 25). Hill was expected in Seoul today, where officials have expressed concern that Washington’s recent references to Libya as a WMD disarmament “model” could signal that it is reverting to a hard-line approach to the North Korea nuclear negotiations, Yonhap News Agency reported. “Buoyed by the Libya case, the U.S. may seek a harder-line and epochal resolution to the North Korean nuclear issue,” former South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung-joo said last week (Yonhap News Agency, May 25). Back to top       U.S. House Slashes GNEP Funding The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly yesterday to cut nearly half of the fiscal 2007 budget request for the White House nuclear fuel reprocessing program, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, May 18). Lawmakers voted 404-20 in favor of an energy and water spending bill that contains $130 million for the fuel recycling initiative. The Bush administration had sought $250 million for the project. The Senate is expected to support at least that much funding, setting up a showdown when the congressional bodies meet in conference to balance the spending proposals. The House approved the full White House request for $545 million for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository in Nevada. That is $95 million more than budgeted in this fiscal year. Fiscal 2007 begins in October. The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership would involved increased research on recycling spent nuclear fuel so that it could be reused rather than immediately stored away. The United States would offer nuclear fuel to other nations, which would later return it for reprocessing, according to AP. Critics have not been convinced by administration claims that developing new technology that would not separate weaponizable plutonium would eliminate the possible proliferation dangers of recycling. The House Appropriations Committee also said the Energy Department has yet to supply specific information about the cost of the program, which is expected to reach billions of dollars over a period of decades, or whether the new technology is certain to be developed. “There’s only a guess of how much it’s going to cost … $3 billion to $6 billion for a demonstration project,” said Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.). While the recycled fuel might not function in a nuclear weapon, it would “not be too dangerous for terrorists to handle for a dirty bomb,” he added. Markey unsuccessfully sought to cut another $40 million from the program. Representative David Hobson (R-Ohio) backed the first reduction but said additional cuts could kill the program, AP reported (Josef Hebert, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, May 24). Back to top

Russia to Deploy Missile Defenses Outside Borders Russia plans to base missile interceptors in neighboring countries in response to U.S. plans to deploy interceptors for its missile defense system in Europe, the Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday (see GSN, May 23). Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said yesterday that the Russian system would be deployed over the next four years (Xinhua News Agency/People’s Daily, May 24). Back to top       U.S. Ship Shoots Down Test Missile in Late Flight The United States yesterday for the first time was able to destroy a short-range ballistic missile in the late phase of its flight using an interceptor fired from a Navy ship at sea, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, May 5). The USS Lake Erie fired a Standard Missile 2 at a target coming from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. U.S. ships previously have only fired the SM-2 at missiles in the beginning or middle stages of flight, AP reported. The test Wednesday is expected to move ships closer toward being able to destroy missiles in the moments before impact (Audrey McAvoy, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, May 25). “We believe it is an important step towards the desired end-state of a robust sea-based terminal ballistic missile defense capability,” Rear Adm. Barry McCullough said in a Missile Defense Agency press release. “The only terminal phase program we currently have that is operational is the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3), and considerations to put those aboard ships are still under review.” “There [are] a significant number of SM-2 Block IV missiles available, which may be modified and deployed on Navy ships modified to perform a [ballistic missile defense] mission,” added Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency (U.S. Missile Defense Agency release, May 24). Back to top       Israeli, U.S. Military Contractors Collaborate on Missile Defense Interceptor Technology Raytheon Missile Systems and Israeli defense contractor Rafael Armament Development Authority plan to develop an interceptor for the Israeli Missile Defense Organization, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, March 3). Raytheon first developed the “Stunner” interceptor’s kinetic kill technology for the U.S. missile defense program, according to AP. “The threat is really Iranian power projection out of Lebanon and Syria,” Adam Cherrill, business development manager for Raytheon’s advanced missile defense programs, told the Arizona Daily Star. Deployment of interceptors under the expected contract, worth up to $250 million, is expected to begin by 2011, Cherrill said (Associated Press, May 25).   Back to top

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