A technician works to destroy an obsolete chemical weapon at the British defense laboratory at Porton Down (British Defense Ministry photo). United Kingdom Destroys “Legacy” Chemical Weapons Stock By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The United Kingdom announced today that it had finished destroying thousands of decades-old chemical weapons (see GSN, June 6, 2002). The elimination of the last known “legacy” munitions containing agents such as sulfur mustard and phosgene is in keeping with the nation’s obligations under the Chemical Weapon Convention, a Defense Ministry spokesman said...Full Story

U.S. Tests 15-Ton Bunker Buster By Jon Fox Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — In a tunnel under the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the U.S. military this month conducted the first test detonation of a massive bomb designed to crack hardened bunkers (see GSN, Oct. 20, 2006)...Full Story

Quick Resolution Seen on North Korea Money Issue North Korea’s demand that it receive a $25 million fund transfer before resuming nuclear disarmament talks could be met within the next couple days, a senior U.S. official said yesterday (see GSN, March 26)...Full Story

	Tuesday, March 27, 2007

BYU Develops Portable Bio, Chem Detector A portable mass spectrometer and gas chromatographer being developed at Brigham Young University in Utah could be used to detect biological and chemical agents, The Daily Universe reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 24). “We are developing a hand-portable biological, chemical detection unit,” said researcher Milton Lee.  “An instrument you can carry around, analyze, sample and figure out what it is.” Older devices must be carried on trucks.  The new technology is intended to be easily moved, and to require little training for military personnel or emergency responders to use.  Samples placed in the machine would be checked against a library of biological or chemical agents.  The device would identify the material and the level of threat it poses. “You need to identify if (the sample) is not hazardous or suit up,” said adjunct professor Larry Lee, Milton Lee’s brother and fellow researcher. The researchers ultimately hope to create a palm-sized version of the device. Testing of the units is planned shortly at government laboratories, and mass production and sales could begin within months, the Universe reported (David Fellingham, The Daily Universe, March 26). Back to top

U.S. Tests 15-Ton Bunker Buster By Jon Fox Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — In a tunnel under the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the U.S. military this month conducted the first test detonation of a massive bomb designed to crack hardened bunkers (see GSN, Oct. 20, 2006). At the helm of the $30 million project to develop what the Defense Department calls the Massive Ordnance Penetrator is the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a Pentagon branch devoted to countering threats from weapons of mass destruction. The 30,000-pound bomb could be deployed against the type of underground facilities in which Iran is engaged in uranium-enrichment work in defiance of tightening U.N. sanctions (see GSN, March 26).  The Bush administration has said both that it is committed to diplomacy in the Iranian nuclear crisis but also that military options remain on the table. While the immediate applications of the enormous conventional weapon seem to relate to the standoff with Tehran, the bomb likely sprang from concerns about a different state, according to defense strategy expert Michael O’Hanlon, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It probably has more to do with North Korea than Iran,” O’Hanlon said,   noting that this type of weapon development takes years.  Defense officials said planning for the March 15 test began three years ago. The Bush administration in 2002 alleged that the North Korean regime was cheating on a Clinton-era nonproliferation agreement by pursuing uranium enrichment while its plutonium-based program was frozen (see GSN, March 7). Defense planners were probably spurred by improvements in tunneling technology as well as concerns that the United States might not be willing or able to use nuclear weapons to defeat hardened, underground targets, O’Hanlon said. A Defense Department plan to develop a nuclear bunker buster faced intense opposition in Congress and was eventually abandoned in 2006 (see GSN, March 24, 2006).  A planned test to detonate 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil in the Nevada desert was also recently scrubbed amid public fears that the explosion, to take place over an underground tunnel, was designed to simulate a low-yield nuclear weapon (see GSN, Feb. 23). Declared a “success,” the recent test of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator was not related to the recently canceled “Divine Strake” test, defense officials said. The penetrator packs 5,300 pound of explosives into its 30,000-pound shell. Officials at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency would not quantify exactly what the criteria for success were but said that “MOP technology demonstration” is proceeding on track. Test drops from a B-52 long-range bomber are planned to start late in 2007.  The Air Force is also proceeding with work to shoehorn the enormous bomb into the B-2 stealth bomber. There was no immediate word on when the weapon could be deployed. DTRA officials refused to discuss capabilities of the weapons, but in 2005, after a briefing from Northrop Grumman and Boeing contractors involved in the weapon design, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that the 20-foot-long bomb would burrow as many as 200 feet into the ground through reinforced concrete. In terms of underground facilities surviving bunker-buster attacks intact, there is pretty much a single consideration:  “It’s always a question of how deep they are,” O’Hanlon said. While the tunnelers and burrowers can largely always go deeper, bomb designers end up butting against a wall.  For the bombs to penetrate increasingly deeper before detonating, the velocity of the projectile needs to increase, O’Hanlon said. Eventually, “you’d have to do things like drop rocks from space,” he said.  “There tends to be a very stark technical limit. … The basic point here is you can only get so deep.” That does not mean that pushing penetrating-bomb technology forward is a useless enterprise, said Michael Levi, a defense and nuclear weapon expert with the Council on Foreign Relations. Building a better bomb means those who wish to avoid it have to dig deeper, and that is not entirely without pain, he said.  “There’s a cost to digging deeper, whether it’s in how quickly something can be deployed or whether you need to spend money on completely new facilities,” Levi noted. Back to top       Quick Resolution Seen on North Korea Money Issue North Korea’s demand that it receive a $25 million fund transfer before resuming nuclear disarmament talks could be met within the next couple days, a senior U.S. official said yesterday (see GSN, March 26). Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser is in Beijing, trying to smooth the passage of North Korean funds from the Banco Delta Asia in Macau to another institution.  The Bank of China has reportedly expressed concerns that accepting the money might damage its credit rating. Pyongyang refused to participate in last week’s six-party talks while it waited for the money.  Continued delay could undermine the chances that the Stalinist state would meet its mid-April deadline under a Feb. 13 agreement to halt work at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and readmit international inspectors. “As we get through this banking issue — I believe we will in the next couple of days — North Korea will have further discussions with the [International Atomic Energy Agency] and by the early part of April — certainly by the first half of April — we will have the reactor shut down, sealed and we will have the international inspectors back,” said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, Washington’s lead negotiator at the talks (Agence France-Presse I/Channel News Asia, March 27). Glaser met today with officials from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, central bank and banking regulator, AFP reported.  This followed separate meetings with Chinese and North Korean officials in Beijing (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, March 27). Meanwhile, the European Union today approved U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea following its October nuclear blast, AFP reported. The U.N. Security Council in November banned sales of material to North Korea that could support nuclear and missile programs, along with luxury items sought by leaders in Pyongyang (Agence France-Presse III/Spacewar.com, March 27). Back to top       Iran Adds Uncertainty to Nuclear Dispute Iran’s decision to limit its cooperation with international nuclear inspectors following a new set of U.N. economic sanctions has added uncertainty to a dispute over inspectors’ access to an Iranian uranium enrichment facility, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, March 26). After the U.N. Security Council expanded sanctions against Iran on Saturday, leaders in Tehran vowed to shorten the advance notification they provide to the International Atomic Energy Agency about Iranian nuclear plans. The move has raised questions of how Iran will handle a dispute over providing agency inspectors access to the enrichment facility at Natanz, according to AFP. Earlier this month, inspectors were not allowed to enter the facility where Iran plans to install 3,000 enrichment centrifuges (see GSN, March 21).  Days later, agency officials were permitted in, but were not allowed to count the number of operating centrifuges, AFP reported (see GSN, March 20).  Inspectors were scheduled to return to the site today. The number of working centrifuges has become an issue because IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has asserted that Iran must permit the agency to install additional monitoring equipment once 500 centrifuges are operating. The number of running centrifuges remains unknown to outsiders at this point, according to AFP, but one diplomat said Iran has installed six 164-centrifuge “cascades” and has been testing four of those, so far without using uranium gas.  Such an activity level would clearly surpass ElBaradei’s trigger of 500 centrifuges. “In various ways, Iran is pushing the envelope toward the very edge of what are absolute legal requirements,” said nonproliferation expert Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute of Strategic Studies (Michael Adler, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 26). Meanwhile, a senior EU official yesterday reaffirmed a Western offer to provide nuclear energy technology to Iran in exchange for Iran abstaining from uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing, the Associated Press reported. The offer of West European nations, backed by the United States, was delivered last year and the text was publicly released as part of Saturday’s Security Council resolution. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana spoke by phone for nearly an hour yesterday with lead Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, according to AP. A senior U.S. official said the Security Council members supported Solana’s efforts. “We would all ask Javier Solana to now undertake some vigorous diplomacy with Larijani to see if we can convince the Iranians that the way forward is not through punitive measures, through the Security Council, and through sanctions, but through negotiations,” said U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns (George Jahn, Associated Press/International Herald Tribune, March 27). Back to top       U.S., Indian Officials Discuss Nuclear Terms India and the United States held formal talks yesterday in New Delhi to negotiate the detailed terms of a planned nuclear trade agreement, the Dawn reported (see GSN, March 26). The meetings were needed to “iron out key differences” in the two nations’ positions over what limitations India would accept as part of the deal to buy U.S. nuclear technology and material, said an Indian official. A U.S. official said the two sides, led by U.S. State Department official Richard Stratford and Indian Foreign Ministry officials S. Jayashankar and Gayatri Kumar, would meet throughout the week (Agence France-Presse/Dawn, March 26). Back to top       U.S. Awards Grants for Nuclear Detector Research The U.S. Homeland Security Department yesterday announced that it had awarded 10 contracts for research into nuclear detector technology (see GSN, March 26). The nearly $9 million in contracts went to nine firms that would conduct “aggressive research and development that is unconstrained by pre-existing user expectations,” according to a DHS release. The department announced grants earlier this year that went to academic institutions for similar research (see GSN, Feb. 23; Homeland Security Department release, March 26). Back to top

United Kingdom Destroys “Legacy” Chemical Weapons Stock By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The United Kingdom announced today that it had finished destroying thousands of decades-old chemical weapons (see GSN, June 6, 2002). The elimination of the last known “legacy” munitions containing agents such as sulfur mustard and phosgene is in keeping with the nation’s obligations under the Chemical Weapon Convention, a Defense Ministry spokesman said. The British military began using chemical weapons in World War I, and maintained an offensive program until 1956.  The Porton Down research facility was already regularly destroying weapons when the treaty entered into force in the United Kingdom in 1997.  A total of 7,000 munitions have been destroyed since 1989, with work ending on March 7. The 3,812 weapons eliminated at Porton Down over the last decade were recovered individually or in small numbers from existing or former military sites.  Most dated from 1939 to 1945, The Herald newspaper reported.  The artillery and mortar shells were “rusty, old, they couldn’t be used,” the Defense Ministry spokesman said. Some weapons were drained of agent and then incinerated, while others were detonated if they were found not to contain any dangerous substances.  The entire project cost nearly $20 million. “Britain now no longer has any chemical weapons, usable or not,” the spokesman said.  “What we’ve destroyed is a drop in the ocean, but symbolically it’s very important.” “I’d say this is a very favorable development,” said John Gilbert, a senior science fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.  “Obviously, it eliminates those [weapons] that could be stolen and then used for blackmail or a terrorist attack” (see GSN, March 26). Most of the attention on chemical weapons today focuses on the ongoing work to destroy tens of thousands of potentially still-usable munitions in Russia, the United States and several other treaty nations. However, a number of European nations, including France and Germany, are still dealing with chemical weapons that remain scattered around the continent from World Wars I and II, experts said.  Other weapons ended up in underwater dumps (see GSN, Aug. 4, 2006 and Nov. 1, 2006). Hundreds of thousands of weapons are believed to remain in China, abandoned by the Japanese army at the end of World War II (see GSN, Dec. 21, 2006). These munitions generally would fall under the Chemical Weapons Convention’s definition of old and abandoned weapons.  “Old chemical weapons” are defined as those produced before 1925 or produced “between 1925 and 1946 that have deteriorated to such extent that they can no longer be used as chemical weapons.”  “Abandoned chemical weapons” are those left in another nation’s territory without consent after Jan. 1, 1925. Nations are generally considered to face the same deadlines for destruction of old and abandoned weapons stocks as they do for current arsenals, said chemical weapons expert Jonathan Tucker, a Fulbright fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.  For the United Kingdom, that deadline would have been April 29, 2007, the 10th anniversary of the treaty’s entry into force. The United Kingdom will maintain its weapons disposal infrastructure at Porton Down to deal with any buried weapons that are found in the future, the Defense Ministry said in a release. The facility also plans to maintain limited amounts of chemical agents, to be used in research on defense against chemical weapons, the Herald reported. Back to top

U.S. Missile Interceptor Silos Flooded, Group Says Seven U.S. missile interceptor silos flooded last year during heavy rains in Alaska, causing a significant reduction in defense capability, a Washington watchdog group said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 8). The flooding at Fort Greely occurred during heavy rains over three weeks in late June and early July 2006, according to the Project on Government Oversight.  This happened just as North Korea conducted test launches of seven missiles (see GSN, July 5, 2006). None of the flooded silos housed missile interceptors, but the damage limits the numbers of silos from which the defensive weapons could be fired, the group said.  It estimated that the flooding had reduced U.S. missile defense capability by 25 percent. Fort Greely has 13 missile interceptors and 26 silos.  Additional interceptors are deployed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The affected silos were not complete and did not have proper drainage, according to POGO investigator Nick Schwellenbach (Project on Government Oversight release, March 26). Back to top       Israel Tests Arrow Missile Interceptor Israel launched an Arrow 2 missile interceptor yesterday in a successful test that did not attempt to destroy a target, the Jerusalem Post reported (see GSN, Feb. 16; Yaakov Katz, Jerusalem Post, March 26). The launch was the 16th Arrow test, according the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (U.S. Missile Defense Agency release, March 26). The version tested yesterday has greater missile interception capabilities than earlier versions and costs 20 percent less to produce, said Israel Aerospace Industries official Yoav Turgeman. A February Arrow test successfully intercepted a target missile at night and at the highest altitude of any test so far, the Post reported (see GSN, Feb. 12; Katz, Jerusalem Post). Back to top

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