Russia declared Friday that it would begin regularly sending its strategic bombers within striking distance of the United States and allied nations for the first time since the end of the Cold War, the Los Angeles Times reported (see GSN, Aug. 15).
“Today just after midnight, 14 strategic missile aircraft, with support and fuel planes, took off from seven airfields across Russia,” said President Vladimir Putin. “Combat duty began in which a total of 20 planes are taking part. From today, combat duty of this kind will be carried out on a regular basis,” he added. Putin said the nuclear-capable bombers would mainly fly “in the regions of our busy sea routes and economic zones,” adding they were being refueled in the air and were expected to be in flight for about 20 hours on Friday. “We proceed from the notion that our [Western] partners will react with understanding to the resumption of flights of the Russian strategic air forces," he said. “Our pilots have sat idle for too long. We have had a strategic air force but practically no flights.” Rather than a move aimed at affecting the strategic balance between Russia and the West, the reinstatement of the bomber flights halted in 1992 appeared to be intended to affect politics internationally and within Russia, the Times said. Rising oil revenues produced by high petroleum prices have strengthened Russia economically and allowed Moscow to step up its defense spending. “What we see today is not a step in the resumption of the Cold War but some kind of a Cold War farce staged by President Putin,” said Alexander Golts, a military analyst for the Russian-language Web site Yezhednevny Zhurnal. Russia’s strategic bombers are capable of carrying nuclear cruise missiles with ranges of 1,800 miles or more. “This would be a laughable farce but for one serious thing: It is a very dangerous farce. The strategic planes are up in the air. They may be carrying nuclear missiles or may not, which we will never know for sure, but this risk strongly exists,” Golts said. He said that by resuming Russia’s Soviet-era bomber flights, Putin aimed to ensure that discussions with the West focused on strategic matters. “Putin feels less and less comfortable being obliged to talk with his Western counterparts mostly about democracy and human rights,” Golts said. “He is fed up with this kind of dialogue, especially in conditions of uncertainty surrounding the 2008 presidential election in Russia.” James Collins, a former ambassador to Russia and director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Putin was “trying to make sure that nobody thinks he’s soft on national security in an election season.” The flights also serve as a response to the planned deployment of U.S. missile defense interceptors and radar in Eastern Europe, Collins said (see GSN, Aug. 15; David Holley, Los Angeles Times, Aug. 18). U.S. officials expressed little concern about Putin’s announcement, Agence France-Presse reported Friday. “If Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again that's their decision,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. “We certainly are not in the kind of posture we were with what used to be the Soviet Union. It’s a different era,” he said (Olivier Knox, Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, Aug. 17). Military analysts have warned, however, that Moscow’s decision to resume long-range bomber flights marks Russia’s revival as a political entity and economic power capable of challenging U.S. dominance and the continued expansion of Western alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, AFP reported yesterday. “The decision was taken many months ago and specially announced on that day and at that place,” Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said in reference to the Russian-Chinese military exercise during which Putin announced the resumption of bomber missions. “This of course is very dangerous. The planes will be flying carrying nuclear weapons and flying in positions from which they can strike the United States,” he said. While Putin made no specific reference to the bombers carrying nuclear weapons, his language is likely to be taken to indicate that is what is occurring, experts said. “Russia could not fail to respond to the expansion of NATO military infrastructure in Europe,” said Vladimir Yevseyev, a senior researcher for the Center for International Security at the Russian Academy of Science. “It was important to demonstrate again that Russian bombers can reach targets in the United States,” he said in comments published Saturday on a Russian-language Web site (Christopher Boian, Agence France-Presse II/Khaleej Times, Aug. 19).
By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — When Charles Ferguson was studying for his doctorate in the early 1990s, the science of radiation detection and the basic physics behind it were not particularly sexy topics (see GSN, Aug. 16). “That was considered sort of ho-hum,” said Ferguson, a physicist and now a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. “There wasn’t really a strong motivation for talented young scientists to study these subjects.” Following Sept. 11, 2001, however, detecting radiation took on a new immediacy. Radiation detectors were no longer needed just to stop contaminated scrap metal from ruining industrial processing equipment or making sure nothing radioactive from inside a nuclear power plant ended up outside. As the United States recovered from spectacular strikes against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, concerns grew about what could be the most devastating terrorism scenario — detonation of a stolen or improvised nuclear weapon. Radiation detection technology would likely play an integral role in catching a nuclear weapon or nuclear material before it could be used in such an attack. The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office was created two years ago within the Homeland Security Department, which was itself formed in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Part of its mission, in addition to developing a web of radiation detection to safeguard the United States from a smuggled nuclear weapon, is pushing forward detection technology through “an aggressive … and transformational” program of research and development (see GSN, Aug. 3, 2006). To a certain extent, however, the mental capital to develop that technology was lacking. People were not paying attention to this challenge, at least not in the way that the post-Sept. 11 world seemed to demand. “People had been concerned at the national labs about monitoring special nuclear material, but it wasn’t until terrorism reared its ugly head that people began to get concerned about the ultimate terrorist attack, which is a loose nuke,” said David Wehe, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Michigan who studies radiation detection. “We need the intellectual horsepower to come along and solve these things,” he said. Detecting radioactive scrap metal is one thing but detecting the low activity nuclear material that could fuel fission weapons is something else altogether. “That’s a huge challenge,” Wehe said, noting the materials do not produce much of a radioactive signature. “I don’t know if you were ever on a nuclear submarine but people sleep next to these things. A nuclear-tipped torpedo could be on the bunk above you.” Since the devastating twin blows to nuclear power of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and later the end of a Cold War focus on nuclear one-upmanship, there has been a decline in both the number of nuclear engineering departments and nuclear engineering students in the United States, said William Hagan, assistant director of transformation research and development at the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. “That has led of course to fewer students going into the field, fewer students graduating and therefore fewer people available in general,” he said during a recent interview. Nearly six years later after Sept. 11, that gap is still outstanding. “We didn’t have the huge group of people we felt we needed right after Sept. 11 to really pay attention to these issues, so even six years after Sept. 11 we still have this lag,” Ferguson said. Now the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office is doing what it can to address that lag, by providing $58 million over five years to academic institutions digging into the problems of radiation detection. Jump-Starting AcademiaThe Academic Research Initiative, designed with input from the academic community it is aimed to invigorate, is being run jointly by the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office and the National Science Foundation. The recipients of the first grants have already been selected but not yet publicly identified. In fiscal 2007, the first year of the program, Hagan’s office plans to hand out roughly $8 million to fund research programs that would operate from three to five years. The largest research programs could take up to five years and receive up to $7.5 million over their spans. The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office is looking for universities to work on detecting shielded material, detecting material at greater distances, miniaturizing detectors as well as more effectively analyzing the data streaming back from the devices (see GSN, April 10). “We’ve got to deal with this sort of languishing of technology that has happened over the past couple of decades,” Hagan said. “I think we’re already starting to snap out of that.” While Hagan’s office tries to spread its attention over the three constituencies that make up the research community — the national laboratories, private industry and the universities — the academic community offers particular opportunities for innovation, he said. Universities can be the places where outlandish and unlikely solutions to problems can emerge, solutions that might not come to fruition in a more conservative, profit-minded industrial atmosphere or in the national laboratories. The idea with the Academic Research Initiative “was we want this to be very unrestrictive,” Hagan said. “We want this to be very innovative. We want this to be things that a company may not think of because it’s too far out.” Hagan is hoping the program results in some unconventional thinking that provides the next step forward in technology. Even if it does not, it would hopefully produce graduates “intellectually engaged and familiar with the kinds of problems and the technologies that are relevant to our mission,” he said. “It takes a while to get going, to get some momentum.” Moving Forward“They’re stuck,” said Richard Lanza, a senior research scientist in the nuclear science and engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Most of the detectors that we’re using are stuff that was around 20 years ago,” Lanza said. The science of radiation detection has not been moving forward in leaps and bounds, he said, suggesting need for a “longer-term look at the fundamentals.” Even the new Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors, which the Homeland Security Department is pushing to deploy at the cost of more than $1 billion, use older detection materials such as sodium iodide and germanium, said Wehe, the Michigan nuclear scientist. “There’s no breakthrough there in terms of material of science,” he said. The new monitors analyze signals more effectively to pinpoint what isotopes the detectors are detecting, but the basic science behind the device is nothing new. Significantly transforming the technology and science used to detect radiation sources will take a tremendous effort, Wehe said. Bright students are looking for just such a challenge, he said. “I think what young people are looking for is an interesting technical question. The fact that the application is homeland security is a good thing.” To hear Wehe tell it, the challenge of radiation detection is so significant that the solutions might come from far left field. “I’ve been at workshops where people are looking at crazy things like training honey bees to hunt for special nuclear materials,” he said. This was not a science fiction conference either. There were serious scientists there from national laboratories and federal agencies. “It was called informally the out of the box conference, but most of us were calling it the out of your mind conference,” he said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency was scheduled to resume talks today with Iran aimed at resolving concerns over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Aug. 17). The delegation led by agency safeguards head Olli Heinonen is expected to have two days of discussions with Iranian nuclear negotiator Javad Vaidi, Iranian state television reported. IAEA officials are aiming to secure an agreement under which inspectors would receive more information about Iran’s nuclear program and easier access to Iranian nuclear sites. “This round of talks will be the final round of talks to set a framework to solve the remaining issues," said Iranian atomic official Mohammad Saeedi. “We hope that during the two days of talks the remaining issues will be defined and we can immediately enter into talks on them,” he said. The sides held two earlier rounds of high-level talks in Vienna and Tehran, in which they arranged an IAEA visit on July 30 to the Arak heavy-water reactor (Farhad Pouladi, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Aug. 20). An Iranian nuclear agency official said today that Tehran expects IAEA officials to emphasize the country’s cooperation in its next report to help stave off a third round of U.N. Security Council sanctions, Reuters reported. Iran has remained under pressure to halt its uranium enrichment efforts, which Western powers believe is aimed at constructing a nuclear weapon. Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is focused on energy production. Iran in June agreed to draft an “action plan” within 60 days to give IAEA officials more access to nuclear sites and to clarify the country’s nuclear intentions. “Our expectation from Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency's director, is that he would point to this cooperation in his report,” Saeedi said regarding the report for the September meeting of the IAEA governing board. “Of course, this path (of negotiations) will be a path that will take a lot of time,” he said ElBaradei has said that Iran’s promise to assemble an action plan has improved the prospect resolving its standoff with the West. “The strategy of [uranium enrichment] suspension failed a long time ago so the West has no option but to wait and let the agency have whatever time is needed. There is no other practical way," said a senior diplomat close to the Iran inspections (Reuters I/New York Times, Aug. 20). This week’s talks are expected to address the source of weapon-grade uranium traces found on Iranian nuclear equipment, the country’s experiments with plutonium, and the status of development of high-speed centrifuges that could enrich uranium three times as quickly as Iran’s current model. “So far there have been useful and constructive talks,” Vaidi said (Fredrik Dahl, Reuters II/Canada.com, Aug. 19).
The Singh administration in India yesterday sought to preserve its planned nuclear trade deal with the United States without causing the collapse of New Delhi’s ruling coalition, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Aug. 15). While senior officials rejected the potential for further negotiations on the pact, they backed the need for continued talks with communist parties that are key components of the ruling group. Those parties have argued that the agreement would undermine India’s sovereignty and restrict development of its military nuclear program. “We are making serious efforts. We have had some discussions, and they have expressed their desire that the government shouldn’t proceed further on the nuclear deal,” said Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee. A panel of politicians and nuclear experts might be formed to examine the Hyde Act, the U.S. law that gave India an exemption from rules barring nuclear trade with countries outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In return for access to U.S. nuclear technology and materials, New Delhi would open its civilian nuclear sites to international monitoring. A main point of contention in both countries is whether Washington would kill the agreement if New Delhi conducted another nuclear test blast. “Unless all the implications of the Hyde Act are evaluated and considered, the government should not proceed with the negotiations,” said Communist Party of India (Marxist) member Sitaram Yechury. “For that, if they want to set up a committee, then we are ready to consider it.” The party warned Saturday of “serious consequences” should Prime Minister Manmohan Singh fail to consider its position during safeguards negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Post reported. It was not immediately clear if the matter would lead the communist parties to leave the coalition. Some analysts said they believed such a withdrawal was now in the offing (Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, Aug. 20). “The level of cooperation will now go down and our support to it will be merit-based from now on,” said Doraiswamy Raja, national secretary to another coalition member, the Communist Party of India (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Aug. 18). The United States restated its position that the agreement is not open for renegotiation, AFP reported. “We cannot renegotiate it because the agreement is done. Neither government wishes it to be renegotiated because it is now complete,” Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said in an Outlook magazine interview published this weekend. He would not address issues raised by communist parties, but denied that the deal would give the United States undue influence over India’s foreign policy. “I don’t have any particular message for [the communists] except to say that in the 21st century we have seen the global balance of forces is shifting,” said Burns, who led negotiations on the deal for the Bush administration. “No one is trying to challenge India’s sovereignty as a country to make its own decisions,” he said (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Aug. 18). Meanwhile, India is expected to seek Japan’s support for the deal during a visit this week by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, AFP reported. Japan is a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which must sign off on the U.S.-India agreement. While no formal announcement is expected during Abe’s trip, “I think Japan will accept the deal,” said security analyst Uday Bhaskar. The agreement “is still under careful scrutiny,” Japanese Ambassador Yasukuni Enoki told the Press Trust of India last week (Agence France-Presse III/Khaleej Times, Aug. 19).
Another round of talks on normalizing diplomatic relations between North Korea and the United States could occur this month in Geneva, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Aug. 17). The session would follow a working-level meeting held in March in New York, according to the Yonhap News Agency. It would precede the next round of full six-party talks planned for next month in Beijing. Working group meetings on several issues are part of an effort to carry out the February agreement under which North Korea pledged to shutter its nuclear program (Agence France-Presse/Khaleej Times, Aug. 19). A working group meeting on security in Northeast Asia is scheduled for today and tomorrow in Moscow, RIA Novosti reported. Envoys from all six-party nations — China, Japan, Russia, the United States and both Koreas — are expected to attend. “It is not our intention to formalize the meeting; it is important to listen to the opinions of all sides and discuss current matters. We believe that this will be a ‘brainstorming’ session,” said Vladimir Rakhmanin, Russia’s envoy to the meeting (RIA Novosti, Aug. 20). The upcoming meeting follows a working group session last week on technical details of North Korea’s declaration and disablement of its nuclear complex. The International Atomic Energy Agency also prepared a report for the September governing board meeting on Pyongyang’s cooperation with monitoring of its shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear complex. Lead U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill reiterated that North Korea must address its suspected uranium enrichment program in the declaration, the Associated Press reported. The IAEA report does not address the matter. U.N. nuclear watchdog officials in North Korea are not yet assigned to look for such a program, two diplomats said (Associated Press/International Herald Tribune, Aug. 17). Inspectors took photographs at the Yongbyon nuclear fuel production site, radiochemical laboratory and five-megawatt power reactor, Reuters reported. Cameras and radiation-detection equipment were also installed at the plutonium-producing complex. The radiochemical laboratory contained various levels of uranium waste that will be monitored by the agency, according to the report. Since 2002, the year IAEA inspectors were forced out of the country, the facility has had design changes that could allow it to convert plutonium oxide into a metal for possible weapons purposes (Mark Heinrich, Reuters/Washington Post, Aug. 17).
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