The United States plans to destroy a malfunctioning spy satellite with a sea-based Standard Missile 3 (shown above in test), officials announced yesterday (U.S. Navy photo). Pentagon Space Shot to Offer Antisatellite Data, Experts Say By Elaine M. Grossman Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A U.S. Defense Department plan to use a Navy missile to shatter a dysfunctional spy satellite in the coming days would likely spawn data that could boost the U.S. ability to destroy foreign space assets, according to military experts (see GSN, March 12, 2007). President George W. Bush ordered the intercept as a way of ensuring that toxic rocket fuel aboard the spacecraft would burn up when pieces of the satellite re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, administration officials said.  ..Full Story

FBI to Get Nuclear Weapon Neutralizer By Jon Fox Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration expects this year to provide the FBI with a way to disrupt the detonation of an improvised nuclear device, a tool first responders could use to put the bomb into a “standby” mode until expert teams could respond, NNSA chief Tom D’Agostino said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 9 2007)...Full Story

Bush Policies Undermine Science, Group Says By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire BOSTON — The Bush administration’s persistent interference in the work of federal scientists has cut experts out of top-level discussions of bioterrorism and served to punish researchers who questioned one White House nuclear weapon initiative, a science watchdog organization said yesterday (see GSN, May 10, 2007)...Full Story

	Friday, February 15, 2008

Army Guard Requests $94M for WMD Gear The U.S. Army has asked lawmakers to allocate $94 million for equipment to protect Army National Guard personnel responding to attacks involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, Inside the Pentagon reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 14). The request was included among $4 billion in unfunded Army National Guard priorities submitted in a Saturday letter by Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey to Representative Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee (Jason Sherman, Inside the Pentagon, Feb. 14). Back to top       Bush Policies Undermine Science, Group Says By Chris Schneidmiller Global Security Newswire BOSTON — The Bush administration’s persistent interference in the work of federal scientists has cut experts out of top-level discussions of bioterrorism and served to punish researchers who questioned one White House nuclear weapon initiative, a science watchdog organization said yesterday (see GSN, May 10, 2007). During the first day of a major science conference here, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report accusing the executive branch of committing a host of abuses over the last seven years. Included among 17 distinct charges are allegations that federal officials misrepresented or simply fabricated scientific data, suppressed certain findings, and pressured scientists to change reports in favor of administration positions. “This interference in science threatens our nation’s ability to respond to complex challenges to public health, the environment and national security,” states the report, Federal Science and the Public Good.  “It risks demoralizing the federal scientific work force and raises the possibility of lasting harm to the federal scientific enterprise.  More importantly, it betrays public trust in our government and undermines the democratic principles upon which this nation was founded.” Physicist Kurt Gottfried, chairman of the organization’s Board of Directors, argued that this behavior is indicative of Bush administration procedure in sectors ranging from economics to arms control. “I think more broadly than science the administration has tried and often succeeded in distorting and manipulating expert opinion that contradicts its chosen policies or that contradicts the views of some of its important constituencies,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. While this is true to some degree of all presidents, it has become far more systemic in this White House, Gottfried said.  The organization points to the elimination of two panels formed to provide federal agencies with expert advice on weapons issues as evidence of this posture. The National Nuclear Security Administration, the semiautonomous arm of the Energy Department that oversees the U.S. nuclear complex, in June 2003 abolished a 2-year-old advisory panel filled with atomic weapons experts. Some physicists on the panel had written articles questioning the Bush administration’s research on a nuclear “bunker buster,” a weapon intended to destroy hardened, underground targets.  The experts warned that such weapons might not prove effective but would create high levels of radioactive fallout, the UCS report says. The agency made its displeasure with the articles known, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.  While acknowledging it is not “provable,” Gottfried argued that there was a clear connection between those pieces and the subsequent dismissal of the panel.  NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes rejected the organization’s claims on several points, starting with the report’s statement that “White House officials” disbanded the committee.  The first NNSA administrator formed the group as a source for technical advice; his successor had significantly more experience in nuclear weapons and nonproliferation issues and allowed the panel’s charter to lapse, he said.  Any articles critical of the bunker buster would have been “irrelevant,” Wilkes said, also denying that the agency’s work on the weapon had gone beyond the feasibility study stage. “They don’t have their facts right.  They’re wrong,” he said. Formal pursuit of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator ended in 2006 (see GSN, March 24, 2006).  A longtime State Department advisory committee on arms control was also disbanded shortly after Bush took office, the organization says on its Web site. Gottfried used the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to illustrate the level of expertise that members of these panels could provide.  The experts would be able to discuss with policy-makers detection capabilities for underground nuclear blasts, the consequences for failing to detect a test and what a nation’s leaders might learn from setting off a weapon without being caught, he said. While NNSA managers can reasonably say they have access to a significant amount of expertise through the national nuclear laboratories, there is always value in hearing independent voices who can speak freely without worrying about how their opinion might affect their future, Gottfried said.  The State Department could not claim to have the same technical resources when it cut the arms control panel, he added. The position of presidential science adviser has lost standing under the Bush administration, the organization claims.  Losing its “near-Cabinet-level” status meant less access to President George W. Bush and reduced influence within the federal government.  “As a result, scientific experts have not been as involved in high-level policy discussions on crucial issues such as climate change, stem cell research and bioterrorism,” the report says. As another case of the conflict between scientists and the administration, Gottfried pointed to assertions by Bush and high-level administration officials that prewar Iraq attempted to import aluminum tubes intended for a nuclear weapon program.  That claim, used to bolster the White House’s case for war, was based on a CIA analysis but was disputed by experts from several U.S. nuclear laboratories (see GSN, March 9, 2006).  The scientists’ analysis, though, “didn’t coordinate with the policy,” Gottfried said. The White House had not returned a request for comment as of press time.  A State Department spokeswoman said she could not comment without first reading the report. The organization issued a statement signed by prominent researchers, including Nobel laureates and former high-level federal scientists, calling for the next administration and for Congress not to meddle in scientific affairs. Government scientists need to be free of interference when it comes to conducting their work, communicating and publishing their findings, blowing the whistle on abuses of science and undergoing peer reviews, the report says. Gottfried expressed optimism about the likelihood of change, whether the occupant of the White House is a Democrat or Republican.  It will take more than a change of presidents, he said.  Federal scientists will have to regain the sense that they are free to speak freely — possibly through legislative protections. Experts on arms control will only have influence if the next administration favors that work more strongly than seen in the Bush White House, Gottfried said. “I’m hopeful,” he said.  “What is the saying, hope springs eternal?” Back to top

FBI to Get Nuclear Weapon Neutralizer By Jon Fox Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration expects this year to provide the FBI with a way to disrupt the detonation of an improvised nuclear device, a tool first responders could use to put the bomb into a “standby” mode until expert teams could respond, NNSA chief Tom D’Agostino said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 9 2007). “Obviously the tools themselves are highly classified,” D’Agostino said, while avoiding any specifics about the device he said could be deployed to FBI agents during this calendar year. If adversaries knew too much about techniques potentially used to temporarily disarm a nuclear device they could counter such techniques, he said.  What D’Agostino would say, however, was that after the inclusion of $16 million in the fiscal 2008 budget he expects one of the concepts proposed by the national laboratories to become a reality this year. Proposals involved electrically interrupting an improvised device’s firing circuitry or chemically disrupting a critical element of a bomb. The idea is to give the FBI, the agency tapped for the lead during the initial response to any domestic nuclear incident, the tools where they could essentially put the improvised nuclear device in sort of a standby mode,” D’Agostino said. Such a delay would allow the Energy Department’s Joint Technical Operation Team, a group that assists the Defense Department’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team, more time to respond if a terrorist nuclear device were discovered on U.S. soil. According to a 2003 DOE inspector general report JTOT teams are dispatched via plane in the event of an incident. Outlined broadly in the president’s fiscal 2009 budget request, programs to respond to nuclear terror would receive $222 million, an increase of nearly 40 percent, although some of that boost represents a reallocation of funds. The lion’s share of that funding, nearly $160 million, would provide for collaborative efforts with the Homeland Security Department and the intelligence community to study “improvised nuclear device concepts,” according to the budget summary (see GSN, Feb. 5). D’Agostino said there would also be a focus on both continuing work on such “stabilization” technologies to render a bomb temporarily safe and nuclear forensics work, identifying the origin of nuclear material based on its isotopic characteristics. “That’s real money, that’s extra money that wasn’t there before,” he said, indicating he’d like to see even more of a focus in future years on nuclear counterterrorism efforts.  “As we develop our next year’s budget you’ll be seeing that manifested.” This year, in terms of stabilization technology, getting something out to the FBI agents in the field as quickly as possible is really the goal, he said. Back to top       Rice Could Visit Pyongyang to Meet Kim, Report Says U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could attend a Feb. 26 Pyongyang performance by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in an attempt to break new ground with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in carrying out a deadlocked denuclearization agreement, the Korea Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 14). According to foreign affairs experts quoted by Radio Free Asia, North Korea wants the United States to send a top official to the concert to meet with Kim. “Certain kinds of exchanges like the visit by the New York Philharmonic … are precisely the kinds of activities that can promote better awareness on the part of North Korean leaders,” said U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alexander Arvizu. “We are trying to use this as one of the many other forms of engagement to create a certain space that makes possible some very difficult things we are trying to do on the denuclearization front,” he said. However, the State Department said it currently has no plans to send a representative to the concert (Yoon Won-sup, Korea Times, Feb. 14). Meanwhile, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill plans to visit South Korea on Tuesday to discuss delays in the North Korean nuclear disablement deal, the Yonhap News Agency reported (Yonhap News Agency, Feb. 15). Back to top       U.S. to Disclose Iran Nuclear Findings The Bush administration plans to share intelligence with the International Atomic Energy Agency indicating that Iran operated a nuclear weapons program until 2003, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Feb. 14). The decision to disclose the nuclear findings would reverse Washington’s long-standing refusal to share the information with the U.N. nuclear watchdog for the stated reason of protecting intelligence sources. U.S. officials hope the intelligence can help agency officials pressure Tehran to disclose new information about the history of its nuclear program, which international powers suspect is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, the Times reported.  Iran has insisted that its nuclear activities are intended solely for peaceful energy production. It remains uncertain how much of the intelligence U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei will be permitted to share with Iranian officials, said U.S. and international diplomats concerned that findings ElBaradei will be allowed to share might not persuade Iran to disclose details on its most controversial nuclear activities. Iran is most likely to receive a limited overview of the U.S. intelligence similar to a 2005 presentation that made the case for U.N. Security Council member nations to impose sanctions on the Middle Eastern country, according to officials (Sanger/Sciolino, New York Times, Feb. 15). Meanwhile, Russia and Iran are planning to found a joint venture this spring that would operate the Bushehr nuclear power plant now under construction in southern Iran, the president of Russia’s nuclear construction contractor told reporters yesterday. “We have almost agreed to establish a [joint venture] to operate the Bushehr [plant], both as part of the contract and later, during maintenance,” said Atomstroiexport President Sergei Shmatko.  “I have set myself an optimistic timeframe — three months” (RIA Novosti I, Feb. 14). Shmatko said Atomstroiexport plans to nearly double its number of workers at the Bushehr site in 2008, Agence France-Presse reported. “Earlier all our problems stemmed from irregular equipment supplies, now this is no big problem.  But the problem of the lack of personnel remains, the deficit of workers is quite significant,” he said. The firm plans to send as many as 300 technicians to the site within the next several weeks and add an additional 1,000 personnel to Bushehr’s current staff of 1,500 over the course of the year, Shmatko said. (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 15). The U.N. nuclear watchdog plans to conduct regular inspections of storage conditions for Russian nuclear fuel delivered to the Bushehr site, RIA Novosti reported. “International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have twice visited to check the conditions of fuel storage since deliveries started to the Bushehr nuclear power plant,” said Sergei Titov, a nuclear safety official. IAEA inspectors plan to visit the Bushehr site once every few months, he said (RIA Novosti II, Feb. 14). Back to top       Nuclear Suppliers Group Rules to Reflect U.S. Law on Indian Nuclear Trade Deal, Rice Says The United States will seek to relax international nuclear trade rules for India in a manner “consistent” with U.S. law, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday (see GSN, Feb. 12). Her remarks to the House Foreign Affairs Committee followed a charge by committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.) that U.S. officials were seeking to void congressional limits on a tentative U.S.-Indian nuclear trade deal. The deal would enable India to purchase U.S. nuclear materials and technology, but the pact hinges in part on exempting New Delhi from U.S. and international bans on selling key nuclear technologies to nations that have not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and do not allow outside monitoring of all their nuclear activities. The United States exempted India from its nuclear nonproliferation laws in December 2006, when President George W. Bush signed the so-called Hyde Act, which kept some restrictions on nuclear trade (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2006).  In particular, the act calls for ending U.S. participation in the nuclear trade deal if India conducts a nuclear test. In the Wednesday hearing, Berman expressed concern that those restrictions would be erased by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, the informal assembly that sets global nuclear trade guidelines. “As I understand it, the U.S. representative to that body has circulated a clean exemption for India that doesn’t reflect any of the restrictions contained in the Hyde Act,” Berman told Rice.  “It would seem to me that would undermine our nonproliferation goals and create a strong incentive for India … to purchase technology from Russia and from France.” Rice said she would not endorse such a policy. “We will support nothing with India in the NSG, congressman, that is in contradiction to the Hyde Act,” she said.  “We’ll have to be consistent with the Hyde Act or I don’t believe we can count on the Congress to make the next step” (Federal News Service transcript, Feb. 13). Back to top

India Conducts Chemical Attack Drill on Subway New Delhi authorities responded to a mock chemical weapon attack on a city subway station during a drill yesterday, the Indo-Asian News Service reported (see GSN, Aug. 4, 2006). The exercise scenario involved the detonation of a chemical weapon in one of the Indian capital’s deepest underground Metro Rail stations to test the time needed for emergency responders to evacuate riders from the site.  Authorities also responded to simulated gunfire, vehicular detonations and grenade explosions at three other subway stations. The drill highlighted coordination problems between the participating agencies, officials said. “The mock drills were carried out to review the efficacy of various agencies like Metro, the district administration, the police and the Central Industrial Security Force in such scenarios,” said N.C. Vij, vice chairman of India’s National Disaster Management Authority. The paramilitary CISF force was instructed to protect the New Delhi Metro in 2007 after it was designated a terror target.  More than 600,000 people use the system each day (Indo-Asian News Service/Yahoo!News, Feb. 14). Back to top

Pentagon Space Shot to Offer Antisatellite Data, Experts Say By Elaine M. Grossman Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A U.S. Defense Department plan to use a Navy missile to shatter a dysfunctional spy satellite in the coming days would likely spawn data that could boost the U.S. ability to destroy foreign space assets, according to military experts (see GSN, March 12, 2007). President George W. Bush ordered the intercept as a way of ensuring that toxic rocket fuel aboard the spacecraft would burn up when pieces of the satellite re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, administration officials said.  The first attempt to destroy the satellite could be made as soon as Sunday or Monday, and later efforts would be possible for seven or eight days after that, the officials said.  Left untouched, the satellite would fall back to Earth on or about March 6. At a Pentagon press briefing yesterday, U.S. officials insisted that the only reason for undertaking the extreme measure was to prevent people on the ground from potentially being exposed to any hazardous hydrazine fuel that might survive re-entry. “The likelihood of the satellite falling in a populated area is small, and the extent and duration of toxic hydrazine in the atmosphere would be quite limited,” Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey told reporters.  “Nevertheless, if the satellite did fall in a populated area, there was a possibility of death or injury to human beings, beyond that associated with the fall of satellites and other space objects normally.” A number of space and missile experts are not buying the explanation, though.  Given the limited nature of the risks associated with an uncontrolled descent for the crippled satellite, some are pointing to other possible justifications for the White House plan. “I think the scenario is kind of funny,” said one space contractor who declined to be named in this article, citing the sensitivity of calling the administration’s explanation into question.  If the satellite were to fall to Earth unhindered, “it shouldn’t contaminate a large area,” the official said. Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated yesterday that the toxic fuel potentially could disperse in gas or liquid form over an area the size of two football fields. “There has to be another reason behind this,” Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, told the Washington Post.  “In the history of the space age, there has not been a single human being who has been harmed by man-made objects falling from space.” The space contractor speculated that U.S. officials are more concerned about the potential that classified technology or information aboard the reconnaissance satellite could endure re-entry and fall into adversary hands, if discovered on the ground. There exists “as high a chance” that spy technology or data “would survive [descent] as a fuel tank filled with hydrazine,” said the space expert. Administration officials explicitly rejected that hypothesis. “Our assessment is high probability that it would not be of any intelligence value,” Cartwright said.  “Just the heating, the destruction that occurs on the re-entry would leave it in a state that … other than some rare, unforecasted happenstance, this would not be of intelligence value.” Rather, he insisted, “it is the hydrazine that we are looking at.  That is the only thing that [makes it] worthy of taking extraordinary measures.” “I am willing to believe Gen. Cartwright even though his statement makes no sense to me,” said Jeffrey Lewis, who directs the Nuclear Strategy Initiative for the New America Foundation.  “His personal credibility is so high.” Regardless of the central rationale for the anticipated intercept, the action almost certainly would offer the Pentagon useful data on conducting antisatellite missions, Lewis told Global Security Newswire in a telephone interview. The dead U.S. satellite is to be struck at a significantly lower altitude than other space assets.  However, that could prove even more of a challenge to the Navy than any future antisatellite operation because spacecraft on lower orbits typically travel at higher speeds, Lewis said.  The upcoming shot — using a sea-based Standard Missile 3 developed for regional and tactical missile defense — could thus prove to be a useful test for less demanding intercepts that might someday follow, he said. “The higher a satellite is [in space], the slower it moves, more or less,” Lewis said.  “This is a perfectly good ASAT test.” Cartwright said Thursday that a Navy Aegis ship would launch a single missile to destroy the satellite.  Two additional ships with back-up missiles would also remain on station in case the first attempt fails.  In such an instance, the military would assess in fewer than two days whether the benefit of any subsequent shots would outweigh the risks. Cartwright said the first shot would probably hit its target. “I don’t think hitting a satellite is very hard,” Lewis added.  “I would be surprised if they missed.” “What could be the worst downside?” asked Cartwright, saying this was a question administration leaders pondered carefully.  Assessing each alternative, “we really came away with we're better off taking the attempt than not,” he said. However, some pundits have already taken issue with that notion.  Some note the heavy criticism Cartwright and others leveled at China for an antisatellite test Beijing conducted early last year (see GSN, Jan. 11). In that January 11, 2007, test, China destroyed an aging weather site with a ground-based missile, leaving thousands of pieces of debris in orbit. A U.S. official in Vienna, speaking at an international space conference coincidentally under way this week, today said that the United States expects 99 percent of the debris from the planned destruction to fall to Earth within two weeks. Officials briefing the Washington press yesterday insisted the planned U.S. shot in no way should be construed as a response to Beijing’s own satellite shootdown. “This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings,” Jeffrey told reporters. The top U.S. officials’ public explanation for the upcoming action would not stop China or others from interpreting the move differently, some observers have said. Bush’s National Security Council “may have no sensitivity to the political costs,” Lewis said.  “The administration has been generally willing to offend allies and [doesn’t] put as much stock into how their actions are perceived.” Asked if it would be fair for other nations to regard the Standard Missile 3 as an antisatellite-capable weapon if the upcoming mission is successful, Cartwright said it was “a fair question and a good question.” However, he said, the Navy has implemented for this action a “one-time” modification to the three ships and missiles, which “would not be transferable to a fleet configuration.” For their part, “the Chinese are going to use this to excuse their otherwise inexcusable test,” Lewis said.  “And those other countries who we count on to create a norm against debris-creating ASATs will be less willing to help us” in that effort, he said. That said, Lewis added, “maybe they’ll buy the hydrazine story.” Jeffrey said international consultations began only yesterday so it was too early to know how foreign nations would react to the use of a Navy missile in taking down a U.S. satellite. Back to top       Russia Could Target U.S. Defenses, Putin Says Russia could retarget its strategic missiles at a missile shield the U.S. plans to deploy in Central Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday at his last annual Kremlin news conference (see GSN, Feb. 14). “Our experts believe the system threatens our national security,” Putin said.  “If it appears, we will be forced to respond appropriately — we will have to retarget part of our systems against those missiles,” Putin said. “We will be compelled to aim our missiles at facilities that we consider a threat to our national security, and I am putting this plainly now so that the blame for this is not shifted later,” he said. However, he added that Russia would not “retarget anything at anyone without extreme necessity” (RIA Novosti, Feb. 14). Putin said that recent threats he has issued over the proposed missile defenses do not reflect a desire to increase international tensions to Cold War levels, China Daily reported. “To suppose that we aspire to return to the times of the Cold War is just too bold a supposition,” he said. “We are not interested in this.  Our main tasks are internal development, the solution of social and economic problems of the country,” Putin said, adding that Moscow hopes to cooperate with the next U.S. administration “towards the construction of a positive dialogue” (China Daily, Feb. 15). Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko said yesterday that Ukraine would pose no threat to Russia if it joins NATO, Interfax reported. “There is no and there will be no threat to Russia from Ukraine’s territory,” Ohryzko said, noting that a provision in the Ukrainian constitution states that “no foreign military bases can ever be deployed on its territory.” “Ukraine has surrendered its world’s third largest nuclear arsenal on its own initiative,” he said. Ohryzko declined to comment on Rice’s earlier remarks (Interfax/BBC Monitoring, Feb. 14). Back to top

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