By Bryan Bender
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The debate over the Bush administration’s controversial new national security strategy, explicitly reserving the right to launch pre-emptive strikes against terrorists and rogue states intending to use weapons of mass destruction, was re-ignited this week as a key U.S. ally called for international acceptance of a limited doctrine of preventive self-defense (see GSN, Sept. 23).
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, saying for the first time that his country may have to resort to pre-emptive military action against terrorists, called on the international community to consider adjusting traditional legal norms to allow for pre-emptive action in the face of potentially catastrophic attacks.
As the United States prepares for a possible military invasion of Iraq, however, there is no international consensus on the circumstances under which it would be acceptable for one nation to attack another believed to be harboring terrorists or acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The stormy reaction from Asian countries to Howard’s comments underscored the widespread disdain of such a policy.
Pre-empting an imminent and potentially catastrophic terrorist attack — if it can be known in advance, however unlikely — is widely considered the moral responsibility of any nation seeking to defend its citizens.
Yet the Bush administration has sought to expand the conditions that would justify an offensive — to include, for example, the right to defuse a threat before it has fully materialized — but its efforts have instead ignited worldwide opposition and even outrage at what is viewed as U.S. disregard for international law, according to diplomats and foreign policy experts.
They are urging the Bush administration and its allies to more clearly delineate the special circumstances under which they would resort to pre-emptive or preventive attacks. They contend that the policy is confusing and that by talking too openly about it the United States has attracted unnecessary criticism. They also warn that the rhetoric could force potential enemies to hide their capabilities or use them before losing them.
Seeking International Acceptance
The doctrine of pre-emption, as outlined in the National Security Strategy of the United States published in September, is gaining little support even as al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups continue to mount successful attacks in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and East Africa and their appetite for chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological weapons remains unabated. Suspicion that the policy is being used as a cover for Washington to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has fed those who oppose the new U.S. policy.
Nevertheless, Howard said this week that the defining characteristic of national security in the past — that nations were threatened primarily by other nations — has been replaced by the threat of subnational actors such as terrorist groups that have the potential to cause devastating damage and are unlikely to be deterred by the threat of massive retaliation.
“That’s different now,” Howard said Dec. 1, according to the Australian Associated Press. “What you’re getting is nonstate terrorism which is just as devastating and potentially even more so,” Howard said. “All I’m saying, I think many people are saying, is that maybe the body of international law has to catch up with the new reality,” he added.
Australian Defense Minister Robert Hill, in a speech last week, called for reforming the U.N. charter to reflect the threats of a new era. “In a world of spreading terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, the international community should review the limits of self-defense and the right of national governments to take pre-emptive action,” he said at the University of Adelaide.
Australia was one of the first and only countries to applaud the new U.S. security strategy when it was first announced, but Canberra has taken on an even more hawkish stance in the wake of the terrorist bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, in October that killed dozens of Australians.
“Article 51 of the U.N. Charter permits the use of self-defense if a criminal attack occurs,” Hill said. “But this has not settled the debate between those who adopt a literal interpretation and those who argue that contemporary reality demands a more liberal interpretation.”
Different Interpretations
While welcomed by U.S. President George W. Bush, Howard’s statements were quickly criticized by several of Australia’s Asian neighbors. Malaysia threatened to pull out of its counterterrorism pact with Australia and the Philippines said it would reconsider plans to ink a similar agreement.
“I say it is an act of arrogance that disregards the right of nations, and prejudices our friendly ties,” Philippine Vice President Teofisto Guingona said today. Added Foreign Secretary Blas Ople, “This proposal has no ghost of a chance to be supported by the U.N. General Assembly.”
Indonesia, which has been accused in recent weeks of dragging its feet on the Bali investigation, also criticized Howard.
Outside of Asia, opposition to the pre-emption doctrine is even more widespread. With the exception of Russia and the United Kingdom, most European countries have been lukewarm at best to the new Bush, and now Howard, doctrine.
In Canberra, opposition Labor Party leader Simon Crean said, “The Australian people are rightly entitled to be worried that these dangerous and reckless statements are placing us in danger.”
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer tried to clarify Australia’s position in a meeting yesterday with the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but the government refused to back away from the policy.
“I said what I said very carefully,” Howard insisted earlier today, “I have been invited to [retract the policy statement] and I have declined that invitation. You only apologize if you have something to apologize for.” He said he was only maintaining the principle of self-defense.
Pre-emption vs. Prevention
Still, how to define the parameters of pre-emption has been one of the major points of contention. On the one hand, its application to terrorists such as the al-Qaeda network appears to be largely accepted because pre-emption can be the only way to stop terrorists from launching attacks, which are difficult to detect in advance.
Given the stealthy nature of terrorist groups, it is unlikely that that a specific attack can be identified in advance and thus thwarted by pre-emptive action. Therefore, terrorists’ past practices and public statements provide sufficient rationale to use force on foreign soil to prevent attacks.
The Bush concept, however, “is not limited to the traditional definition of pre-emption — striking an enemy as it prepares an attack — but also includes prevention — striking an enemy before it is even in a position to attack,” according to a forthcoming report by the Brookings Institution’s James Steinberg, former U.S. deputy national security advisor, and Senior Fellows Michael O’Hanlon and Susan Rice.
Prevention, they said, is a far less accepted concept of international law.
“The idea principally appears to be directed at terrorist groups as well as extremist or ‘rogue’ nation states,” according to the Brookings study. “The rationale for the shift appears to be twofold: to deal with actors who cannot be reliably deterred, and to address the enormous threat posed by the spread of weapons of mass destruction.”
They added, “It also allows the administration to argue that its focus on Iraq is part of a broader security concept and does not represent preoccupation with a specific regime.”
Policy Risks
It may not work though, according to experts and former government officials. Without clarifying the policies of pre-emptive and preventive war, the new U.S. security strategy could do more harm than good — particularly if the United States goes ahead with a military assault on Iraq.
“Other states also might copy the dangerous American example,” Alan Kuperman, assistant professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University, wrote Tuesday in USA Today.
For example, “The Indian government long has considered attacking Pakistan’s small nuclear force pre-emptively, but has been dissuaded at least in part by U.S. exhortations and fear of international condemnation. Bush’s new policy would undercut” such diplomatic efforts in the future.
“Bush imagines that by smashing Iraq, the U.S.A. will coerce other aspirants to regional power to abandon their ambitions,” he wrote. “Rome had similar visions, as has every momentary hegemony. Nearly all undermined their power by abusing it in that manner.”
An attack on Iraq “could encourage some to acquire weapons of mass destruction as their best guarantee against a U.S. attack,” Kuperman wrote.
The Brookings report echoes some of those concerns. “Elevating the pre-emptive option to a policy doctrine has serious negative consequences,” it says. “For one, it reinforces the image of the United States as too quick to use military force and to do so outside the bounds of international law and legitimacy. This will make it more difficult for the United States to gain international support for its use of force, and over the long term, may lead others to resist U.S. foreign policy goals more broadly, including efforts to fight terrorism.
“Elevating pre-emption to the level of a formal doctrine may also increase the administration’s inclination to reach for the military lever quickly, when other tools still have a good chance of working,” the report concludes.
In being too public about their intentions, moreover, the United States and its allies might make their job harder by giving potential enemies forewarning of what is to come.
“I don’t think it should be an announced centerpiece of national strategy,” former U.S. Senator Gary Hart told Global Security Newswire this week.
“Advocating pre-emption warns potential enemies to hide the very assets we might wish to take pre-emptive action against, or to otherwise prepare responses and defenses,” according to the Brookings experts. “In this tactical sense, talking too openly about pre-emption reduces its likely utility, if and when it is employed. “Finally, advocating pre-emption may well embolden other countries that would like to justify attacks on their enemies as pre-emptive in nature.”
Building a Consensus
If there is a growing consensus regarding the pre-emption it is that there is a lack of one and the Bush administration needs to do a better job of clarifying its new and potentially destabilizing policy.
Some say it Washington must lay out a high threshold for taking pre-emptive or preventive action.
“Recent history has been that you don’t attack, even though threatened, until attacked,” Hart said. “The [new] standard must be opponents with weapons of mass destruction, the ability to delivery them and intent to use them. Those are pretty high standards to meet,” he said Tuesday. In Iraq, “the first has been clearly met, but not the second or third.”
Others say the policy should be clearly reserved only for terrorists and their sponsors.
“Less clear is the need for an expanded approach with respect to rogue states,” according to the Brookings report. “One problem is that the strategy fails to distinguish between eliminating dangerous capabilities and overthrowing dangerous regimes. Pursuing regime change has broad consequences for the overall stability of the international system and is less widely accepted as a legitimate objective than eliminating weapons of mass destruction.”
Regime change cannot be ruled out, but global public opinion must take into account that is not the primary objective of the new policy, the report says. “On balance, policy should not rule out regime change in extreme cases, but it should only be considered when there are no alternative means of eliminating unusually dangerous capabilities,” the report adds.
The Brookings report concludes, “Given that the doctrine has now been promulgated, the Bush administration should clarify and limit the conditions under which it might be applied.”
The most vocal proponents of the new U.S. policy also see the lack of international consensus. “The issues and uncertainty remain unresolved,” said Hill, the Australian defense minister, in his speech last week. “Some would argue that it is time for a new and distinct doctrine of pre-emptive action to avert a threat. A better outcome might be for the international community to seek an agreement on the ambit of the right to self-defense better suited to contemporary realities.”
U.N. inspectors yesterday confirmed that a stockpile of chemical agents stored at a former Iraqi biological and chemical weapons site had been undisturbed since previous rounds of inspections (see GSN, Dec. 4).
During a visit to the al-Muthanna State Establishment north of Baghdad, inspectors verified that mustard gas shells that had been left at the site were still stored there, said Dimitri Perricos, leader of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission team. Before halting operations in Iraq in 1998, inspectors had destroyed thousands of chemical weapons shells at the site (U.N. release, Dec. 5).
“We wanted to make sure that the mustard shells which were not destroyed were still there,” Perricos said. “It’s a pretty good quantity of mustard. There is no leakage,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Times of India, Dec. 5).
The shells have been “well stored” at al-Muthanna, which was “a very important place for the chemical warfare program they [Iraq] were building in the past,” Perricos said. Inspectors hope to begin destroying the shells soon, he added (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Dec. 5).
After visiting various Iraqi sites for a week, U.N. inspectors are scheduled for a short break today and tomorrow to mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, the Associated Press reported today (Charles Hanley, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Dec. 5).
United States Calls for More Inspectors
The United States, meanwhile, has begun urging the United Nations to intensify inspections, the Bush administration said yesterday.
“We want to make certain that they are aggressive enough to be able to ascertain the facts in the face of an adversary who in the past did everything in his power to hide the facts,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
U.S. national security advisor Condoleezza Rice met Monday with UNMOVIC head Hans Blix and requested that he increase the number of inspectors and conduct several visits at once to make it more difficult for Iraq to interfere, according to the Los Angeles Times. About 100 inspectors should be in Iraq by Christmas, and more plan to arrive in January, Blix said. The United States, however, has requested that the United Nations accelerate inspector training, the Times reported.
During their meeting, Rice offered “recommendations and advice on how to proceed,” Blix said, adding that he did not consider it as undue pressure. “I know what my job is,” Blix said (Gerstenzang/Farley, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 5).
Oil-for-Food
At the United Nations, the Security Council yesterday voted 15-0 to renew the oil-for-food program for the customary six-month period. The United States had delayed a vote on the program to force the council to amend the Goods Review List of items that Iraq must not import without approval from the council. The United States agreed to accept a commitment from the council to “consider necessary adjustments” to the list within 30 days (Colum Lynch, Washington Post, Dec. 5).
U.N. diplomats were pleased that the United States agreed to the compromise, saying a time when a united front on Iraq is needed, according to the New York Times.
“It’s a good solution,” a French diplomat said. “The American delegation listened to the other members and made a reasonable response,” the diplomat added (Julia Preston, New York Times, Dec. 5).
For further information, see:
UNMOVIC
Inspectors from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have visited more than a dozen sites near Baghdad in the round of post-Gulf War inspections that resumed Nov. 27 after a four-year lapse. The following chart summarizes their activities.
| Date | Site | Activity | | Dec. 4 | Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, located south of Baghdad | The IAEA has monitored the center, considered to be Iraq’s main nuclear facility, for the past 10 years, according to Reuters (see GSN, Dec. 4). | | Al-Muthanna State Establishment, located 45 miles north of Baghdad | Inspectors visited the site to check for resumed chemical and biological weapons activity after equipment and materials were destroyed in the 1990s. They also confirmed the presence of mustard-filled artillery shells, previously tagged by U.N. inspectors (see GSN, Dec. 5). | | Dec. 3 | Al-Sajoud palace | Inspectors were quickly admitted but appeared to have found nothing, according to the Associated Press. | | Dec. 2 | Three distilleries near Bakuba, north of Baghdad (first previously unvisited site) | IAEA inspectors did not explain why they visited the distilleries, but possibly searched for hidden nuclear equipment (see GSN, Dec. 3). | | Waziriyah ballistic missile development site at the al-Karama General Company, outside of Baghdad | Several pieces of equipment tagged in 1998 are now missing, according to the IAEA (see GSN, Dec. 3). Iraqi officials said they revealed the new locations of the equipment in a declaration in October (see GSN, Dec. 4). | | Dec. 1 | Khan Beni-Saad cropdusting facility, 35 kilometers north of Baghdad | Satellite information “called for a specific investigation of modified aircraft fuel tanks,” according to a U.N. spokesman. Onsite for five hours, the inspectors took samples from tanks and downloaded files from the base director’s computer (see GSN, Dec. 2). | | Al-Taji complex that houses the bin Firnas and al-Quds missile production facilities | “We gave the inspectors every assistance and answered all their questions,” bin Firnas director Brahim Hussein said (see GSN, Dec. 2). | | Nov. 30 | Balad Chemical Defense Battalion, where troops train to defend against WMD attacks | Inspectors spent five hours examining storage sheds, opening ordnance crates and operating handheld sensors (see GSN, Dec. 2). | | Um al-Maarik dual-use equipment production facility, a machine tool factory | Iraqi officials said the facility only produces parts for light machinery and vehicles (see GSN, Dec. 2). | | Al-Meelad dual-use equipment production facility, formerly known as al-Furat, where centrifuges have been developed | Recent satellite imagery has indicated that construction has taken place at the site since 1998 (see GSN, Dec. 2). | | Nov. 28 | Al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Production Laboratory | Following four hours of inspection, U.N. experts concluded that the plant is no longer operational for any purposes (see GSN, Dec. 2). | | Al-Nasr industrial complex where uranium enrichment centrifuge rotors and missile engine parts were once made | A newly constructed building identified by U.S. intelligence as suspicious appeared to be inactive, according to IAEA team leader Jacques Baute (see GSN, Dec. 2). | | Nov. 27 | Al-Tahidi Scientific Research Center | Seven IAEA representatives spent three hours speaking with workers, examining documents and removing an air sampler installed by inspectors in 1998 (see GSN, Dec. 2). | | Al-Rafah graphite production facility | Graphite can be used in missile components (see GSN, Dec. 2). | | Al-Rafah missile test stand | UNMOVIC inspectors looked for information indicating range of missiles tested here (see GSN, Dec. 2). |
By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The U.S. General Accounting Office has strongly criticized the U.S. Defense Department’s fiscal 2002 report on plans and activities for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which was submitted almost 19 months after the legally mandated deadline (see GSN, Nov. 15).
In a November report sent this week to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, GAO auditors summarized flaws that they claimed were in the Pentagon’s report. Pentagon officials failed to clearly outline future funding data required by Congress, to include certain important planning elements or to incorporate all previous GAO recommendations, the auditors said. In some cases, the Pentagon asserted that it used a more rigorous methodology than what it actually used, the auditors said.
The Pentagon failed to clearly outline the amount of funding to be provided over the term of a five-year plan, according to the GAO. While previous reports had presented funding amounts clearly by fiscal year, the amounts in the 2002 report had to be deduced from a summary table, the auditors said. Pentagon officials said uncertainties in long-term CTR budgets and scope made the defense comptroller unwilling to endorse more clarity, according to the auditors.
The Pentagon’s five-year plan failed to incorporate several important strategic planning elements, including a description of external factors that could affect the Pentagon’s ability to achieve program goals and plans for revising such goals, the GAO said. The planning elements are important for preparing annual program budgets, according to the auditors.
While some previous GAO recommendations had been incorporated into the Pentagon’s report, those regarding the planning and scope of audit and examination visits were not reflected, the auditors said. Furthermore, while the Pentagon asserted that a statistically significant sample methodology was used on an audit and examination visit, that was not the case, according to the auditors.
The Pentagon did address accountability requirements, the GAO said, adding that it described the condition and location of program equipment, reported the status of contracts to ensure intended use of such equipment and determined whether beneficiaries had used the program properly (see GSN, Oct. 24).
While the Pentagon was required to submit its CTR report by early February 2001, it did not do so until Sept. 3, 2002. Defense officials said the delay was caused, in part, by the report’s relatively low priority, the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and questions that the Bush administration raised regarding the program’s scope, according to the GAO.
For further information, see:
U.S. Defense Department CTR Site
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Kazakhstan has proposed that a treaty to establish a nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia be signed early next year in a ceremony at the former Soviet nuclear test site of Semipalatinsk, a source in the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said Tuesday (see GSN, Nov. 22).
The deputy foreign ministers of the five Central Asian states involved in the creation of the zone — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — are expected to meet with representatives from the five declared nuclear weapons states Dec. 17 in New York for consultations over their role in respecting the zone, the source said (Interfax, Dec. 3 in FBIS-SOV, Dec. 3).
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U.S. trials of smallpox vaccine are revealing a variety of annoying — but not life threatening — side effects, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Nov. 25).
Immunization tests of healthy young men and women at a half dozen universities and clinics have resulted in fevers, aches, swelling, itching, rashes and a general unpleasantness, all considered routine responses to the receiving the smallpox vaccine.
“I just wanted to go to bed for a day or two,” said Alison Francis, a New York University graduate student who was recently inoculated. “I thought, ‘Can you just chop off my arm?’” she added.
None of the 1,500 volunteers who have been tested in the last year have died, the Post reported, but in one government study of 200 young adults, 75 registered high fevers and several were put on antibiotics. In a study at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, 5 percent of participants developed rashes that spread over their bodies, researcher John Treanor said. Some test subjects developed significant swelling, he said.
Experts have said that a lack of recent smallpox inoculations has left the U.S. population unprepared for the vaccine’s effects, triggered by exposing vaccinees to a live virus.
“The reactions we are seeing are totally out of line with today’s vaccine experience and absolutely in line with historical experience,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “In the 30 years since we had routine vaccination, the public’s tolerance level has gone way down,” he added.
Even some professionals have been taken aback by the immunization reactions because most U.S. health care workers have never administered the vaccine or treated its side effects.
“I can read all day about it, but seeing it is quite impressive,” said Kathy Edwards, a Vanderbilt University physician who oversaw a smallpox trial at Baylor University in Texas. “The reactions we saw were really quite remarkable,” she added.
Studies have shown that a previous smallpox immunization can prevent much suffering and annoyance. For those who were not inoculated — or born — when routine smallpox immunizations ceased in the United States, however, the experience can be “pretty miserable,” said Meg Gifford, a University of Maryland junior who took part in a study.
“You can’t scratch it — it’s all bandaged up. All I could do was smack it,” she said (Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, Dec. 5).
Meanwhile, the largest U.S. union representing health care workers has demanded better protections for those who probably would be the first to receive the vaccine in an expected national inoculation plan, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today.
Officials from the Service Employees International Union and the Bush administration met yesterday to discuss whether workers sickened by the vaccine would be allowed to take leave and whether officials would screen workers properly before immunizing them. The union represents 710,000 health care professionals.
“Without better protections, the proposed plan could put hospital patients, caregivers and the public at risk,” the union said in a statement (Associated Press/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dec. 5).
By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire
A Florida sheriff who was inoculated against smallpox Tuesday and encouraged his deputies to do the same is not trying to act ahead of U.S. leaders planning a national vaccination strategy, an official from his office said yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 4).
Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary, is promoting an effort to produce vaccinia immune globulin, which is used to treat adverse reactions to smallpox vaccine, said Chief Steve Jones of the sheriff’s office.
The globulin — known as VIG — is produced from blood plasma extracted from people who have recently been immunized against smallpox. U.S. officials have contracted with several companies to produce VIG, which would be needed if the United States conducts large-scale immunizations (see GSN, Nov. 12). Experts have estimated that for every 1 million people who are inoculated against smallpox, fewer than 50 would become seriously ill from side effects of the vaccine, and one or two would probably die.
It had been reported that Beary was seeking to protect his force from smallpox even though U.S. President George W. Bush, who is reportedly considering inoculating 500,000 emergency workers and 500,000 military personnel, has not yet announced national plans.
Although immunity to smallpox is a benefit of inoculation, Beary is primarily advocating producing VIG for the national stockpile, Jones said.
The sheriff’s office received calls from news organizations across the country when the VIG drive was announced, but Jones said he had not expected that Beary would be depicted as maverick local official.
“Before it gets to the end, it’s all twisted around,” Jones said.
The sheriff’s “primary goal” is to encourage voluntary participation in the VIG drive and to assuage fears, Jones said. Health officials have said that a thorough screening process, which the Florida program has in place, should drastically reduce the chances of complications from the vaccine.
“He’s basically trying to tell people, ‘I did it. I had no reaction to it,’” Jones said.
Beary is encouraging his law enforcement agency to follow his lead, and the program so far has enrolled about 10 of his 1,400 deputies, including Jones, who said he has felt “absolutely no ill effects.”
The office supports the drive but is not pushing it, Jones said. Beary is not paying deputies “on our time” to be vaccinated, he added.
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The United States has made a $2 million voluntary contribution to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention, the organization announced Tuesday (see GSN, Nov. 21). The funding will be used to conduct additional inspections, enhance management functions, develop information technology to support verification measures and conduct outreach activities to help combat chemical terrorism, the OPCW said.
The U.S. donation “will certainly be of great assistance in relieving the organization of its fiscal constraints and will also facilitate a number of important activities,” OPCW Director General Rogelio Pfirter said in a press statement (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons release, Dec. 3).
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A top U.S. missile defense official has presented flawed testimony to Congress, two scientists said in a article released yesterday (see GSN, July 17).
U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Missile Defense Agency, reported an incorrect success rate of certain missile defense tests, said the Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists — Global Security Program co-director George Lewis and Lisbeth Gronlund, senior research associate in the Security Studies Program.
The article, in the December issue of Arms Control Today, focuses on Kadish’s contention that quality control problems early in interceptor flights have caused most test failures (see GSN, Oct. 30). According to the scientists, Kadish has said that missiles that have reached the technologically complex endgame of the intercept have been significantly more successful.
“Close examination of statements by MDA officials, who have been arguing that the test record for hit-to-kill missile defenses shows that such systems will work, demonstrates that the Pentagon has been less than forthright about its successes and failures,”according to the article.
The scientists accused Kadish of miscalculating the percentage of endgame successes and of comparing dissimilar tests. Kadish testified that the endgame success rate is 88 percent, they said, but actually it is 71 percent. Furthermore, the endgame success rate for midcourse intercept tests is 61 percent, they added.
While the scientists criticized Kadish’s testimony and calculations, they also said that the “endgame success rate is irrelevant.”
“There is no reason to consider the endgame success rate rather than the overall success rate,” the article says. Taking into account all stages of the test, “the overall success rate for midcourse systems drops to only 41 percent,” it says (Lewis/Gronlund, Arms Control Today, December 2002).
Two developing U.S. missile technologies could make missile defense systems more lethal, according to reports.
During last month’s test for U.S. Sea-based Midcourse Defense program, the Standard Missile 3 successfully changed its aim before impact to a new point on an incoming target, Defense Daily reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 22).
The ability to shift the aim of the interceptor makes it much more lethal, an official with contractor Raytheon said. Originally aimed at the center point of the target, the missile shifted its course to directly strike measurement and communications equipment.
Shifting the aim point was a secondary goal in the test, Raytheon officials said. An effort to enable such technology began a year ago when U.S. Navy and Missile Defense Agency officials decided to test new software that would allow a more effective intercept, according to Defense Daily. The next flight test will also involve a shift in aim point, a Raytheon official said (Robinson/Gildea, Defense Daily, Dec. 4).
Meanwhile, new warheads that use chemical reactions and the force of the target’s movement to break an incoming missile into pieces could make interceptors 500 percent more powerful, the U.S. Office of Naval Research said Tuesday.
The warheads carry a powdered metal embedded in a plastic matrix that breaks on impact with the missile to start a chemical reaction, according to the office. The reaction causes high heat and pressure to destroy a target more completely, the office said (U.S. Office of Naval Research release, Dec. 3).
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The U.S. Enrichment Corporation plans to build a centrifuge test facility in southern Ohio as a precursor to a full-sized new uranium enrichment plant, the company announced yesterday (see GSN, July 23).
At its Portsmouth plant in Piketon, Ohio, USEC plans to build the Lead Cascade facility to test enhancements to centrifuge technologies developed by the U.S. Energy Department, the company said in a press release. Company officials plan to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in early 2003 for a license for the facility, which will probably open in 2005 with a staff of about 50 people, the company said.
The site was chosen for both cost and scheduling reasons, said USEC President and Chief Executive Officer William Timbers. At the Portsmouth plant, the company can take advantage of existing buildings to save time and money, he said.
Ohio Governor Robert Taft praised the USEC announcement.
“This will be the first new nuclear facility to begin operations in the United States in over 10 years,” he said (U.S. Enrichment Corporation release, Dec. 4).
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham also hailed USEC’s decision, saying it would “help ensure long-term, domestic capacity to enrich uranium fuel for our commercial nuclear reactors.”
“USEC and its partners in the nuclear industry continue to take important steps enhancing national energy security with private sector development of advanced American technology,” he said, according to an Energy Department press release.
After successfully demonstrating enhanced centrifuge technology, USEC plans to build a commercial-sized uranium enrichment plant in either Portsmouth or Paducah, Ky., according to the Energy Department (U.S. Energy Department release, Dec. 4). USEC plans to decide in 2004 where to locate the commercial plant, the company said (USEC release).
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2002 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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