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We have identified — not characterized, not understood, not studied — but identified less than 1 percent of all the bacteria in the world.
—Tara O’Toole, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, describing the difficulties of developing defenses against bio-engineered bacteria.
By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire
UNITED NATIONS — After two days of speeches at a meeting of the parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, only the United States has declined to fully endorse the two-year-old consensus document committing the nuclear powers to take steps leading to nuclear disarmament. The other four nuclear powers and additional nations have unconditionally supported the final document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference (see GSN, April 9)...Full Story 
By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire
BALTIMORE — U.S. scientists must advance their biology skills to fight a future set of as-yet unidentified bacteria that could be used as biological weapons, a leading biological defense expert told Global Security Newswire Monday...Full Story
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon this year has quietly begun pursuing a risky new missile defense technology that, if successful, could resolve a core problem faced by the national missile defense system...Full Story
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Wednesday, April 10, 2002 |  | | |  |
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Russia yesterday criticized the U.S. decision to curtail some cooperative disarmament projects, saying it will endanger cooperation between the two former Cold War rivals (see GSN, April 8).
“Such actions can have the most negative impact on achieving mutual trust and can be reflected in the two countries’ cooperation in liquidating weapons of mass destruction and in the sphere of nonproliferation,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko.
Under the Cooperative Threat Reduction Act, the Bush administration must certify that Russia is complying with the biological and chemical weapons conventions in order to provide funding for programs, including certain military exchanges and U.S. assistance to prevent theft of nuclear materials in Russia. The administration, however, has said that it cannot provide certification.
Russian officials said their country is following both treaties and called the U.S. decision bewildering (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, April 10).
Russia is gaining the impression that the U.S. decision has been “used primarily in order to deflect attention from the actions of the U.S.A. itself, which is refusing to support the protocol on verification of the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons and is disrupting the activities of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,” Yakovenko said (see GSN, April 4).
“What causes particular concern,” he said, “is that the U.S. side has taken this decision without exchanging views with Russia and without identifying the specific facts which it is querying” (ITAR-Tass/BBC Monitoring, April 9).
Russia and other states must comply with the arms control agreements, but it is not in U.S. interests to “stymie efforts to safeguard nuclear stockpiles in Russia,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association (Kralev, Washington Times).
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By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire
UNITED NATIONS — After two days of speeches at a meeting of the parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, only the United States has declined to fully endorse the two-year-old consensus document committing the nuclear powers to take steps leading to nuclear disarmament. The other four nuclear powers and additional nations have unconditionally supported the final document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference (see GSN, April 9).
Russian representative Alexander Mostovets said yesterday, “we consider the final document of the conference as a forward-looking program of measures ... which provide benchmarks for negotiations on step-by-step and consensus basis carefully taking interests of security of all the NPT parties into account under conditions of stability and predictability, which should be implemented totally, not selectively.”
The consensus decision at the 2000 Review Conference included a commitment from the five nuclear weapon states to work on 13 steps leading to the elimination of their nuclear arsenals, including entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the reduction of the role of nuclear weapons in strategic planning.
On Monday, the United States said it “generally agrees” with the 2000 consensus. Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France were all more explicit in supporting that decision. Ambassador Hubert de la Fortrelle of France said, “the concrete measures inscribed in the final document of the 2000 Review Conference constitute indicators of the direction in which we should be going. Let us make no mistake: There is no single path, but there is a direction in which these concrete measures lead.”
“Through this instrument, we should seek to maintain and reinforce a multilateral process. Indeed, it is clearer than ever that multilateral nonproliferation and disarmament regimes are indispensable. The obligations they carry and the controls they provide for constitute factors of trust and predictability. In the current phase of uncertainty and instability, it is truly cooperation, trust and predictability that should guide our efforts.”
Ambassador Peter Jenkins of the United Kingdom said his country “welcomes the significant commitments in relation to methods of achieving treaty obligations.” The 2000 final document “including its ‘13 practical steps,’ identifies a number of ways in which nuclear weapon states can pursue nuclear disarmament.”
China bluntly criticized the U.S. position. Ambassador Hu Xiaodi said, “we note not without regret that the provisions of the final document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference have not been fully materialized and that new negative developments which have an impact on the NPT review process and detriment to international security environment have occurred.”
“New negative developments” probably referred to the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review released earlier this year that envisions the indefinite retention of nuclear weapons and an increased role for them in strategic planning.
The non-nuclear parties to the treaty also reaffirmed support for the 13 steps while commenting on the Nuclear Posture Review with varying degrees of disappointment. “The two years since we last met have seen clouds darken our outlook for success in the 13 steps we planned to disarmament,” said Canadian Ambassador Christopher Westdal.
While “heartened” by the improvement in relations between the United States and Russia, Westdal said, “signals from some nuclear weapon states regarding their nuclear arsenals occasion uncertainty and concern. As well, the ongoing development of nuclear weapons and missile programs in volatile regions including states not parties to this essential treaty is of grave concern.”
“Canada sustains its conviction that global security prospects are best served by legally binding multilateralism,” Westdal said. “The NPT’s inherent discrimination is acceptable only in a larger context of coherent commitment and credible progress toward disarmament.”
On the other end of the rhetorical scale, Ambassador Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian of Iran said, “the new nuclear posture review … indicates the emergence of a new doctrine in the United States on the use of nuclear weapons through development of a new generation of nuclear weapons and improving the existing ones to be used against nuclear as well as non-nuclear weapon states.” Iran is one of several countries named in the U.S. review as a country of concern.
“This new proposed U.S. doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons is in clear violation of the commitments which were made and reaffirmed to help the indefinite extension of the NPT,” he said.
While the United States on Monday cited its negotiations with Russia as a major advance in arms control, [Russia] was less enthusiastic. “We are convinced that under present conditions it is necessary to conclude a new legally binding treaty regarding further reductions,” Mostovets said. “We think it is important that such reductions are real and reliably monitored.” He also repeated the Russian proposal to make deeper nuclear cuts than the United States and Russia are now discussing.
Mostovets called the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty ”wrong” and “not in line” with the 2000 decision nor “the opinion of the world community.” He added, “We are also concerned because of the fact that the withdrawal from the ABM Treaty may bring along such a dangerous development of events as ‘weaponization’ of space.”
The U.S. Energy Department is restarting a chemical processing facility at its Oak Ridge site in Tennessee to rid the building of uranium before demolishing it, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, March 28).
Building 9206 at the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons plant has been shut down since 1994. Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has decided to restart the facility to remove all remaining uranium compounds, at which point it will be shut down again. The NNSA will cast the uranium compounds into metal disks for storage at Y-12, according to the AP.
“We expect to have the uranium removed by the end of summer,” said Oak Ridge spokesman Steven Wyatt (Associated Press, April 9).
The U.S. Energy Department expects to complete the cleanup and destruction of a plutonium-finishing facility at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state a few years ahead of schedule, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, March 7).
The plant, which was used to prepare plutonium for use in nuclear weapons, houses more than four tons of plutonium mixed with 20 tons of scrap materials. It is considered the third most serious cleanup problem at Hanford, according to the AP.
Energy Department contractors expect to convert the plutonium into a safer form for storage by the end of 2004, the AP reported. Under a plan being developed, the facility itself might be ready to be destroyed by 2010, several years ahead of a 2016 deadline agreed to by Energy, Washington state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
If Congress allocates an additional $3 million this year for preparation work, the project could be finished by 2009, said Pete Knollmeyer, an Energy Department assistant manager. Without the additional funding, the project is scheduled to be completed in 2010, he said (Associated Press, April 10).
U.S. special envoy on Korean affairs Charles Pritchard plans to discuss North Korean issues tomorrow with officials in South Korea, the U.S. embassy in Seoul said. Pritchard’s discussions will follow U.S. meetings with Asian allies in Japan and an informal visit to North Korea by a former U.S. ambassador (see GSN, April 5).
Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea during the first Bush administration, visited North Korea for four days before arriving in South Korea yesterday. He expressed hope that his talks with North Korean officials might help facilitate U.S.-North Korean dialogue.
Gregg was expected to meet with South Korean Foreign Minister Choi Sung-hong today, South Korean officials said.
After South Korean envoy Lim Dong-won met last week with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and other officials, the two countries agreed to restart reconciliation projects. Kim said he would also resume talks with the United States, Lim said Saturday.
The North Korean leader also said he had planned to visit South Korea in March 2001 but postponed the trip in response to U.S. President George W. Bush’s policies (Reuters/New York Times, April 10).
Could Be Worse
Meanwhile, if the two Koreas and the United States cannot reach some type of agreement to deal with North Korean weapons of mass destruction and missiles, a crisis could occur on the peninsula next year, Kim Kyong-won, director of the Institute of Social Sciences, wrote in the Seoul JoongAng Ilbo (see GSN, March 26).
One potential cause for a crisis is the U.S. policy that refusal to allow IAEA inspectors to conduct inspections constitutes a violation of the Agreed Framework, Kim wrote (see GSN, March 21).
If such conflicts over the North Korean nuclear program continue, the result will likely be a crisis worse than the 1994 crisis that led to the Agreed Framework, Kim wrote. At that time, the United States was prepared to take military action against North Korea, Kim said.
The end of North Korea’s three-year moratorium on missile test launches in March of next year will also probably increase tensions on the peninsula, Kim wrote (see GSN, Jan. 15).
The countries involved must resolve some technical issues, such as interpretations of the framework, but peace and stability can only occur when North Korea stops developing weapons of mass destruction, Kim wrote.
Therefore, it is worthwhile now for South Korea and its allies to wait cautiously and see where the new North-South dialogue will lead, Kim wrote (Kim Kyong-won, Seoul JoongAng Ilbo, April 7 in FBIS-EAS, April 9).
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By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire
BALTIMORE — U.S. scientists must advance their biology skills to fight a future set of as-yet unidentified bacteria that could be used as biological weapons, a leading biological defense expert told Global Security Newswire Monday.
“Five years from now it’s not going to be anthrax we’re worried about, it’s going to be something else,” said Tara O’Toole, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies.
“What people are not understanding is how fast biology is moving forward and what that is going to mean for potential biological weapons.”
Future advancements in genetic fingerprinting will enable scientists anywhere, including those who might be associated with terrorists, to understand whole new strands of bacteria, O’Toole said.
While most if not all research on bacteria is conducted for peaceful, medical purposes, the knowledge gained from such research could be used to employ new bacteria or even viruses in harmful ways, she said.
“We have identified — not characterized, not understood, not studied — but identified less than 1 percent of all the bacteria in the world,” O’Toole said.
“Now these new techniques allow you to basically fingerprint whole populations of bacteria,” O’Toole said. “The fact is you can get the genome of the 1918 flu bug that killed millions on the Internet.”
In addition to genetically modified biological weapons, which countries such as Iran are suspected of developing (see GSN, Nov. 30, 2001), technologies for dispersing agents more rapidly and effectively are moving at a fast pace, according to O’Toole.
“Techniques for manipulating organisms create the possibility of engineering bacteria and viruses so that they can be more virulent and evade traditional diagnostic methods,” she said.
“Technologies for drug delivery — patches for your skin, inhaling your insulin — are going to be fantastic medically speaking,” she continued. “However, it could be possible to coat molecules or bacteria in ways that make it likely that they would be inhaled into the deep lung and absorbed by the bloodstream.”
In coming decades the United States could make it “impossible” for biological weapons to be effective as weapons of mass lethality, but only if the country pours $10 billion to $30 billion a year into the public health sector to hire the top-notch officials and train them vigorously, O’Toole said (see GSN, April 9).
The country would need to increase current funding proposals drastically and greatly boost the capabilities of both public health systems and health care facilities to accomplish this task, she said.
Beginning next year the National Institutes for Health is slated to spend $1.73 billion on research and development related to infectious diseases such as anthrax and smallpox, according to NIH officials (see GSN, Feb. 6). Of those funds $441 million is expected to fund basic research into anthrax and smallpox and how the body reacts to them.
This focus on anthrax and smallpox is a major flaw, O’Toole said, calling it a short-term solution. Soon scientists are going to have to explore the multitude of other bacteria and viruses that terrorists or rogue states could manipulate for use as biological weapons, she said.
“Most people have not yet woken up to how serious this is, or to the recognition that we’re in a whole new era,” O’Toole said, adding that another biological weapons attack on a larger scale than last fall’s anthrax mailings might be what it takes to spurn a crisis-like effort for the country to prepare for bioterrorism properly.
U.S. biological weapons scientists will soon begin comparing the genetic makeup of anthrax samples taken from U.S. laboratories with that of samples taken from the letters used in last fall’s attacks, Newhouse News Service reported today (see GSN, April 9).
The researchers, from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease at Fort Detrick, Md., will also examine the coating used to weaponize the anthrax spores for any further clues about who might be responsible, Newhouse reported.
Experts, however, said genetic evidence could provide few leads for the FBI’s “Amerithrax” investigation. Even if some leads are discovered, genetic fingerprinting is still too new and prone to errors to stand up in court, they said.
“If I were a defense attorney, I would raise questions about the error rate of DNA technologies,” said Abigail Salyers, president of the American Society for Microbiology.
The genetic fingerprinting process itself might cause problems, said Jill Trewhella, head of the bioscience division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In order for scientists to study DNA fragments, they must first make copies, a process that can introduce errors, according to Newhouse.
“What’s the degree of certainty you can have comparing a DNA sequence or chemical signatures of different labs? This is not known. It’s happening now,” Salyers said, adding she is planning a conference in June to develop forensic guidelines for bioterrorism investigations.
The FBI has worked to ensure that any scientific evidence in the Amerithrax investigation, including genetic evidence, will stand up to scrutiny in court, according to an FBI official.
“We have extremely top-of-the-line experts in pathogens, molecular biology and analytical chemistry,” said Van Harp, head of the FBI investigation.
The FBI might have to rely on scientific evidence for a big break in its investigation because thousands of interviews and a reward of $2.5 million have provided little information, Newhouse reported.
“We all agree that the scientific analysis will be the key to identifying the source of the anthrax and putting the pieces together,” said Kevin Donovan, head of the FBI’s New York Office (Kevin Coughlin, Newhouse News Service, April 10).
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Members of the Chemical Weapons Convention will hold a special session April 21 at The Hague, according to an announcement yesterday from the treaty’s administrative body, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (see GSN, April 1).
The OPCW yesterday announced that one-third of its members have agreed to a request for a special session, which will probably last three days (OPCW release, April 9).
The organization is holding the session to vote on a U.S. motion to oust Director General Jose Bustani (see GSN, April 4). During a meeting of the OPCW Executive Council last month, the United States — which has accused Bustani of mismanaging the organization’s finances —brought and lost a motion to remove Bustani. It then obtained agreement to call the special session, the first such meeting since the OPCW was created.
Observers expect the U.S. resolution to be a strongly worded demand that Bustani be removed as director general, a post he has held since the OPCW was created, said Gordon Vachon, a Bustani adviser. To remove Bustani, two-thirds of the OPCW membership must approve the resolution, he said.
“It is not at all sure that they are going to achieve that,” Vachon said (Associated Press, April 9).
The United States also has criticized Bustani for attempting to bring Iraq into the OPCW and to begin chemical weapons inspections there, according to the Chinese agency Xinhua (see GSN, March 19).
The United States has said Bustani’s attempts were no substitute for U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein readmit U.N. weapons inspectors. Bustani made overtures to Iraq’s U.N. delegation in accordance with the goals of the CWC, said a Bustani spokesman (Xinhua, April 9).
Wouter Basson, the former head of apartheid-era South Africa’s biological and chemical weapons program, could be convicted tomorrow on charges including murder and attempted murder of anti-apartheid activists.
If Basson, dubbed “Dr. Death,” is found guilty of 46 charges — including more than 12 murders — covering the Project Coast program from 1982 to 1992, he could be sentenced to life imprisonment, the London Evening Standard reported. Basson, who has denied responsibility for any assassinations, has said he only followed orders from senior South African officials.
Among the operations conducted by Project Coast was an attempt to kill South African anti-apartheid activist Frank Chikane with poisoned underwear, according to the Evening Standard. The attempt failed when Chikane unexpectedly visited the United States where doctors were able to save his life.
In 1987 Basson allegedly ordered delivery of a poison-tipped umbrella to London for use in killing two senior members of the African National Congress, the main anti-apartheid group in South Africa. The assassination attempt was canceled, however, when the scientist who developed the poison traveled to London to demonstrate its use and almost killed himself with it, the Evening Standard reported.
Other devices used in assassination attempts included walking sticks that hid injectors and syringes altered to look like screwdrivers, the Evening Standard reported. Anthrax and cyanide were among the weapons used in the missions.
“The most frequent instruction was for the development of a compound which would kill but make the cause of death appear to have been natural,” said a former Project Coast scientist (Keith Poole, London Evening Standard, April 10).
During Basson’s trial, which lasted more than two years, he testified that South African soldiers were used in 1989 to test the narcotic drug Mandrax and a new form of tear gas. He also said he had bought a zoo to test whether animal hormones could be used for crowd control. Witnesses during the trial testified that Basson and other Project Coast scientists attempted to create chemical weapons that would sterilize or kill only blacks.
Basson and Project Coast scientists also developed a plan to poison Nelson Mandela with the heavy metal thallium, which can impair brain function, according to Agence France-Presse. The chemical was to be placed into Mandela’s medication before he was released from prison in 1990.
Former South African soldier Johan Theron testified that Basson had provided him with deadly muscle relaxants to use on captured guerillas from the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) in South Africa-controlled Namibia. The captured SWAPO soldiers were administered the muscle relaxants so they would suffocate before the apartheid military tossed them from aircraft into the Atlantic Ocean, Theron said. Basson denied the allegation and the court threw out the charge on technical grounds, AFP reported.
Basson’s trial began in 1999, following a hearing by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was investigating crimes committed under the apartheid regime. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who headed the commission, called the Project Coast program “diabolical” (Jan Hennop, Agence France-Presse, April 10).
The U.S. Center for Domestic Preparedness in Alabama might double the number of emergency personnel it trains to handle a chemical weapons attack, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said yesterday (see GSN, April 9).
Each year, 10,000 first responders — including police and firefighters — train at the center to learn ways to respond to attacks involving chemical weapons, explosives and radiation, according to the Associated Press. Up to 5 million people nationwide could be called on to respond to an attack involving weapons of mass destruction, Ridge said.
“You could ramp this thing up to 15,000 or 20,000 and you’re never, ever going to be able to (train) everyone who’s a first responder,” he said after visiting the facility. No decision is expected, however, until officials complete a final homeland security plan in July (Jay Reeves, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, April 9).
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found a significant lack of communication among emergency responders in the area around the Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon, the Associated Press reported Monday (see GSN, April 3).
Lack of communication between fire, police and depot officials and hospital personnel is a “significant problem,” the officials said.
“The information we get is not adequate. Hospitals are repeatedly left out of the loop,” said Ken Franz, manager of emergency services at an area hospital.
In a mock emergency in January, the emergency management team did not call Franz until an hour and a half after a mock explosion at the depot, he said.
Unclear Coordination
Communication between Oregon and Washington health officials is also unclear, CDC evaluators said. That is a problem because patients might require transportation to nearby Washington hospitals, and other residents would also probably flee across the state line, according to the CDC.
Washington health officials are very willing to work with Oregon authorities to care for patients in the event of a chemical accident, said Mark Clemens, spokesman for Washington’s Emergency Management Division. Emergency planners, however, have never had a “focused discussion” about the need to move patients across the state line, he said.
“We’re ready to help out,” Clemens said, but added, “Oregon and Washington both have felt like they could take care of their own patients.”
Bad Antidote?
Another problem the CDC noted is an antidote for sarin gas stored at Umatilla that has passed its expiration date by 12 years, the AP reported.
The U.S. Army provided the antidote, called atrophine, to the Good Shepherd Medical Center near the depot and has said the atrophine is still usable. An Army letter to the CDC said the antidote “is tested annually by the manufacturer, and the stability test date is evaluated by the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration).”
The CDC, however, expressed skepticism. Expiration dates exist because medicine’s potency decreases with time, said CDC spokeswoman Susan McClure.
“We would not recommend using expired medicine in any case,” said McClure.
“I just don’t know why the Army doesn’t replace this. It’s so cheap,” said Franz. The antidote costs $3 or $4 per vial, according to the AP.
Army Report Overdue
Meanwhile, the state of Oregon last week said the Army had missed a March 25 deadline for conducting an independent engineering study of the depot’s incinerator, where the Army plans to conduct a test burn on May 25.
Rick Kelley, a spokesman for the Washington Demilitarization Co., which built the incinerator, said the company was not aware any deadlines had been missed.
The Army plans to burn nontoxic material in the test before beginning the incineration of 4,000 tons of nerve gas and mustard agent next February (Associated Press/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 8).
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By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon this year has quietly begun pursuing a risky new missile defense technology that, if successful, could resolve a core problem faced by the national missile defense system.
The envisioned technology is a package of 20-40 “miniature kill vehicles,” each the size of a softball and weighing two kilograms. If successfully developed, these warhead interceptors might be launched on a single missile to attack a cluster of multiple targets in space.
That capability, experts say, could significantly reduce the challenge of requiring one kill vehicle to distinguish a warhead from a cloud of decoys and other objects surrounding it. The miniature interceptors could possibly attack everything.
The miniature kill vehicle (MKV) represents for the military a potential paradigm shift in strategy from “a sniper to a shotgun,” according to one military presentation on the technology.
It is an idea that even some missile defense critics are applauding.
“I guess it’s a terrific idea if you could make it work,” said Steve Fetter, a physicist and professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland. “But in order to make it work against countermeasures these would have to be very small, so you could put say a hundred on a ground-based interceptor.”
“I’m actually quite intrigued by this idea. It’s very close to an idea I proposed a little while back,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Theodore Postol.
High Risk
Critics say, however, that the system still might be fooled by certain countermeasures.
“It certainly has a significant advantage in terms of creating many more shots at a small cluster of objects, but it appears on the surface that there would be relatively straightforward countermeasures against it anyway,” said Postol.
A senior U.S. official who described the program in detail said the program is “high risk.”
“Functionally,” all kill vehicles are the same, having the same kind of components, said the official. “What we’re trying to do is push the state of the art on the miniaturization side of things.”
The Navy’s theater missile defense “LEAP” interceptors, which weigh 15 kilograms, employ some miniaturization technology, the official said (see GSN, Jan. 28). “We feel the technology with electronics and with seekers allow us to go to the next step with miniaturization.”
Fetter said he agrees.
“There are all sorts of things you can do if you are clever,” Fetter said. “It seems to me the only practical way to salvage the midcourse concept.”
Good Idea, If It Works
For years, the U.S. military has been developing a 60-kilogram Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), only one of which might be launched aboard an intercepting missile.
This midcourse ground-based system, intended to knock threatening warheads out while they are in space, is one of the most expensive and high-profile of at least a half-dozen major U.S. programs — in various stages of conception and development — designed to destroy ICBM-launched warheads in various stages of flight.
Critics have charged that that single kill vehicle could easily be fooled and the missile shot wasted if decoys surround the target warhead. For example, a single, shiny Mylar balloon sheath could hide a warhead among other similar balloons.
The system “has little chance of being effective, because states capable of deploying intercontinental-range missiles armed with weapons of mass destruction would also be able to deploy countermeasures that would defeat the system,” wrote Fetter in a co-authored article published last summer in the journal International Security.
The article suggests miniaturized kill vehicles as a solution, but adds that the program would go “far beyond the boundaries of the currently planned system.”
Cost Tradeoffs
The principal challenge is containing the cost per kill vehicle, the senior U.S. official said.
While size and weight are important, “what we really need to go after is the cost,” the official said, adding that reducing cost could entail a tradeoff in terms of how accurately the miniature kill vehicles can be guided toward a target.
“We’ve got to make sure we can build these things so they’re not $1 million a copy, but tens of [thousands of dollars] a copy. That will allow us to have a lot of them on a vehicle,” the official said. “We know we’ve got the technology in hand, I think, to get the miniaturization. The real issue is can we bring the cost down.”
Reducing cost, the official said, involves a tradeoff in terms of how accurately the miniature kill vehicles can guide themselves toward a target.
The kill vehicles would be housed on a “carrier vehicle,” which would be launched toward a “threat cloud” of objects. If each kill vehicle were to home in on a target by itself, it would probably need to carry an infrared device and accompanying focal plane array and cooling system to track the object, which , the official said, could cost a great deal.
Also, there could be a challenge in miniaturizing the infrared sensors and accompanying equipment like a cooling system, said Wright of Union of Concerned Scientists. The larger EKV uses infrared to home in as it nears a target.
A Lighter-Weight Solution
The “most likely” idea under consideration, the official said, is to equip the vehicles with much cheaper and much lighter “visible seekers,” which would detect sunlight reflected off the target.
The kill vehicle might employ a telescope that focuses the optical energy onto a sensor such as a charge-coupled device used in a digital camera, according to the official.
“The advantage of charge-coupled devices is because they operate in the visible, they don’t need to be cooled to a very low temperature for them to function,” Postol said.
The charge-coupled devices are commercially available and inexpensive, he said. “You get a vast decrease in complexity in the kill vehicle simply by using visible energy.”
A laser designator could be deployed on the carrier vehicle to guide the kill vehicles to their respective targets, particularly in the Earth’s shadow when no sunlight is present. The type of laser that might be needed to provide sufficient targeting accuracy also could impact cost, the official said.
Another potential tradeoff, according to the official, involves the propulsion system of the kill vehicles.
“You want to go after threat clouds where the objects are reasonably close spaced as opposed to all over the place,” the official said. “If the threat cloud is very, very big or the objects are all over the place, this thing will break down because you’ll have to put more and more propulsion fuel in these little things, and then that adds the weight, and you’re not going to maintain your two kilograms.”
Alternatively, fewer, bigger and heavier kill vehicles could be deployed, the official added. “So those are tradeoffs we still have to do.”
More Challenges
Another challenge is deciding what type of sensor to put on the carrier vehicle to ensure it can maneuver toward the threat cloud.
The launch mechanism is another concern. “You just don’t drop these things off. You’ve got to aim them. So does that mean the carrier vehicle has to maneuver around, and how much of a timeline do you have to start [launching] these in particular directions?” the official said.
Authorities must also decide a battle management philosophy, according to the official.
“Are we going to assign [the kill vehicles] one-on-one, or are we going to have several of these attack one [target]?” the official said. “How do these things decide themselves what to attack?”
There is also a “lethality issue,” given the relatively small mass compared to a potential warhead, and the EKV for that matter. If the reentry vehicle (RV) housing the targeted warhead is not struck in the right place, it and the warhead may not be sufficiently destroyed.
“This is an accuracy problem,” the official said. “We might have to have several of these attack the RV or they would have to be very accurate and hit a specific point on the RV, a tradeoff of cost once again.”
“These things clearly will kill balloons. We have to make sure they’ll kill an RV, and that’s a tradeoff of accuracy,” the official said.
Fetter said he believes even a one-kilogram kill vehicle would be sufficient, as it would be traveling at an extremely high closing speed of 15 kilometers per second.
“That’s plenty,” he said.
Questions About Effectiveness
Experts said miniature kill vehicles would face many of the same troubles overcoming countermeasures as would the larger EKV.
“You are reflecting light off objects, and there’s no reason to believe that you would be able to do tremendously better telling a decoy from a warhead with a laser,” said Postol, though he said that challenge is offset by having numerous kill vehicles.
Postol said it is also fairly easy to make clouds of reflecting materials, such as frozen water droplets, that could surround a warhead and decoys and confuse sensors.
Since the system would employ an infrared sensor to track objects, it might still be foiled if a warhead is sufficiently cooled and hidden in a balloon, said David Wright, a senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and author of a widely reported study in April 2000 arguing simple countermeasures could foil the EKV system.
“If the infrared sensors can’t detect it until it is too late, it doesn’t matter how many there are,” he said.
Another potentially effective countermeasure, he said, would be to embed a warhead in a very large balloon so that an interceptor might have a low chance of hitting the warhead if it hits the balloon.
“You make the balloons so much bigger than the warhead, and the probability that you could kill the warhead is still pretty low,” he said. “There are still easy ways to get around this.”
Information released by the Army suggests that at a minimum, the system could eliminate large numbers of decoys so another — possibly larger — infrared interceptor could finish the job.
An alternative to precise targeting, according to the senior military official, might be to direct several kill vehicles into a small area, so that the warhead would have a good chance of being struck.
Funding This Year
The military has in the past invested some money in pursuing the MKV concept, but this year the Missile Defense Agency ratcheted things up.
The Army expects to spend $11.5 million in fiscal 2002, has requested $15 million for 2003, and projects to spend $25 million for 2004.
The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Technical Center in Huntsville, Alabama, awarded three such contracts to teams of Lockheed Martin and Coleman Research, Schafer and Boeing, and SAIC and Raytheon in mid-February for concept definition studies, basically to work out some of the tradeoffs. After a year, two teams will be chosen to do detailed studies, including designs of the kill vehicles and the carrier vehicle.
Two other contracts were awarded to Shafer and SAIC to perform experiments to demonstrate the capabilities of various miniaturized elements. “To show we’re in the ballpark of feasibility, with respect to size and weight,” the official said.
After a year, one will be chosen for further demos. The goal is to begin flight-testing by 2005.
Allaying Russian and Chinese Concerns
Fetter has argued against developing a midcourse missile launched national missile defense system, principally because it might present a threat to the offensive ballistic missile systems of Russia and China, possibly inciting those countries to deploy larger force numbers than currently planned and possibly put them on a higher, more perilous state of alert.
If fewer interceptor missiles need to be built as a result of the new technology, deploying the miniature kill vehicles might work to alleviate Russian and Chinese concerns about their own deterrent force, Fetter said.
That “should generate less concern for Russia and China,” he said.
To better simulate real-life missile threats, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency wants to use test targets with boosters that utilize liquid rather than solid fuel, Aerospace Daily reported last week.
To represent Scud missiles in past PAC-3 tests, the agency has used solid-fuel based targets (see GSN, March 22). Now the developers are “looking at different types of targets — liquid-fuel types now instead of solid-based booster targets,” said Lt. Gen. Joseph Cosumano, head of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command.
Liquid-fuel targets are more like Scud missiles because they allow better control of the target’s speed and movements, Cosumano said. They also have a longer burn, like Scuds, said Steven Zaloga, an analyst with the Teal Group.
The Army awarded contracts to Orbital Sciences Corp. and TRW in September to design liquid boosters for missile defense targets and decided recently to terminate the Orbital contract and continue with the TRW design, Aerospace Daily reported (see GSN, Oct. 5, 2001).
The booster will probably use nontoxic propellants, such as hydrogen peroxide and kerosene. It should be safer than old Scud missiles, which used an unstable mix of propellants, said Zaloga (Sharon Weinberger, Aerospace Daily, April 4).
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The water supply to the U.S. Energy Department Yucca Mountain Project site in Nevada was reduced to near nothing yesterday when temporary well permits expired. Meanwhile, Congress began the Yucca Mountain debate with the introduction of a Senate resolution to approve the site as a nuclear waste repository (see GSN, April 9).
Energy’s temporary permits to draw 140 million gallons of water per year from five wells in Yucca Mountain’s Nye County expired yesterday at midnight, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The department plans to abide by Nevada’s decision to deny an extension of the permits, said a Yucca Mountain Project spokesman.
“We have no need to draw water for operations right now and we’re going to abide by the law,” Allen Benson said.
The department had expected that the well permits would not be extended and built and filled a million-gallon water tank near the mountain, according to the Review-Journal. The stockpiled water, along with 400,000 gallons stored in several smaller tanks, is enough to allow scientists at the project site to continue design work and needed experiments, Benson said.
In February, Nevada State Engineer Hugh Ricci denied an extension of Energy’s permits, saying the water was no longer needed to study the site. On April 1, Justice Department lawyers attempted to obtain a preliminary injunction, saying Energy should be allowed access to water while Congress decides whether Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn’s veto of the site should stand.
Nevada Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said she would oppose the injunction request in court papers scheduled to be filed next week.
“We’re pretty serious about this,” Adams said Monday. “We really do feel that until Congress acts (on Guinn’s veto) the project is dead” (Keith Rogers, Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 10).
Senator Introduces Resolution
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) yesterday introduced a joint resolution approving Yucca Mountain as the site of a long-term nuclear waste repository, as required under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (see GSN, March 29).
The resolution will be referred to committee for 60 days and must be passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law 90 legislative days from Guinn’s veto, which was filed Monday, in order to overturn the veto. Bingaman said he plans to schedule hearings on President George W. Bush’s recommendation of the site in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee after the Senate completes action on pending energy legislation.
Beginning with the introduction of the joint resolution, the congressional debate over Yucca Mountain will serve two goals, Bingaman said on the floor of the Senate.
“It will afford the state of Nevada a fair hearing on its objections to the repository and will ensure that those objections stand unless the administration can persuade both houses of Congress to override them,” he said. “At the same time, it will give the administration an opportunity to present its case and to override the state’s objections if it can show its decision was sound and in the national interest” (Congressional Record, April 9).
Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) yesterday spoke in favor of the joint resolution approving the site.
The Yucca Mountain waste repository is necessary to continue operating U.S. nuclear power plants and to clean up Energy Department Cold War-legacy sites that have nuclear waste, Murkowski said on the floor of the Senate. The federal government also has an obligation for the spent fuel, and in order to meet that obligation, a waste repository must soon be operational, he said.
“To date, we have spent over 20 years and over $4 billion to investigate and characterize the site,” Murkowski said. “The science tells us this is the place” (Congressional Record, April 9).
Representative Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.) spoke in favor of Guinn’s veto.
“Almost two decades ago when Nevada was given the right to cast this veto, we were under the impression that a recommendation on Yucca Mountain would be based on sound science, assuring the safety and security of Nevadans and every American,” he said on the floor of the House of Representatives. “Instead, the process has been riddled with bias, and the [Energy] recommendation was based on political expediency.”
“I urge my colleagues to join Nevada’s governor and delegation in opposing a project that is immeasurably dangerous to every American,” Gibbons said (Congressional Record, April 9).
PR Campaign Gets Underway
Nevada has begun an anti-Yucca Mountain advertising campaign in an attempt to convince Americans to pressure their legislators to stop the project, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal (see GSN, April 2).
The campaign will highlight the potential dangers to people who live near the planned waste shipment routes to Yucca Mountain, said Mark Brown, head of one of the advertising agencies hired by Nevada for the effort.
“We are going to scare them with facts,” Brown said. “When they find out 3,000 to 4,000 shipments (a year) are coming through their communities, let’s see how much they want Yucca Mountain. Some of these communities have only volunteer fire departments.”
Nevada Governor Guinn wants state legislators to provide more funds for the advertising effort, the Review-Journal reported. The Nevada Legislature Interim Finance Committee is expected today to debate allocating an additional $3 million. Brown’s advertising agency and a Washington-based advertising agency would be the main recipients of the additional money, according to the Review-Journal.
“More (money) is always better,” said Ed Rothchild, an executive at the Washington-based agency. “But I think the issues and the arguments are on our side.”
Last year Nevada already gave $1 million to the advertising agencies involved in the anti-Yucca campaign, and $50,000 of that has already been spent, Brown said. The ad campaign began Monday with full-page advertisements in Nevada newspapers to strengthen the support of about 80 percent of Nevadans who oppose the project, he said.
Even though the additional funding the advertising agencies hope to receive will not be able to buy as much television time as needed, Brown said he plans to place advertisements in states where senators might be undecided on Yucca Mountain. With the help of Nevada Senators Harry Reid (D) and John Ensign (R), Nevada might only need to persuade 10 senators to back Guinn’s veto, Brown said (Ed Vogel, Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 9).
Nevada’s anti-Yucca Mountain campaign, however, has failed to raise the $10 million the state says it needs and is now soliciting $1 donations, according to the Associated Press.
Guinn was initially able to raise $6 million from state and local governments, as well as some Nevada businesses. Only $2.5 million of that is left though, and that is being kept in reserve for anticipated legal battles, Guinn said.
“We have to convince everybody that this isn’t just Nevada’s problem,” said Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman (see GSN, March 14). “We have to alert, not alarm, senators’ constituents about the potential of a disaster happening in their back yards so they tell their elected officials, ‘Don’t let this come by my house.’”
Guinn decided against calling a special session of the Nevada Legislature to fund the anti-Yucca Mountain effort once it became clear he did not have the needed support, the AP reported. Nevada is facing a $100 million deficit and some state lawmakers believe the campaign will have little effect in stopping repository plans, according to the AP.
“I think the people of Nevada are increasingly prepared to say it’s time to talk about benefits, what we can get in return,” said consultant and former Nevada Governor Robert List. “I think citizens and businesses of Nevada feel that this is wasted money, that this is a done deal” (Ken Ritter, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, April 10).
Hundreds of radioactive devices with civilian uses are stolen, lost or abandoned in the United States each year, causing concern among officials and analysts that terrorists could easily acquire radioactive material to create a dirty bomb, the Christian Science Monitor reported today.
There are two million small radioactive devices in the United States that are used in a variety of areas, including construction and health care, the Monitor reported. Authorities find only a small number of the hundreds of items lost each year and 30,000 are unaccounted for, according to some estimates.
Some of the items have very small amounts of radioactive material. For example, many emergency exit signs use radioactive isotopes for power rather than electricity. If someone broke the signs, the exposure to radiation would be less than a dentist’s X-ray.
Numerous items, however, could have more serious effects. The food industry uses pencil-sized rods to irradiate food that could kill someone directly exposed to them. An Alabama pawnshop owner recently came across a small piece of iridium-192 that had been stolen from a pipeline company. The iridium was protected by depleted uranium to prevent radiation leaks, but two hours of exposure to unshielded material could be fatal, experts said.
Easy to Steal?
Thieves would need special equipment and knowledge to steal some of the most lethal items such as the food irradiation rods. Devices that cause the most concern are ones that are very dangerous but easy to handle, according to the Monitor.
In March, a Maryland construction site reported the theft of a radioactive moisture-density gauge used to determine whether fresh concrete is completely dry. Such devices usually contain several grams of cesium-137 and are very radioactive, according the Monitor. However, they are easier to handle than more toxic items.
Easy to Use?
Not all radioactive devices would be very useful to terrorists. Many items contain very low levels of radiation. Nevertheless, terrorists could create a dangerous “dirty bomb” — a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material — by collecting several minor radiation sources, said Friedrich Steinhausler, a Stanford University nuclear physicist.
“If you were going around snatching these smaller devices over a period of years and putting them all in a truck bomb, it could be as powerful as a bomb with a single, big radiation source,” said Edwin Lyman of the Nuclear Control Institute.
Accounting and Security
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is working to find ways to monitor radioactive devices, the Monitor reported (see GSN, March 18).
“We’re looking at requiring licensees to increase security,” said John Hickey, chief of the NRC division that oversees such devices. That might only mean better locks and storage facilities, and some experts have said that is not enough, according to the Monitor.
Increasing security, however, would also increase the costs of construction, healthcare and other industries that rely on radioactive tools, Lyman said. The balance between security and cost “is a tough societal question,” he said.
Theft is not the only problem. Disposing of one cubic foot of cesium-137 costs $400, said Lyudmila Zaitseva of Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies (see GSN, March 7). That is 10 times more than a fine for improper disposal. The economic solution for some companies could be abandoning the material, Zaitseva said (Abraham McLaughlin, Christian Science Monitor, April 10).
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