By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — A pending report on the U.S. nuclear force structure by an independent think tank uses different criteria yet draws many of the same conclusions as the Bush administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, Global Security Newswire has learned.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies report — Revitalizing the U.S. Nuclear Deterrent, due for release later this month — determines that the United States should maintain between 1,500 and 2,500 nuclear warheads on active status by 2010. Such levels practically mirror the Bush administration’s review, which calls for reducing U.S. deployed nuclear weapons to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads by 2012 (see GSN, March 14).
The reports also called on the United States to keep many of its nuclear warheads in storage, similar to plans laid out in the NPR to maintain a so-called “responsive force” (see GSN, March 25).
While the yearlong study by a host of bipartisan experts uses a different approach than the NPR — they base U.S. nuclear needs off Russian capabilities while administration officials professed not to — the report, like the NPR, concludes that the United States should revitalize its nuclear infrastructure and consider making and testing new, low-yield bombs intended to reduce collateral damage (see related GSN story, below).
“It differs in some important methodological aspects from what the administration did in the NPR, but … there’s a great deal of agreement,” one of the report’s directors, Clark Murdock, told GSN recently.
“This is a case where you have some who support that number because they know it makes sense when you target the Russians, and some who support a similar number because it’s their sense of what you need for dissuasion.”
Dissuading enemies from militarily confronting the United States is the primary tenet of the latest Quadrennial Defense Review conducted by the Bush administration and echoed in the NPR, which was released to Congress in January. The administration’s other priorities for the U.S. nuclear stockpile, which currently hovers around 6,000 deployed warheads, are reassurance, deterrence and defeat.
“As part of their NPR [administration officials] did not go through the Russian target bases to say ‘this is how much you need,’” Murdock said. “What they did do was go through an internal debate upon how much is enough for dissuasion, how much is enough for reassurance, how much is enough for deterrence, how much is enough for defeat, if necessary. The drivers of the size of the force were dissuasion and assurance.”
Various Force Structures Offered
The main thrust of the CSIS report is to offer current and future administrations various force structure options for the U.S. nuclear stockpile, according to Murdock and Michele Flournoy, the study’s co-director.
The lengthy report details 10 possible nuclear force structures ranging from 1,000 to 3,500 deployed warheads by 2010 and weaves them into a complex matrix with 12 criteria such as survivability, range and penetration ability.
Half of the force structures were eliminated due to insufficient mixes of ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and aircraft bomber warheads, leaving five force structure options that range from 1,500 to 2,500 deployed warheads by 2010, according an executive summary and the first two chapters of the report obtained by GSN.
The force structure options for 2010 are critical for determining how to shape the U.S. nuclear arsenal for 2020 and beyond, the report said.
“Our study does not try to recommend [any] force structure. It defines a range of options that we think satisfies [future] needs,” Murdock told GSN during an interview similar to briefings given to U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy J.D. Crouch and Commander in Chief of the U.S. Strategic Command Adm. James Ellis.
“When you go to a smaller force, the amount of hedging you have to do is a lot more because the shortfalls are greater,” Murdock said. The report called for the United States to hedge, or buffer, itself against enemy nuclear threats by keeping a certain number of nuclear options open.
“What we’re trying to do is to be as transparent as we can and be as useful as we can,” he continued. “For each leg of the triad, plus the infrastructure, we identified the actions that you need to do in order to preserve the force and to provide for your hedging options.
“Obviously right up front we have storing excessive Minuteman warheads,” he said. “If you want to develop a new capability this is something you have to start thinking about right away because we agree with those that the B61 [low-yield penetration bomb] is not going to get the job done.”
Nuclear Options Key for Future
Because of future uncertainty in the world, the CSIS report offers the United States options for nuclear force structures it may want to possess in order to negate any specific threats.
“Twenty-first century deterrence is going to be very different, but from an operational perspective,” Murdock said.
“When the rubber hits the road, you have to hold targets at risk … we believe that a president will want conventional options for a broader range of targets,” he continued. “But we also believe … he will also want a nuclear option. And the reason why? The nuclear deterrent has a different message, a credibility associated with it, if you’re trying to [prevent a country from using] WMD.
“What we’ve tried to do here is to say ‘these are the weapons, the targets for which the president is going to want a nuclear response.’ In some cases it may be the only response,” he added.
“So we don’t assume that if a president has a nuclear option and a conventional option … that he will always go for the conventional. There may circumstances in which he doesn’t,” such as attacking deeply buried underground targets, he said.
The key for the United States to be prepared to handle an uncertain future is having flexibility in its nuclear arsenal, Murdock said.
The United States should hedge against various threats as they develop while simultaneously trying to shape a world environment in which those threats either would not emerge or would be dissuaded from attacking or blackmailing U.S. interests or allies, he said.
The U.S. nuclear force structure should be flexible enough to change as the capabilities of potential adversaries do, Murdock said.
“If circumstances change you can stop or if necessary, go up. From our perspective… that makes great sense. That’s why we recommended maintaining a lot of weapons in storage,” Murdock said.
“We also believe it’s important to have a lot of them in storage because you don’t know how the future’s going to evolve, you don’t know what’s going to happen with our own infrastructure in terms of what’s available.”
There are two kinds of storage for nuclear weapons — active storage, in which warheads are kept intact, and inactive storage, in which parts of a warhead, including the nuclear pits, are cannibalized to maintain deployed warheads.
Excerpts of the NPR leaked to the Internet suggest nuclear warheads in active storage could be reconstituted “in a matter of days.”
Russian, Chinese Stockpiles Demand Attention
Unlike the administration’s NPR, the CSIS report said U.S. nuclear force structures should reflect the threats posed by Russian and, to a lesser extent, Chinese nuclear arsenals.
The report devised a complex matrix in which the exact mix of ICBMs, SLBMs and bomber missiles for 2020 and beyond would depend on four world scenarios ranging from the most peaceful, “great power cooperation,” to the most threatening, “great power rivalry,” in which China and Russia might “gang up” on the United States, Murdock said.
The other two scenarios are “uneasy great power relations” similar to today’s situation, and “nuclear multipolarity,” a world in which numerous “regional rogue” nations possess nuclear weapons, according to the report.
“We have to worry about the capabilities the other side has, not their intent,” Murdock said.
“If you had twice as many weapons as needed, we said that’s really counterproductive because you’re really trying to shape everybody towards world one,” a scenario the report called a world of “great power cooperation,” Murdock said.
“You want to be in the rosy scenario world. But if you had excess capabilities it’s going to be harder to do,” he added. “If you have excess of capabilities, Russia looks at you and they have 1,500 weapons, you’ve got 3,500, they say ‘we’re threatened by you,’ [and] they start building up.”
Survivability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is driven by Russia’s stockpile, which currently ranges between 4,000 and 5,000 warheads, the main reason the report based its assessments off that country’s capabilities, Murdock said.
“The United States would have to think about the potential, the possibility that Russia and China might gang up on it,” he said. “We wanted to hedge against uncertain futures, so that if events go south if necessary we can reconstitute ourselves.
“What is the primary thing you’re going want to target in Russia? It’s their nuclear capabilities,” he added.
“In the case of China we held more leadership type of targets at risk, more economic targets because of the importance they put on national performance,” he continued.
“In the case of Russia it was strictly a nuclear counter force strategy with a few economic, with a few conventional military targets,” he said. “Our requirement was that we would hold all the regional rogues at risk simultaneously. That’s not a big numbers requirement because you have [only have] three in 2010,” North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
Military Officials Leery of Downsizing
Privately, many U.S. military officials have been leery of drastically downsizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which they would prefer to see remain at the levels of 3,000 to 3,500 deployed warheads —as agreed in the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which has been signed but is not in force — officials have told GSN.
According to Murdock and Flournoy, officials at U.S. Strategic Command and the Pentagon also bristled at the Bush administration’s approach to the NPR by not basing U.S. needs off Russian nuclear capabilities.
“It was a source of some frustration to STRATCOM and professionals within the military who do this business on a day-to-day basis,” Murdock said.
“We wanted to follow a methodology that would be acceptable to others in the community, particularly at STRATCOM. So when we went through we did the same kind of targeting drill that STRATCOM does only we did it completely unclassified,” he said.
The report based its conclusions that in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States by Russia, China or both, the U.S. military would only need to target garrisons of mobile missiles, not the missiles themselves once they have been deployed to various locations, he said. Each enemy garrison should be targeted with two U.S. missiles, he said.
STRATCOM, he said, would likely prefer to target more Russian and Chinese assets — and hit each target with more than two missiles, Murdock said.
“I think STRATCOM would have followed a methodology similar to ours, but … places where we might have targeted just two warheads on a particular [target], they might have targeted more,” Murdock said. “They might have had more weapons targeted in order to have higher level of damage.”
By Greg Seigle
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The United States should develop and test new low-yield nuclear warheads to demonstrate U.S. resolve to use tactical nuclear weapons against any enemies that use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. interests or allies, the director of a pending nuclear posture report told Global Security Newswire recently.
Currently a U.S. nuclear retaliation against a regime that unleashes any WMD attacks would devastate its country, an undesirable response that would kill large numbers of innocent people. The United States does not have any low-yield bombs sufficient for precision strikes, according to Clark Murdock, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“If you are going to threaten to respond to somebody else’s use of WMD with a nuclear response, you’ve got to have a nuclear capability that is tailored to that potential scenario,” said Murdock, adding that the B61 warhead, the only low-yield bomb currently in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, is too powerful for precision strikes that would limit collateral damage.
“We’re not going to destroy Baghdad” in order to take out of the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Murdock said. “That’s not the way we conduct a war.”
Murdock and CSIS colleague Michele Flournoy directed a yearlong study of the U.S. nuclear force structure due out later this month. The study, Revitalizing the U.S. Nuclear Deterrent, concluded the United States should consider developing and testing new nuclear weapons that can reach deeply buried underground targets while limiting collateral damage (see related GSN story, above).
The United States should have started developing “regime buster” warheads in 1994, after the first congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review, Murdock told GSN during a briefing on the CSIS report.
“We should have not only been developing them but we should have been testing those warheads so that a Saddam Hussein knows that we’re serious, that if he uses a nuclear weapon against us, if he uses a biological weapon that causes large casualties and maybe even if he uses a chemical weapon that doesn’t involve large casualties, he ain’t gonna survive that conflict,” Murdock said.
Enemies Know U.S. Nuclear Shortfalls
Countries that may one day challenge the United States are keenly aware that the U.S. military always tries to limit civilian deaths during war, and that its current nuclear arsenal is not prepared to limit such casualties, Murdock said.
Hence, countries such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea may gamble that the United States would be extremely reluctant to drop any nuclear weapons on them during a war, even if they use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. targets, he said.
“I’m a little leery of relying just upon conventional capabilities to deter other guys’ use of bugs and gas and nuclear weapons,” Murdock said.
“They already know how conventionally superior we are. They already know that when we use our conventional superiority we do it in a way to try to minimize the loss of collateral damage. We’re not devastating cities. We’re not firebombing Dresden. We don’t do that anymore.”
B61 Not Up to Job
The B61 nuclear warhead, the only one in the U.S. arsenal considered to be low-yield, is not well-suited for scoring precision hits that limit collateral damage, Murdock said.
“There is a debate within the nuclear community about the extent to which you can groom or tailor existing capabilities in order to be able to get that job done,” Murdock said (see GSN, March 19).
“There are those who believe, for example, that when we’re getting in both limiting collateral damage, which is dialed low-yield, and penetrating to try to get at a deeply buried target, that you can do this by grooming the B61 warhead,” he added.
Others, he said, “believe that the capability of the B61 is quite limited, [and that] you need a new weapon. If you get a new weapon, you’re going to probably have to test.” Designing, testing and deploying a new weapon could take up to 15 years, Murdock and others have said.
The United States will eventually need better capabilities to strike deeply buried hardened targets, the kind Iraq and North Korea are believed to use to protect their most important assets, including WMD facilities, Murdock said.
Conventional weapons are sufficient for destroying some of these types of underground, reinforced targets, but ultimately the United States should have the option of hitting them with limited, tactical nuclear bombs, he said.
“If you’re relying upon a 5,000-pound bomb — which is a pretty big bomb — you have to get pretty deep in order to be able to do it,” Murdock said.
“Because of the limits of its explosive power — you’re talking about being down 100, 150 feet — you’re going to have to be pretty close to that target, because it’s surrounded by concrete and rock, to make sure that when it explodes that you actually got the target,” he continued.
“That’s why you think about a nuclear weapon … because you can pack in a much smaller package a much larger bang. It means you don’t have to get as close to that target down there in order to destroy it.”
New Warheads Could Deter or Defeat Enemy WMD
Conventional explosives used against caches of chemical weapons or, to a lesser extent, biological weapons, could wind up spreading the agents around once a bomb detonates, Murdock said.
New low-yield nuclear warheads could be used against WMD depots because there would be no such risk of spreading the deadly agents, he added.
“A nuclear weapon incinerates” biological or chemical weapons, he said. “It destroys the weapons of mass destruction.”
Public outcries against the use of nuclear weapons, even low-yield warheads that limit and collateral damage, would be drowned out if U.S. forces overseas were ever hit with weapons of mass destruction, Murdock said.
“It is my belief that if there was a biological attack on U.S. forces abroad that resulted in the loss of life on a scale of Pearl Harbor, that the political pressure on the president to use a nuclear weapon would be irresistible,” Murdock said.
“He wouldn’t have to garner any support” to use low-yield nuclear warheads that limit collateral damage, Murdock said. “He would have to garner support for restraint.”
The United States and Russia should use a “chain-of-custody” approach to secure and dismantle surplus Russian nuclear warheads and materials, wrote two nonproliferation specialists in this month’s issue of Arms Control Today.
The United States should work with Russia to prevent warheads and fissile material from falling into the hands of terrorists, said Tom Collina of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (see GSN, April 1).
To do so, the United States would need to give up its plans to store, rather than eliminate, thousands of warheads removed from delivery vehicles, they said.
If the United States keeps nuclear warheads in storage then Russia is likely to do the same, Collina and Wolfsthal said. Russia, however, does not have adequate security and safeguards.
“By failing to destroy nuclear warheads, the (Bush administration) would increase the threat of proliferation at the very time when the al-Qaeda terrorist network is known to be pursuing nuclear weapons,” U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) was quoted as saying in February (see GSN, March 8).
U.S. and Russian Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin “should commit both countries to a binding agreement to eliminate warheads removed from deployment under an effective ‘chain of custody’ from deployment to disposal,” said Collina and Wolfsthal.
The Chain
The first step in a chain-of-custody approach would be for both countries to formally pledge that excess nuclear warheads would be permanently removed from military service, the authors wrote.
Under joint monitoring, officials at deployment sites would put the warheads into containers marked with unique seals as they remove them from weapons systems. Inspectors would then examine the warheads at several stops en route to a secure storage site in each country, which could also be monitored jointly or internationally.
Russian warheads could be sent to a Russian dismantlement plant to allow for transparency while still protecting design secrets, Collina and Wolfsthal said. After the warheads are disassembled, the plutonium and highly enriched uranium would be altered into unclassified shapes.
The last step would be for the fissile material to be permanently eliminated. One way to do this would be through the U.S.-Russian “Megatons to Megawatts” program under which the United States is already purchasing 500 metric tons of Russian weapon-grade uranium for use as nuclear power plant fuel, according to Collina and Wolfsthal (see GSN, March 28).
“The key benefit to this chain-of-custody approach is that international inspectors, in addition to national monitors, could be involved every step of the way,” Collina and Wolfsthal said. “In theory, the United States could have as much access over the process as it is willing to give the Russians over its elimination process.”
Poor Security
Over the next ten years, the number of Russian deployed nuclear warheads will decrease as most of Russia’s missiles and submarines come to the end of their service lives by 2007. Russia could remove from service 3,500 warheads containing 85 metric tons of fissile material by 2010, according to Collina and Wolfsthal.
The Russian warhead-security system “was designed in the Soviet era to protect weapons primarily against a threat from outside the country and may not be sufficient to meet today’s challenge of a knowledgeable insider collaborating with a criminal or terrorist group,” said U.S. intelligence sources.
Russian warhead security forces have had to contend with food and housing shortages and not being paid, said Collina and Wolfsthal. One Russian warhead storage site was forced to shut down in 1997 because of a worker hunger strike.
“The greatest problem is the person who works with nuclear warheads,” said Russian Col.-Gen. Igor Valynkin, head of warhead storage. “He knows the secrets, he has the access, he knows the security system.”
For fissile materials, Russian security is worse than that for nuclear warheads, and Russia has the largest stockpile of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, Collina and Wolfsthal said. Even though the United States has worked with Russia to upgrade security at the more than 50 fissile material sites, the U.S. Energy Department has estimated that basic security upgrades will not be installed at all these sites until 2006.
Unlike the United States, Russia must transport plutonium to purification sites to maintain its nuclear warheads, according to Collina and Wolfsthal.
“If Russia responds to U.S. policies by maintaining a large number of warheads in reserve, the result would be a greater amount of nuclear material in various stages of processing and in transport — the two most vulnerable points of the weapons complex to theft and diversion,” Collina and Wolfsthal said.
Warhead production sites are the least secure section of Russia’s nuclear weapons complex, said Collina and Wolfsthal. Russia is expected to close two of its four production sites, but any concerns over U.S. weapons reductions could keep those sites operational longer than planned, they said.
Could Chain of Custody Work?
In order for a chain-of-custody approach to work, Russia would want a reciprocal role in the U.S. method for reducing excess warheads, according to Collina and Wolfsthal. For that to occur, the Bush administration will have to choose between eliminating excess warheads under a monitoring system and storing them for future redeployment, they said.
“When one compares the probability of nuclear warhead and material theft in Russia to the probability that the United States will need to double the size of its arsenal in the future, the choice is easy,” the authors said (Collina/Wolfsthal, Arms Control Today, April 2002).
Very little progress has been made on the set of objectives laid out during the 2000 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, according to a report released yesterday by the Arms Control Association (see GSN, April 4).
ACA outlined the lack of progress in a number of goals NPT parties agreed to work toward, as outlined in the 2000 NPT Review Conference final document, including the following:
* Signing and ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: Although 34 countries have ratified the CTBT since the 2000 NPT conference, the treaty is unlikely to enter into force in the near future because of U.S. objections, according to ACA.
* Moratorium on testing nuclear weapons: The United States has not ruled out further nuclear testing, and is examining reducing the time needed to prepare for a test to three months to a year, down from as long as three years (see GSN, March 22).
* Creation of a fissile material cutoff treaty to ban creation of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons: The 66-member Conference on Disarmament has yet to begin negotiating a fissile material cutoff treaty due to U.S-Chinese disagreements, ACA said (see GSN, March 27).
* Creation of a subsidiary CD body to exchange information on nuclear issues: The CD’s work on a fissile material treaty also would create a CD group concerned with nuclear disarmament. Such a body would fulfill the NPT review conference’s request “to deal with,” not negotiate, nuclear disarmament, according to ACA.
* Irreversibility of nuclear reductions: In a recent arms control proposal to Russia, the United States has suggested storing 2,400 warheads (see related GSN story, today). The Bush administration also opposes destroying delivery systems for nuclear weapons, ACA said.
* Complete elimination of nuclear arsenals: Although nuclear weapons states at the 2000 NPT Review Conference pledged to eliminate their arsenals, the U.S. plan to store rather than destroy warheads counteracts that goal, according to ACA (see GSN, March 25). China also is apparently increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal, ACA said.
* Entry into force of the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, completion of START III and strengthening of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty: The United States has indicated it will not seek the entry into force for START II, nor will it negotiate a START III agreement, the ACA said. The Bush administration also has pledged to withdraw from the ABM Treaty.
* Completion of the Trilateral Initiative between the United States, Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency to secure excess nuclear materials: There are still unresolved issues on the scope of a verification system, specification of subject materials and duration of verification measures, according to ACA.
* Efforts to reduce nuclear weapons arsenals: Since the 2000 NPT Review Conference, no nuclear weapons state has reduced its nuclear weapons stockpile, and China could be increasing its arsenal, the ACA said.
* Increased transparency of nuclear capabilities: Even though the United States and Russia have declared that any strategic arms reductions would be conducted in a transparent manner, they have not reached any detailed agreement (see GSN, April 4).
* Further reduction of nonstrategic nuclear weapons: The United States still deploys 1,700 nonstrategic nuclear weapons, and Russia still has 3,000 deployed and several thousand in reserve. While the START III framework dealt with nonstrategic weapons, neither the United States nor Russia has made it an issue, according to ACA.
* Reduced role for nuclear weapons in state security policies: The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review emphasizes flexibility in the size of the U.S nuclear weapons arsenal and new nuclear weapons capabilities, ACA said (see GSN, March 14). Russia also has emphasized a growing reliance on nuclear weapons.
* Agreements by nuclear weapons states to place any nonmilitary fissile material under international verification: France and Great Britain have not worked with the IAEA to secure their respective excess fissile material, according to ACA. China might be increasing its stockpile.
* Affirmation that complete disarmament is the ultimate objective: Slow progress has been made with regard to eliminating chemical, biological, nuclear and conventional weapons, according to ACA. One example is the U.S. rejection of a draft enforcement protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention (Arms Control Association release, April 4).
North and South Korea neared agreement to revive cooperation yesterday during a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean envoy Lim Dong-won in Pyongyang, South Korean officials said (see GSN, April 4).
Lim, who was scheduled to return to South Korea today, extended his trip and is now expected to return tomorrow.
“Both sides are near agreement on several issues, including family reunions and economic cooperation,” said Kim Hong-je, a spokesman for the South Korean Unification Ministry. “Despite some difficulties, we have begun making progress, and both sides will be able to make a joint statement.”
An agreement between the two sides is expected to reactivate an inter-Korean committee established in 2000 to oversee economic cooperation and exchanges, said Kim.
South Korea is also hoping the two countries can resume a project to reconnect a railway running across the border, according to the Associated Press (Associated Press/New York Times, April 5).
U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration are skeptical that South Korean President Kim Dae-jung’s “sunshine” policy of engagement with North Korea will work, the Korea Times reported.
The Bush administration, however, appears to have allowed South Korea a chance to prove the policy works through this week’s meetings in North Korea, according to the Times. Therefore, Lim’s ability to make progress toward resolving U.S. concerns about North Korean WMD programs is crucial to the continuity of the sunshine policy and to stability on the Korean Peninsula, the Times reported (Korea Times, April 5).
Officials are expected to hold inter-Korean meetings on economic cooperation this month, the Times reported. The two countries also plan to exchange delegations for the World Cup soccer tournament in South Korea and the Arirang Festival in North Korea (Seo Soo-min, Korea Times, April 5).
Piecemeal Approach
Despite some hope for improved relations, some analysts have criticized North Korea for using piecemeal tactics in negotiations, always refusing to talk unless offered incentives, according to the Korea Times.
North Korea refused to hold talks with the United States on broad issues, instead insisting on only discussing issues related to the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea by a U.S.-led consortium, the Times reported.
“In a sense, the Bush administration’s comprehensive approach is not acceptable to the North, as it could lead to the grave issue of the North Korean regime’s survival,” said a South Korean Foreign Affairs Ministry official (Shim Jae-yun, Korea Times, April 5).
The U.S. Air Force last week updated lawmakers on plans to reduce and modernize its B-1 bomber fleet, according to Defense Daily (see GSN, Jan. 2).
The current Air Force bomber fleet of 94 B-52s and 92 B-1s will be reduced this year “to provide America with a smaller, more lethal and survivable long-range strike force,” said Air Force documents sent to Congress.
The Air Force will go ahead with plans to retire 32 B-1 bombers and to consolidate B-1 operations to two air bases, instead of the current five, Defense Daily reported. Consolidation would end B-1 operations at Robbins Air Force Base in Georgia, McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas and Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. The money saved through consolidation will be channeled back into modernizing the remaining B-1 force, according to Air Force documents on the plan.
The B-1 fleet will be upgraded to better integrate precision munitions, improve electronic protection and allow the bombers to conduct more missions than they have in the past, according to the Air Force (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001). Technical limitations, such as the legacy nuclear cockpit, will also be examined, according to Defense Daily.
The nuclear cockpit is too compartmentalized for the current conventional-weapons role of the B-1s, Defense Daily reported. Only one of the four-crew stations has access to enemy threat information while another station has navigation information.
“This causes an inefficient working environment with four crew members sharing vital information via voice intercom,” said an Air Force document.
Even though “reducing the bomber fleet incurs some risk,” that risk would be minimized because of the modernization of the remaining B-1 fleet, the Air Force said. The service estimates it will spend about $1.4 billion modernizing the remaining B-1s from 2003 to 2007, according to Defense Daily.
“Our new long-range strike force will be more effective, survivable and supportable,” the Air Force said (Kerry Gildea, Defense Daily, April 4).
Iran wants Russia to build a second reactor where it is currently building the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said yesterday (see GSN, March 29).
“The issue of building new reactors for the nuclear power station … is set to be decided at the negotiating table,” Kharrazi said yesterday at a speech in Moscow. He is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin today.
Iran wants Russia to add at least one more reactor to the Bushehr power plant, in which there is one currently under construction, according to Reuters. The Russian Atomic Energy Ministry last month said it had received permission to expand nuclear cooperation with Iran but did not say if that included building additional reactors at Bushehr (Reuters/Planet Ark, April 5).
Russia has already sent 5,000 tons of equipment, including the body of the first nuclear reactor, to Iran, said Viktor Kozlov, head of Atomstroyexport, the Russian firm constructing the plant. The project involves 3,900 Russian and Iranian workers, he said.
“Guided by the results of work on the first power unit, the sides are now discussing the possibility of completing construction of the second unit,” Kozlov said (Tim Vickery, Associated Press/Moscow Times, April 5).
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