By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Although the development of Chinese missile defense countermeasures is not likely to keep pace with U.S. technologies, the United States should still monitor China’s efforts, says a report released this week by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute (see GSN, July 23).
Building on years of research, China has created a broad program to develop countermeasures to defeat a U.S. missile defense system, according to a chapter in the report, China’s Growing Military Power: Perspectives on Security, Ballistic Missiles and Conventional Capabilities. The chapter was prepared by Mark Stokes, country director for China and Taiwan in the U.S. defense secretary’s office, in an unofficial capacity.
Countermeasures developers have focused on two main avenues, countersurveillance and counterintercept, the report says.
Countersurveillance
The countersurveillance strategy is designed to prevent U.S. sensors from detecting ballistic missiles and their warheads, the report says. To this end, China has worked to develop passive electronic countermeasures such as chaff to confuse X-Band radar systems and active electronic countermeasures such as radar jammers. Analysts at the Chinese National University of Defense Technology have researched electronic countermeasures to sensors on the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 and the Sea-Based Midcourse interceptors, which have been proposed for use in the U.S. missile defense system, according to the report.
China is also examining ways to reduce sensors’ ability to detect ballistic missiles during their midcourse and terminal flight phases, the report says. Engineers have experimented with altering the shape of reentry vehicles to reduce their radar signatures, the report says. They also are working to reduce infrared signatures. Researchers have conducted experiments on “cold screen technology,” in which a warhead is encased in an aluminum alloy and liquid nitrogen is placed between the warhead and the shell, the report says. In some experiments, infrared sensors normally capable of detecting an unshrouded reentry vehicle 3,000 kilometers away were unable to detect a cold-screen-protected warhead at more than three meters, the report says.
Chinese engineers have worked to develop two kinds of decoy measures — saturation and deception. Saturation measures such as balloons have been praised for their relative ease of technology and low costs, the report says. Researchers are also working on electronic decoys that emit a radar return similar to an actual reentry vehicle.
To counter U.S. anti-missile lasers, Chinese engineers have worked on fast-burn boosters, the report says, adding that concerns have been raised over possible quality control problems related to stage separation and accuracy (see GSN, July 15). The report also says that some observers have reported research efforts into boost-phase maneuvering systems, but there is so far no hard evidence as to any actual development.
Counterintercept
China has worked on several measures to block interceptors from engaging targets. One method that has been examined is the use of multiple warheads, the report says, adding that China has researched multiple independent reentry vehicle (MIRV) technology since the 1970s (see GSN, Feb. 12). The report cites Chinese missile designers who have said that real and decoy warheads could be combined through the use of MIRV technology.
Researchers are also working to develop maneuverable reentry vehicles to complicate missile defense tracking, according to the report. Efforts have focused on programming a reentry vehicle to maneuver during its terminal flight phase — about 20 to 30 seconds before engaging a target, the report says.
To counter U.S. boost-phase intercept systems such as the Airborne Laser, China is researching missile spinning and hardening, the report says. Missile spinning, designed to reduce the concentration of a laser on a single spot, and hardening might not render a missile immune to boost phase defenses, but they probably would lower the number of laser shots available per mission, the report says.
Other Measures
China also has several other missile defense countermeasures under consideration, including non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, anti-satellite measures and anti-radiation missiles, according to the report. Chinese engineers have experimented with the use of EMP weapons, such as a high-powered microwave warhead, to knock out space-based and ground-based missile defense sensors, the report says.
“PLA [People’s Liberation Army] writings indicate that fielding of an EMP warhead is a relatively high priority,” the report says.
China has also conducted research on anti-satellite measures since the 1960s, according to the report. To counter a missile defense system, ASAT measures would be directed against satellite systems in low-Earth orbit — for example, the Space Based Infrared System-Low system — or in highly elliptical orbits — for example, SBIRS-High (see GSN, Sept. 4). China has also increased efforts to distinguish actual satellites from decoys, the report says.
To destroy radar installations within a missile defense system, China is attempting to acquire or develop anti-radiation missiles such as the Russian Kh-31P, according to the report.
“There are persistent rumors of PLA procurement or joint production arrangement on the Kh-31P, which Chinese engineers note was specifically developed to counter the Patriot’s MPQ-53 radar and Aegis SPY-1D phased array radar,” the report says (see GSN, June 19).
China’s countermeasure research program is apparently well advanced, but could also overwhelm China’s entire ballistic missile program, the report says (see GSN, Sept. 16).
“Chinese research and development of missile defense countermeasures is extensive and appears relatively sophisticated. However, countermeasures introduce an added element of complexity into an already complex system,” the report says. “Despite significant investment, P.R.C. [People’s Republic of China] countermeasures on longer-range ballistic missiles are unlikely to keep pace with U.S. technologies. ... Nevertheless, the U.S. should hedge against unforeseen breakthroughs in P.R.C. countermeasure technology.”
For further information, see:
MDA Basics of Missile Defense
MDA Missile Defense System
MDA Boost Defense Segment
MDA Midcourse Defense Segment
MDA Terminal Defense Segment
PAC 3 Fact Sheet
Sea-Based Midcourse
Airborne Laser Fact Sheet
Uranium-producing countries in Africa such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa could be a source of fissile material for rogue states, including Iraq, attempting to develop nuclear weapons, the London Guardian reported today.
A dossier released by the United Kingdom yesterday accuses Iraq of attempting to obtain uranium from Africa (see GSN, Sept. 24). While the dossier did not identify which countries might have been involved, analysts said the two most likely countries were the D.R.C. and South Africa.
Leaders of the Mayi-Mayi, a militia group involved in the D.R.C. civil war, traveled to Baghdad twice to offer gold and diamonds, according to documents. While uranium was not specifically mentioned, the Mayi-Mayi would have been able to obtain the mineral in areas under its control, a western intelligence officer said.
Other rogue states and groups have attempted to obtain uranium from the D.R.C., according to reports. In 1998, North Korea provided the D.R.C. with military trainers under an agreement with former President Laurent Kabila, the Guardian reported. The trainers were withdrawn under U.S. pressure after allegations that they had reopened a uranium mine, the Guardian reported.
In addition, French radio reported last year that supporters of Mobutu Sese Seko, the former leader of then-Zaire, shipped 22 pounds of uranium bars to Libya (see GSN, Dec. 5, 2001; Astill/Carroll, London Guardian, Sept. 25).
In 1998, Italian police arrested a group of men who attempted to sell a uranium fuel rod to the Mafia, according to the Financial Times (see GSN, Nov. 9, 2001). The rod had been stolen from a nuclear reactor in Kinshasa. A second fuel rod missing from the reactor has still yet to be found, nuclear industry sources said yesterday. Experts consider the reactor, which was damaged during civil war, to be highly insecure, the Times reported (Financial Times, Sept. 25).
South Africa
It is highly unlikely that Iraq was able to obtain uranium from South Africa, which had a nuclear weapons program in the 1980s, said Jakkie Cillers, head of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa.
“As a past nuclear power we are an obvious suspect but it is unlikely because the program was dismantled under the observation of the ... International Atomic Energy Agency,” Cillers said.
South Africa ended its nuclear weapons program in 1991 and signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Cillers said, however, that former South African officials or military officers might have had contacts with Iraq since then (Astill/Carroll, London Guardian).
Other Producers
In other African countries with uranium, production is strictly monitored and sales are made under exclusive contracts, the Financial Times reported. It is unlikely that any uranium could have been smuggled out to rogue states, experts said.
In Niger and Gabon, two of the continent’s main uranium producers, the French company Cogema controls the production operation, according to the Times. In Namibia, another chief source, production is controlled by the international mining company Rio Tinto and primarily sold to the French electricity company EdF under a long-term agreement (Financial Times).
For further information, see:
NPT Text
States Parties to the NPT (U.N.)
U.N. Background on NPT
By Bryan Bender
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has capped a year of dramatic expansion in which it initiated new efforts to stop the spread of nuclear-related materials and to more fully address threats of nuclear and radiological terrorism (see GSN, Sept. 12).
At an annual meeting in Vienna that ended last week, the agency reported on preparations for returning IAEA monitors to Iraq and attempted to break a logjam over on-site inspections in North Korea.
Meanwhile, representatives from the agency’s 134 members reviewed a variety of new measures designed to step up nuclear power plant security, track radioactive sources worldwide and dispose of at-risk materials. The members pledged to expand their efforts further as international cooperation and investment in nuclear and radioactive safeguards continues to expand.
A year into the global war on terrorism, the IAEA has emerged as a key component of international efforts to enhance defenses against the prospect of catastrophic terrorism.
“The IAEA continues to play a central role … through its long-standing work to verify compliance with nonproliferation obligations,” U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told conference attendees.
Noting the growing and critical need to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into terrorist hands, Annan urged the agency to continue programs aimed at safeguarding nuclear material, securing nuclear facilities and preventing illicit trafficking of nuclear and radiological materials.
IAEA Reacts to Sept. 11
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the security of the world’s nuclear power plants and nuclear-related industrial material and waste has been a rising concern, particularly in light of new information about al-Qaeda terrorist plans.
The IAEA reviewed its efforts to prevent acts of terrorism involving nuclear or radiological materials, resulting in a $12 million per year effort to enhance security in eight areas, including protecting nuclear material and facilities and securing radioactive sources.
“In just over five months, a plan of enhanced and new activities to upgrade nuclear security worldwide was developed,” IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei reported to the general conference.
He reported that, to date, 12 member states and one nongovernmental organization — the Nuclear Threat Initiative — have pledged a total of $8 million to implement the new measures in the first year. More pledges are expected, he said.
Nuclear Power Plants
One IAEA focus has been nuclear power plant safety and security. Information gained after the Sept. 11 attacks indicates that the al-Qaeda terrorist network has considered attacking nuclear power plants. New IAEA security guidelines adopted over the past year are the “highest caliber,” according to ElBaradei.
“It is satisfying to note that nuclear safety continues to improve at power plants worldwide,” he said. However, “more work needs to be done, and public demands are widely voiced in many countries for greater transparency and accountability on safety issues. The need for a more effective and transparent international safety regime, therefore, continues to be a high priority.”
Tracking Radioactive Sources
In June, the IAEA established a working group with the United States and Russia on “securing and managing radioactive sources.” The group plans to develop a strategy “to locate, recover, secure and recycle orphan sources throughout the former Soviet Union,” according to the IAEA. A month earlier the two countries had agreed to cooperate in this area and Washington had pledged $1 million for security upgrades at Russia’s largest radiological repository. It is the first international effort to safeguard materials necessary to build a “dirty bomb.”
Radioactive materials in industrial and medical facilities around the world have become a new proliferation concern because terrorists could make a so-called dirty bomb by mating the materials with conventional explosives.
“Plans found in al-Qaeda bunkers revealed in detail the interest of al-Qaeda in radiological dispersal devices,” according to the U.S. Energy Department. “The discovery of these plans demonstrates the importance of incorporating radiological dispersal devices into the world’s nonproliferation and counterterrorism strategy.”
At the Vienna conference, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham proposed expanding U.S. and Russian cooperative efforts and called for an international conference to address the threat posed by the misuse of radioactive materials to make radiological weapons (see GSN, Sept. 16).
“Although these dirty bombs are not comparable to nuclear weapons in destructiveness, they are far easier to assemble and employ,” Abraham said.
At-Risk Nuclear Material
Meanwhile, a scenario in which terrorists would acquire nuclear weapons is considered a nightmare, prompting the IAEA to increase efforts to secure at-risk fissile material around the world.
One such security effort occurred in August when the agency and the United States — with funds from the Nuclear Threat Initiative — removed 100 pounds of bomb-grade nuclear material from a scientific academy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (see GSN, Aug. 23).
IAEA officials have said they are planning additional missions in the coming months at as many as two dozen facilities around the globe (see GSN, Sept. 3).
Proliferating Countries
IAEA officials have also reported on agency efforts to monitor the activities of countries considered to be some of the world’s most immediate proliferation concerns (see GSN, Sept. 16).
On Iraq’s nuclear efforts, IAEA has “no additional information that can be directly linked without inspection to Iraq’s nuclear activities,” ElBaradei said Sept. 16. “Resumption of inspections is therefore a crucial step towards providing assurance to the international community that Iraq’s nuclear weapons program has been neutralized and is not being revived.”
“We do have access to commercial satellite images of specific facilities in Iraq,” he added, “and some of those images show changes. But we have not been physically present in Iraq since 1998, and without the return of inspectors we cannot verify anything.”
Another proliferation concern, North Korea, has continued to delay agency inspections called for under the Nonproliferation Treaty.
“The agency continues to be unable to verify … that the D.P.R.K. has declared all the nuclear material that is subject to the agency safeguards measures under its NPT safeguards agreement,” ElBaradei said. Further inaction could lead to a “substantial delay” in the construction of the light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea called for under the 1994 international agreement in which Pyongyang exchanged its nuclear programs for two nuclear power reactors.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group, Inc.]
Los Alamos National Laboratory is buying a relatively inexpensive $6 million dollar Linux supercomputer for nuclear weapons simulations, CNET News.com reported Monday (see GSN, June 25).
The laboratory has traditionally run nuclear simulations on systems that can cost $215 million from computer manufactures Silicon Graphics and Hewlett-Packard. Los Alamos has seen success using less expensive components and the Linux operating system to build supercomputers but has not used them for nuclear simulations, according to News.com. The shift requires that software be reworked to run on the less expensive machine.
The new system, known as Science Appliance, will be able to complete 10 trillion calculations per second and is due by the end of 2002 (Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com, Sept. 23).
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Monday approved a plan to make tritium at the Watts Bar commercial nuclear power plant near Spring City, Tenn. (see GSN, June 28).
The United States stopped producing tritium, an isotope of hydrogen used in nuclear weapons, in 1989, but it has sought to resume production to replace losses caused by natural radioactive decay.
The use of a commercial plant has raised concerns.
“It crosses the imaginary line that separates the civilian nuclear industry and military production in the U.S.,” said Bob Schaeffer of the Alliance For Nuclear Accountability. “This is the first time that the U.S. is using a civilian power reactor to make nuclear weapons” (Associated Press, Sept. 25).
Irradiated tritium-producing burnable absorber rods are to be taken from the Watts Bar facility in Tennessee to Savannah River, S.C., where Energy Department technicians will extract the tritium.
“Producing tritium is a key element in the U.S. national security strategy to maintain an effective nuclear deterrent,” said Linton Brooks, acting administrator of the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (Energy Department release, Sept. 24).
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov has said the U.S.-Russian Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty will be sent to the lower house of the Russian Parliament sometime in the near future, the Russian newspaper Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye reported last week (see GSN, Sept. 13).
“The procedure of budget forming,” however, has delayed sending the treaty to the Duma for ratification, Mamedov said. In a June 14 resolution, the Duma criticized the treaty and offered several measures in an attempt to improve upon it.
A hearing on the treaty is expected in October, according to the newspaper. Mamedov indicated that the Russian Parliament might confirm the treaty by the end of this year (see GSN, June 13; Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, Sept. 20).
For further information, see:
U.S.-Russia Nuclear Reduction Treaty Text (U.S. State Department)
Bush Announces Moscow Treaty
U.S. State Department Fact Sheet on Moscow Treaty
Russia has proposed convening just-established working groups with the United States this fall to discuss missile defense issues and the U.S.-Russian Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty on nuclear weapons, the Russian Foreign Ministry said today (see GSN, Sept. 19).
The groups could meet in “late October or early November of this year in Moscow,” according to the statement. Officials established the groups during a recent meeting of the U.S.-Russian Consultative Group on Strategic Security in Washington (Agence France-Presse, Sept. 25).
For further information, see:
U.S.-Russia Nuclear Reduction Treaty Text (U.S. State Department)
Bush Announces Moscow Treaty
U.S. State Department Fact Sheet on Moscow Treaty
Mali, Chile and South Africa this month signed additional protocols to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterday. The agreements expand the agency’s authority to detect undeclared nuclear materials or activities.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei last week urged members of the organization to sign additional protocols so the agency can continue to provide assurances about nuclear materials (see GSN, Sept. 16).
“The number of safeguards agreements and additional protocols in force remains well below expectations,” ElBaradei said at the IAEA General Conference in Vienna. “I urge all States who have not done so to conclude and bring into force the required safeguards agreements and additional protocols at an early date.”
This week the IAEA’s Board of Governors also approved an additional protocol with El Salvador, the agency said in a press release (IAEA release, Sept. 24).
For further information, see:
NPT Text
States Parties to the NPT (U.N.)
U.N. Background on NPT
Six years after the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was opened for signature, great progress has been made in creating the global verification regime called for under the treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 18). The treaty was opened for signature Sept. 24, 1996.
Out of the 337 International Monitoring Station facilities called for in the treaty, site surveys have been completed for 280 stations, the organization said in a release. So far, 135 stations have been built and an additional 104 are currently under construction (see GSN, April 15). About 70 stations are contributing data to the organization’s International Data Center in Vienna, according to the release.
On the treaty’s anniversary this year, 166 countries had signed the treaty and 94 had ratified it, including 31 of the 44 nations whose ratifications are required for the treaty to enter into force (see GSN, Sept. 18).
“Today, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is recognized as a cornerstone in nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament,” the organization said. “States which sign and ratify the Treaty join a global community committed to ensuring that the world is a safer and more secure place” (CTBT Organization release, Sept. 24).
For further information, see:
CTBT Text
States Parties to the CTBT (Federation of American Scientists)
CTBT Organization
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