This was a rare moment of levity back when:
Speaking exclusively to the Guardian from his 31st floor office at the UN in New York, Mr Blix said: “I have my detractors in Washington. There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media. Not that I cared very much.”
I suspect that many nerds already know this, but here’s a data point from the document about which I blogged yesterday:
The Soviets have a wide variety of tactical nuclear weapons. The number of nuclear capable and potentially nuclear-capable artillery cannons has increased by well over a factor of ten in the last decade.
Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda place the number of Soviet TNWs at “13,000–22,000 in the late-1980s.”
Here’s the 1991 DOD Memorandum for Secretaries of the Military Departments: Reducing the United States Nuclear Arsenal, September 28 1991.
Here’s a slide:
Ambassador Susan Rice writes the following in Tough Love:
The IAEA reported [n 2009] that Iran had enriched some uranium to 20 percent (close to bomb-grade quality) and continued working on warhead designs far longer than previously suspected.
I didn’t understand this reference, so I consulted the the IAEA DG reports from 2009:
November, August, June, February.
Having done so, I still don’t understand the reference. The IAEA was investigating possible Iranian work on RV’s in 2009, but it had been doing so since at least 2005. Even if her claim were true, it seems irrelevant…Rice doesn’t explain whether and to what extent this information impacted the IC’s 2007 assessment that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program.
The 10th anniversary of the Tehran Declaration took place a few days ago. Man, has that been put down the memory hole.
The history of the UK’s thermonuclear weapons program about which I blogged the other day repeatedly mentions a 1955 paper updating the 1950 version the 1957 edition of The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Much of the discussion concerns potential UK H-Bomb tests.
I just received this as a gift.
The other day, I posted a excerpt from a November 2004 piece by the late Ambassador Donald Mahley. That excerpt discussed Libya’s CW program, but the article also has good material about Libya’s BW program:
Libya seems to have contemplated a biological weapons program. To support such contemplation, Libya decided to procure a dual capable facility, ostensibly for public health-related research, that would provide the option to pursue biological weapons research as decisions about such research were made. The Libyan scientific personnel charged with actually procuring the capability were not necessarily informed of the diverse purposes to which such a capability might be put – which is indicative of the broader international difficulty of pursuing biological weapons proliferators. All the elements of a biological weapons program, with the possible exception of specialized munitions and munitions filling equipment, also have peaceful uses. So it is entirely possible to conceal, even from your own personnel who might be working at a dual-use facility, the full range of purposes to which the facility might be put.
<snip>
The second success is more subtle. I indicated earlier that Libya had been unable to obtain the dual-purpose capabilities it sought in biology, potentially to become the foundation of a biological weapons program. Everyone should understand that the capabilities in question are not uniquely biological-weapons oriented. In fact, they were the kind of laboratory and research facilities that many countries have as part of their general medical capabilities to improve the health of national populations. The Libyan scientists pursuing this capability, in part possibly because they were not told about the potential diversion of capability, sought to contract laboratory construction with Western firms, where they had faith in quality control and delivery reliability. When they attempted to finalize the contract, however, the contacted firm declined once the location of construction was revealed, citing, according to Libyan officials, the problem of providing a country (Libya) under sanctions with the dual-capable equipment and facilities specified in the request. While this outcome illuminates the potentially draconian effect of sanctions when applied (the purpose of the construction could equally have been purely humanitarian), it is a rare revelation of how stringent sanctions programs must be in order to impinge on the kinds of covert and dual-purpose capability building rogue states can conduct.
The UK National Archive has a number of items available for free. I recommend a document set called Thermo-nuclear Weapons: Policy and Research. It’s too big for me to upload, so click here.
