This PNNL report has a good description of IAEA safeguards at Brazil’s Resende enrichment facility. Here’s the relevant section on the measures designed to protect some centrifuge design information:

For this facility, the sensitive information to be protected relates to the design of the centrifuges. During inspections, the inspectors have full access to the F&W station to observe and verify measurements of cylinder uranium element and isotope weight. The inspectors have access to the general vacuum station and to the building (confinement). Inspectors also have physical access to the cascade halls but not complete visual access. The facility has been designed to permit visual access to the cascade piping and the main header to permit inspector verification that the configuration has not been changed. The upper piping going to each centrifuge is visible to inspectors; however, the centrifuges are concealed behind panels to protect sensitive design information. In addition, the inspector visual access is sufficient to verify that clandestine piping or unidentified support equipment has not been installed in the portions of the process area outside of the panels that conceal the centrifuges.

The design of this enrichment facility corresponds to one of the more transparent types of conceivable black box facilities. This limited the inspectors’ ability to directly observe some aspects of the configuration of the centrifuge cascade.

<snip>

Inspectors also review surveillance data during both interim and unannounced inspections. During interim inspections the review covers the entire period since the last interim inspection. During unannounced inspections, the review is limited to the period since the event that triggered the inspection and the review of camera data is limited to cameras covering critical points.

Inspectors also visit the process areas during routine, interim, and unannounced inspections to verify the design information and to provide assurance that the facility has not been reconfigured to permit misuse. Inspector access to the process areas is governed by agreed-upon procedures to ensure that sensitive information is protected. To verify the configuration of piping in the areas concealed by panels, to which inspector visual access is denied, the operator is asked to take pictures of piping on randomly selected centrifuges.1 These pictures are compared to pictures taken when the cascade first started. The pictures are left at the facility under IAEA and Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC) seals. A review of all surveillance camera images within a given period is performed to confirm the absence of undeclared activities or nuclear material. Randomly selected cascade panels and points are used for ‘go – no go’ gamma and transmissivity measurements. This process uses a gamma detector system set up to detect a gamma source situated on the opposite side of the cascade, at the exact position of the detector. The process is then repeated without the source to account for background. The background radiation data measured are expected to be equal to or below the baseline data collected when the cascade was first started because an increase in the gamma radiation level being monitored could be an indication of the presence of higher uranium enrichment levels in the cascade hall.

The E3 recently sent this letter to the UNSG. It has some material about Iran’s missile program. For example:

According to Iran’s announcements, the Zoljanah can be launched from mobile launchers. Because they minimize pre-launch detection and increase second-strike capabilities, these are typically used for the flexible deployment of ground-launched ballistic missiles, but are rather unusual in the context of satellite launch vehicle tests in an allegedly peaceful space programme.

Time bombs in the hands of all the wicked warbabies
Light the fuse of temptation and we all burn
Four horsemen sit high up in the saddle
And waiting are ride the bloody trail of no return

Brahmos cruise missiles are among DRDO items for export.

Here are some specs from the Brahmos site:

Here’s a tutorial on missiles from Brahmos Aerospace:

I don’t recall reading this before. From this NYRB article by Elizabeth Kolbert:

What is often called “the first use of weapons of mass destruction” took place on April 22, 1915, near the town of Ypres, in western Belgium. Six months earlier, Germany’s hopes for a quick victory in World War I had been dashed on the banks of the Marne, and the country had enlisted some of its top scientists to break the stalemate. One of them, Fritz Haber, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, had suggested releasing chlorine gas. Since the gas is heavier than air, Haber reasoned, it would sink when released; this would allow it to infiltrate the trenches of the French and English forces.

The Germans had signed the Hague Convention of 1899, which forbade the “use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.” Nevertheless, by interpreting this clause literally—the chlorine would be released not from projectiles but from canisters—the country’s military commanders managed to convince themselves that the move was permissible.

In the same interview that I cited the other day, Herbert York also mentioned this fact about thermonuclear weapons:

The simple fact is every hydrogen bomb there is was invented by, was based on technology fully known by 1960. There hasn’t been anything in 50 years that matters. Some of the ideas from 1960 didn’t get made until 1970, but there’s nothing new. It’s a totally mature thing. The only things that are like new are like modem refrigerators are better than they were 20 years ago, they’re still the same thing. They’ve got better hinges, more space on the door…

Of Course I Fucking Did.

In this interview with Alex Wellerstein, Herbert York says a bit about what the U.S. government learned about Israel’s nuclear weapons from Vanunu:

WELLERSTEIN asks whether classification caused technical difficulties. “No, well, no, I don’t think so. At least, I never thought it did. It’s always possible that if we could actually go back in time we might find something, but, because we did have very tight control of the shops, and again, I thought some of that was overdone. For example, in those days — it’s no longer true — but in those days, spherical symmetry was nearly everywhere. The primaries were always spherically symmetrical. And so anything so anything, any shell of metal that was spherical in shape, was highly classified. But of course, it’s like my discovering plutonium, this guy from Israel, from Dimona [Mordechai Vanunu], he brought out with him either the shapes or the lot of dimensions that he gave to the British and then we call got, which told us a lot, even those spheres are not classified, we learned a lot about the first Israeli bombs from just the drawings of shapes, the same thing from the Soviets. … Vanunu is still an issue, it’s amazing. And it’s a secrecy issue!”

The Newsletter for Nominated Experts and Analytical Laboratories for the Secretary-General’s Mechanism for the Alleged Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons reminds us that

Under the current UNSGM guidelines, investigations took place in Mozambique and Azerbaijan in 1992.

Here’ are the conclusions of the Mozambique investigation:

Here‘ are the conclusions of the Azerbaijan investigation: