The Wall Street Journal has begun 2010 a lot like it ended 2009: By attempting to undermine the Obama administration’s pursuit of a new nuclear reductions agreement with Russia.

2010’s first offering focuses on the December 15 letter sent by 40 Republican Senators (and Sen. Joe Lieberman) to President Obama claiming that “the National Defense Authorization Act of 2010 requires that the submission of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) follow-on agreement to the Senate be accompanied by a plan to modernize the U.S. nuclear deterrent.”

As I noted in a pre-holiday interview with DailyKos’ Plutonium Page, the Republican Senate letter grossly distorts the Defense Authorization Act.  The bill requires a plan to enhance the safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile, modernize the nuclear weapons complex, and maintain the delivery vehicles (i.e. bombers, subs, and missiles).  However, it says nothing about modernizing the “nuclear deterrent” or building new nuclear warheads. Nothing at all, except to those whose aim is to mislead.

Both the Senate letter and the Journal claim that the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States links nuclear force reductions and modernization.  In the words of the Journal: “The bipartisan report noted, among other things, that the U.S. needs new warheads and nuclear research facilities.”  This too is misleading.  The bipartisan report cited by the Journal said no such thing…

On arms reductions the Commission is clear and unequivocal:

The moment appears ripe for a renewal of arms control with Russia, and this bodes well for a continued reduction in the nuclear arsenal. The United States and Russia should pursue a step-by-step approach and take a modest first step to ensure that there is a successor to START I when it expires at the end of 2009.

Nowhere in the chapter of the report on arms control is there any attempt to make modest reductions along the lines of those called for in New START contingent upon the design and production of new warheads and new warhead production facilities.  

A finding in an earlier chapter does state that the U.S. could pursue further reductions “if this were done while also preserving the resilience and survivability of U.S. forces.”  The Commission clearly used the words “resilience” and “survivability,” which suggests that reductions could occur without building new warheads and production facilities.  

It is highly questionable whether the Commission calls for the production of new warheads in any event.  While the Commission did endorse the Bush administration’s plan to build new production facilities at Los Alamos and the Y-12 facility in Tennessee, it took a far more nuanced view of how best to maintain the nuclear weapons stockpile.  In doing so it gave the following advice:

• The decision on which approach [to refurbishing and modernizing the nuclear stockpile] is best should be made on a case-by-case basis as the existing stockpile of warheads ages.

• Congress [should] authorize the NNSA to conduct a cost and feasibility study of incorporating enhanced safety, security, and reliability features in the second half of the planned W76 life extension program. This authorization should permit the design of specific components, including both pits and secondaries, as appropriate.

• As a general principle for subsequent life extensions, the Commission recommends that NNSA select the approach that makes the greatest technical and strategic sense.

• As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States does not produce fissile materials and does not conduct nuclear explosive tests. Also the United States does not currently seek new weapons with new military characteristics. Within this framework, it should seek all of the possible benefits of improved safety, security, and reliability available to it.

The Commission, simply does not say that the U.S. needs new warheads, as the Wall Street Journal claims.  Instead it notes that existing life extension programs and new warhead designs represent opposite ends of a spectrum of options. What we have learned about our nuclear weapons to date suggests that existing life extension programs, not new warhead designs, make the greatest technical and strategic sense.  

For example, The JASON scientific advisory group could not certify that the chosen design for the now defunct Reliable Replacement Warhead program could be officially confirmed as reliable without nuclear explosive testing, a key condition set out by the Commission.  In addition, a 2006 JASON report concluded that the explosive cores in U.S. warheads will remain reliable for many, many years.  A September 2009 JASON report went even further, noting that “lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence by using approaches similar to those employed in [life-extension programs] to date.”

Furthermore, the U.S. is already modernizing its nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles.  Some Republicans seem to think that because the U.S. is not building new missiles and warheads like the Russians and Chinese, we’re falling way behind.  In reality, our nuclear arsenal remains and will continue to remain second to none.  

But don’t expect the Journal to ever admit this. The nuclear alarmists are looking to oppose a treaty that is clearly in American national security interests, even if it means deliberately misconstruing a bipartisan Congressional Commission report.

The Nuclear Posture Review seems to have been on the mind of more than one reporter over the holidays.  Both Bryan Bender over at the Boston Globe and Paul Richter at the LA Times penned very strong articles on some of the fault lines within the ongoing Review.  However, each article contains a mixup/error that requires a correction and some further explanation…

First, Richter’s piece contains the following graf:

For instance, some U.S. submarines in the Pacific carry nuclear-tipped torpedoes, which, Ferguson said, many Japanese officials like for their possible deterrent effect against a growing Chinese navy. Because nuclear weapons provide such assurance to a key ally, some U.S. officials are reluctant to cut back on the capability.” [emphasis mine].

I’m not sure what is meant by “nuclear-tipped torpedoes” but the context of the paragraph suggests that the piece may be referring to the SLCM known as the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile-Nuclear (TLAM-N).  As Jeffrey noted last May, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States erroneously asserted that the TLAM-N is deployed on some U.S. Los Angeles-class attack submarines. In reality, as a result of President George H.W. Bush’s 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs), the U.S. “cease[d] deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on surface ships, attack submarines, and land-based naval aircraft during ‘normal circumstances’”.  We do however apparently retain the capability to redeploy TLAM-N on attack submarines if necessary.  

Bender’s suspect graf reads as follows:

But for war planners, they [submarines] also bring more bang for the buck. Under the terms of the proposed treaty with Russia, each submarine and its 24 Trident missiles would count as only one “delivery system,’’ unlike the land-based missiles, which each count toward the total allowed.”[emphasis mine].

Either Bender or his editors messed something up here.  I find it hard to believe that the Russians would agree to allow our entire strategic submarine force to count for only 12 (or 14 depending on whether the two U.S. subs in overhaul at any onetime are included) delivery vehicles.  Those 24 missile tubes certainly aren’t phantoms! As one colleague put it to me earlier today, if the Russians had agreed to count them as one delivery vehicle, then the U.S. could have easily agreed to the Russian-proposed limit of 500 delivery vehicles for the New START treaty!

It’s looking increasingly likely that the U.S. and Russia will be unable to sign a New START agreement until sometime early next year.  Of course, if the two sides manage to sign an accord  this weekend or early next week, I reserve the right…

Earlier today Iran tested an allegedly more advanced version of its solid-fueled Sejjil-2 medium range ballistic missile.  The missile has a similar range to that of the liquid-fueled Shahab-3 (i.e. approximately 2,000-2,500 kilometers) and could reach targets in Israel, Turkey, and portions of southeastern Europe.

In the wake of today’s test, it’s worth recalling that the Bush administration’s plan to deploy ten long-range ground-based interceptors (GBIs) in Poland and an accompanying radar in the Czech Republic was not designed to deal with Iranian short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.  Click here for a nice map, courtesy of the BBC, demonstrating the limitations of the GBI-based system.      

In contrast, the Obama administration’s modified missile defense plan for Europe is specifically designed to counter the threats posed by Iranian short- and medium-range missiles such as the Sejiil-2.  The new approach will rely on “scores” of SM-3 interceptors, at first based on Aegis ship destroyers, which will be capable of defending more of Europe than the Bush administration’s plan. And the initial pieces of the system are slated to be deployed by 2011, some six or seven years before the Polish and Czech sites would have been completed.  As Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright stated in a September 17 press conference announcing the decision:

We built the original system on the idea of a rogue-nation threat: three to five missiles that could come from either North Korea or Iran. The reality is, we’re dealing with hundreds of missiles in the [intermediate-] and medium-range capabilities…. What you can do with an SM-3 in affordability and in deployment and dispersal is substantially greater for larger numbers of missiles than what we have with a ground-based interceptor.

In sum, if you’re inclined to view the Sejjil-2 as a major threat, it’s tough to argue that the Obama administration’s decision to pursue a new missile defense architecture for Europe was the incorrect one.

In his new book, Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security, Dr. Gregory Koblentz, a member of the Center’s Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons, observes that “biological weapons are the least well understood of the WMD” and that “use of terms such as WMD and ‘chem-bio’ has hindered our understanding of the international security implications of biological weapons.”

Below are three concepts that illustrate the current challenge presented by biological weapons (BW)…

1.    “The dual use dilemma is absolute.”  – Kathryn Nixdorff in Verifying Treaty Compliance: Limiting Weapons of Mass Destruction and Monitoring Kyoto Protocol Provisions

At an AAAS panel discussion last week, Senior Bio Advisor of the U.S. National Counterproliferation Center, Dr. Lawrence Kerr, explained that all life science research is dual-use by nature. The very same technologies, techniques, and studies designed to create pharmaceuticals, for instance, can be employed nefariously to manipulate biological agents (pathogens and toxins) and identify exploitable vulnerabilities in the human body.

Dr. Koblentz takes this concept a step further, arguing that the biological dilemma is more accurately described as “multiuse”:

In [Living Weapons], the term “multiuse” is used to highlight the distinct but overlapping applications of biotechnology in civilian, defensive, and offensive domains. The old distinction between military and civilian applications of biological and biotechnology has become more blurred in recent years as more civilian institutions become engaged in defensive research and military organizations become more interested in applying biotechnology in areas of energy, materials science, logistics, medicine, and electronics.

2.    “In the life sciences, proliferation is over.”  – Dr. Lawrence Kerr at AAAS panel discussion, 8 December 2009

Techniques and technologies in the most advanced biological fields are already spread across the globe and across populations. The life sciences’ immeasurable potential for legitimate and constructive use, the culturally entrenched value placed on improving human health worldwide, the aforementioned dual-use dilemma, and decreasing costs have made most biological materials and biotechnologies largely uncontainable. And from a global public health perspective, they should not be contained.

It is possible now for amateur biologists to genetically alter or synthesize pathogens out of their own closets. These at-home “biohackers” can “tinker with the building blocks of life in the comfort of their own homes” for a modest price.

Striking the proper balance between reaping the benefits of the life sciences and reducing the risks of technological abuse is extraordinarily tricky. Professor Barry Kellman of the International Security and Biopolicy Institute has called biothreat policy “the most multifaceted, multidimensional, nuanced undertaking in the entire security domain.”

3.    “What do you mean we can’t do this? We’re doing it now.”  –Dr. Raymond Zilinskas, quoting the scientific community’s response to an assessment of biotechnological capabilities

The biotechnology industry is moving at a revolutionary pace. Dr. Raymond Zilinskas, Director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, co-authored a 2002 report detailing the threat of bioterrorism. According to the Washington Post, the report noted that “some key biotechnologies would be achievable only three to four years from then.” However, by the time the final report was sent out for review by bench scientists, the report’s expert panel learned that some of those technologies had been developed. “It shows how fast the field is moving,” noted Dr. Zilinskas.

From altering biological agents at their most fundamental building blocks to “de novo” synthesis of preexisting or new microbes, the wonders of biotechnology often seem boundless. The risks presented by advances in biotechnology will increasingly demand attention in the future.