Breakdown of Federal Funding for Biodefense 2001-2007
The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation has released their analysis of US Federal Spending on Biodefense from 2001-2007.
The numbers are staggering: Since 2001 the U.S. government has spent or allocated over $36 billion among 11 federal departments and agencies on biodefense. The Bush Administration has proposed $8 billion in biodefense spending for FY ’07, approximately $120 million (or 1.5%) over the ’06 appropriation. Of particular interest was that only 2% of all federal biodefense funding has been devoted to efforts to prevent the development, acquisition, and use of biological weapons by other nations and terrorists.
You can view their analysis here or download it as a PDF
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.