Morton Halperin speaks at CSIS

By Hans M. Kristensen

Kevin Kallmyer at CSIS has an interesting recap of a recent debate between Paula DeSutter and Mort Halperin about the New START Treaty.

Ratification of the treaty is held up in Congress by a handful of Senators who (mis)use questions about, among other issues, verification to extort billions of dollars to pet nuclear modernization projects at the expense of greater U.S. interests.

During the CSIS debate, Mort Halperin provided an enlightening anecdote about how to judge whether ratification of the treaty is in the U.S. interest. It cuts to the heart of what is important and deserves a repost here:

How do you decide whether a Treaty is in the American interest in relation to verification? The question cannot be are we sure that we will have 100% confidence that we would detect the first instance of Russian cheating. The question has to take into account the limits of the Treaty, and some degree of Russian cheating, is it in our interest to have the limit in the treaty, as opposed to not constraining the Russian forces. Our notion of what is acceptable verification goes back to the Reagan administration, it actually goes back before that…because the last time the Joint Chiefs of Staff held the view that a limit was not acceptable unless it could be 100% verifiable was in 1968. At that point, the Administration was planning to put forward a proposal to the Soviet Union to ban the further production of any ballistic missiles or submarines. The Joint Chief’s position then was to we can only include things in the agreement if we could be absolutely certain there will be no Russian cheating. A navy officer came to me one day and said, “Well, we cannot include submarines in the agreement.”

I said, “Why is that?”

He said, “Because the CIA has just come out with its estimate that said the Russians could cheat on an agreement that bans Russia from building any more ballistic missile submarines.”

And I said, “What does it say?”

He said, “It says the Russians could build as many as 3 submarines and we wouldn’t detect it, and only if they build a fourth submarine could we have very high confidence of detection.”

And I said, “How many submarines doe we have now?”
He said, “41.”

I said, “How many submarines do we plan to have 10 years from now.”

He said “41.”

I said, “How many submarines do the Russians have now?”

He said, “I think one.”

I said, “How many do we think they will have in 10 years from now.”

He said, “50.”

I said, “So, you prefer a world where we do not limit this and the Russians have 50 submarines and we have 41, to a world where we have 41, and the Russians have [4] until we can be sure we detect the [5th] submarine.”

And he said, “That’s right, the principle is that you do not include something in an agreement that cannot be verified.”

I looked at him and said, “Well, I think I’m going to win this fight…and I did.”

And the Joint Chiefs changed their position then, to what is clearly the correct position. You ask yourself about each limit, including the warhead limit in this treaty; is it in our interest to have this limit, recognizing that there obviously could be some amount of Russian cheating. The question is how much Russian cheating can there be before we detect it, and the question is what is the strategic significance of that cheating. We have seen no such analysis, because no such analysis that could be presented would be the slightest bit persuasive. The fact is that with the margin of deterrence we have to deter a Russian attack, that the margins of cheating the Russians can do is simply insignificant to the security to the United States.

Check out the full debate at the CSIS web site.

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

Like many techie sorts interested in military matters, I was caught up in the great California missile plume mystery.  I first heard about it when a reported called with questions and she sent a link to a video.  A traffic helicopter, an often underappreciated source of strategic intelligence, working for a local news station, KCAL, filmed what appeared to be a trail from a rocket launched off the coast of Los Angeles.  And the pictures do look like a rocket trail.  If someone showed me the still photographs and told me they were of a rocket launch, I wouldn’t think to question it.  But based on the photo, I would guess it is at least an anti-aircraft missile, like the Standard, and that is a 3000 pound missile, so this is not some amateur hobbyists flying a model rocket.  The Navy swore it wasn’t one of theirs.  The Air Force, too, denied any rocket launch and, anyway, Vandenberg, which does launch rockets, is in another direction.  No foreign government with the technical capability to, say, get a freighter close and launch a rocket from the back as some sort of demonstration would be crazy enough to do such a thing and the only country crazy enough to do it, North Korea, doesn’t have the technical capability to get away with it.  If it were some sort of secret test, then why test it off the coast of a multi-million inhabitant city and not, say, off the coast of Antarctica?  (And Vandenberg launches secret payloads all the time.  The fact of the launches obviously can’t be kept secret but the payloads are, so why go to the trouble?)

So, with no one confessing to launching a rocket, what is the explanation?  The obvious alternative is a contrail from a large jet aircraft at typical cruising altitude, heading toward the camera.  Two rocket experts, David Wright and Ted Postol seem to come out in different positions on this.  Jeffrey Lewis cited a website devoted to jet contrails with lots of great pictures.  If a long horizontal band stretches off to the horizon, the eye will see it as a vertical band rising from the horizon and some of the contrail photos make clear that the streak in the picture could be a contrail.

I was excited to be invited onto ABC News because I assumed they had the original video, not the poor quality video available on the web, but they actually had a 20 second clip that was not as good as what I had seen already but I could watch it on a big screen.  The contrail seemed too fat at the tip to be an airplane contrail (if I watch multiengine jets overhead, even I, with so-so eyesight, can see two separate contrails that take a second to converge).  Toward the end of the video there was a glow that easily could have been a rocket exhaust plume but, if I could see it then, why not earlier?  So I guessed that must be sun glint off an airplane.  (I believe, but am not sure, that at the time the sun had set already for those on the surface but an aircraft at cruising altitude would still be in sun.)  All in all, it seems to be an airplane but if someone later claimed it had been a rocket, I certainly couldn’t prove them wrong based on the hazy, choppy video I got to see.

But the real mystery here, to me at least, is that there is any mystery.  Why hasn’t the television station released the whole video?  You would think, with all the attention from the press and their needling of the Pentagon, someone would try to go to the source.  The problem with “the” video is that it is not the video but a news clip containing the video and it is edited into what is effectively a series of still photographs.  If the object were a plane, then it would be at long distance, it would be traveling about 600 mph, and, moreover, heading in the direction of the observer.  All these factors would make the track across the image slow.  A rocket would be much closer and traveling transverse to the camera view at least two to three times the speed of an airplane.  All these factors would add up to make the track appear to move quickly across the image.  My guess is that watching the original unedited video for 10 seconds would resolve this “mystery.”  I hope the helicopter cameraman didn’t erase it.

Because of what appears to have been a computer glitch, a group of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) was temporarily off-line last week and not ready to launch on a moment’s notice. According to an article in The Atlantic, some Republicans have suggested that this means that New START, the nuclear arms control treaty awaiting Senate ratification, is unwise and should be rejected. This assertion is nonsense but is a useful illustration of how much of current nuclear “thinking” is just a holdover from now irrelevant Cold War doctrine. (more…)

Deliveries of arms through the Defense Department’s Foreign Military Sales Program (FMS) increased by nearly $700 million in fiscal year (FY) 2009, according to the most recent edition of the Annual Military Assistance Report. The report, which is often referred to as the “Section 655 Report,” is compiled each year by the Defense Department and the State Department. The Defense Department’s contributions to the annual report are acquired by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) through annual requests under the Freedom of Information Act. While the report is useful for tracking trends in the overall value of certain types of arms sales to specific countries, it provides very little detailed information on individual exports, or exports arranged through non-traditional US military aid programs. Changing the way the data is aggregated and presented, and expanding the report to include data on all arms exports, would make the report more useful and improve congressional and public understanding of US arms exports.

Click here to read the full article.

I have not written here on the New START treaty, in part because everything that can be said has been said, well, almost everything…see below.  The treaty is in no way revolutionary.  I don’t think Reagan would bat an eyelash at it.  Yet, while there is widespread bipartisan support for the treaty, including almost all the leading defense specialists from former Republican administrations, there is also some opposition to the treaty, with the Heritage Foundation having taken it on as a cause.  Some of the critiques are truly bizarre, such as the treaty does not address Russian tactical nuclear weapons or North Korea.  (On that last point, would one of the critics please sketch out how we would have included North Korea in the negotiation?)  Of course, no past arms control treaty has ever covered every type of weapon and if New START is not ratified then any chance of negotiating limits on tactical nuclear weapons is off the table completely.  (The treaty does not cure world hunger either, another good cause.)

The one issue that opponents consistently latch onto is the supposed limits on missile defense.  There is language in the preamble drawing attention to the connection between offensive and defensive missiles and in the text there is a limit on converting offensive missile launchers to be able to launch defensive missiles.  Administration spokesmen have addressed these criticisms by saying the preamble language is not binding.  I find it very strange that advocates of missile defense would like to argue that there is no connection between offensive and defensive missiles. Of course there is a connection between the two of them.  Isn’t one supposed to shoot down the other?  Isn’t that a connection? It is like arguing there is no connection between ships and torpedoes.  (I think the connection is actually quite weak because defensive missiles probably cannot shoot much down, but that is a different story.)  Simply saying that doesn’t seem to change much. (more…)

The global trade in ammunition for small arms and light weapons is worth an estimated $4.3 billion, according to a comprehensive new study released today.

Findings from the study, which is co-authored by Matt Schroeder of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), appears as a chapter in Small Arms Survey 2010: Gangs, Groups, and Guns.

The study is part of a multi-year assessment of authorized international transfers of small arms and light weapons, their parts, accessories and ammunition. Previous findings on the international trade in firearms are available in last year’s edition of the Small Arms Survey’s annual yearbook.

Highlights from this year’s chapter include the following:

• The USD 4.3 billion ammunition finding shows that the long-standing estimate of USD 4 billion for the total trade (including weapons, parts, and accessories) considerably undervalues recent activity.

• In 2007, 26 countries had documented exports of small arms ammunition worth more than USD 10 million.

• The trade in propellant chemicals is worth at least tens, and perhaps hundreds, of millions of US dollars each year.

• Governments procure most of their light weapons ammunition from domestic producers when possible. Therefore, international transfers of light weapons ammunition are probably a small percentage of global public procurement.

• Ammunition imported by Western countries is overwhelmingly sourced from Western companies. Public procurement data from seven Western states indicates that in recent years they have received less than four per cent of their light weapons ammunition (by value) from non-Western firms.

• In 2007 the top exporters of all small arms and light weapons (those with annual exports of at least USD 100 million), according to available customs data, were (in descending order) the United States, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Austria, Belgium, the United Kingdom, China, Switzerland, Canada, Turkey, and the Russian Federation. The top importers of all small arms and light weapons for 2007 (those with annual imports of at least USD 100 million), according to available customs data, were (in descending order) the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, and Spain.

A summary of the chapter is available here.

The full chapter is available here.

by Alicia Godsberg

The NPT Review Conference ended last Friday with the adoption by consensus of a Final Document that includes both a review of commitments and a forward looking action plan for nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and the promotion of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.  In the early part of last week it was unclear if consensus would be reached, as states entered last-minute negotiations over contentious issues.  While the consensus document represents a real achievement and is a relief after the failure of the last Review Conference in 2005 to produce a similar document, much of the language in the action plan has been watered down from previous versions and documents, leaving the world to wait until the next review in 2015 to see how far these initial steps will take the global community toward fulfilling the Treaty’s goals. (more…)

by Alicia Godsberg

Yesterday FAS premiered our documentary Paths To Zero at the NPT RevCon.  The screening was a great success and there was a very engaging conversation afterward between the audience and Ivan Oelrich, who was there to promote the film.  As a result of some suggestions, we are hoping to translate the narration to different languages so the film can be used as an educational tool around the world.  You can see Paths To Zero by following this link – we will also be putting up the individual chapters soon.

This morning I spoke at a side event at the NPT RevCon entitled “Law Versus Doctrine: Assessing US and Russian Nuclear Postures.”  I was asked to give FAS’s perspective on the New START, NPR, and new Russian military doctrine.  Several people asked me for my remarks, so I’m posting them below the jump.   (more…)

By Matthew Buongiorno
Scoville Fellow

Shortly after the United States invaded Iraq and disbanded its army, the Bush Administration concluded that a key to stabilizing the country was the creation of a self-sufficient and effective Iraqi Security Force (ISF). To this end, the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF) – later succeeded by the Iraq Security Forces Fund (ISFF) – was established as a train-and-equip program charged with quickly delivering weaponry to the ISF. While the ad hoc program was successful in quickly supplying large quantities of weapons to the ISF, it lacked the stringent accountability procedures applied to other U.S. arms transfer programs and, consequently, may have failed to prevent the diversion of U.S. weapons.

Recognizing the dangers associated with poorly secured weaponry, the United States has taken several important steps to improve stockpile security and accountability procedures for U.S.-origin and U.S.-funded weapons transferred to Iraq. These steps are assessed in the latest edition of the Public Interest Report.

The article draws on documents retrieved by the Federation of American Scientists via the Freedom of Information Act. These documents, as well as additional documents not cited in the article but of relevance to the debate over security and accountability procedures in Iraq, are posted below:

▪ Compliance with Section 1228 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (FY08 NDAA)

▪ Presidential Certification of Compliance with Section 1228 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (FY08 NDAA)

▪ Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) Compliance with Section 1228 of FY08 NDAA

▪ Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Program Compliance with Section 1228 of the FY08 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)

▪ Directive-Type Memorandum (DTM) 08-041 – Registration and Monitoring of Defense Articles and Services Provided to Iraq

▪ Background 1228 Policy Changes

▪ DOD Inspector General Report SPO-2008-001 – Special Plans and Operations: Assessment of the Accountability of Arms and Ammunition Provided to the Security Forces of Iraq (Part I)

▪ DOD Inspector General Report SPO-2008-001 – Special Plans and Operations: Assessment of the Accountability of Arms and Ammunition Provided to the Security Forces of Iraq (Part II)

▪ DOD Inspector General Report SPO-2008-001 – Special Plans and Operations: Assessment of the Accountability of Arms and Ammunition Provided to the Security Forces of Iraq (Part III)

Current pace of U.S. strategic warhead downloading could reach New START limit in 2010.

By Hans M. Kristensen

The United States appears to be moving toward early implementation of the New START treaty signed with Russian less than one month ago.

The rapid implementation is evident in the State Department’s latest fact sheet, which declares that the United States as of December 31, 2009, deployed 1,968 strategic warheads.

The New START force level of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads is not required to be reached until 2017 at the earliest. But at the current downloading rate, the United States could reach the limit before the end of this year.

Since the signing of the Moscow Treaty in 2002, the United States has removed an average of 490 warheads each year from ballistic missiles and bomber bases, for a total of approximately 3,436 warheads. There are now only a few hundred strategic warheads left at U.S. bomber bases, with most of the deployed warheads concentrated on ballistic missiles.

The last time the United States deployed less than 2,000 strategic warheads was in 1956. The peak was nearly 12,790 deployed strategic warheads in 1987.

The rapid downloading of U.S. strategic forces illustrates just how confident the military is in the capability of U.S. nuclear forces to provide a credible deterrent even at the New START level. Several thousand non-deployed warheads in storage can be loaded back onto missiles and bombers if necessary.

Even so, the rapid downloading gives the Obama administration a strong basis to argue at the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference that it is serious about moving forward on nuclear arms control.

Additional information: United States Reaches Moscow Treaty Warhead Level Early | Obama and the Nuclear War Plan

This publication was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has endured as the cornerstone of the non-proliferation regime and remains the only legally binding multilateral agreement on nuclear disarmament. In May 2010, the NPT Review Conference met at the United Nations and provided a critical opportunity to advance the vision President Obama laid out of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Download Full Brief

By Matt Schroeder

Arms sold by the Defense Department to foreign recipients totaled more than $15 billion in the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2009, according to a report obtained by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). The quarterly report, which is dated February 2009 and is required by Section 36(a) of the Arms Export Control Act, indicates that defense articles and services sold through Defense Department Security Assistance programs from October through December 2008 were worth approximately $15.79 billion[1]. The United Arab Emirates was the largest buyer, accounting for $7 billion of sales. Saudi Arabia was a distant second with $1.87 billion, and Iraq was third with $947 million in sales. The remaining top ten recipients are listed in the table below. Sales to the top ten countries accounted for more than 80% of total sales, and nearly 89% of unclassified arms sales. These data show that a handful of countries continue to account – in dollar value terms – for the vast majority of arms sold through the US Defense Department.

 

DSCA Security Assistance Sales 1 October 2008 through 31 December 2008
Country	Total Estimated Case Value
United Arab Emirates	$7,017,276,438
Saudi Arabia	$1,874,981,657
Iraq	$947,469,859
NAMO	$871,283,087
Egypt	$479,317,918
South Korea	$476,861,899
Switzerland	$303,522,255
Turkey	$258,385,648
Canada	$255,271,952
Colombia	$219,957,504
Source: Quarterly report required under Section 36(a) of the Arms Export Control Act, February 2009. Table compiled by the Federation of American Scientists.

The report contains new or more detailed data on the following:

• Outstanding letters of offer that include Major Defense Equipment worth $1 million or more as of 31 December 2008.

• Arms sales agreements (i.e. “accepted letters of offer”) that include Major Defense Equipment worth $1 million or more during the first quarter of FY2009.

• Total value of defense articles and services sold to each country/purchaser during FY09 as of 31 December 2008.

• Foreign Military Sales (FMS) Direct Credits and Grant Apportionment for FY09 as of 31 December 2008.

• Foreign Military Sales projections for FY09 as of 31 December 2008.

• Foreign Military Construction Sales, 1 October 2008 through 31 December 2008.

• U.S. Munitions items sold, leased, or otherwised transferred by the DoD to other U.S. government entities, 1 October 2008 through 31 December 2008.

• Security Assistance Surveys authorized between 1 October and 31 December 2008.

• Excess Defense Articles transfers under Foreign Military Sales and Grants, 1 October 2008 through 31 December 2008.

• Waivers of nonrecurrent cost (NC) recoupment charges, 1 October 2008 through 31 December 2008. Note: this section contains detailed commodity data.

• Concluded government-to-government agreements regarding foreign coproduction of defense articles of United States origin, 1 October 2008 through 31 December 2008.

Much of this data is not available in other reports, or is not as detailed. For example, the Section 36(a) report contains specific data on missile sales, most of which are redacted in the most comprehensive publicly available source of data, the Annual Military Assistance Report (i.e. Section 655 report).[2] Data on sales of other commodities are also notably more specific than comparable data in the Annual Military Assistance Report. For example, the Section 36(a) report reveals that an October 2008 ammunition sale to Israel consisted of HEDP, White Star & Practice 40 mm ammunition valued at $9,897,682. Comparable data on ammunition (deliveries) in the Annual Military Assistance Report is aggregated into commodity categories that are so broad (e.g. “cartridge, 37 mm to 75 mm”) that the data are almost meaningless.

The Section 36(a) report is not a substitute for the Annual Military Assistance Report. It only includes disaggregated data[3]. on sales agreements, not actual deliveries, and only on a small sub-set of Defense Department arms sales (i.e. sales of Major Defense Equipment valued at $1 million or more). Furthermore, the data on commercial sales were withheld from public release by the Department of State [To the State Department’s credit, however, they recently posted a CSV file containing the data on commercial exports in the FY08 Section 655 report. CSV files are readily convertable into excel spreadsheets, databases, and other use-friendly research tools].

In short, the Section 36(a) report is a useful supplement to the Annual Military Assistance Report, and its narrow and specific commodity categorization is a model for other reports, many of which, like the Annual Military Assistance Report, are in dire need of an overhaul (See Eight Recommendations for Improving Transparency in US Arms Transfers).

The FAS has submitted requests for more recent editions of the Section 36(a) report, and will post them on the Strategic Security Blog and our U.S. Arms Transfers: Government Data webpage as they become available.

Click here for a pdf version of this summary.

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[1] A more complete accounting of the value of arms sales in FY2009 will be released within the next couple months as part of the “supporting information” in the Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations. Data from previous years is available on the Federation of American Scientists’ website.
[2] It should be noted that the commodity-specific data in the Section 36(a) report is on agreements (i.e. accepted Letters of Offer and Acceptance) while the data on Defense Department exports in the Section 655 report is on arms that were delivered to the foreign recipient.
[3] By disaggregated data, we are referring to country-specific data that is disaggregated by commodity.