Formed over 6 billion years ago, uranium, a dense, silvery-white metal, was created “during the fiery lifetimes and explosive deaths in stars in the heavens around us,” stated Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias.¹ With a radioactive half-life of about 4.5 billion years, uranium-238 is the most dominant of several unstable uranium isotopes in nature and has enabled scientists to understand how our planet was created and formed. For at least the last 2 billion years, uranium shifted from deep in the earth to the rocky shell-like mantle, and then was driven by volcanic processes further up to oceans and to the continental crusts.  The Colorado Plateau at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where some of the nation’s largest uranium deposits exist, began to be formed some 300 million years ago, followed later by melting glaciers, and erosion which left behind exposed layers of sand, silt and mud. One of these was a canary-yellow sediment that would figure prominently in the nuclear age.

From 1942 to 1971, the United States nuclear weapons program purchased about 250,000 metric tons of uranium concentrated from more than 100 million tons of ore.²  Although more than half came from other nations, the uranium industry heavily depended on Indian miners in the Colorado Plateau. Until recently,³ their importance remained overlooked by historians of the atomic age. There is little doubt their efforts were essential for the United States to amass one of the most destructive nuclear arsenals in the world.  By the 1970s an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 of the 12,000 miners employed in the United States were Navajos. ^{4 5}

From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, they dug up nearly 4 million tons of uranium ore – nearly a quarter of the total national underground production in the United States.⁶  In doing so they were sent into harm’s way without their knowledge,  becoming the most severely exposed group of workers to ionizing radiation in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.

For minimum wage or less, they blasted open seams of ore, built wooden beam supports in the mine shafts, and dug out ore pieces with picks and wheel barrows. The shafts were as deep as 1,500 feet with little or no ventilation. The bitter tasting dust was all pervasive, coating their teeth and causing chronic coughing.  They ate in the mines and drank water that dripped from the walls. The water contained high quantities of radon – a radioactive gas emanating from the ore. Radon decays into heavy, more radiotoxic isotopes called “radon daughters,” which include isotopes of polonium, bismuth, and lead. Radon daughters’ alpha particle emissions are considered to be about 20 times more carcinogenic than x-rays.⁷ As they lodge in the respiratory system, especially the deep lung, radon daughters emit energetic ionizing radiation that can damage cells of sensitive internal tissues.

The miners were never warned of the hazards of radioactivity in the mines in which they inhaled, ingested and brought home along with their contaminated clothing. Withholding information about the hazards of the workplace was deeply embedded in the bureaucratic culture of the nuclear weapons program. In 1994, a previously secret document (written in the late 1940s) was made public by the Department of Energy which crystallized the long-held rationale for keeping nuclear workers in the dark.

“We can see the possibility of a shattering effect on the morale of the employees if they become aware that there was substantial reason to question the standards of safety under which they are working. In the hands of labor unions the results of this study would add substance to demands for extra-hazardous pay . . . knowledge of the results of this study might increase the number of claims of occupational injury due to radiation.”⁸

Kee Begay worked in the mines for 29 years and was dying of lung cancer. “The mines were poor and not fit for human beings,” he testified at a citizen’s hearing in 1980. Begay also lost a son to cancer. “He was one of many children that used to play on the uranium piles during those years. We had a lot of uranium piles near our homes –just about fifty or a hundred feet away or so. Can you imagine? Kids go out and play on those piles.”⁹

For many years the Navajos and other tribes living in the Colorado Plateau used uranium ore in sand paintings and for body adornment. By 1896 samples of this ore were passed along to mineralogists at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. Initially confounded by its properties, the Smithsonian experts concluded this was an extremely rare mineral containing uranium and vanadium.

That same year, French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered that uranium crystals emitted “luminous rays” on photographic plates. Two years later, Becquerel’s colleagues Marie and Pierre Curie painstakingly extracted tiny amounts of two new elements that they named polonium and radium from several tons of uranium ore in an abandoned shed in Paris. Emitting millions of times more of these mysterious rays than uranium, Marie Curie coined the term “radioactivity” to describe their energetic properties.

News of the discovery in Colorado came quickly to the Curies, who were seeking richer ores than those from eastern Germany. In 1897, aware of growing scientific interest in their native country, chemists Henry Poulot and Charles Volleque (who lived in Colorado), purchased 10 tons of this mysterious ore and sent samples to the Paris School of Mines in France,¹⁰ where they were also analyzed by Marie Curie.¹¹ A year later it was named Carnotite after Aldophe Carnot, the Inspector General of French mines.

By 1910, a 20 by 60 mile oval strip of carnotite with countless visible swaths of canary-yellow became one of the world’s first major radioactive metal discoveries – helping to usher in the nuclear age. By 1912, nearly all of the uranium ore went to European firms. Its vanadium content (used to harden steel), came into heavy demand during World War I for use in armaments as it would during World War II.

The Colorado Plateau became one of the world’s most important sources of radium, which at a price of $160,000 a gram in 1913 became the most precious substance in the world. About three tons of uranium contained one gram of radium. Half went for use in medicine and the rest was used for luminous paint on dials and other instruments.

By the mid-1920s, the U.S. uranium boom ended when far richer deposits were found in the Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo. While uranium mining continued in Colorado, the Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK) of Belgium dominated the world uranium market. In the shadow of the highly lucrative radium boom, a revolutionary and fiercely competitive scientific exploration of its radioactive properties would reveal the enormous energy contained in the atoms of uranium. ¹²

Spurred on by the scientific discoveries and growing consensus among scientists and engineers that atomic weapons fueled by uranium could be made in a relatively short period of time by Germany, the United States launched an unprecedented crash program in December 1941 under the auspices of the Manhattan Engineering District (MED) of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After surveying the known uranium sources, the MED concluded that the Shinkolobwe Mine in the Belgian Congo, the Eldorado Mine in Canada, and the Colorado Plateau were the three most important locations of uranium mining in the world. After being warned by a British scientist in 1939, Edgar Sengier, the head of Union Miniere’s that owned the Congo mine, managed to secretly ship 1,250 tons to the United States in late 1940, where it was stored in a warehouse in Staten Island, New York.

Described as a “freak occurrence of nature” by a top official of the early U.S. nuclear weapons program,¹³ the Congo mine yielded the highest concentrations of uranium (30-70%)¹⁴ of any mine in the world since.¹⁵ By comparison, the Congo ore contained as much as much as 7,000 times the concentration uranium than mined in the United States.  Between 1942 and the late 1950s, the U.S. nuclear weapons program plant processed approximately roughly 20,000 tons of uranium oxide from the Shinkolobwe mine.^{16 17 18}

Under the MED, the government assumed total control over the production, milling, refining, and use of uranium. This was done out of an office in New York City. Because of its higher purity and immediate availability, uranium from the Belgian Congo proved to be the most significant supply.

By the end of the war, the Colorado Plateau provided 2,698,000 pounds of uranium oxide, (about 14 percent of the project’s uranium needs)¹⁹ with the rest coming from the Belgium Congo and Canada.  However, the Plateau’s ore reserve was considered very important because it was considered the world’s third largest reserve and primary domestic source of uranium. Grand Junction, Colorado became the center of this secret operation.

On August 1, 1946, Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, which created a new civilian-controlled Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). This new agency consisted of a civilian panel, and a panel of senators and congressmen who formed the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE).  As it was during the war, all nuclear facilities and uranium remained under federal control with the government as the only producer of fissionable materials. Even though mining and milling were left to the private sector, the government remained the sole customer with total control over the industry.

Given the potentially tenuous dependence on foreign supplies, the AEC realized that the enormous uranium demand to fuel plutonium production reactors being constructed at the Hanford site in Washington and the uranium enrichment plants in Tennessee and Kentucky could not be met without a major increase in domestic mining. By 1948, the AEC stimulated a uranium mining boom that led to the discovery of other important ore findings on the Navajo reservation and elsewhere. Mining companies promptly entered into agreements that included requirements to hire and train tribal members. In addition to the Colorado Plateau, uranium mining extended to the Black Hills of South Dakota, Northwest Nebraska, Spokane, Washington, the Wind River Indian Reservation and other sites in central Wyoming, the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana, and the Texas Gulf coast.

In the Colorado Plateau alone, uranium mining increased by nearly 150 times from 1948 (54,000 tons of ore) to 1960 (8 million tons).  The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s uranium purchases exceeded $2.4 billion (2013 dollars) in 1960 alone, making it the third most valuable metal mined in the United States.²⁰

The AEC also encouraged private companies to establish mills and buying stations to process the ore.  After milling, about 99 percent of the ore is left behind as waste containing significant amounts of long-lived radiotoxic elements such as radium 226 (which has a half-life equal to 1,625 years). At the end of 1961, there were 25 active uranium mills with a daily capacity of 20,800 metric tons of uranium oxide. Nearly half of the total ore mined was milled in the Grants, New Mexico area.²¹

More than 230 million tons of uranium mill tailings in the United States have accumulated, dwarfing the volume of all radioactive waste from the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation.  Only after widespread contamination containing long-lived radiotoxic elements such as radium 226 drew public alarm were regulations established for the remediation of uranium mill tailings in 1980.

The hazards of uranium mining were known for centuries. As early as 1556, dust in the Ore Mountain mines (Erzgebirge, bordering Germany and what is now the Czech Republic), was reported as having “corrosive qualities, it eats away the lungs and implants consumption in the body…”²² By 1879, researchers found that 75 percent of the miners in the Ore Mountains had died from lung cancer. By 1932, the Ore Mountain miners were receiving compensation for their cancers from the German government.

Uranium mining was convincingly linked to lung cancer by dozens of epidemiological and animal studies by the late 1930s.²³ In 1942, Wilhelm C. Hueper, the founding director of the environmental cancer section of the National Cancer Institute, brought the European studies to light in the United States—concluding that radon gas was responsible for half of the deaths of European miners after 10 to 20 years of exposure.²⁴ By this time, uranium had become a key element for the making of the first atomic weapons. Dr. Hueper was blocked from further publications and discussion in this area by his superiors- who informed him that it was “not in the public interest.”²⁵

In defiance to the AEC, Dr. Heuper prepared a paper discussing the hazards of uranium mining for the Colorado Medical Society in 1952. Shields Warren, Director of the AECs Division of Biology and Medicine, ordered the head of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to direct Dr. Heuper to remove all references to uranium mining hazards.  Declaring he had not joined the NCI to be called “a scientific liar,” Dr. Heuper withdrew from the conference and sent a copy of his paper to the President of the Society. The Surgeon General soon forbade him from any further epidemiological research on occupational cancer, and he was further prevented from traveling on official business west of the Mississippi River.²⁶

A year before Dr. Heuper’s confrontation with the AEC, researchers from the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), in the confines of Cold War secrecy, conclusively showed that radiation doses to the miners’ lungs were from radon decay products.²⁷  Around that same time, PHS researchers reported in a classified progress report that radon levels were “310 times the accepted allowable concentration.”²⁸

Radiation doses were calculated to be “twice to nearly ten times the allowable amount of radiation… In the worst cases, they were exceeding allowable weekly doses in less than one day, and were reaching total annual doses in just a week.” ²⁹ The report concluded, “It is not surprising the exposure to radiation doses of this magnitude should produce malignancies.”³⁰

At private meetings with the AEC, mining companies bitterly resisted ventilating the mines, claiming that it would close smaller operations and raise the price of uranium. “While it has a big effect on the price of ore,” an AEC Health scientist argued at a meeting of agency’s Advisory Committee on Biology and Medicine in 1956. “By the time you get it into a reactor or into a bomb that differential is insignificant.”³¹

By 1957, PHS official Henry Doyle told a hostile audience that radon concentrations in some domestic mines were 67 times higher than in the German mines, where a lung cancer epidemic had been long identified. He also pointed out that the average radiation lung dose to miners in the Colorado Plateau was 21 times higher than allowed in AEC nuclear weapons plants.³² By 1962, the Public Health Service revealed that radon exposure in the mines was statistically linked to lung cancer among miners in the United States.³³

Lung disease associated with radon exposure was “totally avoidable” declared Merrill Eisenbud, a former Chief AEC health scientist in 1979. “The Atomic Energy Commission …is uniquely responsible for the death of many men who developed lung cancer as a result of the failure of the mine operators, who must also bear the blame, because they too had the information, and the Government should not have had to club them into ventilating their mines.” Lung cancer risk for Navajo miners was subsequently reported in 2000 to be nearly 30 times higher than for non-miners.³⁴ The percentage of cancer cases linked to radon exposure was comparable to what Wilhelm Heuper first reported in 1942.

While the Navajos were contributing to the increase of ore production during the 1950s, production of fissionable materials was reaching its height. By the mid-1960s, the U.S. nuclear arsenal contained more than 30,000 warheads.³⁵ This is when President Johnson ended production of highly enriched uranium for weapons and sharply curtailed plutonium production – signaling an end to AEC uranium purchases that would stop by 1971. The once booming uranium market was now stagnant, with some of the oldest and largest companies on the Colorado Plateau pulling out.  Between 1961 and 1966, domestic uranium ore production dropped by 50 percent.³⁶

In early March of 1967, the Washington Post ran a series of front-page stories by John Reistrup exposing decades of failure by the U.S. government to prevent what had become a growing epidemic of lung cancers among uranium miners. Keying off Reistrup’s stories, the Post’s editorial board castigated the Johnson Administration and Congress for presiding over “death mines.”³⁷

Moved by the stories, Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz took unilateral action in May of 1967, proposing the first federal standard to limit radiation exposures in U.S. uranium mines. It would reduce the average radon concentrations measured in the mines that year by more than three times. True-to-form, it provoked  immediate opposition by the industry and the JCAE, which held 12 days of hearings in an effort to block the Labor Department. Wirtz was undeterred, arguing “ventilation is a cost item. It doesn’t belong on the same balance sheet with cancer.”³⁸ By the late summer the standard was endorsed by the Johnson Administration, but delayed its implementation until 1971.

By this time, the Department of Defense declared that its uranium stockpile goals were met and stopped purchasing uranium. Moreover, Congress authorized a cutback on acquisitions. The AEC would no longer guarantee prices for crude ore and cancelled its exploration campaigns. As a result, the demand for uranium slowed and insecurity crept over the mining industry. The United States would never again experience the enormous uranium boom brought on during the first 30 years of the nuclear arms race.

Even though there was a significant body of evidence spanning decades of deliberate negligence by the U.S. government, federal courts denied claims by the miners and others exposed to radioactive fallout from Nevada nuclear weapons testing, on the grounds of sovereign immunity stating, “all the actions of various governmental agencies complained of by plaintiffs were the result of conscious policy decisions made at high government levels based on considerations of political and national security feasibility factors.”³⁹

It took more than 20 years and a considerable amount of effort by the miners, their families, before the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was passed in October 1990. The Act offered a formal apology for sending people into harm’s way and provided a one-time compensation to each victim in the amount of $100,000.

Ten years later, Congress passed even more sweeping legislation, known as the Energy Employee Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. It not only provided compensation for the many thousands of nuclear weapons workers, but also expanded the benefits for uranium miners – increasing the lump sum to $150,000 per person and providing health care. Financial compensation came too little and too late. It would never be enough for an illness and death that could have been prevented.

The legacy of U.S. uranium mining lingers on. More than three billion metric tons of mining and milling wastes were generated in the United States.⁴⁰ Today, Navajos still live near about one third of all abandoned uranium mines in the United States (~1,200 out of 4,000).⁴¹ Only after a concerted effort by Navajo activists to spur congressional investigations in 1993 and 2006, has the U.S. government recently promised to complete remediation of abandoned mines, nearly a century after the first uranium leases were issued on Navajo land.⁴²

Robert Alvarez is a Senior Scholar at IPS, where he is currently focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies. Between 1993 and 1999, Mr. Alvarez served as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment. While at DOE, he coordinated the effort to enact nuclear worker compensation legislation. In 1994 and 1995, Bob led teams in North Korea to establish control of nuclear weapons materials. He coordinated nuclear material strategic planning for the department and established the department’s first asset management program. Bob was awarded two Secretarial Gold Medals, the highest awards given by the department.

Starting from literally table-top science in 1939, the development of a full-fledged nuclear weapons production system in the United States by late summer 1945 is properly regarded as a near-miraculous achievement. It’s no surprise that the Manhattan Project has long been hailed as one of the great success stories of modern science and technology.

But it has become increasingly common to invoke the Manhattan Project as a general exemplar of applied science. Using Google’s Alert service, one can see that almost every week someone, somewhere, calls for a “new Manhattan Project.” Apparently, we need a Manhattan Project for cancer, for AIDS, for health, for solar power, for alternative energy, for fusion power, for thorium reactors, for global warming, for cybersecurity, for nutritional supplements (!), and, most literally, for protecting the island of Manhattan from the rising seas.

The historical trends of this invocation can be roughly charted with the Google Ngram Viewer, which charts word frequencies across the massive Google Books corpus. Searching for the terms “a Manhattan Project for” and “a new Manhattan Project” reveals the following interesting trend regarding relative usage in American English:

Figure 1

Relative instances of the phrases “a Manhattan Project for” and “a new Manhattan Project” in the Google Books corpus. A similar trend can be found for “a Manhattan Project,” though there is more noise due to phrases like “a Manhattan Project veteran.” Google Ngrams Viewer is case-sensitive.

As the data shows, while such phrasing in general was not completely unheard of during the Cold War, it was pretty rare. Only with the fall of the Soviet Union did this specific phrasing start to rise in frequency.

The Manhattan Project ought to mean much more than just “a big government investment,” should it not? But if we did want to draw out lessons from the Manhattan Project, in order to better use it as an exemplar for contemporary discussions, what would we say? What would a call for a new Manhattan Project really mean if we took it seriously?

The overriding factor of the Manhattan Project- the policy that touched everything and affected everything it touched- was secrecy. As such, one obvious contradiction in calling for a “new Manhattan Project” is there were no public calls for a project to develop an atomic bomb because it was secret. Instead, there was private lobbying for such work. Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard famously wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 arguing for government investigation into the possibility of the military applications of uranium fission, and this resulted in the creation of a small, exploratory “Uranium Committee.” Several not-terribly-productive years later, after seeing enthusiastic calculations from the United Kingdom, the work was scaled up, turned over to the Army Corps of Engineers, and formally became the Manhattan Project. This too was done in secret by well-connected insiders. Had anyone actually made a call for an American atomic bomb effort, they would have been rudely silenced by the Manhattan Project security team for drawing too much attention to the issue. ¹

This secrecy also quite deliberately meant that only the slimmest accountability was enforced. Congress was purposefully excluded from the “secret,” because, as the scientist-administrator Vannevar Bush put it to Roosevelt, “it would be ruinous to the essential secrecy to have to defend before an appropriations committee any request for funds for this project.”² For this reason, all of the early funding for the research was taken out of special discretionary funds that Roosevelt had at his disposal, the beginnings of the famed nuclear “black budget.” When Congressmen attempted to investigate or audit the mysterious project that was soaking up so many precious wartime resources, they were scolded and shooed off.³  Eventually a small group of politicians were brought into the fold for the express purpose of green-stamping any further appropriations requests and enforcing silence amongst the other Senators and Representatives.

This secrecy also masked cost overruns. When Bush got Roosevelt’s approval for an expanded black-budget funded effort for the bomb, he guessed it would cost $400 million, what he admitted was “a serious figure.”⁴ But the bomb proved to be much more costly to construct. As the work proved to be more difficult and expensive, the total amount of funds (and manpower and material) seamlessly increased. The final Manhattan Project would consume some $2 billion, five times the original estimate, and employed nearly one out of every thousand Americans in one capacity or another at its peak, the vast majority working in ignorance of the ultimate purpose.⁵

The secrecy also hid mission creep. The initial work had been done out of fear that the Germans were devoted to building a bomb (an assumption that proved to be not correct — while the Germans did investigate the question in an exploratory fashion, they never dedicated the resources or manpower necessary to actual constitute a true bomb production program). The American atomic bomb, then, was originally meant to be a deterrent, not a “first strike” weapon. But as the work progressed and resources were invested in the development, a mostly-unquestioned assumption took over that the first atomic bombs were meant to be used, whether the enemy in question had atomic bombs themselves. Similarly, the focus shifted from Germany to Japan. Towards the very end of the project, a group of scientists at the University of Chicago (among them many of those who would later found the Federation of American Scientists) attempted to open up a discussion about this shift, but their proposals were never taken seriously by those in positions of power.⁶ From the very beginning, however, the question of wartime policy was explicitly limited to less than a dozen individuals, in the name of secrecy as well as simplification.

What of the long-term consequences of the atomic bomb? Because of the haste and secrecy of the wartime work, these were only rudimentarily explored, and only a handful of opinions were considered. A small “Interim Committee” was appointed by the Secretary of War in May 1945 with the goal of considering end-of-war problems. Postwar, they primarily directed their attentions towards approving of the post-Hiroshima “publicity” strategy (their term), domestic legislation whose insulated, military nature led to its almost immediate rejection by the postwar Congress, and only the vaguest of considerations about what the implications of atomic weapons were for the postwar international order. As a result, the United States left World War II with no coherent domestic or international position with regards to atomic energy, leading to missed opportunities and policies founded on deeply incorrect assumptions, such as the existence of a unitary atomic “secret” and the long-term viability of an American nuclear monopoly. At a minimum, it also led to the postwar decline of the expensive Manhattan Project infrastructure, causing a languishing of the American nuclear program until the late 1940s.

Separately, most invocations of the Manhattan Project frame it as a primarily “scientific” endeavor. But while the importance of the pure and applied scientific contributions was mighty, the bulk of the effort and resources for the work went towards engineering and construction. The fissile material sites at Hanford and Oak Ridge consumed around 80% of the total expenditures. Los Alamos, the “hub” of scientific research, accounted for only 4% of the expense.⁷ This is not to discount the contribution of science or the scientists. Rather, it is to emphasize that the atomic bomb production effort was less of a scientific endeavor than it was a massive collaboration between the military, the civilian federal government, industrial contractors, and academic scientists. Every one of those components was necessary for the final outcome — it was a true military-industrial complex before we had a term for it.

As an aside, we now also know that the much-vaunted, much-championed secrecy of the atomic bomb — which had so many problematic side-effects — did not keep the Soviet Union from infiltrating the project deeply. Even the ignorance of the Axis powers seems, under close scrutiny, largely due to the fact that their intelligence-gathering capabilities in the domestic United States were largely stillborn (as was the Axis nuclear program), and that they missed many high-profile leaks and other indications. In other words, while the secrecy apparatus had so many problematic implications for policy both wartime and after, it was not even especially effective at keeping the secrets in question.

Instead of “the Manhattan Project” being a stand-in for a large, government-supported scientific effort, we ought to regard its legacy in a much more nuanced way. It was indeed a large government effort, one where academic science played an important role. But it was also a full-fledged, over-budget government-military-industrial collaboration, one where the requirements of secrecy trumped all other concerns, including democratic deliberation, consideration of long-term consequences, and consideration of mission creep. And this secrecy itself proved fallible, keeping Congress and the American public out of the discussion, but not Joseph Stalin.

Scholars still debate the role of the atomic bomb in the surrender of Japan and the morality of using the weapons against largely civilian targets. But even if we accept that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to end the war, American attitudes towards the bomb were marked by heavy ambivalence even at the time.⁸ As such, even if the atomic bomb is taken as a “means to an end” of the application of science and technology to specific problems, it is a troubling one. Do those who call for new Manhattan Projects want their results to be so similarly fraught, so similarly morally and historically divisive?

Of course, nobody who invokes the Manhattan Project as something to be emulated means it in quite a complex and problematic a register as described above. There are very few modern projects that even resemble the Manhattan Project (though some of the newly-revealed surveillance programs of the National Security Agency may fit the bill in terms of their scope and secrecy).  But that’s exactly why it shouldn’t be invoked frivolously and trivially. Even heavily abstracted, it is a troublesome exemplar.

Are there better examples of national triumph that could be invoked instead? In truth, most large-scale projects have had their critics and detractors. Project Apollo is today sometimes nostalgically invoked as an example of an unambiguous good, a sign of lost American scientific greatness. Historians would be quick to point out that it was not perceived as such in its time — that there were many who saw it as an extravagant piece of Cold War propaganda at a time when the country was undergoing deep and lasting changes due to domestic social unrest. Still, as far as applications of science, technology, and government funding go, even its most problematic aspects are far tamer than the many tens of thousands of deaths that resulted from the Manhattan Project.

There is also the “War on Cancer,” which suffers from the unfortunate fact that cancer is still a major killer, making it seem like a failure. This is perhaps an unjustified conclusion, given the number of cancers which are now considered treatable, and the amount of raw knowledge gained about cancer in general through this program. But it is understandable, so why is it not invoked quite as frequently?

We might also consider the Human Genome Project as such a model, especially for projects which involved collaboration between government laboratories, academic scientists, and corporate interests. The Human Genome Project was a massive, long-term collaboration on a goal which by itself provided arguably little tangible outcome, but created new tools, new analytical methods, and new opportunities for future medical and commercial benefits. This model has its detractors, as does any large-scale application of money to specific scientific outcomes. And the commercialization of biology may, in the end, provoke as many ethical quandaries as the militarization of physics did.

The only conditions in which we should want to create another Manhattan Project, with its warts and all, are those in some way comparable to those that led to the original Manhattan Project: existential threats on the magnitude of those posed by the fear of a Nazi atomic bomb. Even then, anyone embarking on such an endeavor should be aware that the Manhattan Project itself was not a model for an orderly, democratic, unambiguously positive government science project. It was problematically un-transparent, over-budget, under-considered project to create weapons of mass destruction which were then debuted to the world by being detonated over two cities mostly inhabited by civilians. That’s a pretty heavy load to invoke trivially.

Alex Wellerstein is an Associate Historian at the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics. He received his PhD from the Department of History of Science at Harvard University in 2010. He is currently in the final stages of a book on the history of nuclear secrecy in the United States, from the Manhattan Project to the present. He is also the author of Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog.

By Hans M. Kristensen

China continues to upgrade bases for mobile nuclear medium-range ballistic missiles. The image above shows one of several new launch pads for DF-21 missile launchers constructed at a base near Jianshui in southern China.

A new satellite image* on Apple Maps shows the latest part of a two-decade long slow replacement of old liquid-fuel moveable DF-3A intermediate-range ballistic missiles with new road-mobile solid-fuel DF-21 medium-range ballistic missiles.

Similar developments can be seen near Qingyang in the Anhui province in eastern China and in the Qinghai and Xinjiang provinces in central China.

This and other developments are part of our latest Nuclear Notebook on Chinese nuclear forces, recently published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

New Nuclear Notebook

In the Nuclear Notebook, Robert Norris and I estimate that China currently has roughly 250 warheads in its nuclear stockpile for delivery by land- and sea-based ballistic missiles, aircraft, and possibly cruise missiles.

This is a slight increase compared with previous years that reflects the introduction of new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). China is the only nuclear weapon state party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that is increasing its nuclear stockpile, which might grow a bit more over as more missiles are fielded over the next decade.

Even so, the Chinese nuclear modernization is very slow, as in the case of the introduction of DF-21 medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) at Jianshui and the apparent (temporary?) leveling out of ICBM deployments; China is clearly not in a hurry to reach parity with the United States or Russia anytime soon (if at all) but instead seems focused on safeguarding its minimum retaliatory nuclear deterrent. Even so, the breadth of Chinese nuclear capabilities is widening with introduction of a class of ballistic missile submarines and cruise missiles that might have nuclear capability. With these come new scenarios and command and controls issues that are not yet apparent or understood.

Several interesting publications have made contributions to the public debate on China’s nuclear force operations and modernization over the past few years. Most valuable has been the work by Mark Stokes at Project 2049, most noticeably his 2010 report on China’s nuclear warhead storage and handling system. Also in 2010, M. Taylor Fravel and Evan Medeiros provided valuable analysis of China’s search for assured retaliation. Retired Russian general Victor Yesin claimed in 2012 that China has 1,300-1,500 nuclear warheads more than assumed by the U.S. intelligence community – a Georgetown University study even imagined 3,000 warheads (we consider these estimates exaggerated; see here and here). And renowned scholars John Lewis and Xue Litai described last year what they view as an increasing complexity of Chinese nuclear war planning.

The SSBN Force

Since our previous Notebook in 2011, most attention has been on the status of China’s new ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) and Julang-2 SLBM. After a series of technical difficulties, the DOD reported in May 2013 that the JL-2 “appears ready to reach initial operational capability in 2013.”

The range of the JL-2 has been the subject of much speculation, and we are struck by how much the range estimates vary and how much experts and news media continued to use outdated estimates or claim that the missile will be able to target the entire United States from Chinese waters. A review of the various estimates published by U.S. government agencies since 1999 shows estimates spanning from 7,000 km to as much as 12,000 km (see image below), although most hover around 7,200+ km.

The latest range estimates of 7,000+ km (NASIC) to 7,400+ km (DOD) show continued uncertainty within the U.S. Intelligence Community about the JL-2 capability. But both estimates also reaffirm that the missile cannot be used to target the continental United States from Chinese waters. Doing so would require a range of at least 8,400 km – and that would only reach Seattle. To target Washington DC from Chinese waters, the range would have to be at least 11,000 km. With the current range estimate of about 7,200+ km, a JL-2 equipped SSBN would have to sail deep into the Sea of Japan between the island of Hokkaido and Russia’s Primorsky Krai oblast to target Seattle, or venture far into the Pacific northeast of Tokyo. To target Washington DC, the SSBN would have to sail even further and launch from a position between the Aleutian Islands and Hawaii – more than halfway across the Pacific Ocean. Due to the apparent noise level of Chinese missile submarines and the extensive anti-submarine capabilities of the United States, that would indeed be risky sailing in a war.

Sending SSBNs far into dangerous water would be China’s only option to fire missiles directly at the United States if Chinese leaders wanted to avoid shooting across Russian territory (all China’s ICBMs launched at the United States from their current deployment areas would overfly Russia).

A JL-2 equipped SSBN could of course target U.S. territories outside the continental United States, including Alaska and Guam, from Chinese waters. To target Hawaii, and SSBN would have to launch from a position in the Sea of Japan or the Philippine Sea.

All of that just to say that JL-2 – despite what you might hear on the Internet – can not be used to target the continental United States. Instead, it is a regional weapon capable of targeting Alaska, Guam, India and Russia from Chinese waters.

So far three Jin-class SSBNs have been delivered and one or two more are in various stages of construction. By 2020, according to information obtained from ONI, China might operate 4-5 SSBNs (see image below). Now that China has said something about its submarines (see sections below), it would help if it would also say something in its next transparency initiative about how many SSBNs it plans to build. The United States, Russia, France and Britain have all shown their plans and there’s no reasons China cannot do so as well.

 A Washington Times article recently described how many of China’s state-run press outlets have reported that China’s SSBNs “are now on routine strategic patrol,” and quoted the an article concluding that this “means that China for the first time has acquired the strategic deterrence and second strike capability against the United States.”

The first claim – that China’s SSBNs are now on routine strategic patrol – is wrong. Although it has operated an SSBN (the Xia) since the early 1980s, China has never conducted an SSBN deterrent patrol. And since the JL-2 is not yet operational, the SSBNs are certainly not on patrol yet. But even once the JL-2 becomes operational, it is not clear whether China will operate the SSBN fleet in the way other nuclear weapons states operate their SSBNs. For one thing, it seems unlikely that the Chinese leadership would authorize deployment of nuclear weapons onboard SSBNs unless in a crisis situation.

The second claim – that China for the first time has acquired the strategic deterrence and second-strike capability against the United States – is also not correct. China has had a nuclear deterrent and second-strike capability against the continental United States since 1981 when the silo-based DF-5 ICBM became operational. In 2008, that posture of 20 missiles was broadened with the addition of the road-mobile DF-31A ICBM. Even before the JL-2 has become operational, China already has about 40 ICBMs that can target the U.S. mainland.

Once the Jin/JL-2 weapon system becomes operational, China would theoretically be able to conduct SSBN deterrent patrols. But that will not in itself provide a submarine-based strike capability against the continental United States from Chinese waters because of the range limitations described above.

The So-Called Targeting Map

Chinese news media carried several stories (see for example here, here, here) in September about increasing transparency of the submarine force. Despite claims about “revelations,” the articles did not reveal much that wasn’t already known. That said, any official news about the secretive submarine force and its operations is of course better than nothing – and perhaps a new beginning.

What created the most attention in the United States, however, was a map (see figure below) that allegedly showed radioactive fallout over the western part of the country apparently following a Chinese submarine attack with the future JL-2 SLBM. I have not been able to find the original article with the map on Global Times but there were plenty of dramatic spin-offs in U.S. papers suggesting the image showed Chinese plans for a strike on the United States. And some hinted that publication in “state-run media” somehow reflected Chinese government endorsement of the information.

Instead, the map appears on huanqiu.com, a glossy military-techno web site without official government status. And the publication is not an “article” but a series of 30 slides with text below each image by someone who appears to have vacuum-cleaned the much of the information from the Internet – including from some of my publications. Statements made in other news articles by “military experts” Du Wenlong (identified as a senior researcher with the PLA Academy of Military Scientists) and Li Jie (affiliation not identified) do not appear in the slides. The Google translator lists the slides editor’s name as [Shen Then] and the artist that drew the map is identified as Pei Shen.

In other words, this map does not appear to be an official government product and does not appear to reflect official Chinese nuclear strike planning.

The map shows three colored regions of radioactive fallout progressively spreading across the United States after 3, 7, and 30 days. One city (Seattle) is identified and 20 other black dots appear to mark locations of major cities. Many are misplaced – and some are odd.

The radioactive fallout patterns on the map are also not very good and appear to be fictive. In reality, radioactive fallout patters are much more narrow, depending on wind and precipitation. In 2006, FAS and NRDC published a report in which we used advanced computer programs to simulate hypothetical Chinese nuclear strikes on the United States. They showed not surprisingly that use of only 20 missiles against American cities would kill tens of millions of people. Back then China only had about 20 DF-5A missiles that could reach the continental United States. But their 20 4-Megaton warheads would cause enormous devastation and extensive radioactive fallout throughout much of the United States (see figure below).

Since then, China has introduced the DF-31A ICBM, each of which carries a smaller (but still significant) warhead. The second simulation we did therefore examined the effect of 20 DF-31A missiles, each with a 250-kiloton warhead. These explosions would also kill tens of millions of people but cause considerably less radioactive fallout (see figure below).

* I’m indebted to Marius Bulla, a 21-year old GIS enthusiast and freelance photographer in Germany, for first bringing my attention to the Apple Maps image of the Jianhui upgrade.

Additional information: Chinese Nuclear Forces, 2013

This publication was made possible by grants from the New-Land Foundation and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

By Hans M. Kristensen

With every official statement about the B61 nuclear bomb life-extension program, the capabilities of the new version (B61-12) appear to be increasing.

Previously, officials from the DOD, STRATCOM, and NNSA said the program is a consolidation of the B61-3, B61-4, B61-7, and B61-10 gravity bombs that would provide no additional military capabilities beyond those weapons.

This pledge echoed the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which states: “Life Extension Programs (LEPs)…will not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities.”

Yet the addition of a guided tail kit will increase the accuracy of the B61-12 compared with the other weapons and provide new warfighting capabilities. The tail kit is necessary, officials say, for the 50-kilotons B61-12 (with a reused B61-4 warhead) to be able to hold at risk the same targets as the 360-kilotons B61-7 warhead. But in Europe, where the B61-7 has never been deployed, the guided tail kit will be a significant boost of the military capabilities – an improvement that doesn’t fit the promise of reducing the role of nuclear weapons.

More recently we also learned that the guided tail kit will provide the B61-12 with a “modest standoff capability,” something the current B61 versions don’t have.

And during yesterday’s hearing in the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, defense officials said the B61-12 would also replace the B61-11, a single-yield 400-kiloton nuclear earth-penetrating bomb introduced in 1997, and the B83-1, a strategic bomb with variable yields up to 1,200 kilotons.

If so, the military capabilities of the B61-12 will be able to cover the entire range of military targeting missions for gravity bombs, ranging from the lowest yield of the B61-4 (0.3 kilotons) to the 1,200-kiloton B83-1 as well as the nuclear earth-penetration mission of the B61-11.

That’s quite an achievement for a weapon that just a few years ago was described simply as a refurbishment of four old B61s. Now the B61-12 has become the all-in-one nuclear bomb on steroids, spanning the full spectrum of gravity bomb missions anywhere.

That has some pretty significant implications in Europe where the United States has never deployed bombs with the military capabilities of the B61-7, B61-11 and B83-1. And it opens up a portfolio of enhanced targeting options with less radioactive fallout – more useable nuclear strike scenarios. Not bad for a simple life-extension, but less clear why it is needed and how it fits U.S. and NATO promises to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and seek “bold reductions” in U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons in Europe.

The Magic Reduction Bomb

During yesterday’s hearing, the military and nuclear lab officials portrayed the B61-12 as key to future reductions and modifications of the nuclear stockpile.

Since its inception, the B61-12 program has been described as a “consolidation” of four existing B61s into one allowing retirement of tree types. Now, in a blunt example of nuclear horse-trading in the 11^th hour, the military and labs are adding retirement of the B61-11 and B83 as additional sweeteners to justify the expensive B61-12 program.

Without the B61-12, so the argument goes, the United States would not be able to reduce its inventory of gravity bombs. In contrast, completion of the B61-12 program “will result in a reduction in the total number of nuclear gravity bombs in our stockpile by a factor of two,” according to NNSA.

That is a stretch, to say the least. In reality, nearly two-thirds of the gravity bombs currently in the stockpile are already inactive and would likely be retired anyway (see table).

Yesterday, the officials ridiculed the B83 as a nuclear dinosaur with too big a yield (1.2 Megatons) even though they admitted that it also has lower yields. But that has been the case for decades and the B83 role faded years ago. After Congress rejected using the B83 warhead for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), the B83 was decertified from first the B-1 bomber and more recently the B-52 bomber as well. That leaves the B-2 as the sole carrier with many more B83s in the stockpile than needed. The same goes for the B61-7.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Despite serious questions raised about the scope, cost, and management of the B61-12 and many other nuclear modernization programs, the Pentagon and NNSA yesterday portrayed the B61-12 – as well as the yet unclear but highly risky 3+2 warhead plan for the entire stockpile – as the cheapest solution to all nuclear issues: deterrence, assurance, modernization, and reductions. If that doesn’t set off alarm bells, I don’t know what would.

The hearing reminded me of the hearing a few years back were the CEOs of the tobacco industry were asked if nicotine were addictive; under oath they all said “no.”

Similarly, when asked yesterday if they could see any reason why the United States should not continue with the planned B61 life-extension program, the nuclear officials all said “no.”

To me, the willingness to trade all gravity bombs for the B61-12 is a tacit admission that most of the existing weapons are not needed but offered as sweeteners to “sell” the expensive program to Congress and the public.

Except for Representatives Loretta Sanchez and John Garamendi, none of the members that had shown up for the hearing asked any critical or difficult questions. Instead they appeared to invite the views that they knew the witnesses had anyway. There were no independent witnesses at the hearing, which appeared to be intended as a pushback against efforts in the Senate to scale back the B61-12 program.

There are no targets for the B61-12 that cannot be held at risk with ballistic or cruise missiles. And it is unlikely that there are any nuclear bombs deployed in Europe a decade from now. Instead, a basic gravity bomb capability on the B-2 and next-generation bomber could be achieved with a simpler and cheaper non-nuclear life-extension of the B61 as proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein.

This publication was made possible by grants from the New-Land Foundation and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

 

By Hans M. Kristensen

Every time India test-launches a new ballistic missile, officials from the defense industry go giddy about the next missile, which they say will be bigger, more accurate, fly longer, and carry more nuclear warheads.

Until now, all Indian ballistic missile types have carried only one warhead each, an important feature that has helped constrain India’s so-called minimum deterrence posture.

But the newest missile, the 5000+ kilometer-range Agni V, had not even completed its second test launch last month, before senior officials from India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) declared that the next Agni variant will be equipped to carry multiple warheads.

While the single-warhead Agni V is a major defense weapon, the multiple-warhead Agni VI will be a “force multiplier,” declared the former head of DRDO.

Moreover, the DRDO chief said that all future missiles will be deployed in large canisters on a road- or rail-mobile launchers to get “drastically” shorter response time with an ability to launch in “just a few minutes.“

It still remains to be seen if these are just the dreams of excited weapons designers or if the Indian government has actually authorized design, development, and deployment of longer-range missiles with multiple warheads and quick-launch capability.

If so, it is bad news for South Asia. The combination of multiple warheads, increased accuracy, and drastically reduced launch time would indicate that India is gradually designing its way of out its so-called minimum deterrence doctrine towards a more capable nuclear posture.

This would almost certainly trigger counter-steps in Pakistan and China, developments that would decrease Indian security. And if China were to deploy multiple warheads on its missiles, it could even impede future reductions of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.

MIRVforia

Indian defense contractors, engineers, analysts and news media reports have for years described efforts to develop multiple-warhead capability for India’s ballistic missiles. Some have even claimed – incorrectly – that some current ballistic missiles are capable of delivering MIRV. A couple of definitions will help:

• Multiple warhead (MRV – Multiple Reentry Vehicles) missiles deliver two or more warheads against the same target. The warheads all impact within a circle of a few kilometers around the target in order to destroy it more effectively.

• Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) missiles deliver two or more warheads against different targets. This requires a Post-Boost Vehicle, or bus, that can maneuver in space to release the reentry vehicles individually so that they follow different trajectories, allowing them to hit separate targets. Some MIRVs can hit targets separated by over 1,500 kilometers.

MRV is relatively simple to deploy but MIRV is a much more complex and expensive technology. News reports and private web sites rarely differentiate between the two but automatically equate multiple warheads with MIRV. Similarly, multiple payloads don’t necessarily mean warheads but can involve penetration aids such as decoys or chaff. MRV might involve 2-3 warheads but 4 or more warheads imply MIRV.

For reasons that are still unclear, Indian defense industry officials have for several years described development of multiple warheads for future Agni variants. In 2007, about a year after Agni III failed its first test launch and before Agni V had even left the launch pad, Avinash Chander, who has since been appointed to head the DRDO, said the next Agni variant would have a range of over 5,000 kilometers and “be a multiple warhead missile with a capacity to carry four to 12 warheads.”

So far that hasn’t happened and DRDO leaders have been unclear about what Agni version would receive the MIRV they are so busy working on. Vijay Kumar Saraswat, for example, made the following statement to NDTV shortly before he retired in May 2013 as DRDO chief:

“Saraswat: Agni Series of missiles are in an advanced stage of production. Today, as you remember, we have completed development of Agni I, Agni II, and Agni III. Agni IV and Agni V are in an advanced stage of development. And this year, you will see two more launches of Agni V, which will culminate its complete developmental activity and it will be led to production. Agni IV is already getting into production mode. So with this – Agni I, Agni II, Agni III, Agni IV, Agni V – getting into production mode, the next logical corollary as far as the long-range ballistic missile deterrents capability of this country is concerned, we will switch over to force multiplication. Force multiplication in the case of ballistic missiles will be by way of multiple independently manouevreable [sic] re-entry vehicles (MIRV).

NDTV: Meaning one missile which can carry many warheads?

Saraswat: Carry multiple warheads. Our design activity on the development and production of MIRV is at an advanced stage today. We are designing the MIRVs, we are integrating it with Agni IV and Agni V missiles, and that would also give us the capability to cover a vast area plus deliver in the event any activity requires a number of payloads at a required place.

NDTV: So will the next test be with a multiple warheads system or…

Saraswat: No. The present task, as I was mentioning, will be only with the normal configuration of Agni V. But there will be an experimental test in which we will be testing the MIRV capability.

NDTV: So that would be what? Agni VI or…

Saraswat: No we are not naming it Agni VI… it will be Agni V missile with MIRVs. 

NDTV: So Agni V plus?

Saraswat: You can name is Agni V plus or Agni VI, but certainly it is not Agni VI.

NDTV: It is not Agni VI but Agni V will have multiple warheads so we can have a single missile going and hitting several targets at the same time?

Saraswat: Yes it will be in that category.”

But only three months earlier, Saraswat was quoted by numerous newspapers as explicitly crediting the Agni VI, not the Agni V, with multiple warhead capability: “Agni-V is a major strategic defence weapon. Now, we want to make Agni-VI, which will be a force multiplier.” The new Agni variant “will have force multiplier capability by the MIRV approach which would enable us to deliver many payloads at the same time using only one missile. Work is on in this area and designs have been completed. We are now in the hardware realisation phase,” he said.

ZeeNews quoted an unnamed “top scientists from DRDO” saying “Agni-VI missiles will carry four or six warheads depending upon their weight.”

After Agni IV and Agni V are handed over to the armed forces, DRDO’s “two major focus areas will be maneuvering warheads or reentry vehicles to defeat enemy ballistic missile defence systems and MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles),” Chander said.

Shorter Launch Time

Ignore for the moment that none of India’s potential adversaries have missile defense systems that can intercept Indian missiles, DRDO is also working on making the missiles more mobile and quicker to launch by deploying them in “canistered” Transportable Erector Launchers (TEL).

The new canister-launchers “will reduce the reaction time drastically…just a few minutes from ‘stop-to-launch’,” according to Chander. “We are committed to making [the missiles] much more agile, much more fast-reacting, much more stable so that the response can be within minutes,” he said. In an interview with India Today, Chander explained: “In the second strike capability, the most important thing is how fast we can react,” he claimed and said: “All future strategic missiles will be canisterised,” with the first canister Agni V launch scheduled for early 2014.

Contrary to the DRDO chief’s claim, however, “the most important thing” in a second-strike posture is not how fast India can react but simply that it can retaliate. The ability to launch quickly is only relevant for two scenarios: One, if India’s adversaries have military forces that are capable of destroying Indian missile launchers on the ground before they can be used. China faces such a capability from the United States and Russia but neither China nor Pakistan has a capability to conduct a disarming first strike against India’s nuclear forces.

The second scenario where a quick-strike capability could be relevant is if India planned to conduct a first strike against its adversaries, but only if the adversaries were able to detect preparations to strike. But planning for first strike would contradict India’s no-first-use policy.

Nor is a quick-launch capability necessarily “more stable,” as Chander asserts. On the contrary, it could significantly decrease stability both in peacetime – by stimulating Chinese and Pakistani planners to further increase the responsiveness of their nuclear missiles – and in a crisis by shortening decision time and increasing risk of overreaction and escalation.

In addition to increasing warhead loading and responsiveness, DRDO is also working on improving the accuracy of warheads delivered by the missiles, although media reports about “pinpoint accuracy” are probably greatly exaggerated. Even the statement by the Ministry of Defense that the payload from the recent Agni V test reached the target area “within a few meters of accuracy” seems over the top. In contrast, back in 2007 when the Agni V was being designed, Chander said: “We are trying to attain an accuracy level of 100 metres.”

There is probably some overlap with conventional missions (the Agni missiles are dual-capable), but accuracy of 100 meters (300 feet) would bring Agni V well within range of the accuracy of the best U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles (in itself a reason to be skeptical). But their accuracy was pursued in support of highly offensive counterforce strategies designed to target and destroy each other’s ICBM silos, missions that are incompatible with India’s minimum deterrence doctrine.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Statements made by Indian defense officials over the past few years about increasing the payload, responsiveness, and accuracy of nuclear ballistic missiles are worrisome signs that India may be designing its way out of its minimum deterrence posture towards one with more warfighting-like capabilities.

This includes development of multiple-warhead capability to move India’s nuclear missiles beyond “a defense weapon” to “a force multiplier” that can strike more targets with each missile. It includes upgrading launchers to “drastically” shorten the launch-time to “minutes.” And it includes increasing the accuracy of the reentry vehicles to more effectively strike their targets.

Where these requirements come from and who sets them is anyone’s guess, but they demonstrate a need for the Indian government to constrain its weapons designers and more clearly reaffirm its adherence to a minimum deterrence doctrine. Not only does the combination of multiple warheads, increased accuracy, and quick-launch capability challenge the credibility of minimum deterrence. It also sends all the wrong signals about India’s intensions and will almost inevitably trigger weapons developments in the nuclear postures of India’s neighbors – developments that would decrease Indian security and that of the whole region.

India is, to be fair, not alone in taking worrisome nuclear steps in the region. Pakistan is developing short-range nuclear missiles envisioned for tactical use below the strategic level that appears to envision potential use of nuclear weapons sooner in a conflict. China is mixing nuclear and conventional missiles that could trigger misunderstandings in a crisis and researching MIRV capability that may well be motivating Indian planners to follow now rather than catch up later.

Together, India, Pakistan and China have embarked upon extensive nuclear arms development and deployment programs with no apparent or declared end in sight. They seem to be making many of the same decisions (and mistakes) as the United States, Russia, Britain and France did during their Cold War. Now it is necessary to complement the nuclear postures with nuclear arms control measures for the region to constrain the forces.

A first step could be to block deployment of multiple warheads on ballistic missiles to prevent what otherwise appears to be a dangerous new phase of the nuclear arms competition in the region.

For its part, the Indian government should make a pledge not to deploy multiple warheads on its missiles a formal part of its minimum deterrence doctrine. Pakistan could easily join such an initiative.

China should join its southern neighbor in a no-multiple-warhead pledge, which would reaffirm its existing minimum deterrence posture and also help reduce India’s interest in multiple warheads. Moreover, a Chinese pledge not to deploy multiple warheads on its missiles would ease U.S. and Russian concerns about China’s potential to “sprint to parity” and therefore help ease the way for further U.S. and Russian reductions – something that both Beijing and Delhi favor.

All sides would seem to benefit from banning multiple warheads on ballistic missiles and India could take the first and honorable step toward a safer future.

[See also additional descriptions of the nuclear forces of India, China, and Pakistan.]

This publication was made possible by grants from the New-Land Foundation and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

By Hans M. Kristensen

While arms control opponents in Congress have been busy criticizing the Obama administration’s proposal to reduce nuclear forces further, the latest data from the New START Treaty shows that Russia has reduced its deployed strategic nuclear forces while the United States has increased its force over the past six months.

Yes, you read that right. Over the past six months, the U.S. deployed strategic nuclear forces counted under the New START Treaty have increased by 34 warheads and 17 launchers.

It is the first time since the treaty entered into effect in February 2011 that the United States has been increasing its deployed forces during a six-month counting period.

We will have to wait a few months for the full aggregate data set to be declassified to see the details of what has happened. But it probably reflects fluctuations mainly in the number of missiles onboard ballistic missile submarines at the time of the count.

Slooow Implementation

The increase in counted deployed forces does not mean that the United States has begun to build up is nuclear forces; it’s an anomaly. But it helps illustrate how slow the U.S. implementation of the treaty has been so far.

Two and a half years into the New START Treaty, the United States has still not begun reducing its operational nuclear forces. Instead, it has worked on reducing so-called phantom weapons that have been retired from the nuclear mission but are still counted under the treaty.

For reasons that are unclear (but probably have to do with opposition in Congress), the administration has chosen to reduce its operational nuclear forces later rather than sooner. Not until 2015-2016 is the navy scheduled to reduce the number of missiles on its submarines. The air force still hasn’t been told where and when to reduce the ICBM force or which of its B-52 bombers will be denuclearized.

Moreover, even though the navy has already decided to reduce the missile tubes on its submarine force by more than 30 percent from 280 in 2016 to 192 on its next-generation ballistic missile submarine, it plans to continue to operate the larger force into the 2030s even though it is in excess of targeting and employment guidance.

Destabilizing Disparity

But even when the reductions finally get underway, the New START Treaty data illustrates an enduring problem: the growing disparity between U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces. The United States now is counted with 336 deployed nuclear launchers more than Russia.

Russia is already 227 deployed missiles and bombers below the 700 limit established by the treaty for 2018, and might well drop by another 40 by then to about 430 deployed strategic launchers. The United States plans to keep the full 700 launchers.

Put in another way: unless the United States significantly reduces its ICBM force beyond the 400 or so planned under the New START Treaty, and unless Russia significantly increases deployment of new missiles beyond what it is currently doing, the United States could end up having nearly as many launchers in the ICBM-leg of its Triad as Russia will have in its entire Triad.

Strange Bedfellows

For most people this might not matter much and even sound a little Cold War’ish. But for military planners who have to entertain potential worst-case threat scenarios, the growing missile-warhead disparity between the two countries is of increasing concern.

For the rest of us, it should be of concern too, because the disparity can complicate arms reductions and be used to justify retaining excessively large expensive nuclear force structures.

For the Russian military-industrial complex, the disparity is good for business. It helps them argue for budgets and missiles to keep up with the United States. But since Russia is retiring its old Soviet-era missiles and can’t build enough new missiles to keep some degree of parity with the United States, it instead maximizes the number of warheads it deploys on each new missile.

As a result, the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces has begun a program to deploy modified SS-27 ICBMs with multiple warheads (the modified SS-27 is known in Russia as RS-24 or Yars) with six missile divisions over the next decade and a half (more about that in a later blog). And a new “heavy” ICBM with up to ten warheads per missile is said to be under development.

So in a truly bizarre twist, U.S. lawmakers and others opposing additional nuclear reductions by the Obama administration could end up help providing the excuse for the very Russia nuclear modernization they warn against.

Granted, the Putin government may not be the easiest to deal with these days. But that only makes it more important to continue with initiatives that can take some of the wind out of the Russian military’s modernization plans. Slow implementation of the New START Treaty and retention of a large nuclear force structure certainly won’t help.

See also blog on previous New START data.

This publication was made possible by grants from the New-Land Foundation and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

By Hans M. Kristensen

The issue of the improved military capabilities of the new B61-12 nuclear bomb entered the Dutch debate today with a news story on KRO Brandpunt (video here) describing NATO’s approval in 2010 of the military characteristics of the weapon.

Dutch approval to introduce the enhanced bomb later this decade is controversial because the Dutch parliament wants the government to work for a withdrawal of nuclear weapons from the Netherlands and Europe. The Dutch government apparently supports a withdrawal.

Bram Stemerdink, who was Dutch defense minister in 1977 and deputy defense minister in 1973-1976 and 1981-1982, said that the Dutch government would have been consulted about the B61-12 capabilities. “Because we have those bombs at the moment. Was the Netherlands therefore consulted, yes,” Stemerdink reportedly said.

NATO approved the military characteristics of the B61-12 in April 2010, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “including the yield, that it be capable of freefall (rather than parachute-retarded) delivery, its accuracy requirements when used on modern aircraft and that it employ a guided tailkit section, and that it have both midair and ground detonation options.”

Dutch approval is also controversial because the improved military capabilities of the B61-12 compared with the weapons currently deployed in Europe (addition of a guidance tail kit to increase accuracy and provide a standoff capability) contradict the U.S. pledge from 2010 that nuclear weapon life-extension programs “will not…provide for new military capabilities.” The U.S. currently does not have a guided standoff nuclear bomb in its stockpile. The improved military capabilities also contradict NATO’s promise from 2012 to seek to “create the conditions and considering options for further reductions of non-strategic nuclear weapons assigned to NATO…”

Last month Dutch TV disclosed a dispute between the U.S. and Dutch governments over how to discuss potential financial compensation in case of an accident involving U.S. nuclear weapons in the Netherlands.

The B61-12 is currently being designed for production with a price tag of more than $10 billion for approximately 400 bombs – possibly the most expensive U.S. nuclear bomb ever.

Nuclear weapons are unlikely to remain in Europe for long, so instead of wasting more than $10 billion on the controversial enhanced B61-12 for a mission that has expired, the United States should instead do a more basic and cheaper life extension of an existing version. Instead of wasting money on modernizing a nuclear weapon for Europe, the United States should focus its efforts on changing the views of eastern European NATO countries by providing extended deterrence in a form that actually contributes to their security.

This publication was made possible by grants from the New-Land Foundation and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

By Hans M. Kristensen

Only a few years before U.S. nuclear bombs deployed at Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands are scheduled to be airlifted back to the United States and replaced with an improved bomb with greater accuracy, the U.S. and Dutch governments are in a dispute over how to deal with the environmental consequences of a potential accident.

The Dutch government wants environmental remediation to be discussed in the Netherlands United States Operational Group (NUSOG), a special bilateral group established in 2003 to discuss matters relating to the U.S. deployment of nuclear weapons in the Netherlands.

But the United States has refused, arguing that NUSOG is the wrong forum to discuss the issue and that environmental remediation is covered by the standard Status of Forces Agreement from 1951.

The disagreement at one point got so heated that a Dutch officials threatened that his government might have to consider reviewing US Air Force nuclear overflight rights of the Netherlands if the United States continue to block the issue from being discussed within the NUSOG.

The dispute was uncovered by the Brandpunt Reporter of the TV station KRO (see video and also this report), who discovered  three secret documents previously released by WikiLeaks (document 1, document 2, and document 3).

The documents not only describe the Dutch government’s attempts to discuss – and U.S. efforts to block – the issue within NUSOG, but also confirm what is officially secret but everyone knows: that the United States stores nuclear weapons at Volkel Air Base.

Michael Gallagher, the U.S. Charge d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Hague, informed the U.S. State Department that environmental remediation is “primarily an issue of financial liability” and discussing it “potentially a slippery slope.” During on e NUSOG meeting, Dutch civilian and military participants were visibly agitated about the U.S. refusal to discuss the issue, and Gallagher warned that “a policy of absolute non-engagement is untenable, and will negatively impact our bilateral relationship with a strong ally.”

Gallagher predicted that the Dutch would continue to raise the issue, and said the Netherlands was ahead of the other European countries that host U.S. nuclear weapons on their territories in having signed and implemented the NUSOG. Unlike Germany, Belgium, Italy and Turkey, the Netherlands was the only country that had raised the issue of remediation in a forum such as NUSOG, but Gallagher warned that the other countries would raise the issue of remediation in the future as similar nuclear weapons operational groups are established.

The United States has deployed nuclear weapons in the Netherlands since April 1960 and currently deploys an estimated 10-20 nuclear B61 bombs in underground vaults inside 11 aircraft shelters at Volkel Air Base. The weapons are under the custody of the US Air Force’s 703rd Munitions Support Squadron (MUNSS), a 140-personnel unit that secures and maintains the weapons at Volkel.

In a war, the U.S. nuclear bombs at Volkel would be handed over to the Dutch Air Force for delivery by Dutch F-16 fighter-bombers of the 1^st Fighter Wing. The Netherlands is one of five non-nuclear NATO countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey) that have this nuclear strike mission, which clearly violates the spirit of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

From 2019 (although delays are expected), the U.S. Air Force would begin to deploy the new B61-12 nuclear bomb to Volkel and the five other bases in Europe that currently store the old B61 types. The B61-12, which is scheduled for production under a $10 billion-plus program, will have improved military capabilities compared with the weapons currently stored at the bases.

The U.S.-Dutch dispute over remediation is but the latest political irritant in the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe, a deployment nearly 200 B61 bombs at five bases in six countries that costs about $100 million a year but with few benefits. President Obama has promised “bold reductions” in U.S. and Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Volkel Air Base would be a good place to start.

This publication was made possible by grants from the New-Land Foundation and Ploughshares Fund. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.

Speech by Hans M. Kristensen
Director, Nuclear Information Project
Federation of American Scientists
To the Deterrence and Assurance Working Group
USAF Global Strike Command
Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana
May 7, 2013

Editor’s Note: The following remarks were presented to the Deterrence and Assurance Working Group at USAF Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in  Louisiana on May 7, 2013.

Let me begin by thanking General Kowalski for the invitation to come down here to Barksdale Air Force Base and address the Deterrence and Assurance Working Group.

I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit that for someone working in the NGO nuclear arms control community standing here today is somewhat akin to being in the lion’s den.

Be that as it may, few in my community discuss deterrence and assurance directly with the military community, which I believe is a significant problem for the public debate because it leaves an enormous gap in perceptions about the issues.

And I also understand that deterrence and assurance is not just – or even predominantly – about nuclear forces, but I have to limit my talk so the nuclear issue is what I will focus on today. And let me emphasize from the start: I do not have clearance. So this is an unclassified observer looking in from the outside.

In the public debate we assess nuclear force levels based on a very simple equation of how much terrible damage ought to be enough to deter anyone.

In the nuclear planning community the first issue is of course also deterrence, but it is as much about assessing what kinds of forces and scenarios are needed if and when deterrence fails.

This perception gap means that we – the arms control community on one side and the military on the other side – essentially talk about two different things.

Right now the public debate is very much dominated by the issue of costs. How much can we afford and for what purpose and how much and of what kind do we need to have sufficient deterrence and assurance?

Most people in my world feel that the nuclear posture is still far too dominated by Cold War thinking and out of sync with the world we live in today or can see on the horizon. I am not of the opinion that one can just do away with nuclear weapons in a heartbeat but I believe there are possibilities for significant responsible reductions that still leave more than enough for deterrence and assurance to work.

How much depends on the role and tasks the president assigns to the nuclear force. That can change. It has changed. And it will continue to change. Anyone can see that nuclear weapons states and allies have very different perceptions about how many and what types of nuclear weapons it takes to deter and assure sufficiently.

If you ask Russia and the United States, the answer is that several thousand nuclear warheads are needed for immediate tasks, technical hedge, and reconstitution in case of geopolitical surprises. But if you ask China, Britain and France the answer is a few hundred. In India, Pakistan and Israel the number required for national security is even lower.

Similarly, Russia and the United States also insist that a Quadrad (that is a Triad of strategic launchers plus non-strategic nuclear forces) is needed, each leg with unique attributes to provide sufficient flexibility and options for deterrence and assurance to work and the national leadership to have enough different options in a crisis. China, India, Pakistan and possibly Israel are also trying to build Triads, but theirs are much smaller and less capable. France used to have a Triad, but gave up its land-based missiles in the 1990s and now says that a Dyad is sufficient for its national security needs. Britain has gone even further to a Monad with a single weapon system and is even debating whether it needs that anymore.

Russia and the United States also say that deterrence and national security require that more than 1,500 of their warheads are deployed on launchers, and that several hundred of those warheads must be on high alert 24/7/365 and ready to launch in a few minutes. Britain and France say they can do with much lower readiness levels, while China, India, Pakistan and Israel don’t see a need to have warheads deployed on launchers or on alert at all.

In 2009, a newly elected President Barack Obama re-energized the international arms control community with a speech in Prague that committed the United States to “take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons” and “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy” to “put an end to Cold War thinking.”

The speech scared the heck out of the nuclear community and had it not been for the Minot incident just two years earlier and the subsequent effort to reinvigorate the Air Force nuclear mission, the air-delivered nuclear posture both here in the United States and in Europe might have looked very different today.

The ultimate goal of eliminating nuclear weapons is not new but has been U.S. policy since the 1960s, regardless of whether the administration at the time was Republican or Democratic or whether they were increasing or decreasing the nuclear arsenal. But the pledge to “put and end to Cold War thinking” seemed new. Unfortunately, the president did not explain what he meant by that other than to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.”

That role or prominence has of course already decreased significantly since the Cold War as missions and tasks fell away with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the demise of the Soviet Union, and improvements in conventional capabilities. The Quadrennial Defense Review, Ballistic Missile Defense Review and Nuclear Posture Review all hinted of further reductions in the role of nuclear weapons, but this appeared to depend on further improvements in non-nuclear capabilities.

Because of this change, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) determined that the United States “is now prepared to strengthen its long-standing ‘negative security assurance’ by declaring that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.”

Previously, this long-standing policy depended on whether a non-nuclear adversary was in an alliance with a nuclear weapon state, but by issuing the new “strengthened assurance,” the NPR stated, ”the United States affirms that any state eligible for the assurance that uses chemical or biological weapons against the United States or its allies and partners would face the prospect of a devastating conventional military response…” (Emphasis added).

This language has been widely used by officials and interpreted by analysts and journalists as the NPR reducing the role of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear attacks. President Obama has even stated publicly that he has reduced the role. “As President, I changed our nuclear posture to reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy,” he said in a speech at Hankuk University in South Korea last year. “We’ve narrowed the range of contingencies under which we would ever use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.”

The year before that, National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon declared that the NPR had created a “new doctrine” that “reduces the role of nuclear weapons in our overall defense posture by declaring that the fundamental role of U.S. nuclear forces is to deter nuclear attacks” (emphasis added) as opposed to deterring conventional, chemical and biological attacks.

But it is not clear to me how and to what extent a reduction in the role has happened because of the NPR. When has the “fundamental role” of U.S. nuclear weapons not been to deter nuclear attack? Moreover, the reduction in the role that has taken place appears to have occurred well before the NPR following the elimination of the Soviet and Warsaw Pact conventional threat to Europe and subsequent improvements in U.S. and allied conventional capabilities and counter-weapons of mass destruction capabilities. Even the “strengthened assurance” comes with a huge exemption. According to the NPR:

“In the case of countries not covered by this assurance – states that possess nuclear weapons and states not in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations – there remains a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW attack against the United States or its allies and partners. The United States is therefore not prepared at the present time to adopt a universal policy that the ‘sole purpose’ of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States and our allies and partners…” (Emphasis added).

Neither the public, allies, friends nor adversaries know much about U.S. nuclear war planning, except that the current strategic nuclear war plan is called OPLAN 8010-12 Strategic Deterrence and Force Employment, and that it is a “family” of plans with a myriad of options directed against half a dozen potential adversaries. But since all of these adversaries are exempt from the “strengthened assurance,” it is hard to see how the NPR has reduced the role of nuclear weapons.

In fact, according to one former White House official, the strengthened negative security assurances were “deliberately crafted to exclude countries like North Korea and Iran which threaten our allies – or countries that depend on us – with a range of potential nuclear, biological, chemical and conventional threats.”

Of course, President Obama also said in Prague that as long as nuclear weapons exist the United States will retain a safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal. He also acknowledged that nuclear disarmament might not happen in his lifetime.

Not surprisingly, everyone has been cherry picking his or her favorite bit of the speech. The arms control community and State Department focus on the bit about reducing the numbers and role of nuclear weapons, the military focuses on the bit about maintaining and modernizing the nuclear arsenal, while conservative lawmakers have been focusing on preventing further reductions.

And in return for a yes vote on the New START Treaty, the administration agreed to significant nuclear modernizations – by some accounts $214 billion – over the next decade. In fact, it has been amazing to see the Obama administration securing more funding for nuclear modernization than the Bush administration was able to do. As a former administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration commented a couple of years ago: “I would have killed for such a budget.”

The twin-commitments to reductions and elimination on the one hand and sustainment and modernization on the other hand have created a somewhat schizophrenic nuclear policy where it can be hard to see what the focus is.

Whether one likes it or not, however, the pledge to reduce the role of nuclear weapons is now a central element of U.S. nuclear policy and to the international community’s perception of what it is.

So it is very important for deterrence, assurance, as well as non-proliferation goals that the role – reduced or not – is not blurred or spun too much. It has to be real and genuine. There are two regions where this is particularly important.

One is the Korean Peninsula where the interaction between deterrence and assurance is particularly striking. The United States has for many decades sought to deter North Korea and assure South Korea, but with North Korea’s nuclear tests the mission has recently taken on new importance.

But with nearly 30,000 U.S. troops deployed in South Korea, large-scale joint exercises, bombers rotating through Guam, eight ballistic missile submarines patrolling in the Pacific with hundreds of nuclear warheads, annual joint U.S.-South Korean statements reaffirming the nuclear umbrella, and significant U.S. and South Korean conventional force modernization over the past two decades, how does one deter the North more or better? And if all of that does not assure the South, what will?

Yet when North Korea earlier this year set off a third nuclear test, launched a missile in defiance of the international community, and issued direct nuclear threats against the United States, all of the above capabilities, operations and statements didn’t seem to matter very much. So B-2 and B-52 bombers were deployed as well to demonstrate extra deterrence and assurance. But how do we know that they made any difference in Pyongyang or in Seoul? What we could see, however, was that they played directly into the North Korean brinkmanship by being used to justify the next outrageous threat. I think what worried me the most was how willing each side was to walk up the escalation ladder until someone finally said: “hold on a minute.”

But now we’re committed. So next time North Korea does something stupid and we do not send the bombers, then what are we signaling? And if sending bombers only makes North Korea ramp up its threats even more, will we then have to re-deploy non-strategic nuclear weapons to South Korea to be taken seriously?

In Europe the situation is very different. There is little need for nuclear deterrence but plenty of people who say they need assurance. After two decades of unilateral reductions of U.S. non-strategic nuclear weapons in Europe and NATO saying Russia is not an adversary and the remaining weapons are not aimed at anyone, the 2010 Strategic Concept and 2012 Deterrence and Defense Posture Review concluded that the weapons in Europe should not be reduced more unless Russia was willing to reduce its inventory of non-strategic nuclear weapons.

Yet Russia is not a military threat to NATO and does not have the conventional capability to conduct a large-scale attack. So it is using non-strategic nuclear weapons to compensate for the much more advanced conventional forces of the United States and NATO.

Nor are the national security concerns of Eastern European countries and their need for assurance about Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons. They are about border security, organized crime, minority issues, and a general and understandable uneasiness about Russia after years of being occupied by the Soviet Union. Indeed, if Russian eliminated all of its non-strategic nuclear weapons tomorrow, the Eastern European NATO countries would probably have exactly the same security concerns that they say they have today.

So in Europe the challenge is how to transition the alliance out of the remnants of the Cold War posture of forward-deployed non-strategic nuclear weapons to something that better captures the essence of Europe’s security situation today and better expresses the direction NATO wants to take in the future. Right now the Alliance seems stuck in the mud. Indeed, non-strategic nuclear weapons deployed in Europe are probably the least credible form of assurance because they are the least likely to ever be used or needed for the security concerns that face Europe today or in the foreseeable future.

So in conclusion I want to say that there are obvious deterrence and assurance challenges but I believe that they are predominantly about non-nuclear capabilities. The nuclear mission is in the background and it can be reduced further. And I am pleased to see that despite a recent tendency to take advantage of Congressional opposition to further nuclear reductions and instead modernize the entire legacy Cold War posture, the military community is spending more time thinking and planning about non-nuclear missions in support of deterrence and assurance.

Although there are nuclear challenges and any nuclear use would be horrific, I think the current scaled-down Cold War nuclear posture is above and beyond what it needed for sufficient deterrence and assurance. In a report to Congress in May last year, the Office of the Secretary of Defense – in a coordinated assessment with the Intelligence Community – expressed an extraordinary confidence in the nuclear posture even against the most severe of all potential nuclear threats.

It concluded that even if Russia conducted a disarming first strike, even significantly above the New START Treaty limits, it “would have little to no effects on the U.S. assured second-strike capabilities that underwrite our strategic deterrence posture” (emphasis added). Moreover, the DOD report stated, the “Russian Federation…would not be able to achieve a militarily significant advantage by any plausible expansion of its strategic nuclear forces, even in a cheating or breakout scenario under the New START Treaty, primarily because of the inherent survivability of the planned U.S. Strategic force structure, particularly the OHIO-class ballistic missile submarines, a number of which are at sea at any given time.”

I want to end with this statement because when we in the public debate read such an official assessment, we find it hard to understand why it is necessary to retain the large nuclear force structure and alert posture that we have today – not least in the current fiscal environment. Despite the challenges with Russia, it would be helpful to reduce the asymmetry in strategic nuclear forces to help remove some of the drivers for worst-case planning and improve the incentives to reduce overall force levels.

The Pentagon and the White House already have decided that it is possible to meet deterrence and assurance requirements with fewer nuclear weapons than we have today. And the administration’s long-overdue NPR Implementation Review might reduce the targeting and alert requirements. So the nuclear force level is not going to go up or stay the same but it will decline further in the future. The challenge for Air Force Global Strike Command therefore is not how to fight reductions but how to sustain sufficient deterrence and assurance at lower levels.

Let me end here and open up for any questions you might have. Thank you.

Hans Kristensen is theDirector of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists where he provides the public with analysis and background information about the status of nuclear forces and the role of nuclear weapons. He specializes in using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in his research and is a frequent consultant to and is widely referenced in the news media on the role and status of nuclear weapons.

His collaboration with researchers at NRDC in 2010 resulted in an estimate of the size of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile that was only 13 weapons off the actual number declassified by the U.S. government. Kristensen is co-author of the Nuclear Notebook column in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the World Nuclear Forces overview in the SIPRI Yearbook.

We at FAS are always looking for innovative thinking on reducing nuclear dangers. This issue features both emerging leaders in the field and seasoned practitioners who are advancing new ways of looking at nuclear education, arms control monitoring, deterrence, and lessons from historical perspectives. Three of the articles have lead authors from the younger generation.

Erika Suzuki, who leads UC Berkeley’s Nuclear Policy Working Group, has joined with Dr. Bethany Goldblum, a younger faculty member, and Dr. Jasmina Vujic, a senior faculty member who has mentored dozens of Ph.D. and M.S. degree students. They describe a new model for educating students about nuclear technology and security policy. Their goals are to develop and sustain “an enduring nuclear security workforce,” to build bridges among “professionals from technical and social science fields,” and “to generate original policy recommendations and technical working papers.”  They want to extend their work to many universities and educational institutions. For PIR readers who are educators in the nuclear security and policy field, we encourage you to contact Erika and her co-authors to find out how you can help advance this important new project.

Ravi Patel, a talented, younger biologist from Stanford, worked last summer at FAS as a security scholar and began researching how to create stability between India and Pakistan. After travel to South Asia and extensive interviews and other research, Mr. Patel wrote the article in this issue on “Using Trade to Build Stability in South Asia.” He discusses four major steps: (1) forming a uniform, jointly developed trade policy, (2) having Pakistan grant Most-Favored-Nation status to India, (3) improving infrastructure linking India and Pakistan, and (4) improving ties between the Indian and Pakistani business communities. He points out that it is often easier to ship goods between the two countries through third party countries such as the United Arab Emirates because of the impediments to direct trade. Although his article does not directly address the nuclear arms race in South Asia, it provides advice on ways to indirectly reduce nuclear tensions.

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting Jay Brotz at a conference at the University of California’s Washington, DC, Center and was impressed with the work that he and his co-authors Justin Fernandez and Dr. Sharon DeLand are performing at Sandia National Laboratories. As discussed in their article, they are developing and analyzing models for monitoring nuclear warheads in potential future arms control treaties or agreements.  Up to now, nuclear arms control agreements between Russia and the United States have primarily focused on inspecting and monitoring strategic weapon systems because of the relative ease of monitoring these objects that are much bigger than individual warheads. When individual warheads are monitored, the inspection system has to provide reliable information to the treaty partner but not reveal sensitive design information about the warhead. Brotz et al. discuss how to achieve that balance.

On FAS’s staff, we are privileged to have senior scholars such as Dr. Robert S. Norris and Hans Kristensen. For many years, they have co-written the Nuclear Notebook in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which is the most authoritative, unofficial source of information on the status of worldwide nuclear forces. In this issue, they have separate articles. Dr. Norris, a leading historian of nuclear weapons, shines a spotlight on the three factors that stoked the nuclear arms race: (1) inter-service rivalry among the branches of the U.S. armed forces, (2) the tenet that the United States could achieve security through technical superiority in nuclear weaponry, and (3) the “hyperactive definition of deterrence,” which resulted in “very high degrees of readiness” to launch an attack. This historical legacy weighs heavily on contemporary nuclear policy as examined in the final article by Hans Kristensen.

The PIR presents Mr. Kristensen’s invited presentation to the Deterrence and Assurance Working Group at the U.S. Air Force’s Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. He raises profound questions about how many nuclear weapons are enough, what are the roles and tasks for nuclear weapons, and whether and how the United States can continue to reduce nuclear targeting and alert levels of nuclear forces. He advises the Air Force Global Strike Command to not resist further reductions but instead “sustain sufficient deterrence and assurance at lower levels.”

We hope you find these articles enlightening. We are grateful for your support of FAS.

Charles D. Ferguson, Ph.D.

President, Federation of American Scientists

“The need for understanding of today’s evolving nuclear threats is critical to informing policy decisions and diplomacy that can move the world toward greater nuclear security. The scientific underpinnings for such an understanding are remarkably broad, ranging from nuclear physics and engineering to chemistry, metallurgy and materials science, risk assessment, large-scale computational techniques, modeling and simulation, and detector development, among others. These physical science disciplines must be combined with social science fields such as public policy, political science, international relations, international law, energy policies, economics, history, and regional studies in order to yield a deep understanding of today’s nuclear security challenges.”

-James Doyle, “Nuclear Security as a Multidisciplinary Field of Study,” Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2008

The future of domestic and global nuclear security depends on today’s university students and young professionals feeding the pipeline to supply the requisite scientific workforce. To develop the next generation of nuclear security experts, universities must not only train students in technical nuclear science but also provide a comprehensive educational platform including nuclear energy and weapons policy in the context of the current political science architecture. Nuclear-related education programs are gaining traction, bolstered by the 2010 Nuclear Forensics and Attribution Act and other government initiatives such as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI).¹

However, many of these programs are geared towards training students already engaged in nuclear science graduate programs. To maintain a steady stream of experts in nuclear security, universities must also actively recruit students in the early stages of their academic career by incorporating undergraduate educational initiatives and pre-professional development through both traditional classroom-based and extracurricular programming.

A working group model established at the University of California, Berkeley provides a pathway through which educational institutions with an established nuclear science program can initiate and further enhance nuclear security educational programming targeting students from all academic career stages.

The PRI(M)³E Model

The PRI(M)³E model was developed by the UC Berkeley Nuclear Policy Working Group (NPWG) in October 2012.²The model is derived from the three-fold mission statement of the NPWG. The first focus is to educate undergraduate students on important issues in nuclear security by providing supplementary education on nuclear technology and policy. The second aim is to foster collaboration between students and professionals from technical and social science fields. The third core goal of the NPWG is to generate original policy recommendations and technical working papers to contribute to the nuclear security field. From these primary objectives, the NPWG developed a foundational model to educate the next generation of nuclear scientists and policymakers.

The PRI(M)³E model features seven key components that are essential for developing and sustaining an enduring nuclear security workforce:

• Pioneering
  • Group discussions, collaborative research, and open communities facilitate the innovation of novel techniques for strengthening nuclear security through technological advancements and action-oriented policy. This environment allows for the unconstrained development of best practices for the education of undergraduate and graduate students in nuclear security.
• Research
  • A research-based working group allows members to collaborate on technical and policy-focused research projects addressing an array of critical nuclear security topics.
• Interdisciplinary
  • Interactive workshops draw from both the physical and social sciences, encouraging students to develop a strong foundational knowledge base in nuclear security to best inform research projects and policy recommendations.
• M³
  • Mentorship
    • Opportunities are made available for undergraduate and graduate students to work closely with senior mentors to share insight, career advice, and guidance on next steps towards a career in the nuclear security field.
  • Multi-level
    • Students at all stages of their academic career- from freshmen through senior-level undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, staff scientists from the university and the national laboratories, and non-academic professionals engage in collaborative needs- driven research in nuclear security and associated applications.
  • Multimedia
    • Participants use a variety of media including various audio-visual presentation platforms, workshops, expert panel discussions, student seminars, and digital electronic technology to convey important concepts and foster debate.
• Education
  • Education of working group members, the campus community, and the general public via accurate, timely information on current developments in nuclear security technology and policy is central to the multistage mission.

Implementation of the PRI(M)³E model serves as a framework that enables the NPWG to fuel the nation’s nuclear security workforce pipeline. Each component of the PRI(M)³E model uniquely targets the recognized need for interdisciplinary training of nuclear experts, integrates a research unit into the overall educational platform, and translates multi-level interaction into mentorship to provide undergraduate and graduate students with career guidance in both the scientific and policy fields. The working group is designed to generate a cadre of experts with both well-rounded and in-depth knowledge of the technical and policy-oriented aspects of nuclear security through comprehensive, research-based, educational programming.

The NPWG is a low-cost, high-impact model. The budget for running a successful working group is minimal compared to the potentially substantial financial and institutional investment required to establish a certificate or degree program, while the organizational structure of the PRI(M)³E model allows for the achievement of comparable educational objectives. Should institutional priorities shift to the adoption of more traditional educational models, the PRI(M)³E model lays the foundation for the future development of degree programs. Further, the inclusive nature of the working group makes it accessible to students at all levels as well as to the general public. Student retention represents the primary challenge to the success of the PRI(M)³E model. The informal nature of the working group can result in difficulties maintaining a core group of students, many of whom may juggle numerous responsibilities and commitments, including academics, work, and other extracurricular activities. To reduce attrition, the NPWG strives to actively engage members using a variety of media and activities, and works with members to develop flexible working practices.

Beyond the Foundational Model: Practices and Results

The PRI(M)³E model is particularly instrumental at UC Berkeley, which has a highly divided campus layout like many research-oriented universities. Almost all of the social science departments are located on the southwest side of campus, while the physical sciences are based on the northeast side of campus. As a result, students from different disciplines often do not physically interact with one another, and opportunities for interdepartmental collaboration between the technical and social sciences at the undergraduate level are sparse. The NPWG serves as a bridge between these two spheres on campus, and establishes a space in which students from various disciplines can interact and collaborate on interdisciplinary research projects.

The principal goals of the PRI(M)³E model are institutionalized through the activities of the NPWG. At weekly research meetings, members discuss research progress and future direction, and contribute to colloquia where participants present on a nuclear security topic of their choice. The multidisciplinary nature of the NPWG is one of its greatest strengths, as students from the nuclear engineering, physics, astrophysics, electrical engineering and computer science, political science, and public policy departments share knowledge and draw on their individual strengths to contribute to joint research projects and weekly seminar presentations. This working group series provides students with opportunities to continually develop dynamic working relationships with other students, as well as senior mentors. The development of close, effective mentor relationships is highly beneficial to undergraduate professional development, as advisors encourage students to apply for internships at the national laboratories or other nuclear security institutions, impart career and internship advice, and support the academic growth of students throughout the learning process.

To expand its educational outreach initiative to the general public, the NPWG hosted its first annual Nuclear Security Panel in April 2013, which featured prominent nuclear security experts well versed in both the technical and social science aspects of the field (see Fig. 1). The panel event generated lively debate and educated the broader campus community on current issues in nuclear forensics. This interdisciplinary team of experts provided the UC Berkeley campus and the public with a multifaceted examination of the role of nuclear forensics in combating nuclear terrorism, and also served as a public forum for discussion.

Figure 1

Nuclear Security Panel featuring (from left to right) Ian Hutcheon, Michael Nacht, Jasmina Vujic (moderator), Raymond Jeanloz, Stan Prussin and Jay Davis.

The NPWG also showcased its practices and results at several technical and policy conferences to disseminate the PRI(M)³E methodology for student engagement and communicate contributions to the nuclear security field in the form of original policy recommendations (see Fig. 2). These events provided undergraduate and graduate students with professional development opportunities, occasions to cultivate and hone presentation skills, and networking opportunities with nuclear security professionals from around the globe. Feedback from these colleagues has been vital to the enhancement of working group practices and research project design.

Through these PRI(M)³E-based endeavors, the NPWG has trained a first-year cohort of fifteen members and conducted educational outreach on numerous occasions in both technical and public policy capacities.

Figure 2

Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation 2013 Winter Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Conference. NPWG Undergraduate Research Assistant Erika Suzuki with Ambassador Linton Brooks.

Institutional support has been critical to the success of the NPWG and is essential for the long-term efficacy of the working group model. The NPWG is currently supported through an educational programming grant provided by the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium (NSSC) through the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. The NSSC is a $25 million grant with UC Berkeley as the lead institution that was awarded by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to support its NA-22 Nonproliferation Research and Development mission. The purpose of the NSSC is to train and educate experts in the nuclear security field using “an end-to-end approach, from recruitment of undergraduates to early career phases,” – the SUCCESS PIPELINE (Seven Universities Coordinating Coursework and Experience from Student to Scientist in a Partnership for Identifying and Preparing Educated Laboratory-Integrated Nuclear Experts). The NPWG operates at the foundational level, recruiting and educating undergraduate students, providing them with opportunities to collaborate with and learn from advanced students and professionals actively engaged in the nuclear security field.

SUCCESS PIPELINE NSSC³

At the input end of the pipeline, highly promising undergraduate and graduate students who have shown relevant interests are exposed to nuclear security. The program couples basic science research to technological developments relevant to the nuclear security mission. Student education includes hands-on training in a broad set of experimental disciplines—at university facilities and, as a formally constructed and supported aspect of their education, at the Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, or Sandia National Laboratories. Between the academic and the national laboratory partners exist an array of facilities including nuclear reactors, cyclotrons and other particle accelerators, as well as detector development and characterization facilities. Summer schools and seminars broaden student exposure to a wide range of topics in the nuclear security mission. This approach is designed to not only recruit but also retain top students by exposing them to a diverse and exciting research portfolio of critical importance to the U.S. nuclear security mission. The graduate will be a well-rounded professional ready to contribute to nuclear security and step into leadership roles in the field.

Future Vision

In an effort to further develop and sustain an enduring expertise pipeline, the NPWG will be launching its Nuclear Security Initiative (NSI) in the coming year. The purpose of the NSI is to extend the NPWG across NSSC partner institutions to engage a larger cross section of students in interdisciplinary nuclear security science, provide foundational knowledge on nuclear science and policy, and train students to work collaboratively on technical research projects and policy recommendations. The NSI is a refined version of the NPWG’s efforts based on the PRI(M)³E model, and expands on the NPWG’s research focus on nuclear forensics to include nuclear terrorism, nuclear material security and nonproliferation. The NPWG thus serves as a feeder for the NSSC’s SUCCESS PIPELINE at a micro-level, and duplication of its practices via the NSI will support the development of a robust national nuclear security network among universities, national laboratories, government agencies, and industrial institutions.

Conclusion

Universities are increasingly impacted by state and federal budget cuts, so the role of institutional support has intensified. Most prominently, the recent sequester cuts will reduce the available pool of research funds by an estimated $1 billion.⁴This will not only affect the ability of researchers at universities and national laboratories to obtain grants from federal science-based organizations, but will also potentially decrease the number of graduate students admitted to science and engineering programs at universities that rely heavily on federal funding.⁵ The loss in funding coupled with a reduced number of doctoral students in these fields may hinder scientific progress and shrink the pipeline as fewer students pursue advanced degrees in science and engineering. Cultivating the future scientific workforce is crucial to operations at the national laboratories, which will face a shortage of staff scientists in the coming years due to a combination of scheduled retirements and voluntary early retirement policies stemming from the sequestration budget cuts.

As we enter the new academic and fiscal year this fall, universities and other educational institutions will need to supplement losses in research and graduate programs with lower-cost, extracurricular modes of learning. The PRI(M)3E model is one such pathway to establish a rich environment for the generation of debate and novel direction on critical nuclear security issues while engaging students outside of a traditional classroom setting. This interdisciplinary approach to academic programming is crucial for securing the future of domestic and global nuclear security, as it provides a means for involving students from various disciplines to cooperatively address the multifaceted and vital nuclear issues that permeate the current landscape of national defense. Training future nuclear scientists and policymakers to collaborate on nuclear issues will forge better-informed and better-implemented nuclear policy and practices, and will ultimately result in the maintenance of a strong, sustainable nuclear security infrastructure.

Erika Suzuki leads the University of California, Berkeley’s Nuclear Policy Working Group in support of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium. Erika has taught three student elective courses on human rights, the politics of genocide, and California/UC labor policy that she developed through the Democratic Education at Cal program. She has also interned for Democratic Leader and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 3299, and Berkeley Rent Board Commissioner Igor Tregub. She is an alumna of the 2012 Berkeley Haas School of Business Summer Program: Business for Arts, Science, and Engineering, and is a member of Delta Phi Epsilon, a co-ed, professional Foreign Service and international affairs fraternity. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Public Policy, Erika aspires to work as a nuclear policy analyst focusing on nuclear counterterrorism and nonproliferation efforts, and obtain an advanced degree in international security studies.

Bethany L. Goldblum received a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007. She served as a Clare Boothe Luce Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Berkeley before joining the nuclear engineering faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in August 2010. In January 2012, she returned to Berkeley as a member of the research faculty. Her research interests are in the areas of fundamental nuclear physics for nuclear security applications, nuclear-plasma interactions, technical nuclear forensics, and nuclear energy and weapons policy. From 2004-2006 she held the National Science Foundation Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Fellowship. She was a Project on Nuclear Issues Scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of the United States delegation to the China-India-United States Workshop on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy in Bangalore, India. She is the founder of the Nuclear Policy Working Group at UC Berkeley, an interdisciplinary team of undergraduate and graduate students focused on developing policy solutions to strengthen global nuclear security.

Jasmina L. Vujic is Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Nuclear Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1989. After working at Argonne National Laboratory she joined UC Berkeley faculty in 1992. From 2005 to 2009 she was the Chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley and in 2009/2010 she chaired the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization (NEDHO). Her research interests are in the areas of nuclear reactor analysis and design, neutronics and neutron physics, non-proliferation and nuclear security, and engineering aspects of medical imaging and cancer therapy. She is currently a Principal Investigator for two large research projects (over $30 million): the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium and the Berkeley Nuclear Research Center, involving close to 150 students, faculty and researchers from 7 partner universities and 4 national laboratories. Professor Vujic is the author of three books, the editor of 6 monographs and international conference proceedings, and the holder of one U.S. patent. She authored close to 300 research publications. Under her mentorship 24 students received the Ph.D. degrees and 22 received the M.S. degrees.

This article was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency there of. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.

This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under Award Number DENA0000979. We also gratefully acknowledge support from the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and the Berkeley Nuclear Research Center.

By Hans M. Kristensen

MSNBC used FAS data on the world nuke arsenals in an interview with Ploughshares Fund president Joe Cirincione about how deteriorating US-Russian relations might affect efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals.

The updated weapons estimates on the FAS web site are here.

Detailed profiles of each nuclear weapon state are published as Nuclear Notebooks in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

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