Update (February 22, 2007): DTRA announces that Divine Strake has been canceled.

In a surprising move, the National Nuclear Security Administration last week withdrew (!) its Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for Divine Strake, a document issued in April that declared that a planned detonation of 700 tons of chemical explosives at the Nevada Test Site “would not result in the suspension or dispersion of radioactive materials or human exposure to radioactive materials.”

The question therefore is: Does this mean that Divine Strake could result in the suspension or dispersion of radioactive materials or human exposure to radioactive materials? And do other assurances about the test need to be reassessed?

The decision to withdraw the FONSI, NNSA says in a press release, which is not available on their web site, was made “to clarify and provide further information regarding background levels of radiation from global fallout in the vicinity of the Divine Strake Experiment.” That seems to be beaucratish for “sorry, we were wrong.”

The revised Environmental Assessment for Divine Strake, which has not been withdrawn but could potentially be revised, concluded earlier this month: “Results confirm there is no radiological contamination within the impact area of DIVINE STRAKE; therefore, no contamination could be resuspended into the environment.” The claim echoes the statement made last month by the Environmental Protection Specialist for Divine Strake, Linda Cohn: “There is literally no way this experiment can pick up radioactive contamination because it does not exist here.”

Yet since “here” is the Nevada Test Site, the home of well over 1,000 nuclear explosions in the past, many of which scattered radioactive nuclear fallout over adjacent states, many were surprised by NNSA’s radiation-does-not-exist-here-assurance. The FONSI withdrawal follows a lawsuit that claims the government failed to complete required environmental studies for Divine Strake. NNSA’s withdrawal of the FONSI acknowledges that atmospheric testing in the 1950s and 1960s “resulted in the dispersion of radioactive fallout throughout the northern hemisphere,” presumably also at the Nevada test Site. Time will tell whether NNSA ignored public health to get approval for Divine Strake.

Time will also test another of the government’s claims: That Divine Strake is not related to nuclear weapons missions at all. This claim is particularly problematic because the government in consecutive budget requests informed Congress that the experiment is intended to provide information that will permit warfighters to set the yield accurately when attacking underground facilities with nuclear weapons.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), NNSA’s contractor for Divine Strake, confirmed in writing to FAS on April 3, 2006, that “Yes, the event described [in the budget documents] is Divine Strake,” and even elaborated that “Better predictive tools will reduce the uncertainties involved with defeating very hard targets, and therefore reduce the need for higher yield weapons to overcome those uncertainties.”

When that confirmation became public, DTRA suddenly change its story, saying it had made a mistake and that Divine Strake was is not related to nuclear weapons missions at all. The nuclear reference “got left in” improperly, DTRA told Washington Post, and there is “no relationship between this test and any new nuclear weapons.” Moreover, DTRA later explained to me, even though the 700 tons of explosive exceeds [by far] the capability of any conventional weapon – but fits nicely with the low yield of the B61 nuclear bomb – the “explosive amount represents no specific weapon, nuclear or conventional. Warfighters can use the models for their planning. Their planning is for conventional, advance conventional and high energetics weapons.” But not for nuclear weapons?

Contrast that explanation with the statement made by DTRA’s director of the counter-WMD program, Douglas J. Bruder, on CNN in late April: “Particularly a charge of this size would be more related to a nuclear weapon.”

It is true that the Pentagon is developing non-nuclear weapons to destroy underground targets, but the claim about “no relationship” to nuclear weapons is suspect also because Los Alamos National Laboratory as recently as in 2004 conducted a high-speed computer simulation of a 10-kiloton nuclear earth-penetration weapon against the same tunnel that is used for Divine Strake. The 10 kiloton is considerably less than the 400-kiloton single-yield of the existing B61-11 earth-penetrating nuclear bomb currently in the stockpile, but it might be a yield that was envisioned for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP).

Yet Congress has repeatedly rejected the Administration’s request to fund work on the RNEP, partially due to concern that more useable nuclear weapons with lower yields for these kinds of earth-penetrating missions will make nuclear weapons more acceptable to use.

“Officials who say they are using this Divine Strake test in planning for new nuclear weapons seem to be ignoring Congressional intent about no nuclear weapons,” Congressman Jim Matheson said after a tour at the test site and a DTRA briefing in late April.

The political explosiveness of Divine Strake far exceeds its military power and the government appears to be walking a fine line to avoid a clash with Congress – so fine that it can’t seem to get its story straight.

Divine Strake Background

The administration has a new plan: as it prepares for production of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) to replace most of the nuclear warheads in the operational stockpile, it will “accelerate” dismantlement of retired nuclear warheads to “assure other nations that we are not building up our stockpile.”

According to this plan, Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Cell told the House Energy and Water Subcommittee last week, the DOE will “increase dismantlements planned for FY 07 by nearly 50% compared to FY 06,” and is “committed to increasing average annual warhead dismantlements at the Pantex Plant by 25%.”

Big percentages sound good, but here’s the problem: Since the DOE didn’t plan to dismantle very many warheads in 2007 anyway, increasing the rate by 50% won’t dismantle much either. As congressional and administration sources told the Washington Post, fewer than 100 warheads have been taken apart annually in recent years.

Under the new plan, assuming an increased annual dismantlement rate of 150 warheads, it will take the DOE over 28 years to dismantle the roughly 4,300 warheads it has pledged will be cut from the stockpile by 2012. To meet the deadline, DOE will have to increase the dismantlement rate to more than 700 warheads per year.

What does “accelerated dismantlement” look like? It looks like what we did back in the 1990s, when the United States scrapped some 11,000 nuclear warheads! Since then, the DOE’s priorities have changed from nuclear dismantlement to life-extension of the “enduring” nuclear stockpile. For the next decade, unless Congress or a new administration intervenes, DOE will be busy extending the life of the stockpile rather than dismantling it.

But since an official objective of the administration’s new plan is to “assure other nations,” why not tell them what the warhead numbers are? Why this Cold War nuclear secrecy? The numbers need to be kept secret, the nuclear custodians warn, because if we told other nations how many warheads we dismantle, they might be able to figure out the size of our stockpile, and that would be bad for national security. But how does the administration plan to assure other nations if they cannot be told? While we wait for the administration to figure that out, here is the stockpile number: today, roughly 9,960 warheads; in 2012, nearly 6,000 warheads. Reassured?

Update (February 22, 2007): DTRA announces that Divine Strake has been canceled.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) today confirmed to FAS that the upcoming Divine Strake test widely reported in the media to be a non-nuclear event is in fact a low-yield nuclear weapons calibration simulation against an underground target.

A few, including Albuquerque Journal and disarmamentactivist.org, have speculated that Divine Strake was a nuclear-related event, but DTRA has up till now declined to confirm or deny the nuclear connection.

In response to an email earlier today, a DTRA spokesperson confirmed that Divine Strake is the same event that is described in DTRA budget documents as being a low-yield nuclear weapons shock simulation designed to allow the warfighters to fine-tune the yield of nuclear weapons in strikes on underground facilities.

It also turns out that Divine Strake is “an integral part” of STRATCOM’s new Global Strike mission, which is normally reported to develop mainly non-nuclear capabilities against time-urgent targets. Global Strike is one of the pillars of the Bush administration’s so-called New Triad which is said to be reducing the role of nuclear weapons.

According to a Department of Energy document associated with Divine Strake, the event comes only two years after President George W. Bush in Summer 2004 signed a presidential decision directive that ordered STRATCOM to “extend Global Strike to counter all [Hard and Deeply Buried Targets] to include both tactical and strategic adversarial targets.”

Divine Strake was not mentioned during last week’s Senate hearing on the Global Strike mission.

More: Divine Strake Background | Global Strike Chronology

Hans M. Kristensen and two analysts from the Natural Resources Defense Council examine the debate over China’s modernization of its nuclear forces, review the composition and possible future development of the Chinese nuclear arsenal, describe past and current U.S. nuclear targeting of China, and use government software to simulate the effects of Chinese and U.S. of nuclear attacks. The report (PDF) concludes that both countries use the other as an excuse to modernize their nuclear forces, and recommends that urgent steps are needed by both sides to halt and reverse a nuclear arms race.

Download Full Report

Will the New Triad of nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities reduce or increase the role of U.S. nuclear weapons? To get an answer to that question I went to a hearing the Senate Armed Services Committee held earlier today on the Pentagon’s new Global Strike mission. But instead of giving a clear answer, the Pentagon muddled the issue by saying that it is reducing its dependence on nuclear weapons while at the same time increasing the nuclear strike options.

Four officials were lined up to explain the Global Strike mission to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee: Peter C. W. Flory, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, General James E. Cartwright, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Rear Admiral Charles B. Young, Director of the Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs, and Major General Stanley Gorenc, Director of Air Force Operational Capabilities and Requirements and Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations. These guys ought to know what the nuclear policy is.

STRATCOM Commander General Cartwright explained to the Subcommittee that the New Triad provides increased flexibility in dealing with a wider range of contingencies, “while reducing our dependence on nuclear weapons….” Although he mentioned that the President has committed the United States to sustaining a credible nuclear deterrent capability “to ensure our nuclear force remains ready to meet any contingency,” Gen. Cartwright only mentioned non-nuclear weapons when describing the new capabilities of the New Triad, and he never explicitly stated that the Global Strike mission also includes nuclear weapons.

Secretary Flory described the role of nuclear weapons very differently. Although his testimony echoed Cartwright’s statement about reducing the role of nuclear weapons, Flory described an important role for nuclear weapons in Global Strike. In fact, his prepared statement appears to suggest that the nuclear role is increasing. In three consecutive paragraphs describing the continued “critical role” of nuclear weapons, Flory stated that flexible and credible nuclear forces will provide the President with “a broader range of options” that will make it possible to “tailor deterrence” against adversaries armed with “chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons….” “What we need is not a smaller version of the Cold War-era nuclear stockpile; we need capabilities appropriate for 21st Century threats,” he advocated. “Making tailored deterrence a reality…will require us to make adjustments in our force posture, in our residual nuclear stockpile, and in our thinking,” Flory explained.

Will the right nuclear policy please stand up! Is there a nuclear option in Global Strike or is there not? Is the range of options broadening or is it not? Why does STRATCOM gloss over the nuclear option while the Office of the Secretary of Defense emphasizes it? Three years after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld assigned a new Global Strike mission to STRATCOM, 18 months after the first Global Strike plan became operational, and six months after the new Space and Global Strike component command stood up at Offutt Air Force Base, one would have hoped that Congress could have gotten a more coherent account of the role of nuclear weapons in this critical new mission.

This is serious stuff. Embedded in Global Strike is preemption against proliferators of weapons of mass destruction. Try adding nuclear weapons to those scenarios, and the ramifications become truly immense. Several countries, including Russia and North Korea, have already referred to the Bush administration’s preemption doctrine to justify their own preemptive strikes if necessary. Moreover, if we can preempt with nuclear weapons, why can’t terrorists?

A clear account of how U.S. nuclear weapons could potentially be used under Global Strike should have been part of today’s Congressional hearing. After all, if the Pentagon cannot articulate a coherent nuclear policy to the Senate, how does it expect to communicate the policy to the countries it is trying to deter?

More: Global Strike background | Not Just A Last Resort?

The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to hold a hearing on Wednesday, March 29th, on the Pentagon’s new offensive Global Strike mission. The Committee has asked the following officials to testify:

* Peter C. W. Flory, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy
* General James E. Cartwright, USMC, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command
* Rear Admiral Charles B. Young, USN, Director Strategic Systems Programs, Department of the Navy
* Major General Stanley Gorenc, USAF, Director, Operational Capabilities and Requirements, Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, Headquarters, U.S. Air Force

This is Congress’ first hearing on this critical new mission, which includes strike options that span from information warfare to preemptive nuclear attacks against weapons of mass destruction targets around the world.

The long-overdue hearing comes three and a half years after the White House published the so-called preemption doctrine (National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction), three years after STRATCOM was tasked to prepare strike plans against WMD targets around the world, nineteen months after Rumsfeld signed the Alert Order that directed STRATCOM to put Global Strike into effect, and six months after the new Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike became operational at Offutt Air Force Base.

More: Hearing Page | Global Strike Chronology

Nuclear weapons are surprisingly prominent in the Pentagon’s new offensive Global Strike mission, according to the new FAS report Global Strike: A Chronology of the Pentagon’s New Offensive Strike Plan. The 250-page report traces the development of Global Strike through a comprehensive compilation of guidance documents, public statements, budget program descriptions, contracts, and declassified military documents obtained under the FOIA.

One of the FOIA documents is the Concept of Operations for the Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike, the new organization established in 2005 at U.S. Strategic Command to prepare and execute the Global Strike mission. The mission is normally portrayed as a conventional mission, but the Concept of Operations reveals the prominent nuclear role the command has.

Publication of the FAS report coincides with a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Global Strike on March 16. [Update: Hearing postponed. Check link for details.]

Download: The full report | Background information and FOIA documents.

The US Chief of Naval Operations has publicly issued an Instruction that orders US Navy personnel not to tell anyone that US warships do not carry nuclear weapons. Yet the same Instruction states that it is US policy not to deploy nuclear weapons on the ships.

The new Instruction, “Release of Information on Nuclear Weapons and on Nuclear Capabilities of U.S. Forces,” was published on February 6 and updates a previous version from 1993. Both versions state that nuclear weapons were offloaded from the ships in 1992.

The reason for updating the Instruction is to incorporate four guided missile submarines (SSGNs) that are being converted from ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). The SSBNs carry nuclear weapons, but the SSGNs will carry conventional weapons, the publicly available Instruction helpfully informs (!).

Background and analysis here.

A resolution introduced in the German Parliament last week calls for the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Germany. The resolution, which was submitted by nine parliamentarians from the newly formed party Die Linken, also calls for the German Air Force to end its controversial NATO mission to deliver U.S. nuclear bombs in times of war.

The U.S. Air Force currently has some 440 nuclear bombs in Europe deployed at eight bases in six NATO countries. About 76 percent of Germans favor a withdrawal, but NATO insists the weapons provide a crucial bond between Europe and the United States.

NATO’s defense ministers are set to meet in Taormina, Italy, on February 9-10 for an informal meeting. Nuclear weapons are not on the agenda.

The Pentagon has formally cancelled a controversial revision of its Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations after the document was exposed last year in an article in Arms Control Today and described in the Washington Post.

The revised draft doctrine included for the first time descriptions of preemptive use of U.S. nuclear weapons, which prompted the Senate Armed Services Committee to ask the Pentagon for a briefing, and 16 lawmakers to protest to President Bush.

The decision to cancel Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, and with it three other related nuclear documents, was confirmed today by the Pentagon. The cancellation of the documents does not change U.S. nuclear policy which continues to include options for nuclear preemption.

See background briefing and analysis and copies of the doctrine documents.

The Royal Canadian Military Institute (RCMI) has published an article by FAS’s director of the Nuclear Information Project about how U.S. nuclear planners are preparing for the failure of deterrence by putting new strike plans into operation onboard long-range bombers and strategic submarines. This includes options to strike preemptively with nuclear weapons, if adversaries make preparations to use weapons of mass destruction. Some U.S. lawmakers (see below) recently objected to such a broadening of the role of U.S. nuclear weapons.

Download article | Global Strike background

Sixteen members of Congress have asked President George W. Bush to intervene in the Pentagon’s revision of Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations. In a joint letter published by Representative Ellen Tauscher’s office, the lawmakers object to language that appears to broaden the role of U.S. nuclear weapons. The letter follows my critique of the doctrine in Arms Control Today and a subsequent front-page story in the Washington Post.

Doctrine background