Missile Defense Deployments “Secret for Political Purposes”
(Updated below)
The names of foreign countries that are being considered for deployment of U.S. missile defense systems are unclassified but nevertheless should be kept secret, the Missile Defense Agency ordered (pdf) last year.
“There are many operational and political sensitivities that require varying levels of protection as we consider possible deployments,” wrote MDA Deputy Director Gen. Marvin K. McNamara.
“Therefore, I am requiring that potential host nations being studied or considered by MDA for operational deployments not be identified by country or city name in any form on Unclassified computer systems…..”
The November 22, 2005 MDA memorandum on “Protection of Information Regarding Operational Deployments” was obtained by Nick Schwellenbach of the Project on Government Oversight and is available here.
In an email message also obtained by POGO, an MDA security manager paraphrased the policy this way: “Information regarding operational deployments should be treated as ‘Secret’ for political purposes and, for that reason, the information is to be sent encrypted or by SIPRNET.”
What is at issue here, explained Victoria Samson of the Center for Defense Information, is the location of the third site for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, which is still under conideration.
But not everyone got the word.
In a March 20, 2006 briefing (pdf) by MDA Director Gen. Trey Obering, obtained by Ms. Samson, three countries are identified as possible candidates for the third ground-based site: the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, and Poland. See “Missile Defense Program Update” (at slide 35).
Official controls on unclassified information have mushroomed in recent years. An interagency task force that conducted an inventory of so-called Sensitive But Unclassified control markings recently identified 164 distinct marking systems for controlling unclassified information, according to Grace Mastalli, who co-chaired the task force.
Update: The March 20 Obering briefing was presented at an MDA/AIAA briefing in Washington, DC. It was previously reported by Inside Missile Defense, which noted the identification of the UK as a candidate country for the third GMD site, and also made the briefing available to readers.
The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons, and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987.. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]
On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]
A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.
In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]