On the Passing of FAS Board Member Don Lebell
The Federation of American Scientists regrets to share news of the passing of long-time board member Don Lebell at age 95.
Don Lebell was an active voice in national security, working not only with FAS, but with the Ploughshares Fund’s Nuclear-Free Society and the Department of Defense’s Task Force on Globalization and National Security, Amnesty International, and more throughout his life.
Because of Don’s passion for nonproliferation, the world is a safer place today.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.