The imposition of a deadline for automatic declassification of most 25 year old, historically valuable classified records on December 31, 2006 rewrote the bureaucratic software that governs the national security classification system. In principle, official secrecy can no longer be indefinite and open-ended.
Nevertheless, declassification will not be translated into disclosure and public access until the severe logistical and financial challenges that are facing the National Archives can be overcome.
The Washington Post took a look at the lay of the land in “How to Bury A Secret: Turn it into Paperwork” by Lynne Duke, January 16, 2007.
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 […]