First Minuteman III Test Launches as New START Countdown Begins
Theresa Hitchens | Breaking Defense
The test itself, dubbed FTU-2, went off relatively cleanly at 12:33 am, with a short 15-minute delay caused by an unexplained anomaly. The missile splashed down some 30 minutes later 4,200 miles away near Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall islands. Today’s launch coincides with the one-year countdown to the expiration of the 2010 New START treaty. That was not planned, however, since ICBM test launches are slated years in advance. But no message was intended. Testing “is not used as a ‘signaling mechanism’ politically,” Col. Omar Colbert, Air Force Global Strike Command’s 576th Flight Test Squadron commander, stressed on Monday. As I reported yesterday, the “developmental test” was aimed at perfecting a new chemically explosive fuze to set off the Minuteman’s W-87 nuclear warhead. The fuze program, budgeted at just over $2 billion, is expected to reach operational capability in 2024, when replacement of the current fuze in all 400 ICBMs will start. The Minuteman’s replacement, the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) will be designed with an interface to back-fit the new fuze.
Russia Says Alarmed by US Deployment of Low-Yield Nuclear Missiles
Alexander Morrow | Reuters
Russia is alarmed by the U.S. Navy’s decision to deploy low-yield nuclear missiles on submarines since they heighten the risk of a limited nuclear war, a Russian official said on Wednesday. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the deployment of the W76-2 warhead in the name of strengthening deterrence had caused Russia great concern over U.S. nuclear strategy, Russian news agencies reported. Ryabkov said ,“The appearance on strategic carriers of low-power warheads means arguments previously voiced by the American side about the possible use of such a device are now being realized in metal form, as products. This reflects the fact that the United States is actually lowering the nuclear threshold and that they are conceding the possibility of them waging a limited nuclear war and winning this war. This is extremely alarming.” The argument for these weapons is that larger nuclear bombs are so catastrophic that they would never be used, meaning they are not an effective deterrent. With less destructive power, the low-yield option would potentially be more likely to be used, serving as an effective deterrent, U.S. military officials have said.
White House Official: China Should Join Nuclear Arms Talks With Russia
Eunjung Cho | Voice of America
U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Wednesday that China should join the United States in trilateral arms talks with Russia. “The president believes that it shouldn’t just be the U.S. and Russia. We think that China is going to need to become involved in any serious arms control negotiation, so we’re going to work on those talks in the coming months and year,” Robert O’Brien said in Washington. He told a group of 50 foreign ambassadors that U.S. officials would travel to Beijing to discuss reducing the “existential” threats of nuclear war and nuclear proliferation. “The days of unilateral American disarmament are over,” O’Brien noted in remarks that focused on the Trump administration's foreign policy. Trump last year said he discussed a new accord on limiting nuclear arms with Russian President Vladimir Putin and hoped to extend that to China, but Beijing has so far refused to take part. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last month that Russia would take part in potential trilateral talks but that he wouldn’t “force China to change” its position.
Nuclear Watchdog Head Warns Iran Over Recent Detention of Inspector
Julian Borger | Guardian
The new head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has warned Iran there would be serious consequences if there is any repeat of last year’s detention of an IAEA inspector. Speaking to journalists on his first official trip to Washington as IAEA director general, Rafael Grossi said he had met a senior Iranian official in Vienna in December and expressed his concern over what he described as a “grave” incident. IAEA inspectors have remained in Iran monitoring its nuclear programme, even after US withdrawal from the 2015 agreement that imposed limits on that programme and Iran’s subsequent declaration that it would begin ignoring some of those constraints. The inspectors have also continued their work despite the dramatic rise in tensions following the US assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in January. Grossi said that the ejection of IAEA inspectors would trigger “a major international crisis” but he also said he would withdraw the inspectors immediately if there was any threat to their safety. At an appearance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace later on Wednesday, he said that “when I request Iran to work with us … I hope that countries will give me the necessary support that I need.”
DoE Backs Off Drive to Speed Up Pit Production at Los Alamos
Dan Leone | Defense Daily
Last spring, the Department of Energy quietly backed off a drive to produce 30 pits a year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory earlier than the agency’s long-established target of 2026, a recently published contract modification shows. The April 30, 2019 modification to Triad National Security’s Los Alamos National Laboratory management and operations contract scrubs out a directive for the nonprofit consortium “to accelerate manufacture of War Reserve (WR) pits to meet 30 pits/year, 1 year ahead of schedule” and replaces it with a softer instruction “to achieve 30 pits/year by 2026, and provide a list of opportunities to accelerate the schedule.” Years before Triad submitted its winning bid to manage Los Alamos, the Department of Energy said it wanted to begin producing war-reserve pits for W87-1 intercontinental ballistic missile warheads at Los Alamos by 2024, ramping up to 30 pits annually by 2026. The goal appears in editions of the agency’s annual Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan dating back to the Barack Obama administration.
US Nuclear Waste Storage Containers Could Corrode, New Study Warns
Christopher Carbone | Fox News
The containers being used by the United States government to store dangerous nuclear waste far underground could be vulnerable to damage, researchers report. Across America, there are over 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste that require disposal; most of the waste is stored where it was generated, at 80 different sites in 35 states, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. But the government is searching for more permanent sites for its nuclear waste. The government wants to put the radioactive waste into stainless steel containers after mixing it with glass or ceramic material, and then bury it very deep underground, and may even construct a nuclear waste dump beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada. In work published on January 27 in Nature Materials, researchers report that when nuclear waste is exposed to groundwater, the chemical interactions between the stainless steel container and its glass or ceramic contents could cause the materials to corrode a bit faster than expected. Any corrosion, of course, would risk exposing the nuclear waste being stored in the container. Xiaolei Guo, a materials scientist at Ohio State University in Columbus, and colleagues figured out this issue by pressing pieces of stainless steel against glass or ceramic and submerging the materials in a saltwater solution, simulating groundwater exposure.