North Korea Threatens to Boost Nuclear Program Ahead of Drills Between U.S. and ‘Perfidious’ South
Min Joo Kim and Simon Denyer | Washington Post
The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned Tuesday that Pyongyang could move to bolster its nuclear and conventional weapons program in response to a major joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea set for this month. “The dangerous war exercises pushed ahead by the U.S. and the South Korean side disregardful of our repeated warnings will surely make them face a more serious security threat,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.
Biden’s Iran Nuclear Deal Ambitions Shrink as Tensions Flare
Nick Wadhams and David Wainer | Bloomberg
The Biden administration faces the sobering reality that returning to the Iran nuclear deal may no longer be feasible, as the Islamic Republic finds ways to cope with U.S. sanctions and races toward the capacity to build a bomb. U.S. officials are reviewing their options after months of talks on reentry into the accord failed to produce an agreement, according to people familiar with the discussions. Although still calling for a quick return to the pact as a pathway toward a “longer and stronger” deal, the U.S. is willing to weigh alternatives, including the interim step of limited sanctions relief in exchange for Iran freezing its most provocative proliferation work, they said.
Russia’s Latest Nuclear-Powered Sub Capable of Carrying Tsirkon Hypersonic Missiles
TASS
The Project 885M (Yasen-M) new nuclear-powered submarine Kazan accepted for service in the Russian Navy in May is capable of carrying Tsirkon hypersonic missiles to strike ground and naval targets, Commander of the Northern Fleet’s 11th Submarine Division Rear Admiral Alexander Zarenkov said on Tuesday. The Kazan is the Yasen-class second vessel and the lead underwater cruiser built under the improved Yasen-M Project, the rear admiral said during the single military output acceptance day.
How Will the Pentagon Close the Homeland Missile Defense Gap?
Jen Judson | Defense News
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is examining the possibility of building a layered ballistic missile defense architecture for the homeland that would bolster the current ground-based system in Alaska, all while a next-generation capability is developed and fielded. The MDA featured its plan in its fiscal 2021 budget request, but there isn’t much of a strategy laid out in its fiscal 2022 funding picture. And so lawmakers want answers before turning on the funding spigot. Developing such an architecture, even though it would use mostly proven systems, has many hurdles, as MDA Director Vice Adm. Jon Hill said last year.
Plutonium Pits Are a Critical Obstacle in U.S. Nuclear Plans
Cheryl Rofer | Foreign Policy
The United States cannot make its projected numbers of plutonium pits for nuclear weapons. Not now nor the immediate future. Maybe never. That’s important because plutonium pits are part of the fission-fusion chain that is a nuclear explosion. The fission part of a nuclear weapon is a sphere of explosive and metal shells. The pit is the central shell. In early weapon designs, it was solid like the pit in a peach. Its explosion sets off the secondary fusion reaction in another part of the weapon. As part of the United States’ modernization program, the National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) committed to a surge production capacity of at least 80 plutonium pits a year by 2030. It is not clear why rebuilding pits is necessary; a study by Jason, a key group of U.S. scientific advisors, indicated pits should be stable for a century or more.
The Black Reporter Who Exposed a Lie About the Atom Bomb
William J. Broad | New York Times
“Loeb Reflects On Atomic Bombed Area,” read the headline in The Atlanta Daily World of Oct. 5, 1945, two months after Hiroshima’s ruin. In the world of Black newspapers, that name alone was enough to attract readers. Charles H. Loeb was a Black war correspondent whose articles in World War II were distributed to papers across the United States by the National Negro Publishers Association. In the article, Mr. Loeb told how bursts of deadly radiation had sickened and killed the city’s residents. His perspective, while coolly analytic, cast light on a major wartime cover up.