Reinventing Nuclear Arms Control
George Perkovich | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Amid new players and lapsed treaties, nuclear arms control has lost its way. It should refocus on one priority: ensuring against catastrophic escalation. Like car brakes, nuclear arms control is easy to take for granted—until it fails. And, today, it’s failing badly. With the nuclear arms race back on, the world has no reliable brakes to reduce the damage of a catastrophic collision. The arms control system that contained the volatility of the Cold War collapsed over the past two decades, as Russia violated and the United States abandoned a series of agreements that limited—and, in some cases, greatly reduced—both offensive and defensive nuclear capabilities. Most recently, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened to let lapse in early 2021 a treaty governing long-range nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the United States broke the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and the situation in North Korea remains moribund.
Trump Discloses Supposed Existence of a Secret New Nuclear Weapon System to Bob Woodward
Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway | The Drive
President Donald Trump disclosed that the U.S. military has a potentially previously unknown secret nuclear weapon in an on-the-record interview with Washington Post associate editor and veteran journalist Bob Woodward for his new book. Other sources reportedly confirmed the existence of the weapon system in question, but offered no additional details about it. Woodward conducted 18 interviews between December 2019 and July 2020 with Trump for the book, titled Rage, which will begin shipping to the general public later this month. The Washington Post published various details from it, along with audio from Woodward's conversations with the President, on Sept. 9, 2020. “I have built a nuclear – a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about,” Trump told Woodward. “We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody – what we have is incredible.”
LAC Standoff: Massive Chinese Build-Up on North Bank of Pangong Tso Lake
Vijaita Singh | The Hindu
As Indian troops are engaged in a standoff on the south bank of Pangong Tso (lake) for the past one week, a massive build-up had again begun in the Finger area of the north bank, a senior government official told The Hindu. The ground commanders met on Wednesday to solve the stalemate but it remained inconclusive. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had occupied the ridge lines and amassed troops on the north bank, where Fingers 4-8 are located, the official said. There was a worrying concentration of troops on both sides, with China dominating the area, the official noted. The development comes a day before the Foreign Ministers of both countries are expected to meet in Moscow on the sidelines of a meeting of the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
Intel: Iran Claims it Found Agents Behind Natanz Nuclear Explosion
Al-Monitor
Saboteurs responsible for the July 2 explosion at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility have been identified, said a senior Iranian energy official as reported by the country's semi-official state media outlet, Fars News Agency. On Sunday, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) spokesperson Behrouz Kamalvandi told state media that the government had discovered those responsible for the blast. Kamalvandi declined to provide further details as he said the investigation is ongoing. “As far as we know, they have identified the culprits and know their incentives and methods and actually, they have full knowledge over the issue,” Kamalvandi said. The Natanz incident was first announced by AEOI in early July and later verified as an explosion. No casualties were reported.
China’s Air Force Might be Back in the Nuclear Business
Roderick Lee | Diplomat
The Department of Defense’s recent 2020 China Military Power Report reiterated an assessment first made in the 2018 China Military Power Report: that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has re-assigned the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) with a nuclear counterattack mission after a several-decade-long hiatus. (The PLAAF conducted most of the PLA’s early nuclear testing, but the PLA then-Second Artillery, now Rocket Force, later took on the role as China’s primary nuclear force.) This assessment is based on the fact that the new H-6N bomber is capable of carrying a new air-launched ballistic missile, currently in development, that may be nuclear-capable. Unlike platforms that the PLA explicitly associates with nuclear missions, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missile submarines, it is harder to positively demonstrate China’s intent to use long-range bombers as part of a nuclear triad just because they are technically capable of delivering a nuclear payload. However, there is now a growing body of evidence to suggest that China has created an operational bomber unit tasked with conducting nuclear strikes, alongside the acquisition of weapon systems needed to conduct air-launched nuclear strikes.
Northrup Grumman Wins $13 Billion Contract to Replace U.S. Ballistic Missiles
Aaron Gregg and Paul Sonne | Washington Post
The U.S. Air Force has awarded Falls Church-based defense manufacturer Northrop Grumman a $13.3 billion contract to replace America’s aging stock of intercontinental ballistic missiles, marking a major step forward for an ambitious plan to modernize the nation’s crumbling nuclear missile infrastructure. While a nonproliferation treaty caps the Defense Department’s stock of nuclear warheads, top defense officials have said updating the missile infrastructure that would be used to deliver those warheads is essential for deterring aggression from countries such as Russia and China. “Modernizing the nuclear strategic triad is a top priority of our military,” Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said in a statement. “It’s key to our nation’s defense. It provides that strategic nuclear deterrent that we depend on day after day — that we’ve depended on decade after decade.