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Russia Has Restarted Low-Yield Nuclear Tests, U.S. Believes

IN THIS ISSUE:Russia Has Restarted Low-Yield Nuclear Tests, U.S. Believes, Russia Says U.S. Nuclear Accusation is an Attack on Global Arms Control, The U.S. Expects China Will Quickly Double Its Nuclear Stockpile, Trump Will Decide Whether to Extend START Treaty ‘Next Year’: Official, North Korea Accuses U.S. of ‘Evil Ambition,’ Says Use of Strength Not a U.S. Monopoly

Published on May 30, 2019

Russia Has Restarted Low-Yield Nuclear Tests, U.S. Believes

Julian Barnes and William Broad | New York Times

The Trump administration believes Russia has restarted very low-yield nuclear tests, officials said on Wednesday in a finding that could be used to renew in earnest the arms race between Moscow and Washington. But the significance of the statements by the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a senior National Security Council official was immediately debated by nuclear weapons experts. Some experts said claims of low-yield tests would be nothing new. Intelligence officials and nuclear analysts in Washington have long raised the possibility of such violations going back nearly two decades, to when Russia ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 2000. Other nuclear weapons experts have argued that significant Russian cheating on the treaty is unlikely because the designs of the country’s nuclear warheads tend to be very robust. The small returns, they have said, would make the geopolitical costs of getting caught prohibitively high. Lt. Gen. Robert P. Ashley Jr., the director of the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, said Russia appeared to have enhanced its ability to develop new nonstrategic nuclear weapons and to manage its existing stockpile by its testing capability. “The United States believes Russia is probably not adhering to the nuclear testing moratorium in a manner consistent with the zero-yield standard,” General Ashley said in prepared remarks at the Hudson Institute. In a question-and-answer session afterward, he appeared to soften that statement, saying only that Russia “has the capability” to conduct a test with a low nuclear yield.

Russia Says U.S. Nuclear Accusation is an Attack on Global Arms Control

Reuters

Russia’s ambassador to the United States on Thursday said a U.S. allegation that Moscow may be conducting banned nuclear tests was a calculated attempt to undermine nuclear arms control, Russian state television reported. The head of the U.S.’s Defense Intelligence Agency said on Wednesday that Russia may be conducting low-level nuclear testing that flouts the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) which was negotiated in the 1990s. “The U.S. allegations ... look like a well-planned and directed attack not only and not so much on Russia as on the arms control regime, and on the entire architecture for strategic stability,” Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador, was quoted as saying by Vesti TV. 

The U.S. Expects China Will Quickly Double Its Nuclear Stockpile

W.J. Hennigan and John Walcott | Time

China is expected to increase its nuclear weapons stockpile by twofold in the coming decade, according to a new U.S. military intelligence assessment, part of a sweeping build-up of Beijing’s strategic arsenal. “Over the next decade, China is likely to at least double the size of its nuclear stockpile in the course of implementing the most rapid expansion and diversification of its nuclear arsenal in China’s history,” Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said during a speech on Wednesday. Speaking at the Hudson Institute in Washington, Ashley also accused both China and Russia of covertly testing low-yield nuclear weapons in violation of a 23-year old international treaty. The allegation came less than three months before the expected end of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces agreement with Russia; and two years from the expiration of the landmark New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START. Ashley provided no proof for his claims that Russia and China likely violated the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which bans test explosions of nuclear weapons, known as a “zero-yield standard.” Nor did he indicate what further actions might be taken as a result of the violation. A senior U.S. intelligence official said after Ashley’s speech that there is no consensus in the intelligence community that Russia has conducted a low-yield test, only that it is assembling the facilities that would be necessary to do so. The official said the Defense Intelligence Agency generally takes the “worst case” position on military matters, as it did on the question of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Trump Will Decide Whether to Extend START Treaty ‘Next Year’: Official

Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump will not decide until next year whether he will extend a nuclear treaty with Russia, a White House aide said on Wednesday. Extending the New START treaty is under discussion within the administration “and a decision the president will make next year,” Tim Morrison, a director at the National Security Council, said at an arms control forum hosted by the Hudson Institute. Trump has criticized the treaty, which sets limits on the number of nuclear weapons Russia and the United States can have. But supporters of the accord say it is important because it created a monitoring regime to verify compliance.

North Korea Accuses U.S. of ‘Evil Ambition,’ Says Use of Strength Not a U.S. Monopoly

David Brunnstrom | Reuters

North Korea on Wednesday accused the United States of showing bad faith in negotiations by conducting nuclear and missile tests and military drills as part of an “evil ambition” to conquer North Korea by force, even while advocating dialogue. In the latest uptick in angry rhetoric from Pyongyang after a failed summit with the United States in February, a North Korean Foreign Ministry statement repeated complaints about an ongoing U.S. sanctions campaign, including the seizure of one of the country’s biggest cargo ships, and warned that “use of strength is not at all a monopoly of the United States.” The statement, attributed to the Policy Research Director of the ministry’s Institute for American Studies and carried by official media, noted that the United States had conducted a subcritical nuclear test on Feb. 13, just days before a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Pentagon Hits Pause on Redesign of Critical Homeland Missile Defense Component

Jen Judson | Defense News

The Pentagon has hit the pause button on a troubled effort to redesign the kill vehicle on the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system’s interceptors after reporting a two-year delay in its development earlier this year. The GMD system is designed to defend against possible ballistic missile attacks from North Korea and Iran. Dr. Michael Griffin, the under secretary of defense for research and engineering, has decided to issue a stop-work order to Boeing on the development of the Redesigned Kill Vehicle — or RKV — which was first reported by Inside Defense last week. Boeing was directed to stop work on the RKV on May 24, a company spokesman confirmed to Defense News.

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