UN Watchdog: Iran Has Enriched Uranium to Highest Purity Yet
David Rising | Associated Press
Iran has enriched uranium to slightly higher purity than previously thought due to “fluctuations” in the process, the United Nations’ atomic watchdog said Wednesday. The report underscores the challenges diplomats face in ongoing talks, that began in April, to bring the United States back into the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, which is supported by U.S. President Joe Biden.
Army Discloses Hypersonic LRHW Range of 1,725 Miles; Watch Out China
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. | Breaking Defense
How far can the Army’s hypersonic boost-glide missile — and, probably, its Naval variant — actually go? . . . “The Long Range Hypersonic Weapon provides a capability at a distance greater than 2,775 km,” an Army spokesman told me. That’s about 1,725 miles – at a minimum. The “greater than” leaves the door wide open for a significantly longer range than that. That Army statement came after years of silence on the subject, weeks of pestering by Breaking Defense, and at least one high-level discussion among the interservice “board of directors” coordinating hypersonics programs.
Competition Will Speed Up Fielding Timeline for Missile Defense Interceptor, MDA Boss Says
Jen Judson | Defense News
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency aims to get its first Next-Generation Interceptors to replace the Ground-Based Interceptors, which make up the United States’ homeland ballistic missile defense system, by 2028. But the agency’s director thinks it can happen sooner. Two teams — a Northrop Grumman and Raytheon team, and Lockheed Martin with Aerojet Rocketdyne — will go head-to-head to develop the NGI after each were awarded a development contract to mature technology and reduce risk.
U.S. Intel Chief Haines Visits DMZ Amid Policy Coordination Efforts on N. Korea
Yonhap News Agency
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines visited the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas on Thursday to take a first-hand look at the heavily fortified border, as Washington seeks to round out its policy on North Korea. Haines arrived here Wednesday after holding a trilateral meeting with her South Korean and Japanese counterparts—Park Jie-won and Hiroaki Takizawa—in Tokyo apparently with cooperation on the North's denuclearization topping their shared agenda.
The Wrong Lesson to Take From Israel’s Iron Dome
Fred Kaplan | Slate
Some U.S. officials are pointing to Monday night’s success of Israel’s Iron Dome defenses—which shot down the vast majority of the hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza by Hamas, limiting Israel’s death toll to just seven—as bolstering the case for building more of our own Missile Defense weapons to ward off nuclear-missile attacks by North Korea, China, Russia, or whatever other foe comes at us. In fact, the comparison is completely invalid.
Open Letter in Support of Free Inquiry and Discussion
War on the Rocks
We, the undersigned, watched with worry the recent flurry of media and social-media speculation about a possible appointment to the National Security Council. This concerned Matthew Rojansky, the Director of the Woodrow Wilson’s Kennan Institute, a leading national center dedicated to the study of Russia and Eurasia. The personal attacks on Mr. Rojansky were intended simultaneously to damage Mr. Rojansky’s reputation and to shut down policy debate. We see all of this as very dangerous.