U.S. Will Share Nuclear Submarine Technology With Australia as Part of New Alliance, a Direct Challenge to China
Tyler Pager and Anne Gearan | Washington Post
President Biden announced Wednesday the United States and Britain will share highly sensitive nuclear submarine technology with Australia, a major departure from past policy and a direct challenge to China in its Pacific neighborhood. Biden made the announcement alongside British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who joined the president virtually, as they unveiled a new three-way defense alliance, which will be known as AUKUS. Britain is the only other nation to share U.S. nuclear submarine propulsion technology, an agreement dating back decades and aimed largely at countering the old Soviet Union.
Both North and South Korea Fire Ballistic Missiles as Tensions Rise on Peninsula
Brad Lendon, Jake Kwon, Gawon Bae, and Yoonjung Seo | CNN
Both North and South Korea tested ballistic missiles on Wednesday, ratcheting up tensions exponentially in what was already one of the most volatile regions on the planet. Pyongyang fired the first missiles on Wednesday, sending two into waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula five minutes apart, at 12:38 p.m. and 12:43 p.m. local time (11:38 p.m. and 11:43 p.m. ET), according to Japans’ Coast Guard. Seoul followed that test less than three hours later, firing a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from the submerged 3,700-ton submarine ROKS Dosan Ahn Changho, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said. The missile hit its target accurately, the ministry said without giving more details.
Iran Demotes Top Nuclear Diplomat in Foreign Ministry Reshuffle
Yasna Haghdoost and Golnar Motevalli | Bloomberg
Iran’s top international negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, has been replaced by a hard-line critic of the 2015 nuclear deal as world powers press Tehran and Washington to quickly revive the ailing accord after months of stalled talks. Ali Bagheri Kani will take over from Araghchi as deputy foreign minister for political affairs effective immediately, following a reshuffle announced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement Tuesday. Araghchi will be retained as an adviser to Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian.
The US Navy’s Nuclear Proliferation Problem
Alan J. Kuperman | Breaking Defense
As the annual defense authorization and spending bills head to congressional floor votes this month, lawmakers have a chance to take the next step in the critical fight against nuclear proliferation — by pushing the US Navy to change the way it powers some of its ships. A terrorist or rogue state with a nuclear weapon would be a national security nightmare. The most likely path to such a bomb would be for an adversary to divert or steal one of the two required nuclear explosives, plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU), from a non-weapons purpose like reactor fuel. That is why the US, for nearly 50 years, has worked to phase out global commerce in these two dangerous materials. But today the world’s biggest remaining customer for HEU outside of weapons is the Navy, which uses it in reactors to power submarines and aircraft carriers. By contrast, civilian nuclear powerplants use low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, which is unsuitable for weapons. The Navy reactors currently use about 100 nuclear bombs’ worth of HEU each year, more than all of the world’s other reactors combined.
Russia Begins Rollout of New S-500 Air Defence System – Report
Reuters
Russia has completed tests of its new S-500 surface-to-air missile system and has started supplying it to the armed forces, the RIA news agency quoted deputy prime minister Yuri Borisov as saying on Thursday. The S-500, a weapon Moscow hopes will beef up its own defences and become an export best seller, has been described as a space defence system and can intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles, hypersonic cruise missiles and aircraft. Russia started testing the system last year and the military have said that the first batch would be deployed around the city of Moscow.
Introducing Carnegie’s President
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar — a law professor and public servant with broad experience in international and domestic policy, the justice system, education, and philanthropy — will become the eleventh President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on November 1, 2021. A scholar of transnational regulatory and security problems, American institutions, and technology’s impact on law and government, he currently serves as a justice on the Supreme Court of California, the highest court of America’s largest judiciary. He is the first Mexican immigrant ever to serve in this capacity.