NEWS BRIEFS

Kazakhstan Signs IAEA Additional Protocol

Contract for Mini-Kill Vehicles Awarded

U.S.-Russian Arms Reduction Body Yet to Meet

U.S. Dual-Use Exports Largely Go Unchecked

Kazakhstan Signs IAEA Additional Protocol

Kazakhstan signed an additional protocol to its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreement Feb. 6, giving the IAEA a green light to conduct more intrusive monitoring of the former Soviet republic’s nuclear activities.

Kazakhstan inherited the world’s fourth-largest nuclear weapons arsenal after the Soviet Union collapsed. In December 1993, the country decided to terminate its nuclear program and join the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state.

Contract for Mini-Kill Vehicles Awarded

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is moving ahead on a project that it hopes will address what is perceived as one of the biggest challenges to U.S. missile defense programs: the possibility that an enemy could simply overwhelm a system by launching multiple warheads simultaneously or hiding a warhead among several decoys.

On Jan. 7, MDA awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin Corporation to research and develop a Miniature Kill Vehicle (MKV). The contract will initially be worth $27 million for an 11-month period, but its potential value totals $768 million over eight years.

A kill vehicle is a compact array of sensors and propulsion mechanisms that is lifted into space by a powerful booster. Once in space, the kill vehicle is supposed to separate from its booster and home in on an enemy warhead in space. The kill vehicle is not armed with an explosive device or warhead but destroys its target through a high-speed collision.

The ground-based missile defense interceptor, set for deployment later this year, employs a single kill vehicle weighing approximately 55 kilograms. Under the new contract, Lockheed Martin will reduce the size of the kill vehicle so that up to “several dozen” can be fitted on a “carrier vehicle” for a single interceptor, Lockheed Martin spokesperson Lori Reichert said Feb. 17. The carrier vehicle will assign each MKV, which will maneuver autonomously after separating from the carrier vehicle, a target to hit.

In theory, a single interceptor armed with multiple kill vehicles could hit as many targets as it had kill vehicles. This would obviate the need for an interceptor to select only one target to hit if it faces several warheads or decoys at once, reducing the likelihood that a warhead might slip by.The notional date for testing the new type of kill vehicle against real targets is 2007. MDA hopes to start deploying MKVs as soon as 2008.

U.S.-Russian Arms Reduction Body Yet to Meet

The United States and Russia have yet to hold a meeting of the Bilateral Implementation Commission to help implement the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which entered into force June 1, 2003. Under the terms of the accord, the commission is supposed to meet at least twice per year.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton discussed the commission’s status with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak during a Jan. 28-30 visit to Moscow, but they set no date for the first meeting of the commission.

In a report to Congress last summer, the Department of State indicated that the first meeting would take place before the end of 2003. The United States and Russia “will discuss operating procedures for the [commission] at its first meeting later this year,” the report predicted.

Responding to questions from Arms Control Today, the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control stated in February, “The United States is prepared to begin meetings of the commission, although no issues have arisen that require a meeting now.” Russian media reports suggest the two sides have had differences over the commission’s setup.

SORT, also known as the Moscow Treaty, requires the United States and Russia to reduce their current deployed strategic warhead levels—respectively, almost 6,000 and nearly 5,300—to no more than 2,200 apiece by the end of 2012. The treaty limit takes effect and expires the same day. Because SORT does not obligate the destruction of warheads or delivery vehicles, weapon systems taken off deployment under the treaty could eventually be returned to service.

Last summer’s State Department report to Congress noted, “We do not yet know how Russia intends to count its reductions for purposes of the Moscow Treaty.” The treaty does not dictate how the two sides are to make and verify their reductions.

U.S. Dual-Use Exports Largely Go Unchecked

The U.S. government process for checking whether American commercial exports are being misused for weapons purposes needs improvement, the General Accounting Office (GAO) concluded in a January report.

The GAO found that the Department of Commerce conducts few inspections to see if a foreign importer is actually using U.S.-supplied dual-use goods properly. Dual-use goods are items with both civilian and military applications. During fiscal years 2000-2002, the Commerce Department approved more than 26,000 shipments of dual-use goods abroad. Nearly 7,700 of those went to destinations in states of concern, such as China, India, Israel, Russia, and Syria. China and India each accounted for more than 2,000 of the deals.

A total of 428 follow-up inspections, more formally known as post-shipment verification (PSV) checks, were done over that same three-year period on exports to states of concern. GAO found that the inspections were of limited value because U.S. inspectors frequently were not aware of the end-use conditions pertaining to the import in question or did not have adequate technical knowledge to assess whether the import was being wrongfully used. Some governments, notably China, also restricted inspectors’ access. GAO further discovered that recipients were not always informed of how a specific import could be used.

Moreover, GAO stated that PSV findings were not given much weight in later export decisions. Although importers with negative PSV results were more strictly evaluated when requesting additional imports, GAO also found that it did not preclude them from concluding future deals.

GAO recommended that the Commerce Department buttress its inspectors’ technical knowledge of U.S. dual-use goods, as well as their understanding of the specific conditions applying to each export’s supposed end-use. The congressional watchdog agency also said that U.S. exporters should provide buyers with written prohibitions on an import’s use. The Commerce Department responded that it “has already taken significant steps to strengthen the PSV process along these lines.”


In a November 2003 unclassified report on global proliferation during the first half of last year, the CIA identified Russia as a key source of dual-use goods and technical knowledge for proliferators. The report stated that Russian entities “continued to be eager to raise funds via exports and transfers.” Of ongoing concern to Washington is Russia’s continued involvement in Iran’s nuclear reactor project at Bushehr, which does have the Kremlin’s official blessing.