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“It will take all of us working together – government officials, and diplomats, academic experts, and scientists, activists, and organizers – to come up with new and innovative approaches to strengthen transparency and predictability, reduce risk, and forge the next generation of arms control agreements.”
– Wendy Sherman
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
June 2, 2022
September 2019

Arms Control Today September 2019

Edition Date: 
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Cover Image: 

Russian Weapons Accident Raises Nuclear Concerns


September 2019
By Greg Webb

An accidental explosion on Russia’s White Sea coast has triggered questions about the Kremlin’s strategic weapons development efforts and concerns that Russia may have shut down sensors to deny information to international observers.

Officials examine a radionuclide detector stationed on the roof of the Vienna International Centre, home of CTBTO headquarters.  Russia has deployed seven such detectors on its territory as part of the CTBTO's monitoring system, but some stopped transmitting information after a Russian weapons accident on Aug. 8. (Photo: CTBTO)The Aug. 8 incident began with a blast at a military test site near Severodvinsk, where Russia tests missile systems. Conflicting media reports and a lack of official Russian information have led to extensive speculation about the weapon that exploded.

The accident involved “isotopic power sources,” according to a Aug. 10 statement from Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) that also reported the deaths of five employees, but no other official descriptions have been offered. Some media outlets reported that radiation levels had increased following the explosion, and one local doctor was later found to have been contaminated by cesium-137, a by-product of nuclear fission, the Moscow Times reported on Aug. 16.

Extensive open-source research has led analysts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies to assess that Russia was testing a nuclear-powered cruise missile, a technology long discarded by the United States as too expensive and impractical. The Middlebury finding was based on postaccident satellite imagery and ship-tracking information that revealed the presence of a Rosatom-owned vessel that specializes in transporting nuclear cargo.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to confirm the Middlebury assessment on Aug. 21, saying that a “nuclear-propelled missile” was being tested at the time of the accident, according to The Washington Post.

Earlier, other analysts suggested the destroyed weapon could have been a conventional rocket coupled with a radioisotope thermal generator, a technology that has been used successfully for decades to produce small amounts of electricity for spacecraft or remotely located scientific equipment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted in March 2018 that Russia was developing a nuclear-powered cruise missile that would have virtually unlimited range and would be “invincible against all existing and prospective missile defense and counter-air defense systems.” Russia has dubbed the missile Burevestnik, or the 9M730. NATO has named the system Skyfall, or the SSC-X-9.

Reacting to the incident, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted on Aug. 12, “The United States is learning much from the failed missile explosion in Russia. We have similar, though more advanced, technology. The Russian ‘Skyfall’ explosion has people worried about the air around the facility, and far beyond. Not good!” There is no evidence that the United States is developing any nuclear-powered aircraft.

Further confusing the situation, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) reported that some Russian radionuclide sensor stations began to halt transmissions two days after the accident. The CTBTO’s global network of sensors to detect nuclear explosions includes 80 radionuclide stations that sniff for by-products of nuclear fission and fusion. Russia has contributed seven such stations to the network, but by Aug. 13, only two were sending information to the CTBTO, although two more resumed their data flow by Aug. 20, according to information shared with Arms Control Today. Russian officials told the CTBTO that the stations were experiencing “communication and network issues,” The Wall Street Journal reported on Aug. 18.

The outage raised concerns that Russia could be trying to conceal evidence of a radioactive release from the accident, as the information from the CTBTO network is available to all 184 signatories of the treaty, including the United States. Identifying the isotopes that may have been released in the accident could help to understand the nature of the weapon under development.

Russia has accused the CTBTO of meddling by sharing information with the public. “The data transmissions from stations of the national segment of the international monitoring network is strictly voluntary for any country,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Interfax on Aug. 20. “The mandate of the CTBTO…does not cover development of any types of weapons.”

Russian transparency has also come into question in the context of the 1986 Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident. Quickly developed following the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the convention commits its parties, including Russia, to notify the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about transboundary threats from “any accident involving facilities or activities…from which a release of radioactive material occurs or is likely to occur.” The agreement identifies several types of relevant facilities and activities, including “the manufacture, use, storage, disposal and transport of radioisotopes for agricultural, industrial, medical and related scientific and research purposes; and…the use of radioisotopes for power generation in space objects.”

After being contacted by the IAEA, Russia told the agency that the convention did not apply to the accident. “This facility does not belong to the facilities for the peaceful use of nuclear energy,” said a statement to the agency from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, adding that “after the incident the radiation level in the region is equal to the natural radiation background, as confirmed by the data from the automated radiation situation monitoring system.”

Russian opacity fuels speculation about a weapons test gone wrong.

Kim, Trump Maintain Hope for Nuclear Talks


September 2019
By Catherine Killough

A new letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to U.S. President Donald Trump could raise hopes that stalled U.S.-North Korean nuclear negotiations could resume in late August, Trump said Aug. 9. Both leaders apparently remain open to diplomacy, even though North Korea has conducted multiple missile launches since July and the United States and South Korea announced plans to resume joint military exercises.

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Kim Jong Un meet briefly on the North Korean side of the demilitarized zone on June 30. The North Korean visit was the first by a sitting U.S. president. (Photo: Dong-A Ilbo via Getty Images)“He really wrote a beautiful, three-page—I mean, right from top to bottom—a really beautiful letter. And maybe I’ll release the results of the letter, but it was a very positive letter,” Trump told White House reporters.

Kim is planning to stop testing missiles when U.S.-South Korean military exercises conclude at the end of August, Trump said. The ongoing exercises are a modified version of the annual large-scale Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises that Trump previously labeled “provocative” and canceled at the 2018 Singapore summit.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry initially raised objections to U.S.-South Korean plans to resume military exercises in July, asserting they would constitute “a breach of the main spirit of the June 12 DPRK-U.S. Joint Statement.” In the press conference following the Singapore summit, Trump stated, “We will be stopping the war games,” but offered few details on the suspension of future exercises.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry warned, “With the U.S. unilaterally reneging on its commitments, we are gradually losing our justifications to follow through on the commitments we made with the U.S. as well,” most likely referring to Kim’s voluntary moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile testing in April 2018.

North Korea has not technically violated that moratorium, but it has conducted six rounds of short-range ballistic missile tests in the span of a month. The increasing frequency of tests may be North Korea’s attempt to build leverage ahead of the possible resumption of nuclear negotiations with the United States.

South Korea has sought to assure Pyongyang that the joint military exercises are part of preparations for the transfer of wartime operational control from the United States to South Korea.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to characterize joint military exercises as costly to the United States and argues that South Korea should contribute more to defense burden-sharing costs. “We get virtually nothing” for stationing U.S. forces in South Korea, Trump said on Aug. 7. South Korea currently covers about half of the overall cost to host the U.S. military, in addition to having funded the nearly $10 billion expansion of the U.S. Army base at Camp Humphreys.

This month, Washington and Seoul restarted negotiations on the Special Measures Agreement, a U.S.-South Korean military spending pact, which expires on Dec. 31. The financial dispute could pose a strain on the alliance and further complicate diplomatic efforts with North Korea as Kim has also set a deadline “for a bold decision” from the United States by the end of the year.

Possibly in the hopes of holding a fourth summit, Trump and Kim have avoided trading direct insults and even held a brief meeting on June 30 at the Demilitarized Zone, where Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea. The two leaders praised the strength of their relationship and agreed to restart working-level talks, but there were few official remarks regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program or the prospects for advancing denuclearization and peace.

In a recent sign that preparations for working-level talks are underway, Stephen Biegun, U.S. special representative for North Korea, visited Seoul in late August to meet with Japanese and South Korean officials “to further strengthen coordination on the final, fully verified denuclearization” of North Korea, according to the State Department.

The announcement came as reports have emerged that Biegun is under consideration to succeed the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Russia. If confirmed, it is not clear who would take the U.S. lead on working-level negotiations with North Korea.

As U.S. and North Korean leaders make nice, a next round of nuclear negotiations remains unscheduled.

Boeing Bows Out of New ICBM Competition


September 2019
By Kingston Reif

The Boeing Co. announced in July that it would not bid on the contract to develop a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system amid controversy in Congress about the project’s rationale and viability.

A Minuteman III missile stands ready in its silo in North Dakota. Plans to replace the land-based component of U.S. nuclear weapons were disrupted in July, when Boeing Co. announced it would not bid on the program. (Photo: U.S. Air Force/Getty)“After numerous attempts to resolve concerns within the procurement process, Boeing has informed the Air Force that it will not bid [on] Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) under the current acquisition approach,” said Todd Blecher, a company spokesman.

First reported by Inside Defense on July 24, the company’s exit leaves Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. as the only company left competing for the contract.

In August 2017, the Air Force selected Boeing and Northrop to proceed with development of the Minuteman III ICBM replacement. (See ACT, October 2017.) On July 16, the Air Force issued a request for proposals for the EMD contract to produce and deploy the system. The service planned to award the contract in the summer of 2020.

Boeing complained, however, that Northrop had “unfair advantage” in the competition after acquiring last year the firm Orbital ATK, one of the nation’s two producers of solid rocket motors. Boeing has asked the Pentagon to adjust the bid acquisition parameters, but it remains to be seen how the Defense Department will respond.

If the department stays the course and moves ahead without competition, it would have less leverage to control costs. There is no precedent for the absence of competition for a development contract the size of the GBSD program.

The Defense Department is planning to replace the Minuteman III missile, its supporting launch control facilities, and command-and-control infrastructure. The plan is to purchase 666 new missiles, 400 of which would be operationally deployed through 2070.

The Trump administration’s fiscal year 2020 budget request included $570 million for research and development for the GBSD program and $112 million to continue the design of the W87-1 warhead to replace the W78 warhead currently carried by the Minuteman III. (See ACT, April 2019.)

The Air Force initially estimated the cost of the GBSD program at $62 billion after inflation, but the Pentagon in August 2016 set the estimated acquisition cost of the program at $85 billion. The $85 billion estimate is at the lower end of an independent Pentagon cost estimate that put the acquisition price tag as high as $150 billion. (See ACT, March 2017.)


 


The Defense Department completed another independent cost estimate of the program in June, but has yet to disclose whether the projected cost of the program has changed.

The Air Force argues that a new ICBM is necessary because the fleet of 400 deployed Minuteman III missiles is aging into obsolescence and losing its capability to penetrate adversary missile defenses. According to the report of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, the life of the Minuteman III “cannot be extended further.”

A 2014 Air Force analysis, however, did not determine that extending the life of the Minuteman III is infeasible. Instead, the study found that the price to build a new missile system would be roughly the same as the cost to maintain the Minuteman III.

The service arrived at this conclusion by comparing the total life-cycle cost of the two options through 2075 and assuming a need to deploy 450 missiles for the entire 50-year service life of the new missile system.

Critics of the GBSD program claim that if the requirements for 450 missiles, a 50-year service life, and new capabilities are relaxed, then it is possible to extend the life of the Minuteman III for a period of time beyond 2030 and at less cost than the current approach.

The Congressional Budget Office projected in 2017 that $17.5 billion in fiscal year 2017 dollars could be saved through 2046 by delaying development of a new ICBM by 20 years and instead extending the life of the Minuteman III by buying new engines and new guidance systems for the missiles. (See ACT, December 2017.)

Citing concerns about the need for and ability to execute the GBSD program as planned, the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and defense appropriations bill passed by the Democratic-led House this summer eliminated the Pentagon’s funding request to proceed to the main development phase of the GBSD program.

Both bills also halved the funding request for the W87-1 warhead and cut $241 million from the Energy Department’s request of $712 million to expand the production of plutonium pits to at least 80 per year in support of the W87-1 life extension program.

A draft version of the House NDAA also would have required an independent study on the benefits, risks, and estimated cost savings of extending the life of the Minuteman III through 2050 and delaying the GBSD program. The provision was stripped out during the House Armed Services Committee’s markup of the bill in June.

An amendment to restore the provision on the House floor failed by a vote of 164–264.

The Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee fully funded the administration’s request for the GBSD program, W87-1 warhead, and plutonium-pit production.

Pentagon plans to replace U.S. ICBMs are disrupted by contractor difficulties.

Trump Vetoes Challenge to Arab Arms Sales


September 2019
By Ethan Kessler

Some congressional efforts to curb U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates met an end on July 29, when three Senate votes failed to override President Donald Trump’s vetoes of bipartisan resolutions blocking portions of “emergency” arms exports to the two Arab powers. None of the votes achieved the needed two-thirds majority, with the largest override support garnering 46 of 87 senators voting.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appears at a May hearing in Washington. He authored three resolutions on Middle East arms sales that President Donald Trump vetoed on July 29. (Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images)On May 24, the Trump administration originally announced more than $8 billion in potential exports to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, citing a rarely used emergency provision of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) to skirt congressional review. The Senate approved resolutions to block the issuance of licenses on all 22 agreements related to the exports, and the House concurred on July 17 on three of the most controversial, addressing the provision of precision-guided munitions to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and their coproduction in Saudi Arabia. (See ACT, July/August 2019.)

All Democratic and independent senators present voted on July 29 to override Trump’s veto, joined by Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Mike Lee (Utah), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Todd Young (Ind.). Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) voted to override on the last vote after missing the first two. All Republicans voting to override also voted on June 20 to pass at least two of the three resolutions.

In a speech on the Senate floor before the votes, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee and author of all three resolutions, said the Trump administration’s “willingness to turn a blind eye to the wholesale slaughter of civilians [in Yemen] and the murder of journalists and move forward with the sale of these weapons will have lasting implications for America’s moral leadership on the world stage.”

The resolutions were vetoed by Trump five days previously, marking only the third veto of his presidential term and the second regarding U.S. involvement in the Yemen conflict, now in its fifth year. White House statements accompanying the veto called the joint resolutions “ ill-conceived and time-consuming” and said they “directly conflict with the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States” and continued claims that the weapons were needed as a “bulwark against the malign activities of Iran and its proxies in the region.”

In other efforts to restrain the administration, the House-approved version of the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act contains language to prohibit exports of air-to-ground weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Pending negotiations with Senate leaders will determine if the prohibition will continue to stand.

A majority of U.S. senators backed a Congressional effort to limit U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, but President Trump’s veto holds.

IAEA Leadership Opens After Amano Death


September 2019
By Greg Webb

Yukiya Amano, a Japanese diplomat with lengthy experience in the nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament fields, died on July 18 midway through his third term as director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Vienna-based agency quickly announced a rapid process to select its next leader as the agency continues to face many of the same challenges it did when Amano began his first four-year term in 2009, particularly Iran and North Korea.

Cornel Feruta, the IAEA's acting director general, speaks at a tribute to former Director-General Yukiya Amano on Aug. 21. (Photo: IAEA)The agency offered no cause of death for the 72-year-old Amano, who had been forced to miss a number of major agency meetings due to a long illness. He died just one day after news broke that he planned to retire in March 2020.

During Amano’s tenure, the IAEA completed a multiyear, contentious investigation of Iran’s past nuclear activities. For years, Iranian officials had denied any nuclear weapons ambitions or research, but the agency’s 2015 final assessment concluded that Iran had indeed conducted nuclear weapons developmental work. Nevertheless, the investigation found no evidence that Iran had continued such efforts after 2009. (See ACT, January/February 2016.)

The agency also has monitored North Korea’s nuclear activities from a distance after its inspectors were expelled from the country after Pyongyang withdrew from six-party talks in 2009.

Amano’s 2009 selection reflected Western fatigue with his three-term predecessor Mohamed ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 after contradicting U.S. claims about Iraq’s nuclear capability before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. ElBaradei used his position to express views on issues that critics said were beyond his official purview, and Amano promised to focus his efforts on the technical work of the agency’s mandate. Recognizing that the IAEA’s nuclear nonproliferation work would dominate the news coverage of the agency, Amano pushed his organization to excel at other areas of its mission, particularly assisting the developing world to reap the benefits of peaceful nuclear technologies.

He also oversaw the IAEA’s response to the 2011 nuclear accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Days after the disaster, he flew to Tokyo to encourage greater transparency from Japanese nuclear officials, and he led international efforts to upgrade global nuclear safety practices for several years after the accident.

“During the past decade, the agency delivered concrete results to achieve the objective of ‘Atoms for Peace and Development,’ thanks to the support of member states and the dedication of agency staff. I am very proud of our achievements, and grateful to member states and agency staff,” Amano wrote in a note announcing his retirement that he intended to deliver to the agency’s Board of Governors before he died. The agency provided the statement in a July 22 release announcing Amano’s death.

After joining the Japanese Foreign Ministry in 1972 and fulfilling a number of standard diplomatic posts, Amano embarked on an extensive career working on arms control and nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. He became ministry director-general of arms control and scientific affairs in 2002 and director-general of the Disarmament, Nonproliferation and Science Department in 2004.

Amano spent considerable time working with nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) processes, serving on the Japanese delegations to three treaty review conferences before chairing the 2007 preparatory committee meeting for the 2010 NPT Review Conference.

The agency and its 35-nation Board of Governors reacted quickly to Amano’s death, establishing a process for appointing the next director-general. IAEA member states have until Sept. 5 to nominate successor candidates, one of whom will be elected by the board in October and take office by the beginning of 2020. The board must appoint a director-general with a two-thirds majority vote, and then a simple majority of the agency’s entire 171-nation membership must approve the selection.

Both the board and the membership can convene as needed, and such special meetings are expected as the annual membership-wide General Conference is scheduled to begin Sept. 16.

In 2009, Amano was appointed by the board after six votes and approved by the membership by acclamation.

Two candidates have emerged so far as potential successors to Amano. Veteran Argentine diplomat Rafael Mariano Grossi, currently his nation’s ambassador to Austria and permanent representative to the IAEA, has publicly announced his candidacy. Grossi previously served as IAEA assistant director-general for policy under Amano.

Earlier this year, he was designated to serve as president of the 2020 NPT Review Conference. (See ACT, June 2019.) During his IAEA candidacy, Grossi intends to continue his review conference efforts. “I have continued to work with the same enthusiasm and dedication on preparations for the NPT review conference including through regional meetings, which have proceeded as planned,” he told Arms Control Today on Aug. 5.

The other candidate appears to be Romanian diplomat Cornel Feruta, who currently serves as chief coordinator for the IAEA. Feruta has not publicly announced his candidacy, but a wide variety of news reports have named him as a candidate, and his position is likely strengthened by the agency board’s decision to tap him as acting director-general while the selection process is underway. For many months, Feruta has filled in to cover for Amano’s illness-caused absences.

The IAEA establishes a rapid process to replace its director-general.

U.S. Nuclear Warhead Costs Still Rising


September 2019
By Kingston Reif

The estimated cost of sustaining U.S. nuclear warheads and their supporting infrastructure continues to rise, according to the Energy Department’s latest annual report on the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan. Prepared by the department’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the July report illustrates the rising cost of the government’s nuclear mission as the Trump administration implements the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which calls for expanding U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities. (See ACT, March 2018.)

The fiscal year 2020 iteration projects more than $392 billion in spending, after inflation, on agency efforts related to sustaining and modernizing the nuclear weapons stockpile over the next 25 years. This is an increase of $13 billion from the 2019 version of the plan. (See ACT, December 2018.)

The NNSA states that the projected growth in spending is “affordable and executable,” but the projected cost of the plan falls at the low end of an estimated range of $386 billion to $423 billion. The agency has historically struggled to complete large infrastructure and facility recapitalization projects on time and on budget.

Overall, the Trump administration is requesting $37.3 billion in fiscal year 2020 for the Defense and Energy departments to sustain and modernize U.S. nuclear delivery systems and warheads and their supporting infrastructure, an increase of about $2 billion from the fiscal year 2019 appropriation. (See ACT, April 2019.)

Of that amount, the NNSA is requesting $12.4 billion for its weapons program, an increase of $1.3 billion from the fiscal year 2019 appropriation and $530 million from the projection for fiscal year 2020 in the fiscal year 2019 budget request.

A major source of projected growth in the new stockpile plan is in the area of nuclear warhead life-extension programs. The total cumulative costs over 25 years for these programs increased by approximately $4 billion from the 2019 estimate.

The plan attributes the higher projected costs to “2018 Nuclear Posture Review implementation, refined requirements that increase scope complexity, accelerated production schedule milestones, updated assumptions for future warheads, and the escalation costs of a future year replacing a lower-cost early year.”

The estimated cost under the plan to upgrade the warhead for the existing air-launched cruise missile rose to $11.2 billion, an increase of $1.2 billion from the estimated cost as of last year’s plan.


 


The estimated cost of the B61 life extension program held steady at $7.6 billion, but the department reported that the program “is experiencing an unresolved technical issue related to the qualification of electrical components used in non-nuclear assemblies,” which is expected to delay the previously planned first production-unit date of March 2020. (See ACT, June 2019.) The plan states that additional “testing is required to ascertain the impacts and whether a change in initial operational capability dates are necessary.”

The NNSA Office of Cost Estimating and Program Evaluation projected in 2017 a total program cost of approximately $10 billion and a two-year delay to the agency’s first production-unit date. (See ACT, June 2017.)

The stockpile plan notes that the NNSA’s goal remains to produce at least 80 plutonium pits per year as directed in the Nuclear Posture Review. (See ACT, June 2018.)

That goal may be difficult to reach. The Institute for Defense Analyses, a federally funded research organization, reported in April that the agency’s 80-pit goal by 2030 cannot be met. The institute’s study found “no historical precedent to support” achieving such a capability by 2030.

In addition, the stockpile plan reveals that the NNSA and Pentagon have established a “Deeply Buried Target Defeat Team…to determine future options for defeating such targets.” This suggests the administration could consider the development of a new earth-penetrating nuclear weapon. (See ACT, December 2005.)

The Trump administration forecasts spending $392 billion next year to maintain U.S. warheads.

U.S. University to Speed Hypersonic Development


September 2019
By Michael T. Klare

Texas A&M University will build one of the world’s largest wind tunnels on behalf of the U.S. Army Futures Command as part of an accelerating U.S. effort to develop hypersonic weapons, according to an August announcement. The unusual partnership of the university, the Army, and the state of Texas represents a throwback to the Cold War, when prominent educational institutions built and managed major military research facilities, such as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, established by the University of California, Berkeley, in 1952.

Texas A&M University plans to augment its existing wind tunnel facilities, such as the Oran W. Nicks Low Speed Wind Tunnel shown here, with a long wind tunnel to test hypersonic aircraft. (Photo: Texas A&M University) In its announcement, University officials described plans to construct a “ballistic aero-optics and materials” (BAM) test facility for $130 million on a 2,000-acre campus near the small city of Bryan, about 100 miles east of Austin.

“Texas A&M will be the hypersonics research capital of the country with the planned construction of [the BAM] facility,” said Katherine Banks, the school’s vice chancellor and dean of engineering. The facility will consist of an above-ground tunnel 1 kilometer long and 2 meters in diameter, making it one of the largest such installations in the world. According to Defense One, the university will contribute $80 million toward construction costs with $50 million more provided by the state; additional sums will come from the Futures Command, which will operate the facility.

As U.S. military leaders appear determined to outpace China and Russia in the exploitation of advanced military technologies, and now unfettered by the defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the Defense Department is accelerating its drive to develop and deploy hypersonic weapons, projectiles that can fly at five times the speed of sound or faster, evading most air defenses. (See ACT, June 2019.) Many such projectiles, some of which with ranges that would have been limited by the INF Treaty, are being rushed into development, and the Pentagon is planning to procure vast numbers of these munitions as soon as they are deemed ready for combat.

The United States needs “many dozens, many hundreds, maybe thousands of assets,” said Michael Griffin, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, on Aug. 7. “This takes us back to the Cold War where at one point we had 30,000 nuclear warheads and missiles to launch them. We haven’t produced on that kind of scale since the [Berlin] Wall came down.”

To satisfy this requirement, analysts say the arms industry will have to overcome numerous technical issues involving the design and production of hypersonic weapons. Projectiles flying at hypersonic speeds encounter immense pressures and temperatures in the Earth’s atmosphere, deforming even specialized materials and distorting electronic and communications links. Long before such weapons can be deployed, therefore, they must be rigorously tested under realistic conditions. This is normally done in wind tunnels, but hypersonic weapons fly so fast that few such facilities are capable of providing the necessary test environment. The BAM facility is planned to supplement hypersonics testing at NASA’s Ames Research Center, located at Moffett Field, Calif., where the Pentagon currently conducts the bulk of its hypersonic testing.

Texas A&M University expands its aerospace engineering capacity to support U.S. military goals.

U.S. Hosts Nuclear Disarmament Working Group


September 2019
By Shannon Bugos

Aiming to break loose stagnant progress toward nuclear disarmament, officials from more than 40 nations agreed to an initial framework of a U.S. initiative during a two-day meeting in Washington ending July 3. The U.S. State Department hosted the plenary meeting for participants of its Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament (CEND) initiative.

The officials discussed “ways to improve the international security environment in order to overcome obstacles to further progress on nuclear disarmament,” according to the State Department’s media note released on the first day. As stated in a summary report of the working group obtained by Arms Control Today, three particular topic areas were identified: the reduction of the perceived incentives for states to acquire or increase their nuclear stockpiles, the involvement of multilateral institutions in nuclear disarmament, and potential interim measures to reduce risks related to nuclear weapons.

Christopher Ford, U.S. assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, opened the session saying he wanted the process “to be as free and open an engagement as possible…. While no one should be asked to abandon strongly held policy views, I would encourage you to focus more upon how we can build a better world together than upon trading recriminations about the present.”

The United States first proposed the CEND initiative at the May 2018 meeting of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Preparatory Committee, held in advance of the NPT’s 2020 review conference. (See ACT, July/August 2019.) U.S. officials characterized the initiative as an effort to hold a dialogue on the “discrete tasks” necessary in order “to create the conditions conducive to further nuclear disarmament.”

The recent meeting, consisting of about 100 representatives from nuclear- and non-nuclear-weapon states, as well as non-NPT nations, was randomly divided into three groups and rotated through each of the three topic areas. Afterward, a subject matter expert in each group summarized the areas of convergence that emerged from each session.

On the issue of reducing incentives to acquire or retain nuclear weapons, the participants agreed to future discussion of the need for states to clearly articulate the full scope of threats they perceive from others, according to the summary report. Additionally, the officials agreed on their desire to buttress existing arms control, nonproliferation, and security mechanisms, as well as compliance with them. Some participants, for example, expressed support for two existing agreements: the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which curbed Iran’s nuclear program, and the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which they encouraged the United States and Russia to extend.

The summary reported that the discussion of the role of multilateral and other types of institutions found general agreement that the CEND initiative could provide “an innovative format for strengthening existing forums.” Other areas of convergence included the need to reaffirm the importance of the NPT as the “cornerstone” of the global nonproliferation and disarmament architecture and to develop a list of practical measures, such as negotiating and implementing confidence-building measures, to improve the security environment.

Lastly, the risk reduction discussion identified the need to manage and prevent conflict from escalating to nuclear war, according to the summary report. Increased dialogue and communication were noted as potential areas for future work, particularly in respect to having nuclear-armed states provide greater detail on what is feasible for nuclear risk reduction. The most discussed options among participants for specific risk-reduction measures included improving crisis communication channels, standardizing pre-launch notifications to prevent misunderstandings, and eliminating certain categories of nuclear weapons or launch systems.

The next meeting of the CEND initiative has not been announced, but some reports have indicated it will take place later this year in Europe. Finland, the Netherlands, and South Korea will serve as co-chairs of the three discussion subgroups, and three additional co-chairs are expected to be named.

A new survey finds that some global tech firms have no policies to ensure their applications are not used for lethal autonomous weapons.

Few Tech Firms Limit Autonomous Weapons


September 2019
By Michael T. Klare

Only a handful of global technology firms have adopted explicit policies to prevent their products from being used in lethal autonomous weapons systems, also called “killer robots,” according to a survey published in August. Such weapons have become highly controversial because they are gaining a capacity to identify and attack targets without human supervision.

A survey of 50 international technology firms found that Google was one of just seven companies to follow best practices in ensuring their technology is not used for lethal autonomous weapons. A 2018 staff action led the California-based firm to seek no renewal of a contract with the U.S. Defense Department. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)Just seven of 50 companies surveyed in 12 nations were rated as following the best practices of ensuring their technology would not be used in these systems. The survey, called “Don’t Be Evil?” was conducted by PAX, a Dutch advocacy group.

“Don’t Be Evil” was once the official motto of Google, where thousands of workers signed an open letter in April 2018 calling on the company to cancel its involvement with Project Maven, a Pentagon-funded initiative aimed at harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) for the interpretation of video images that would potentially enable lethal attacks by autonomous weapons systems. Google’s management chose not to renew the contract when it came up for renewal in June of that year, promising that the company would not help develop AI for “weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.”

The PAX survey queried major firms known to be developing technologies relevant to autonomous weaponry, such as AI software and systems integration, pattern recognition, aerial drones and swarming, and ground robotics. The list included many household names (Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft) as well as less-known firms involved in specific facets of tech development (Anduril, Clarifai, and Palantir). The companies were asked to describe their policies on development of these weapons systems on a questionnaire submitted by PAX; some responded, some declined.

Using survey responses and open-source literature, PAX analysts placed the companies into one of three categories: Best Practices (firms that explained their policies for preventing the use of their technology in developing lethal autonomous weapons systems); Medium Concern (firms known to be working on military applications of their technologies that refused to answer the survey or did answer the survey and claimed their military work did not encompass these systems); and High Concern (firms working on military applications of relevant technologies that refused to answer the survey).

Only seven companies, including Google and General Robotics, were rated as Best Practices; another 22, including Apple, Facebook, and IBM, were placed in the Medium Concern category; and 21, including Amazon, Intel, and Microsoft, were rated in the High Concern column.

With no international agreement in place to constrain the development and deployment of lethal autonomous weapons systems, a greater burden falls on executives of the major tech firms to establish and enforce ethical principles on the military applications of their products. Although officials at some tech firms, such as Google, have expressed reservations about working for the military on projects related to these systems, their colleagues at other companies have professed a willingness to work for the Defense Department or the militaries of other countries on such devices. This lack of consistency could lead to an unregulated environment in which the introduction of these systems proceeds apace. By publishing its survey, PAX hopes to encourage greater transparency and self-restraint on the part of key tech firms.

“Companies working on these technologies…need to have policies that make clear how and when they draw the line regarding the military application of their technology,” said the PAX report.

 

Global tech firms have yet to adopt policies to ensure their applications are not used for lethal autonomous weapons.

Experts Face BWC Tensions, Developments


September 2019
By Jenifer Mackby

Scientific experts and diplomats debated the tensions between the benefits and risks of sophisticated biotechnology at a July 29–Aug. 8 meeting in Geneva, with developed nations warning about the potential for bioterrorism and developing nations saying they are denied the full benefits of biotechnology. The session gathered scientific experts and officials from states party to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in their annual meetings to discuss ways to strengthen the convention and confront these challenges.

International experts and officials meet at an annual meeting of the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva on July 29–Aug. 8. (Photo: Jenifer Mackby)Modern technical capabilities such as gene editing, gene synthesis, gene drives, and metabolic pathway engineering are helping the health, medical, agricultural, and environmental sectors, but they also risk being misused by bioterrorists. One African country at the meetings, for example, expressed concern that an outbreak of the Ebola virus in the Congo could be used by terrorists to spread the deadly disease across borders to neighboring countries.

The Geneva meetings served as a forum to discuss these persistent tensions in the context of Article X, which provides states-parties the right to participate in the “fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the use of bacteriological (biological) agents and toxins for peaceful purposes,” including for the prevention of disease.

Venezuela, on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), requested in a working paper that the BWC overcome “the obstacles hampering the full, effective and nondiscriminatory implementation of Article X of the Convention, including by addressing the denial cases of states parties.” The NAM claims there that there are restrictions or denials of medicines, vaccines, material, and equipment for peaceful purposes.

Many countries pointed to the extensive programs they have conducted under the provisions of Article X. The United Kingdom reported on its program to provide 500 million pounds each year from 2016 until 2021 to combat malaria and its assistance in introducing single-cell genomics to a university in Thailand. India spoke of a new program of cooperation to upgrade capacities in laboratories on infectious diseases in Africa and an international security disarmament fellowship program. China described efforts to help countries in Africa with the Ebola crisis and a recently conducted course at its Wuhan Laboratory for experts from 22 countries in Africa and Asia. Russia highlighted 15 projects in 20 countries to combat Ebola, plague, cholera, and other diseases and held an international conference on global biosecurity challenges in Sochi in June 2019. The United Arab Emirates announced that it will hold its fourth conference on biosecurity in October 2019 and that it provided $1.7 billion in bioassistance.

Russia proposed the use of its mobile biomedical units, which could operate in the field, to fight epidemics. These units could be used in international cooperation and assistance and investigation of alleged use. Russia has trained 2,500 specialists who can train foreign units in emergency situations. A number of countries in Geneva supported the proposed units, but some thought they should be provided on a national basis, as the BWC could not finance them.

The treaty also encourages nontechnical support to developing nations, and experts discussed a proposal by China and Pakistan for a model voluntary code of conduct for biological scientists that has been gaining support over the past few years.

Officials from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) described their experience with the Hague Ethical Guidelines, which promote a culture of conduct against the misuse of chemicals, stressing safety and security, oversight, ethics, accountability, and exchange of information. The OPCW also presented a description of its scientific advisory board, a subject that BWC meetings have considered as a way for states-parties to keep up to date on advances in the field. Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden submitted proposals that were well received in Geneva for scientific advisory groups.

The United States and others pointed to the BWC “implementation gap,” noting that one in three states-parties had no prohibition on the possession or transfer of biological weapons and one in four had not prohibited their development or production. Moreover, some experts warned that the risks of new technologies, even some peripherally related to biotechnology, are high. One U.S. presentation, for example, noted a range of threats linked to cybersecurity: Automated biological laboratories could be used for gene editing to enhance the ability of a pathogen to infect a host or resist vaccines or antibiotics. Artificial intelligence malware could be used to destroy or contaminate vital stocks of vaccines or cell or immune therapies. Machine learning could train algorithms to disrupt medical information in a hospital network.

Domestic or international terrorists could intentionally introduce a disease to target humans, livestock, agriculture, or the environment, which could cause devastating health and economic consequences, with severe national and international security implications. Many nations lack the capability to contain such an outbreak or a major biological event and would need international support to react, yet there is no coordinated international response mechanism. A number of countries stressed that this must be arranged before a biological event to avoid unnecessary deaths. The United Kingdom and other countries recommended that the UN secretary-general prepare a plan for a coordinated response by UN member states and other partners to a deliberate release of a biological agent or toxin. A number of countries also proposed strengthening the secretary-general’s mechanism for investigating an alleged chemical or biological weapons attack. But Brazil, China, Iran, Russia, and others believe that the BWC stipulates that the UN Security Council is to make decisions in these situations.

NAM states acknowledge that there is a potential for malicious use that would violate the convention, but insist that the dual-use nature of these technologies should not hamper the free exchange of technologies among convention parties. Iran and Venezuela, in particular, have refused to agree to proposals without a holistic consideration of all issues.

Some NAM members suggested again that states-parties should negotiate legally binding measures to verify compliance with the convention, provisions that are currently absent from the pact. A long effort to develop such a verification protocol was ended in 2001 by the United States, which has argued that the convention is not verifiable. U.S. and UK officials opposed NAM proposals at the Geneva meetings to establish a committee to monitor cooperation, ensure that discriminatory measures are not applied, and address disputes regarding Article X.

The reports from the meetings in Geneva will be considered at the annual meeting of states-parties in December 2019, and any outcomes will be forwarded to the review conference in 2021. Some delegations cautioned that a continued inability to agree on proposals would lead to a greater tendency to work outside of the BWC framework.

The annual budget for the 182-nation BWC is $1.5 million, and states-parties pay based on the UN scale of assessments. Due to persistent problems with late payment and nonpayment of dues, by Brazil in particular, the treaty has frequently been under financial duress and was forced to cut a day from its December 2018 meeting of states-parties. It is not certain if there will be sufficient funding for the entire four-day meeting of states-parties that is scheduled to convene December 2019.

Officials spar over benefits and risks of biotechnology.

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