January/February 2025

More Data Is Not the Answer

Deterrence Under Uncertainty: Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear War
By Edward Geist
Oxford University Press
2023

Reviewed by Herbert Lin

Some books are erudite and learned. Some books are entertaining and even funny. Some books offer a whole different perspective on a topic. Some books teach interesting things. Some books are well written. Deterrence Under Uncertainty by Edward Geist is exemplary in each of these categories. It is essential reading for a world awash with conversations about the revolutionary impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on armed conflict.

A bit of history is important to frame these conversations properly. In the 1970s, the Second Offset strategy was formulated as a way of using new technologies to counter the Soviet Union’s numerical superiority in conventional weapons.¹ Investments initiated in this time frame continued through the 1980s, and the fruits of these investments were on display during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Responding to Iraq’s ground invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and subsequent annexation of that Gulf state, the United States led an international coalition to eject Iraq from Kuwaiti territory and restore the latter’s sovereignty. Military operations against Iraqi forces in Kuwait began on January 17, 1991, with extensive aerial bombardments followed by a ground offensive on February 24.

Within 100 hours of the ground operation, a ceasefire was announced after coalition forces ejected Iraqi forces from Kuwait and then advanced into Iraqi territory. The use of precision-guided munitions; advanced command, control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems; and tactics enabled by these technologies resulted in remarkably low coalition casualties compared to previous conflicts. By contrast, Iraqi forces suffered significant losses, with tens of thousands killed or captured and vast amounts of military equipment destroyed. This swift victory underscored the effectiveness of the Second Offset strategy, which emphasized technological innovation to overcome numerical disadvantages on the battlefield.

In the wake of this war, many military decision-makers believed that a genuine revolution in battlefield awareness was closer than ever. For instance, Geist quotes U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Ronald Fogelman as saying in October 1996 that, “in the first quarter of the new century, it will become possible to find, fix or track, and target anything that moves on the surface of the earth.”² Five years later, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Owens suggested that the United States would “be able to see everything of military significance in the combat zone.”³

Lingering Ramifications

So it is today that the ramifications of the Second Offset are still felt as precision-guided munitions, delivered by stealth platforms and enhanced by global location awareness, continue to play a pivotal role in U.S. military strategy for engaging great powers in armed confrontation. These munitions, supported by advanced battlefield information systems communicating through U.S. Department of Defense networks, are intended to enable effective strikes against high-value targets even in heavily defended areas. Many of the platforms and munitions that would be used in such a conflict today are more advanced and sophisticated than those used in the Persian Gulf War, although many would be identical as well. Troops from that era would easily recognize the shape and character of many of today’s technology-enabled weapons if not their precise capabilities.

Military leaders and analysts are now pondering the significance of AI in this environment. In a key part of what reasonably could be called the Third Offset, that is, an AI-enabled Second Offset, the ability of AI to process vast amounts of battlefield data in real time is intended to provide commanders with an even more comprehensive situational awareness through the integration of diverse data sources, such as satellite and drone imagery, electronic warfare intercepts, and intelligence reports.

This information is combined with details about friendly forces, including where they are and what weapons they can bring to the fight, as well as environmental conditions, terrain, and the whereabouts of neutral actors or noncombatants. The resulting near-real-time situational awareness allows commanders to identify patterns and trends that might otherwise go unnoticed. This knowledge enables faster, more informed decision-making, which is essential in high-stakes environments where time is critical.

In this world, AI plays a critical role in a “God’s-eye view” of the battlefield, a concept rooted in the notion of “ground truth,” which denotes information gathered through direct observation and measurement. A God’s-eye view is utterly comprehensive, which means that it accounts for anything and everything that might be relevant to a commander’s decision-making. With a God’s-eye view, everything on the battlefield can be seen, what can be seen on the battlefield can be hit, and what can be hit can be killed. In this environment, victory soon follows.

Extending these capabilities for near-God-like battlefield awareness to the nuclear sphere does not take much imagination, given that senior military leaders have called for the seamless integration of nuclear and conventional command-and-control capabilities.⁴ Responding to such calls, analysts have raised concerns about the putative vulnerability of strategic nuclear systems.

Geist notes Rose Gottemoeller’s concerns that “[s]ecure retaliatory forces are becoming vulnerable…because ubiquitous sensing, paired with big data analysis [in context, an aspect of AI], makes it possible for adversaries to reliably detect those forces. Even moving targets, such as mobile missiles and submarines, may become vulnerable to detection and targeting.”⁵ He also notes Paul Bracken’s suggestion that “the long-prophesied epoch of splendid situational awareness is finally at hand because Al and deep learning will enable information fusion for data from many kinds of sensors, with a resulting ‘synergistic effect.’”⁶

Other analysts with similar concerns include James Johnson, who writes that “the integration of AI, machine learning, and big-data analytics can dramatically improve militaries’ ability to locate, track, target, and destroy a rival’s nuclear-deterrent forces—especially nuclear-armed submarines and mobile missile forces—and without the need to deploy nuclear weapons.”⁷ Johnson concludes that “the capabilities AI might enhance (cyber weapons, drones, precision-strike missiles, and hypersonic weapons), together with the ones it might enable (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, automatic target recognition, and autonomous sensor platforms), could make hunting for mobile nuclear arsenals faster, cheaper, and more effective than before.”

In a somewhat similar vein, other experts raise the possibility that AI may enable more effective targeting of mobile land-based systems,⁸ as the result of AI-enabled improvements in real-time surveillance coupled with a better understanding of the routines and doctrine that shape their dispersal patterns. Such improvements would take place through better processing of larger volumes of data from radar, satellite, and electronic sensors and the control of reconnaissance swarms of sensor platforms.

Geist’s Contribution

Into this conversation steps Geist. The heart of his contribution, a critically important one, is his insight that more data from sensors ultimately will not solve the problem, in this case, one of making now-survivable nuclear forces vulnerable to a splendid first strike. He notes that “[t]ime and again, when much-anticipated new computers and networks are placed into service, they fail to live up to expectations about their military effect.” Geist argues that “this pattern is not a coincidence, or the result of still-immature technology, but rather a straightforward implication of theoretical computer science” and that “‘lifting the fog of war’ is something that computers [no matter how powerful] cannot be counted upon to do.”

Why? The author offers two reasons. The first is relatively easy to understand: information that is received and integrated may be unreliable. As Geist points out, 
“[I]ntelligence about troop movements might be ingenious disinformation planted by devious enemy agents; data about... missile tests might be distorted by faulty sensors; meteorologists might be drunk or simply incompetent.” Worst of all, people do not know what they do not know—the famous problem of “unknown unknowns.”

With such possibilities, it is not clear that more data will help. To make sense out of data of uncertain quality or reliability, one needs a working theory of which data to ignore or how much to downplay it. Any such theory is necessarily formulated outside the scope of the data available. If there were data available to help such formulation, that data itself would be of uncertain quality or reliability. Of course, if the theory of what data to ignore or downplay is wrong, the computation will be less reliable than it would be otherwise.

The second reason, which is independent of the first one, is rooted in a concept known as computational complexity. Sensors provide data from the battlefield, and from this data, AI is supposed to determine, which is to say compute, the specific reality that this data represents, yet there are many possible battlefield realities that would be consistent with the data in hand.

Many of these possible but incorrect realities can be eliminated if more data were available (e.g., if more sensors were available). In many cases, these possibilities would be eliminated because they would not be consistent with the enlarged set of data. As more data and constraints are added, however, the computational task of processing and analyzing this information also becomes more complex and demanding.

The complexity arises from the need to handle large volumes of data and the intricate task of synthesizing this information into a coherent, accurate picture of reality. Each new piece of data must be integrated and analyzed in conjunction with existing information, often requiring complex algorithms and models. This process can be computationally intensive because it involves balancing the volume of data with the capacity to process it effectively.

Ultimately, although more data can help improve understanding of the battlefield, it also increases computational demands. Advanced computational techniques and resources are required to manage and interpret large datasets accurately. Even worse, ingesting even small amounts of additional data increases the need for computing resources faster than these can be made available. Geist argues that having a God’s-eye level of battlefield awareness requires being able to compute a solution of very high complexity.

The most significant of the necessary computational resources is time. It is obvious that the planning needed to conduct a disarming strike against land-mobile missile launchers and ballistic missile submarines requires that the necessary computations be doable in a tactically relevant time. A computation that takes a billion years to complete is not useful, and the fact that such a computation is possible in principle is irrelevant for all practical purposes.

To translate the idea of computational complexity into lay terms, Geist provides a creative analog to navigating a bureaucracy with Kafka-esque rules for anyone who must and can sign off on various forms before some administrative approval for a particular action can be obtained. In this case, the problem to be solved is obtaining such approval, and one can see easily that, by adding more information requirements to the various forms that must be submitted, the longer it will take to review these forms and hence the longer it will take to solve the problem. In this bureaucracy, it sometimes happens that before an administrator can sign off on some form, another form needs to be created, asking the submitter for different information.

In some bureaucracies, this is a never-ending process and might result in the self-contradictory result that before the approval for a particular action can be obtained, the approval must already be in hand. Even if that is not the case, that in principle the approval for that action can be obtained without such a circular requirement and the clerks involved in the process work as fast as possible, skipping lunch and working overtime, it still may take centuries for the process to terminate.

Given such analysis, one might conclude that a computational approach to battlefield awareness is a hopeless task. Taking into account two factors, it may not be hopeless. First, the above result of computational intractability from complexity theory is true only for the “worst possible” battlefield scenario. There may well be many battlefield scenarios, what might be called average-case scenarios, where the performance of a system for battlefield awareness would be acceptable. The question then is whether the system designer can say safely that the on-the-scene commander will never face a worst-case battlefield scenario. Understanding the nature of this problem helps a great deal because domain-specific knowledge can be used to justify such a claim. Perhaps in practice, only average-case scenarios will arise, in which case the system providing battlefield awareness is a big win for the commander.

Second, although calculating optimal solutions may be computationally prohibitive, calculating approximate solutions, that is, solutions that are nearly optimal, often can require far fewer computational resources. “Nearly optimal” means that the solution calculated is guaranteed within a factor X of the optimal solution. X is known as the approximation ratio, and if X were known to be 2, the calculated “nearly optimal” solution would be within a factor of ½, or 2 of the unknown optimal solution. Tolerance for a less-than-optimal solution is what makes this approach acceptable.

Unarguably, going down the path of approximate solutions entails some risk because it often involves making certain assumptions about the nature and structure of the problem. These assumptions are necessary to simplify the problem and enable the use of approximation algorithms that provide performance guarantees, such as specific approximation ratios. If those assumptions are wrong, the approximate solution calculated may be far from optimal, and the performance guarantee as described no longer will be valid. Yet, if system designers understand the problem well enough to make good simplifying assumptions, the system for battlefield awareness is again a win for the commander.

AI and Strategic Stability

Finally, Geist addresses a vitally important point omitted in most analyses of how AI might affect strategic stability. It is true that if states with nuclear weapons continue to design and operate their nuclear strategic forces the way they do today while technology continues to advance, they could start becoming vulnerable, but it is absurd to believe that these states will not do everything they can to reduce such vulnerabilities. Even if Nation A deployed a plethora of surveillance and reconnaissance systems to find the land-mobile missile launchers or the ballistic missile submarines of Nation B and even if A had the computational capabilities and resources to integrate volumes of data that are orders of magnitude larger than those that are flowing today, it is not credible that B would act passively and allow its second-strike systems to lose their ability to evade attack.

Instead, it would make much more sense for Nation B to deploy active and passive countermeasures to frustrate Nation A’s attempts to compromise its second-strike forces. B has the advantage over A in that B generally knows the capabilities and vulnerabilities of its own systems better than A and thus, with its own attack simulators, can test the effectiveness of a variety of countermeasures it could take against A’s threatened attack. A, not knowing B’s systems or countermeasures nearly as well as B, would be planning an attack without the benefit of knowing B’s responses. Indeed, Geist argues that AI would be most useful for B in developing and deploying its countermeasures.

This experience has been repeated again and again. When ballistic missiles became vulnerable to anti-ballistic missile systems, the operators of ballistic missiles developed multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles and penetration aids. When radar stripped away the cloak of invisibility for bombers and fighter planes, the operators of bombers and fighter planes deployed chaff and jamming technologies and flew low rather than high. In the future, as land-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile launchers or ballistic missile submarines become more detectable when operationally deployed, decoys, active sensor countermeasures, and other responses are sure to follow.

This book should be required reading for every strategic analyst. It appears to be the only published work outside the domain of the technical scientist or engineer that links the implications of new information processing technologies for battlefield awareness to the deep insights available through theoretical computer science.

It is tempting to assume that continuing exponential growth (the often-invoked Moore’s law⁹) in the capabilities of that technology will cover all computational contingencies. Yet, theoretical computer science, by comparison quite unfamiliar to most strategic analysts, clearly demonstrates the relationship between integrating more data inputs and increasing computational requirements. Geist’s short if densely argued treatise is a basic introduction to some themes in theoretical computer science that are as important to today’s strategic analyst as a familiarity with Moore’s law.

ENDNOTES

1. Rebecca Grant, “The Second Offset,” Air Force Magazine, July 2016.

2. See John A. Tirpak, “Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess,” Air Force Magazine, July 2000.

3. See William Owens and Ed Offley, Lifting the Fog of War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 96.

4. For example, Air Force Lieutenant General James Dawkins, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, has said that “[w]e’ve got to have [a nuclear command, control and communications system] Enterprise Architecture that provides [nuclear command and control] over assured comms for seamless integration of conventional and nuclear forces.” Theresa Hitchens, “Congress Fears DoD Not Prepared for NC3 Cyber Attacks,” Breaking Defense, December 11, 2020.

5. See Rose Gottemoeller, “The Standstill Conundrum: The Advent of Second-Strike Vulnerability and Options to Address It,” Texas National Security Review, Vol. 4, No. 4 (2021): 115-124.

6. Paul Bracken, “The Hunt for Mobile Missiles: Nuclear Weapons, Al, and the New Arms Race,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, September 2020, p. 98.

7. James Johnson, “Rethinking Nuclear Deterrence in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” Modern War Institute, January 28, 2021(emphasis in original).

8. Michael Klare and Xiaodon Liang, “Beyond a Human ‘in the Loop’: Strategic Stability and Artificial Intelligence,” Arms Control Association Issue Brief, November 12, 2024.

9. Data on semiconductor manufacturing indicate that Moore’s law, when framed in terms of an exponentially declining cost per transistor on a chip, is reaching the end of its useful lifetime. The actual cost per transistor began to level off around 2012, and it has followed Moore’s law predictions since then. See “Semiconductors,” in The Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2023: A Report on Ten Key Technologies and Their Policy Implications, ed. Herbert S. Lin, 2023.

Herbert Lin is a senior research scholar and the Hank Holland Fellow at Stanford University.

January/February 2025
By Daryl G. Kimball

Jaap Ramaker, an accomplished diplomat for the Netherlands who played a critical role in securing one of the most important nuclear nonproliferation breakthroughs, died on December 12. As chair of a UN committee at the Conference on Disarmament (CD), the soft-spoken but firm Ramaker guided multilateral negotiations on the long-sought Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to a successful conclusion in the summer of 1996. The treaty was opened for signature later that year.

Today, the CTBT has 187 signatories, including five of the eight countries that possess nuclear weapons. Although it has not yet entered into force, the treaty that Ramaker brought across the negotiating finish line has established a strong global norm against nuclear weapons test explosions.

Ramaker’s distinguished diplomatic career began after he earned a master’s degree in political science from the University of Amsterdam in 1967 and began working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the following year. By 1970, he was posted to the Dutch Embassy in Cameroon, then returned to The Hague to work at the Foreign Ministry’s central and southern Africa department until 1975. By 1977, he was serving as consul at the Dutch Embassy in Rio de Janeiro and later was promoted to first secretary and deputy chief of mission at the Dutch Embassy in Lisbon. He served as head of the ministry’s Middle East department in The Hague from 1980 to 1983.

Ramaker’s work in multilateral disarmament and nonproliferation began in 1983 when he was made an adviser and deputy head of the Dutch delegation to the CD in Geneva. Subsequently, he was assigned to New York as his country’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.

From 1990 to 1995, Ramaker was deputy head of mission at the Dutch Embassy in Russia and then ambassador to the CD. He was chairman of Main Committee III, on the peaceful use of nuclear energy, of the 1995 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review and extension conference in New York. That same year, Ramaker also assumed the chairmanship of the working group on legal and institutional affairs for negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and was later selected to chair the negotiations on the CTBT through the final and most difficult months of the talks.

As the CTBT negotiations resumed in Geneva in early 1996, India sought changes that would commit declared nuclear-weapon states to a time-bound nuclear disarmament framework. Despite this, Indian diplomats later announced that their government would not sign the treaty under any circumstances. At the same time, China and France were conducting final rounds of nuclear test explosions. New disagreements emerged on verification issues, while some states, particularly the United Kingdom, insisted that all nuclear-capable states had to ratify the CTBT to bring it into effect, a feature of the final treaty text that has slowed its formal entry into force to this day. By the end of June 1996, Ramaker, with help from “friends of the chair,” had resolved most of these issues, and he presented a final CTBT text for member states of the conference to consider.

India and Iran blocked consensus on the treaty text, however, ostensibly due to the failure to include disarmament pledges in the agreement. To overcome the CD’s consensus rule, Australia rallied global support to bring the CTBT directly to the UN General Assembly, which endorsed the treaty 158-3, with five abstentions, opening the way for the CTBT for signature on September 24, 1996.

In 1999, Ramaker became ambassador to Austria and international organizations in Vienna, including the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, which was established in 1997 to help implement the treaty. In 2003 he was appointed by CTBT member states as special representative to promote the ratification of the treaty for five years. During that time, he visited the capitals of many of the states that had not signed or ratified the treaty to understand their perspectives and to press for their support so that the CTBT can formally enter into force someday.

In a 2005 interview with Arms Control Today, Ramaker said, “It may take a while, but a permanent ban on nuclear weapon test explosions remains of tremendous importance for our efforts to prevent ever more states from acquiring nuclear weapons.” Going forward, he observed that “the CTBT, indeed the entire issue of nuclear weapons tests and nonproliferation, deserves a higher place in the list of priorities” and the treaty’s entry into force requires that it is discussed “at a sufficiently high, if not the highest, political level.”

January/February 2025
By Kelsey Davenport and Daryl G. Kimball

The United States accused Pakistan of developing long-range ballistic missiles and announced new sanctions on four Pakistani entities involved with the development of those systems.

U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer said Pakistan is pursuing “increasingly sophisticated missile technology,” including long-range ballistic missiles and large rocket motors that could eventually enable the country to “strike targets well beyond South Asia, including the United States.”

In a Dec. 19 speech sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Arms Control Association, Finer described Pakistan’s missile activity as an “emerging threat to the United States.”

In a Jan. 3 briefing for nongovernmental experts, senior U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, said that Pakistan’s capability to field long-range ballistic missiles is “several years to a decade” away and is part of an ongoing effort dating back several years to increase the range and throw-weight capabilities of the country’s ballistic missiles.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry did not confirm or deny that the country was developing long-range missiles in a statement issued Dec. 19. The statement said Pakistan’s strategic capabilities are “meant to defend its sovereignty and preserve peace and stability in South Asia.”

The senior U.S. officials also revealed at the Jan. 3 briefing that, to address U.S. concerns, Washington had proposed several “basic” confidence-building measures to Islamabad, including sharing telemetry information on Pakistani ballistic missile testing and setting limits on the outside ranges to which Pakistan would test its ballistic missiles. These ideas “were rejected” by Pakistani interlocutors, the U.S. officials said.

The day before Finer’s speech, the U.S. State Department announced sanctions on four entities under an executive order that allows the president to target proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. One of the entities, the National Development Complex, is “responsible for Pakistan’s development of ballistic missiles,” according to the announcement. The three other entities were targeted for supplying the National Development Complex with equipment relevant to missile development. This is the first time that the United States has sanctioned a Pakistani state-owned entity involved in missile development, Finer said.

Earlier this year, the United States also announced sanctions against commercial entities in Belarus, China, and Pakistan that “have supplied missile-applicable items to Pakistan’s ballistic missile program, including its long-range missile program.”

The foreign ministry statement said that the U.S. imposition of “sanctions defies the objective of peace and security by aiming to accentuate military asymmetries.” It accused the United States of engaging in “discriminatory practices” that undermine the nonproliferation regime.

Long-range ballistic missiles generally are defined as having a range greater than 3,500 kilometers and are used to deliver nuclear warheads. Pakistan’s longest-range missile system is the Shaheen-III, which was first tested in 2015 and has an estimated range of 2,750 kilometers.

India has flight tested the Agni-V long-range ballistic missile, which has a range of more than 5,200 kilometers, and is developing the longer-range Agni-VI, ostensibly to counter Chinese nuclear capabilities.

Pakistan’s decision to develop longer-range systems suggests that it may see an expanded role for its nuclear deterrent, which is largely focused on countering India’s nuclear and conventional weapons.

Pakistan’s existing tactical-, short-, and medium-range nuclear-capable ballistic missiles already allow it to strike targets in every corner of that country.

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a Dec. 19 press briefing that Washington hopes to “engage constructively” with Islamabad on this issue but that it is long-standing U.S. policy to deny support for Pakistan’s long-range ballistic missile program

January/February 2025
By Kelsey Davenport

Iran significantly expanded its production of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels in what appears to be a move to build leverage ahead of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump taking office on Jan. 20.

According to a Dec. 6 report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran’s monthly production of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 at the Fordow uranium-enrichment facility will jump from 4.7 kilograms to 34 kilograms. The increase is due to Iran’s decision to feed 20 percent-enriched U-235 into two cascades of more efficient IR-6 centrifuges to produce the 60 percent-enriched U-235. Previously, Iran fed the centrifuges with uranium enriched to 5 percent U-235.

Uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 poses a more serious proliferation risk because it can quickly be enriched to the 90 percent U-235 that is considered weapons grade. If Iran made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon, it would need to feed about 42 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 into centrifuges to produce enough 90 percent-enriched U-235 for one bomb. Increasing the production of 60 percent U-235 at Fordow, rather than Iran’s other uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, further heightens the threat because Fordow is a deeply buried site that is challenging to target militarily.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom condemned Iran’s actions in a joint Dec. 9 statement and strongly urged Iran to “reverse these steps” and “immediately halt its nuclear escalation.” The statement also raised concerns that Iran took the actions before the IAEA could implement additional safeguards.

According to the IAEA report on Dec. 6, Iran did not agree to IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi’s request to hold off on increasing its production of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 until after the agency could update its safeguards approach. The agency reported on Dec. 11 that Tehran agreed to “increase the frequency and intensity” of IAEA safeguards at Fordow and the agency implemented those measures.

Iran is required under its legally binding safeguards agreement to allow the IAEA to increase verification activities as its nuclear program expands.

Despite the implementation of additional safeguards, the United States raised concerns before the UN Security Council that Iran’s actions “suggest it is not interested in demonstrating verifiably that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.” U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the council on Dec. 17 that there is “good reason to be concerned about Tehran’s intentions” and Iran should “take actions that build international confidence and deescalate tensions.”

Iran’s decision to increase production of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 followed a notification to the IAEA that the state would begin enriching uranium using an additional 45 cascades of advanced centrifuges. The IAEA reported on Nov. 29 that the cascades would be used to enrich uranium to 5 percent U-235.

Iran first announced its intentions to expand enrichment capacity after the IAEA Board of Governors censured the state for failing to cooperate with the agency. (See ACT, December 2024.)

Iran did not indicate when it would begin operating the additional machines and will need to install additional centrifuges to meet that goal. According to an IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program dated Nov. 19, Iran was operating 78 cascades, but nearly half of them were the less efficient, more crash-prone IR-1 machines. Iran has an additional 30 cascades of advanced centrifuges that are installed but not being used to enrich uranium.

The  IAEA report on Dec. 6 confirmed that Iran began operating two additional cascades of IR-6 centrifuges installed at Fordow. The machines will produce uranium enriched to 5 percent U-235, according to the IAEA. The report did not indicate if Iran had begun operating any additional centrifuges at Natanz.

Iran’s nuclear activities appear focused on gaining leverage for negotiating a deal with the incoming Trump administration, but the increase in uranium enrichment to 60 percent U-235 and the expansion of Iran’s enrichment capacity allow Iran to move more quickly to produce nuclear material for weapons at a time when Iranian policymakers are debating openly the security value of a nuclear deterrent.

In a report released Dec. 5, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that Iran is “not building a nuclear weapon” but that the country has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce one.”

The report also assessed that public discussions regarding the security value of nuclear weapons in Iran reflects the “erosion of a decades-long taboo” that risks “emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus.” Iran may seek nuclear weapons to “rectify a strategic imbalance with its adversaries,” the report said.

Since the U.S. intelligence report was published, a key pillar of Iran’s national security known as its forward defense strategy faced another setback when opposition forces toppled the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Iran committed to supporting Assad in 2012 after a civil war broke out in the country and deployed military personnel to support Syrian troops. Additionally, Iran used Syria as a transit route for supplying Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and two other militant groups—Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen—as well as the ouster of Assad, significantly eroded Iran’s security.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a Dec. 22 interview on CNN that, with Iran’s conventional military capabilities reduced and the fall of Assad, it is “no wonder” that voices in Iran are calling for nuclear weapons.

Sullivan said the United States will need to be vigilant about the risk of Iran pursuing nuclear weapons and he is briefing the incoming administration on this issue.

The Trump administration has not revealed how it might reduce the proliferation risk posed by Iran. At a September campaign event, Trump said the United States will need to “make a deal” with Iran or face “impossible” consequences.

But it is not clear what type of agreement Trump may attempt to negotiate. After withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran during his first term in office, Trump said that he wanted to conclude a better deal with Iran, but his administration’s demands for a new agreement amounted to regime change and went nowhere. (See ACT, June 2018.)

Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told CNBC in an October interview that there will be “more focus on Iran” in the Trump administration and suggested that the United States will return to a strategy of “maximum pressure.”

But increasing sanctions pressure takes time, and the Trump administration faces a short time frame for reaching a deal with Iran. Without a nuclear agreement in place by October 2025, France and the UK likely will reimpose UN sanctions on Iran, using a mechanism that cannot be vetoed. That “snapback” mechanism was included in Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal, and expires on Oct. 18.

In a Dec. 11 statement, France, Germany, and the UK reiterated their “determination to use all diplomatic tools to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, including using snapback if necessary.”

A nuclear deal is still possible if the snapback mechanism is triggered, but Iran has threatened to withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in response to the reimposition of UN sanctions.

January/February 2025
By Kelsey Davenport

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached after his short-lived declaration of martial law sparked protests across the country, and less than two weeks later, his acting successor was ousted as well.

The political crisis raised deep concerns about the stability of a key U.S. ally in the Pacific region where the United States is trying to manage security challenges with two nuclear-armed states, China and North Korea.

In a Dec. 3 announcement, Yoon said that martial law was necessary to counter “anti-state forces” seeking to “overthrow the liberal democratic system” by abusing legislative powers and cutting budgets. The forces included “pro-North [Korea]” factions, he said.

Yoon’s declaration banned all political activities and put the media under the control of Army Gen. Park An-su, whom Yoon named as martial law commander.

South Korea’s constitution allows the president to declare martial law to respond to a “military necessity” or to maintain public safety, but the backlash sparked by Yoon’s action suggests the majority of South Koreans did not believe his decision met those criteria.

Several hours after Yoon declared martial law, South Korea’s legislature, including members from Yoon’s People Power Party, voted to repeal the measure. The vote prompted Yoon to withdraw the declaration. He later apologized for the decision and committed not to impose martial law for the remainder of his term.

Despite that commitment and South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun claiming responsibility for the crisis and resigning, the National Assembly voted to impeach Yoon.

The first impeachment vote on Dec. 7 failed after Yoon’s party boycotted the proceeding, but a second vote on Dec. 14 passed 204-85. The second motion to impeach Yoon removed language criticizing his foreign policy and accusing him of antagonizing North Korea. Twelve members of Yoon’s own party joined the opposition to vote in favor of impeachment. The South Korean Supreme Court has 180 days to restore Yoon to office or confirm his removal.

Yoon defended himself after the vote and rejected the allegation in the impeachment motion that he “committed rebellion” that harmed peace in South Korea. Yoon said on Dec. 14 that he acted to prevent “forces and criminal groups” from “paralyzing the country’s government” and “threatening the future” of South Korea.

The leader of the Democratic Party, which controls the majority of seats in the National Assembly, raised concerns that if left in power, Yoon may attempt to declare martial law again, despite his commitment not to do that. Lee Jae-myung told the Associated Press in a Dec. 6 interview that there is a “high possibility that [Yoon] could do totally incomprehensible things on security, defense, economy and foreign affairs issues.”

Evidence collected after Yoon’s impeachment raises questions about whether his administration attempted to provoke North Korean aggression in order to justify declaring martial law. A senior South Korean investigator told the National Assembly that a notebook found during the Dec. 15 arrest of Noh Sang-won, former chief of the Defense Intelligence Command, included details about the martial law declaration and references to “inducing a North Korean attack at the [Northern Limit Line],” the maritime boundary between North and South Korea. Other lawmakers accused members of the military’s Headquarters Intelligence Detachment of disguising themselves as North Korean soldiers to provoke chaos. The spokesperson for the South Korea Joint Chiefs of Staff denied the allegations in a Jan. 2 press briefing, saying that “any suggestion that our military conducted operations to deliberately provoke North Korean aggression is completely false.”

After Yoon was impeached and suspended, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo stepped in as acting president, but opposition lawmakers voted on Dec. 27 to impeach Han as well, citing his failure to take actions necessary to complete Yoon’s impeachment process.

Even prior to the decision to declare martial law, Yoon’s approval rating was consistently below 20 percent. He faced several political scandals, including criticism for blocking an investigation of possible corruption allegedly involving his wife.

Lee suggested in an interview with The New York Times on Dec. 9 that his party was not completely surprised by Yoon’s decision to impose martial law. Lee said his party informally had discussed how to respond if Yoon provoked a conflict with North Korea and then declared martial law.

Despite Yoon citing “pro-North” sentiment in the martial law declaration, North Korea did not respond until Dec. 10, when its state-run media described Yoon as a fascist and said he created “pandemonium” in South Korea.

If Yoon’s impeachment is upheld by the Supreme Court, a presidential election must be held within 60 days. In that scenario, Lee is the favorite to become South Korea’s next president, according to South Korean polling analysts.

Lee’s election may reduce the prominence of South Korean rhetoric regarding a domestic nuclear deterrent, which largely comes from members of Yoon’s political party. It is not clear if Lee’s election would open up the political space to reduce tensions with North Korea, even though his Democratic Party is generally more open to negotiating with Pyongyang.

In addition to North Korea’s recent renunciation of the goal of unification, the state’s growing ties with Russia may continue to mitigate any pressure to resume talks with the United States and South Korea.

The United States said it believed that, for the first time, North Korean troops were killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine. In a Dec. 16 press conference, U.S. Defense Department press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that North Korean soldiers “engaged in combat in Kursk” a “little over a week ago” and “suffered casualties.” Ryder said North Korean troops are “legitimate military targets for Ukraine” given that they are engaged in combat as allies of Russia in its full-scale war against Ukraine.

In addition to the growing military partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang, the United States raised concerns during a Dec. 18 meeting of the UN Security Council that Russia “may be close to accepting North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.” Such a move would reverse Russia’s “decades-long commitment to denuclearize the Korean peninsula,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said. She called on council members to “call out this recklessness.”

She also said that the United States is “particularly concerned” about Russia’s intentions to share “satellite and space technologies” with North Korea.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia defended his country’s relationship with North Korea, saying their cooperation “in the military and other spheres is in line with international law.” He said the cooperation will continue and that it does not pose a threat to the region.

January/February 2025
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

The United Kingdom has agreed to cede the disputed Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a deal that the UK and the United States say will ensure that the strategically important military base at Diego Garcia remains in their control for at least the next 99 years.

Under terms reached on Oct. 3, the UK agreed that Mauritius should have sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in the central Indian Ocean. This will include Diego Garcia, the largest island in the archipelago, which serves as a joint UK-U.S. military base. Diego Garcia carries strategic importance because of growing U.S. competition with China in the Pacific region and Chinese ties with Mauritius.

In a joint statement, Mauritius and the UK said that their “political agreement is subject to the finalisation of a treaty and supporting legal instruments, which both sides have committed to complete as quickly as possible.” But it still may face political hurdles given questions raised by skeptical politicians in Washington, London, and Port Louis.

“Under the terms of this treaty the United Kingdom will agree that Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia,” the joint statement said.

“At the same time, both our countries are committed to the need, and will agree in the treaty, to ensure the long-term, secure and effective operation of the existing base on Diego Garcia, which plays a vital role in regional and global security,” the statement said.

The agreement authorizes the UK to exercise sovereign rights over Diego Garcia for an initial period of 99 years and requires Mauritius “to ensure the continued operation of the base well into the next century.”

Several countries and organizations, including the United States, India, the African Union, and the United Nations welcomed the outcome of the Mauritian-UK negotiations, which took two years.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, applauding the agreement, emphasized the strategic value of keeping Diego Garcia under UK-U.S. jurisdiction. “This agreement will secure the operational future of the joint U.S.-UK military facility on Diego Garcia into the next century. Diego Garcia plays a vital role in U.S. efforts to establish regional and global security, respond to crises, [and to] counter some of the most challenging security threats of our time,” Blinken said in press statement on Oct. 3.

In a statement on Oct. 3, Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the African Union Commission, also hailed the agreement as a “significant milestone [that] marks a major victory for the cause of Decolonization, International Law, and the rightful self-determination of the people of Mauritius, bringing an end to decades of disputes.”

It commended “both Parties for honoring their international obligations based on the rules of law and justice” and called on them “to expedite the finalization of the legal aspects of the Agreement in order to allow Mauritius to exercise its full sovereignty over the islands.”

Despite this, diplomatic tension over the agreement is high. According to news reports, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, his advisers, and Republican members of Congress have questioned the possible impact of the agreement on U.S. security interests and expressed concerns that the agreement benefits China.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), whom Trump nominated to be secretary of state, told Politico in October that the handover of the Chagos Islands “would provide an opportunity for communist China to gain valuable intelligence on our naval support facility in Mauritius.”

“This poses a serious threat to our national security interests in the Indian Ocean and threatens critical U.S. military posture in the region,” he said.

In recent years, China has increased its presence in the region, including establishing a military base in Djibouti in 2017 and signing a free trade agreement with Mauritius in 2021. Since 2019, there also has been talk of Russia attempting to establish a naval base in Sudan.

Further, Mauritius is a state-party to the Treaty of Pelindaba, which established the African nuclear-weapon-free zone and commits states-parties “to prohibit, in its territory, the stationing of any nuclear explosive device.” The treaty also asserts that “each Party in the exercise of its sovereign rights, remains free to decide for itself whether to allow visits by foreign ships and aircraft to its ports and airfields, transit of its airspace by foreign aircraft, and navigation by foreign ships in its territorial sea or archipelagic waters in a manner not covered by the rights of innocent passage, archipelagic sea lane passage or transit passage of straits.”

The UK and the United States are nuclear-weapon states, and the ships, submarines, and aircraft that they either base or periodically land at Diego Garcia may carry nuclear weapons.

During a Dec. 2 debate in the UK Parliament, opposition Conservative Party members asked about negative security impacts of the treaty, but Luke Pollard of the Labour Party dismissed their concerns. “[T]he long-term protection of the base on Diego Garcia has been the shared UK and U.S. priority throughout, and this agreement secures its future,” he said. “We would not have signed off on an agreement that compromised any of our security interests, or those of the U.S. and our allies and partners.”

Nevertheless, the Conservative Party’s shadow defense secretary, James Cartlidge, has asked for further clarification on how the deal affects UK and U.S. operations in Diego Garcia, including those involving nuclear weapons, according to The Independent on Dec. 8.

“We need urgent clarity from the government on whether we, and the U.S., will have full military autonomy on Diego Garcia, after Labour’s new settlement kicks in,” he said. “[W]ill our ability to operate be wholly sovereign or subject 
to new rules that threaten our freedom of operation?”

“We already have a confused position and lack of transparency on the cost of the new deal. Far too many questions remain unanswered for such an important issue,” Cartlidge said.

The deal also is coming under pressure from newly elected Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam, who took office in November. He told members of the Mauritian Parliament that he is renegotiating the deal by submitting counterproposals.

According to reports by Reuters and other media, Ramgoolam said that the current deal “would not produce the benefits that the nation could expect from such an agreement” and that his government “is still willing to conclude an agreement.”

A spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, playing down the idea of a rift, told The Guardian on Dec. 17 that “it makes sense that we would engage with the new administration on the details of the deal.”

Mauritius has long argued that the UK forced it to give the Chagos Islands away in return for its own independence from the UK in 1968. Two years earlier, London concluded a secret deal with Washington to lease Diego Garcia for use as a military base in return for a $14 million discount off the purchase of U.S. Polaris ballistic missiles for UK submarines, according to an article from 1975 in The New York Times. As part of this deal, the UK forcibly expelled 1,500 to 2,000 islanders from the archipelago.

With its well-equipped capability to host U.S. nuclear-armed heavy bombers and submarines, Diego Garcia has served as a strategic military asset for the UK and the United States, including as a staging point for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11.

January/February 2025
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

China’s nuclear arsenal likely exceeds 600 operational nuclear warheads as of mid-2024, part of a diversified buildup that is projected to continue after 2030, the Pentagon said in its annual assessment of China’s military capabilities.

When compared to previous reports, “[w]e’re showing a rate of growth that is pretty well consistent with what we’ve described in reports over the past three years…about their nuclear expansion and modernization,” a senior U.S. defense official said at a press briefing on Dec. 18.

The spokesperson for the Chinese Defense Ministry, Zhang Xiaogang, told state-run Xinhua news on Dec. 21 that the intention of China’s nuclear weapons development is to “safeguard the country’s strategic security.”

“We urge the [United States] to stop fabricating false narratives, rectify the erroneous perception of China, and push for the healthy, stable development of bilateral and military relations,” he said.

The Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military power, published Dec. 18, covers developments through 2023. It repeats an estimate first made in 2021 that “China will have over 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030” and will “continue growing its force through at least 2035.” But the report did not reiterate the projection published in 2023 that China aims to obtain 1,500 warheads by 2035. (See ACT, January/February 2023.)

When asked about removing that projection from the 2024 report and whether the previous projection still holds, the U.S. defense official said that “we think that [China] will continue growing their force to 2035 in line with the previous estimates.”

Given that 2035 is still more than a decade away, he said that “we’re still learning more, and [China] may be still defining for itself more of what basically completing [its] modernization means for 2035.”

“That could certainly change [China’s] perception of its strategic security environment, something that is always evolving and that they’re reassessing.… [B]ut I would certainly expect them to continue expanding the modernization [of] their force,” he added.

In general, this year’s report reaffirms previous assessments and adds specific timelines. For instance, the report says that China will implement a launch-on-warning posture “this decade.” Aligning with previous estimates that the Chinese nuclear arsenal is shifting from its historical posture of maintaining the capability to deal limited retaliatory damage, the report “suggests that [China] seeks to have the ability to inflict far greater levels of overwhelming damage to an adversary in a nuclear exchange,” including adopting a launch-on-warning posture and employing lower-yield nuclear weapons.

The report says that the Type 096 ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) “probably is intended to field” sea-launched ballistic missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles and “probably will begin construction in the mid-2020s,” a delay from last year’s estimate of “the early 2020s.” The Type 096 SSBN, China’s next-generation nuclear-powered submarine with longer-range sea-launched ballistic missiles, “will likely begin construction soon” and “is expected to enter service in the late 2020s or early 2030s,” the report says.

To support its nuclear force expansion, China has completed one of its two fast breeder nuclear reactors at Xiapu and construction on the other reactor continues, the Pentagon said. Hui Zhang, a senior research associate at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, previously noted the development in an open-sourced assessment in Dec. 2023.

Confirming a leaked intelligence report from February 2023, the Pentagon assessed that China’s new Dongfeng-27 (DF-27) missile, which can be configured either as an intermediate-range or intercontinental ballistic missile, has a hypersonic glide vehicle payload option. Further, the report said that China “may have deployed” the DF-27 missile with this capability to its rocket force.

The report noted that China “largely denied, cancelled, and ignored recurring engagements and requests for communications” with U.S. officials until the November 2023 meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden. Although bilateral tensions remain high, the Pentagon “is committed to maintaining open lines of communication with [Beijing] to ensure competition does not veer into conflict,” the report said.

It added that the U.S. Defense Department’s “objectives in maintaining military-to-military channels are to help prevent crisis, reduce strategic and operational risk, and clarify misperceptions.”

January/February 2025
By Xiaodon Liang

Congress asked the Defense Department to provide a path toward the potential expansion of U.S. nuclear forces in a defense policy bill unveiled in early December, but for now offered little additional money for programs beyond the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile.

Negotiators for the Senate and House of Representatives released a compromise $850 billion defense authorization bill for the 2025 fiscal year on Dec. 7 that rejected higher overall discretionary spending levels recommended earlier by the Senate Armed Services Committee. The total sum complies with fiscal limits adopted as part of a government spending agreement in 2023.

The House passed the defense authorization bill 281-140 on Dec. 11, and the Senate gave its approval 85-14 on Dec. 18. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on Dec. 23.

The bill directs the Pentagon to provide congressional committees directly with an “assessment of the quantities and types of forces necessary” to hold at risk all the targets defined in the Biden administration’s nuclear weapons employment guidance, which was finalized this year. It also tasks the department to take into account “the planned growth in potential target quantities due to the expansion and diversification of likely adversary capabilities” over the next 10 years.

The bill, the key defense policy legislation, requires the department to report annually on implementation of the recommendations of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States for the next five years. That commission, which released its final report in October 2023, called for increases in U.S. nuclear forces primarily through the expansion of existing modernization programs. (See ACT, November 2023.)

The bill also directs the Pentagon to provide plans to reduce the time needed to upload additional warheads to the existing intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force, expand the future ICBM force to 450 deployed missiles, and manage the transition between older and in-development delivery vehicles.

Even as these directives lay the groundwork for future growth in U.S. nuclear forces, the bill provides full funding for the president’s current nuclear modernization budget requests across the board, trimming and adding only marginal amounts of money from accounts.

One notable exception is the budget for the increasingly expensive Sentinel ICBM. (See ACT, September 2024.) In the compromise defense bill, negotiators added $200 million to the program’s research and development effort to support prototyping and industrial-base risk reduction, bringing the program to an authorized limit of $3.9 billion infiscal 2025.

But the military construction budget for the missile was lowered significantly, with $366 million struck from a $680 million request for land acquisition and construction work at F.E. Warren and Vandenberg Air Force bases.

In July, the Pentagon announced that it would continue the Sentinel program despite continued projected cost increases. The department now estimates that the missile program will cost $141 billion in 2020 dollars. (See ACT, September 2024.)

The bill does not increase funding significantly for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program beyond the $9.8 billion requested by the White House for shipbuilding and R&D.

But in votes on Dec. 20, Congress temporarily raised the annual budget for Columbia-class shipbuilding to $8.9 billion, up from the $5.8 billion approved in fiscal 2024 appropriations, in a second continuing resolution extending appropriations levels from the 2024 fiscal year. The higher spending rate will stay in place until fiscal 2025 appropriation levels are finalized. This additional funding for the Columbia program came as a response to a supplementary request from the White House in November.

The Office of Management and Budget, the Navy, and contractor Huntington Ingalls Industries have been involved in negotiations on the best way to pay for higher costs at the submarine shipyards in recent years, USNI News reported Nov. 25. According to the report, Chief Executive Chris Kastner of Huntington Ingalls noted “underlying realities: a tight fiscal environment, inflation, increased wage expectations for skilled labor, and extended supplier lead times.”

Months after the Biden administration dropped its opposition to a nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missile, the defense bill adds $252 million for R&D for the program, up from $90 million appropriated last fiscal year. (See ACT, July/August 2024.) The bill also authorizes $70 million for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to develop a warhead for the missile, maintaining funding constant compared with last year.

The Senate Armed Services Committee had recommended providing more money above the fiscal 2025 budget request to accelerate modernization of the Navy’s nuclear command, control, and communications system for ballistic missile submarines, which involves the E-6B Mercury aircraft. The final compromise legislation rejected this proposal.

The E-6B aircraft, a critical component in the communications chain between commanders and underwater submarines, is set to be replaced by a new aircraft, the E-130J, by 2026. Construction of the first airframe started in November, according to the Navy’s social media accounts, and the service awarded an overarching systems integration contract for the new plane on Dec. 18.

The compromise bill maintains funding for the B-21 bomber program at levels requested by the Biden administration in March, providing $5.3 billion for R&D and procurement. Speaking Dec. 6 at the Mitchell Institute, the head of the Air Force Global Strike Command, Gen. Thomas Bussiere, suggested that the service may seek to expand the number of bombers it buys beyond original plans for at least 100 aircraft. The total bomber fleet size “probably needs to be reevaluated based on the world as we see it today,” Bussiere said.

The prime contractor building the B-21, Northrop Grumman, told its investors earlier this year that its current fixed-price contract for low-rate initial production of the bomber would lead to $1.6 billion in pretax losses, spread over the first 21 aircraft. In June, the company said it had reached an agreement with the Air Force to raise the price of the plane under its next agreement for 19 more bombers. That threatens the Air Force’s initial promise to keep costs under $550 million per aircraft in 2010 dollars, which is now equal to $780 million.

The defense policy bill also provides $1.2 billion for continued upgrades to the B-52H bomber fleet, including $785 million for an engine replacement program. The new engine passed a critical design review in December, according to an announcement by contractor Rolls-Royce.

The bill adds $4.5 million for renuclearization of the 40 B-52H bombers that were configured for conventional missions to comply with the limits of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Although the Senate committee had recommended directing the Air Force to begin renuclearization of the aircraft, the compromise bill permits renuclearization at the executive branch’s discretion.

Spending on nuclear programs remains largely in line with the president’s budget request, but congressional negotiators gave missile defense several notable boosts in the compromise defense bill. The defense committees authorized $393 million in additional spending on the Glide Phase Interceptor program, a U.S.-Japanese collaborative effort to produce an interceptor for bringing down hypersonic weapons with a glide trajectory.

In September, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) selected Northrop Grumman to continue development of the interceptor, eliminating a competing design effort. In last year’s defense authorization act, Congress directed the agency to ensure that the interceptor can achieve initial operational capability by 2029, but agency leaders remain skeptical that goal can be met.

In its fiscal 2025 budget request, the Biden administration signaled that it would cease production of the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IB ballistic missile interceptor in favor of shifting toward producing the upgraded SM-3 Block IIA variant. The defense authorization bill reverses this decision, adding $250 million to restart SM-3 Block IB production and $65 million to expand SM-3 Block IIA production to 36 interceptors per year, up from the currently planned 12 per year. The Navy fired interceptors, including SM-3 missile variants, to defend Israel from Iranian ballistic missile attacks in April and October.

The defense bill also includes a requirement for the MDA to establish by 2031 a third Ground-Based Midcourse Defense site on the east coast of the United States. Proposals for the third site have been opposed by the Biden administration and failed in previous defense bill negotiations.

The bill also prohibits the NNSA from spending money on dismantling the B83-1 gravity bomb, a large-yield weapon that the Biden administration has sought to eliminate, without assurance from the head of Strategic Command that there are no “gaps” in the U.S. strategic deterrence posture. The Biden administration has argued that the new B61-13 gravity bomb would satisfy the hardened and large-area requirements previously met by the 1.2-megaton B83-1. (See ACT, December 2023.)

Congressional negotiators modified a restriction proposed by the House on data-sharing under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to permit unilateral disclosures when they would be in the national interest or if Russia were to resume providing notifications. The bill also includes a restriction on the admittance of Chinese and Russian citizens to the national laboratories after April 15, 2025.

In an organizational move, the bill designates the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs as the principal civilian adviser to the defense secretary for nuclear programs and policies, including “all matters relating to the sustainment, operation, and modernization of United States nuclear forces.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted his concerns with this modified position in a Sept. 26 letter to the congressional defense committees, stating that the reorganization threatened to “carve out functions and authorities” from two existing offices, that of the undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment and the undersecretary for policy, creating “unclear lines of authority.” The final legislation clarifies the original Senate proposal by stating that the new assistant secretary will advise and assist the existing undersecretaries.

Negotiators significantly changed a House recommendation that Congress mirror the Biden administration’s language that a human always should remain “in the loop” on critical nuclear weapons employment decisions.

Instead, the compromise version states that it is U.S. policy that the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear forces should not compromise “the principle of requiring positive human actions in execution of decisions by the President with respect to the employment of nuclear weapons.”

January/February 2025
By Mina Rozei

International experts have stepped up their monitoring of chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria since the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, but there is much uncertainty about the status of the program and possible contamination due to strikes on military facilities there, according to UN and U.S. officials.

At an emergency meeting of the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Dec. 12, Director-General Fernando Arias reported on “airstrikes targeting military facilities” after Assad was ousted four days earlier by Syrian rebels and fled to Moscow.

“We do not know yet whether these strikes have affected chemical weapons-related sites,” but they “could create a risk of contamination,” Arias said. Multiple news media reported that the Israel Defense Forces began a bombing campaign that included suspected chemical storage sites almost immediately after Assad was ousted.

Arias noted that Syria’s political and security situation “remains volatile.” He warned that attacks on chemical sites also could risk “the destruction of valuable evidence” needed for investigations by various independent international bodies probing the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons and risk “dangerous chemicals or equipment being lost, without any control.”

Along with the OPCW, the United States has been waiting to see if remnants of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons stockpiles would be found, but The New York Times reported on Dec. 25 that “none are known to have turned up so far.”

In a speech on Dec. 19, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor John Finer said that the United States was making the future of the Syrian chemical stockpile a priority after Assad’s fall and would work with the OPCW and states in the region to find, secure, and dispose of any remaining chemical weapons stockpiles.

He also said that the United States understands that the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the caretaker government in Damascus are committed to recovering and disposing of chemical stockpiles and that Washington has encouraged them to do so.

The fall of the Assad regime raises important questions about the remainder of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.

For 11 years, the OPCW has worked to persuade Syria to fulfill its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) by coming clean about its chemical weapons program and destroying all components. Instead, the Syrian government obfuscated and delayed releasing a full report of its chemical program.

Arias said that, since Assad’s ouster, the OPCW has heard “positive signals from within Syria” on the need to rid the country of chemical weapons but “to date, we have not received any official request for help from any Syrian authorities.”

In a Dec. 9 statement, the OPCW “reaffirm[ed] its commitment to clarifying gaps, discrepancies, and inconsistencies in Syrian chemical weapons declarations amidst [the] political transition.” The statement said that the OPCW Technical Secretariat communicated with the Syrians to “ensur[e] the safety and security of all chemical weapons[-]related materials and facilities at all locations on [Syrian] territory.”

At high-level meetings since 2022, top UN disarmament officials bemoaned the “gaps, inconsistencies, and discrepancies” in Syria’s declaration regarding its use of chemical weapons, which the United Nations considered incomplete and not in accordance with the CWC.

Syria acceded to the CWC in September 2013 after allegations of chemical weapons use by the Assad government. The Technical Secretariat formed the Declaration Assessment Team in 2014, when Syria first submitted its declaration to the OPCW. The OPCW repeatedly has questioned the accuracy and completeness of the declaration, stalling the verification of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile and its eventual destruction.

The OPCW confirmed that there were 'reasonable grounds' to believe that the Syrian military used chemical weapons on Douma in 2018. (See ACT, March 2023.)

The OPCW also confirmed the use of chemical weapons by nonstate actors in 2015. Numerous other cases of chemical attacks took place during the Syrian civil war in 2013-2024, but no perpetrator has been determined. (See ACT, April 2024)

January/February 2025

Congress once again failed to allocate aid for communities harmed by U.S. nuclear weapons testing and development in its latest federal spending bill.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), established in 1990, provided one-time payments to downwinder communities affected by Cold War-era nuclear testing, uranium mining, and nuclear waste. Nuclear justice advocates for decades have challenged the program’s restrictive eligibility criteria and pushed for its extension and expansion. The program expired in June without any adjustments. Since then, advocates have been trying to reinstate it through various legislative vehicles. (See ACT, July/August 2024.)

On Dec. 17, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has “blocked” RECA reauthorization from being included in the continuing resolution, an interim bill to keep the government running without regular appropriations. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), another proponent of RECA, blasted Johnson on Dec. 17 on the social platform X for “personally killing a bipartisan, bicameral expansion bill” while spending “billions on Ukraine and foreign wars.”

In his post, Lee said that he had worked with other lawmakers, including Rep. Celeste Maloy (R-Utah), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), and Hawley, to get a “compromise measure” for RECA. Lee did not explain what was included in the compromise and whether it reflects the expansion and extension bill that the Senate approved last year. (See ACT, September 2024.)—SHAGHAYEGH CHRIS ROSTAMPOUR