AWE Aldermaston Firesale: Subverting Congress On RRW?
A US engineering company, Jacobs, has acquired a 1/3 stake in the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston
...Britain no longer has any stake in the production of its nuclear warheads after the Government secretly sold off its shares in the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston...
...The announcement, which means that Americans will now produce and maintain Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, was slipped out on the eve of the parliamentary Christmas holiday...
...The AWE, based at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, employs 4,500 people and more than 2,000 contractors. It designs, assembles, maintains and decommissions nuclear warheads, but the organisation is also a major centre for nuclear weapons research with expertise in advanced physics, materials science and super-computing...
...its one-third stake in the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) had been sold to the California-based Jacobs Engineering Group, a global engineering firm which already carries out work for the nuclear weapons and research establishment in Berkshire...
...Anti-nuclear campaigners claimed the sale would compromise the independence of Britain's nuclear deterrent...
No. This misses the big issue. Jacobs is, or has been, a contractor at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. At LLNL, the winner for the design of the first RRW (WR1 the designated replacement for the W76), Jacobs is a contractor on the National Ignition Facility.
Don't forget that at Aldermaston they have been working on the Reliable Replacement Warhead, what they call the High Surety Warhead. The UK is into "Trident replacement" and that includes a replacement for the W76.
The effect, if not the purpose, of all this is to subvert the US Congress and continue work on the Reliable Replacement Warhead by other means.
You can't tell me that corporations like Jacobs, Bechtel and the like don't have a commercial interest in going beyond Stockpile Stewardship.
The reason for the sale that is cited in the article, to get some cash because of the economic crisis, is absurd. You don't sell your stake in a nuclear weapons facility like Aldermaston to raise a few quid.
Something else is at work here.
Global Environmental Impact Of Nuclear War: Has Man A Future?
Physics Today just continues to deliver. The December issue has an article on the environmental consequences of nuclear war by Toon, Robock and Turco. They actually provide two calculations. One, that looks at the global environmental consequences of a regional nuclear war involving the detonation of 50 nuclear weapons each with a yield of 15Kt.
But, most crucially, they also simulate the environmental consequences of a global nuclear war involving what they call a "SORT conflict", i.e. one that is conducted with force levels consistent with operational stockpiles under the Moscow Treaty. They state
...In the SORT conflict, we assume that Russia targets 1000 weapons on the US and 200 warheads each on France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, and the UK. We assume the US targets 1100 weapons each on Russia and China....
Two quick things here. Firstly, the authors assume that both sides will successfully launch the full force of their respective arsenals in a conflict. The National Resources Defense Council conducted a supercomputer simulation of a SIOP (as it was then) Major Attack Option upon Russia. An estimate assuming a US first strike, that uses the NRDC SIOP supercomputer simulation would have been a good idea. I notice in the references that this NRDC study was not cited.
One needs also to consider the amount of nuclear warheads on generated alert. The operational stockpile and the day-to-day alert force may differ.
Secondly, it assumes in a SORT conflict that the US in OPLAN-8010-08 only has deliberate Reserve Attack Options directed at China. I would be miffed if anyone could demonstrate to me that, post 9/11, Pakistan does not figure in a RAO. The idea is that after an exchange no other nuclear power can use their nuclear forces to coerce the United States. Pakistan must be included. If it isn't then we have what nuclear strategists like to call a deterrence gap; I am sure that the adaptive feature of tailored deterrence will handle this if Pakistan isn't already in.
Let us concentrate on the SORT conflict. The authors state
...A SORT conflict with 4400 nuclear explosions and 440-Mt total yield would generate 770 million casualties and 180Tg of soot. The SORT scenario numbers are lower limits inasmuch as we assumed 100-Kt weapons; the average SORT yield would actually be larger...
Indeed. Russia has warheads at least with 550Kt yields. The W76, 100Kt, is the most numerous in the US operational stockpile, but we also have the W87(300Kt) and the W88(475Kt), for instance. Notice that the scenario does not include Chinese launch. I am sure that Beijing won't just sit around and do nothing while Moscow and Washington exercise their reserve attack options. China has Mt warheads.
These considerations likely compensate for my points above.
They point out
...attacks on a relatively small number of densely populated urban targets generate most of the casualties and soot...
What is especially interesting is that the level of soot is much higher than that of similar studies in the 1908s assuming a nuclear war between the USSR and the US. Recall that the EMT was much higher than then. The reasons for this are important for anybody interested in nuclear war and nuclear strategy
...because of multiple targeting and overlap of detonation zones, their scenario has a built-in fire ignition redundancy factor of about 8.7; our model has negligible redundancy. In fact, their analysis of 3030 specific targets identified only 348 unique, non-overlapping detonation sites in the US. That substantial level of overkill is symptomatic of the enormous excesses of weapons deployed by the superpowers in the 1980s....
US Strategic Command has summed this up by stating that during the cold war there was a "weapons rich environment" whereas now we have a "target rich environment." Overkill suggests to us that nuclear strategy had very little to do with deterrence and that nuclear strategy was a mechanism to justify force levels produced by the weapons complex.
The authors then go on to estimate the longer term ecological consequences of the level of soot production that they cite in their SORT scenario. They state
...in a hypothetical SORT war, for example, we estimate that most of the world's population, including that of the Southern Hemisphere, would be threatened by the indirect effects on global climate...
This is a reference to the possibility of the failure of agriculture. The authors point out that they have not simulated the effects on the ozone layer.
They point out
...our climate and atmospheric chemistry work is based on standard global models from NASA Goddard's Institute for Space Studies and from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research...
It must be stressed that they assume a counter-value attack on cities.
...we consider a 'countervalue' strategy in which urban areas are targeted, mainly to destroy economic and social infrastructure and the ability to fight and recover from a conflict...
Of course, if an apparatchik in DC was really creative they would use this study to explain to Congress why they need to fund nuclear weapons programmes directed toward tailoring capabilities such as the Advanced Concepts Initative or the Reliable Replacement Warhead.
That won't work though. In nuclear planning, for the purposes of deterrence, there will always exist the capability to assure destruction no matter what i said about escalation control and damage limitation; unless more minimum forms of deterrence are adopted, which is probably all that is necessary in so far as the requirements of deterrence are concerned.
The highly regarded evolutionary biologist and paleontologist David Raup, who specializes on the role of extinction in evolution, has pointed out that for a highly successful species that is geographically dispersed across habitats, such as Homo sapiens sapiens, extinction becomes a function of the possible development of singular global processes (or global process that spread over time).
According to this article a nuclear war at current levels could be just such an event.
US Nuclear War Plan Is *Not* OPLAN-8044. It’s OPLAN 8010-08.
From the Eisenhower Administration onwards the US nuclear war plan was known as the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). Prior to the Eisenhower reforms US nuclear war planning was not integrated and the SIOP had its origins in a desire to develop greater coordination.
War plans were known as SIOP-62 (LeMay’s Sunday Punch or I’ll bomb the shit out of them), SIOP-63, SIOP-5, SIOP-6 and so on.
The next big change to the Strategic War Planning System (SWPS) came in the 1990s with the development of adaptive planning and the development of a “living” SIOP.
The development of the “living” SIOP saw the effective end of the SIOP and the Bush Administration changed the SIOP to OPLAN-8044. The nuclear war plan in any given fiscal year would have been known as OPLAN-8044-07 (say fiscal 2007).
However, the US strategic nuclear war plan is no longer OPLAN-8044-YY. This was revealed in the US Air Force report on Reinvigorating the Air Force Nuclear Enterprise
…USSTRATCOM Operational Plan (OPLAN) 8010-08, Global Deterrence and Strike, 1 February 2008 (S)…
Why the change?
As it just me or do I not notice that Stephen Hadley made his speech to Stanford which included important new stuff about the deterrence of nuclear terrorism in February?
Interim Congressional Report On US Strategic Posture And The Limits To Arms Control
The Interim Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States has been released. I will have more to say about this document later but I would like to make one point.
The final report, due to be released into Brand Obama’s term of office, will likely be very important from a Nuclear Posture Review perspective. It could set the tone and parameters of what the NPR will come up with much like a National Institute of Public Policy report by people who went on to serve in Team Bush did at a similar point in the past.
The report spells this out pretty clearly
…We understand that the lack of consensus about the future of the US nuclear deterrent is a key motivator of the charge to the Commission…
The report, at least to me, reads like another sell for something like RRW, which we should really call the Advanced Concepts Initiative. More on that later.
The report develops what will likely prove to be structural limitations to strategic arms control. Firstly, on BMD the report states
…Missile defenses appropriate to defend against a rogue nuclear nation could serve a damage-limiting and stabilizing role in the US strategic posture…on the other hand, levels of defenses sizable enough to sow such doubts in the minds of Russia or China could lead them to take actions that increase the threat to the US and its allies and friends…
The first part shows us that BMD in the “rogue states” context is about providing a posture enabling continued power projection for regional contingencies under a structural strategic environment premised upon “cascading” proliferation. That is, “the second nuclear age.” as I have stated previously more times than I can remember.
The second part demonstrates how BMD provides a structural limit to arms control. The deeper the cuts that are made to Russia’s arsenal the bigger the threat of “damage limitation” (read nuclear war-fighting capability) becomes, a Russian strategic planner would argue. To “assure” deterrence numbers must stay relatively high and that means no deep cuts.
The second part is very interesting given the Wolfowitz report on China and US nuclear policy, recently reviewed below. The Interim Congressional Commission states,
…any negotiated reduction between Russia and the US should not be carried out in a manner that might incentivize the Chinese to undertake a program to increase their nuclear capabilities in an effort to compete with us…
That is a clear reference to the role of dissuasion in US nuclear strategy. This is an argument against deep cuts because it is felt that such cuts would undermine dissuasion by encouraging the Chinese to race to parity if US warhead numbers go into the hundreds.
If you buy, oh say I’m thinking Brand Obama, into dissuasion you can kiss deep cuts as a part of strategic arms control goodbye.
There are three key factors that determine the numbers or size of the US nuclear arsenal
(1). Assurance. This reflects the traditional argument that largish nuclear forces deter nuclear capable latent proliferant states, such as Japan, from going nuclear.
(2). Dissuasion. This reflects an argument premised on the notion that a nuclear arsenal that is much bigger than others would dissuade potential adversary states from making a move to strategic parity with the US. Dissuasion does not have an impact on operational strategy or capabilities; it is primarily a size issue.
(3). Deterrence and Defeat. With the emphasis on defeat. The idea here is that the damage expectancy criteria of OPLAN-8044, especially with respect to Russia, are built around a war-fighting counter-force nuclear strategy. In other words, damage-limitation, it is argued, is needed to deter Russia (and China).
I’m uncertain whether there is a link between 2 and 3.
If Brand Obama buys 1,2 and 3 then we will get more continuity than “change we can believe in.”
Because the Interim Report is really an RRW issue it did not have anything to say about the role, or not, of prompt global strike in the US strategic posture. Russia and the US have formally met on a successor to START and the emphasis, thus far, is on discord.
You can see from the Interim Report that the US wants tactical nuclear weapons to be on the table. But, NATO expansion doesn’t help here and that idiotic Georgian attack was a complete disaster.
Moscow would like prompt global strike, given fears about “conventional counter-force”, to be on the table. However, Washington does not want to bargain away prompt global strike for an arms control accord, especially when the Pentagon thinks these things are passe.
Threat Of Nuclear Terrorism Is 0.000 According To Sandia National Lab Report
As I have stated previously I am writing a book on nuclear terrorism. I have tried not to let my argument slip in here in order to encourage people to actually eventually buy it.
Given that I have done my fair share of reading on the topic let me take the liberty of suggesting strongly the book by Brian Jenkins (who has been studying this topic since the ‘70s) Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?
This book is extremely good. When I bought it I was not able to put it down and essentially devoured it in one go its that damn good.
Having said that I don’t want to talk about nuclear terrorism too much but I must say that I can’t help myself with this one. Let me briefly discuss one of my sources. For further detailed discussion see the book, when it comes out.
A 1999 study by the Sandia National Lab, which [Warning!!!] comes in at a cool 400 pages, has some very interesting comparative probabilistic analysis of the threat of WMD terrorism.
In the nuclear terrorism genre there is an interesting intellectual sub-culture that looks at the probability that an act of nuclear terrorism will occur in the US in x years. The Congressional Panel report on WMD terrorism, just released, set up upon the recommendations of the 9/11 commission plays into that as well.
However, the treatment of the threat of an Improvised Nuclear Device in the Sandia Lab report is extremely interesting.
They begin with the standard
P (A/B) = P(A) P(B)
Where A is successful manufacture and B is successful employment. A and B can, and is, broken down into further probabilities.
They provide an interesting twist to their analysis by renormalizing this product for a given type of WMD terrorism (say high end bioterrorism) by dividing it with the product for the probability of RDD terrorism, which is considered to be the most likely form of WMD terrorism by the authors of the report.
For an act of nuclear terrorism employing an Improvised Nuclear Device we get the following
P (Nuclear Terror) = P (Motivation) . P (Funding) . P (Access to knowledge) . P (Access to equipment) . P (Success in fabrication) . P (Success in escaping detection) . P (Success of employment)
They then list a number of numerical values. This too is standard fair and it is here that probabilistic analyses start to become subjective. At any rate, the Sandia Lab report figures are, for an IND,
P(Nuclear Terror) = 0.8 x 0.2 x 0.05 x 0.05 x 0.01 x 0.01 x 1.0
The Sandia Lab then goes on to give a figure of 0.000, which of course it is to the third decimal point and still would be zero with a standard 8 digit hand calculator but is actually 0.00000004. Renormalizing (by 0.486 the RDD figure) we get 8.23 x 10^-8
That is a pretty, pretty low probability!!!
Now, it’s not relevant terribly too much for the final Sandia figure but that probability of unity for successful detonation for an IND cannot be correct. There will always be some probability, especially for an IND, that a nuclear weapon will fizzle. So the probability of successful detonation at nominal yield should not be unity; that’s not a matter of speculation either.
So I would consider, everything else ceteris paribus, 8.23 x 10^-8 to be too high a figure.
An important role played in the above calculation comes from those 0.01 probabilities. The first 0.01 is critical i.e. a probability of 0.01 for successful fabrication given the difference with other analysis.
That’s in fact a big difference with analysis that puts the threat much higher than that. The reason is because if a terrorist group had access to fissile materials then fabrication of a nuclear weapon is as easy as apple pie. That’s standard in alarmist literature from a wide array of sources from neo-con supporters for a militarised war on terror to opponents of nuclear energy.
Not according to the Sandia Lab.
The Sandia Lab report, remember this is pre 9/11, does make the point that al-Qaeda has shown interest in WMD and an interest in conducting mass casualty attacks in the US. Not only did al-Qaeda show interest but even dabbled in WMD related activity.
The peak concern for IND terrorism was in the ‘90s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Co-operative threat reduction programmes and the re-assertion of the centre in Moscow by the siloviki under Putin have lowered this threat.
The threat of fissile material leakage peaked in the ‘90s. The threat of al-Qaeda mass casualty terrorism also peaked in the ‘90s (the 9/11 plot would have had its genesis during the Clinton years).
Yet despite all that al-Qaeda decided to inflict mass casualty terrorism (by bringing down the twin towers they undoubtedly figured that they would kill more than 3,000) by non-WMD means.
Al-Qaeda has already been deterred from carrying out WMD terrorism and that during the peak of the threat.
It is pointed out, for instance by the Congressional panel, that the threat now lies with Pakistan. In other words that the re-creation of al-Qaeda central and Pakistan slipping into disorder means we have reached a second peak. Perhaps that makes the threat higher than it was in the ‘90s.
That could well be the case, but if it is that would have a fair amount to do with a militarised conception of counter-terrorism that has de-stabilised the region.
You can even see that in the Sandia Lab report and associated documents. The Clinton attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan cemented the Taliban and al-Qaeda nexus, which must have played some role in the genesis of the 9/11 plot.
Brand Obama has now recycled the Clintonites, much as Team Bush recycled the Reaganites. Toward the end of the Clinton Administration even Sam Huntington had a paper in Foreign Affairs calling the US the “rogue superpower.”
Even George Bush campaigned on this sentiment in 2000, stating that he wanted to restore US respect in the world. Sound familiar? How easy we forget.
When it comes to 9/11 itself the Clinton Administration was much worse than Bush. It would do well to remember that before we get too misty eyed about Brand Obama.
Remember for more read my coming book.
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Marko is also interested in philosophy, especially the theory of knowledge, and science, especially physics, and considers himself to work within the naturalist and enlightenment tradition. He is writing a book on nuclear terrorism.