nuclear-news

Just how safe are Pakistan’s nukes?

the fact remains that the security of these weapons rests in the hands of those who somehow missed bin Laden’s mansion just down the street from their training facility, who receive their information from the same intelligence services that consider the Taliban a strategic asset, not an enemy

Pakistan can’t be trusted with nuclear weapons, National Post, Matt Gurney, 3 May 11, “…bin Laden wasn’t hiding in some dank cave, but was in fact living in a newly built mansion in an affluent Pakistani city, apparently within a 10 minute walk — a mere thousand yards — of a Pakistani military academy …… The government of Pakistan is divided up into competing factions, with their own agendas and plots against each other. This breeds instability and the risk of rapid shifts in the balance of power within Pakistan.…..now we discover that the world’s most wanted man, the leading terrorist of our time, was living practically within shouting distance of a major Pakistani military facility in a  heavily garrisoned city. That leaves us with two equally unpalatable possibilities: the military is either not as aligned with the West as we had assumed, or is simply incompetent.

Neither option is good. In recent years, major activity has been observed at many of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities, as the country is believed to be both enlarging and modernizing its stockpile of nuclear warheads. Estimates as to the size of the Pakistani arsenal have now at least doubled to somewhere between one and two hundred bombs, and the bombs themselves are, thanks to modernization, becoming smaller and more powerful at the same time. It is likely that Pakistani nuclear weapons are now capable of achieving yields that would be measured in the hundreds of kilotons — many times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, and certainly capable of hollowing out any major city.

Pakistan has repeatedly tried to reassure the world that its arsenal is safe and secure, and a 2008 U.S. Congressional report noted that the weapons are stored in secure underground facilities, unassembled, and separate from their launchers. But while that might sound comforting, the fact remains that the security of these weapons rests in the hands of those who somehow missed bin Laden’s mansion just down the street from their training facility, who receive their information from the same intelligence services that consider the Taliban a strategic asset, not an enemy……… http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/05/02/matt-gurney-pakistan-cant-be-trusted-with-nuclear-weapons/

May 3, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Pakistan, weapons and war