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CNN: Ukraine Has Become a ‘Weapons Lab’ for Western Arms

“We are interested in testing modern systems in the fight against the enemy and we are inviting arms manufacturers to test the new products here,”

Ukraine’s defense minister previously offered his country as a ‘testing ground’ for Western weapons makers https://news.antiwar.com/2023/01/16/cnn-ukraine-has-become-a-weapons-lab-for-western-arms/ by Dave DeCamp ,

Ukraine has turned into a “lab” for Western arms as the war has given the US and its allies an opportunity to see how their weapons fare in a conflict with a major military power like Russia, CNN reported on Monday.

A source familiar with Western intelligence on the war told CNN that Ukraine is “absolutely a weapons lab in every sense because none of this equipment has ever actually been used in a war between two industrially developed nations.” The source described it as “real-world battle testing.”

Back in July, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov offered his country as a “testing ground” for Western arms makers. “We are interested in testing modern systems in the fight against the enemy and we are inviting arms manufacturers to test the new products here,” he said.

Reznikov got his wish as the US, and its allies have significantly stepped up military aid since then, and the war has escalated as Russia began large-scale strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure in October. Russia’s success in its use of cheap kamikaze drones in the infrastructure attacks has influenced plans for Western arms makers.

The British arms maker BAE Systems has announced that it’s developing a new armored vehicle with added protection to defend it from kamikaze drone attacks from above. Multiple intelligence and military officials told CNN that making cheap single-use drones has become a priority of many defense contractors.

The CNN report said that for the US military, the war has become an “incredible source of data on the utility of its own systems.” For example, the US has seen that its HIMARS rocket launch system has been effective against Russian forces, while the

M777 howitzer has become less effective and less accurate over time.

The war in Ukraine has also created a demand for weapons that were beginning to become obsolete, such as the Stinger shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. Raytheon stopped producing Stingers for years but now has been asked by the Pentagon to ramp up production as thousands have been shipped to Ukraine.

January 16, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear Notebook: United States nuclear weapons, 2023

The United States is modernizing its nuclear bomber force by upgrading nuclear command-and-control capabilities on existing bombers, developing improved nuclear weapons (the B61-12 and the new AGM-181 Long-Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO), and designing a new heavy bomber (the B-21 Raider).

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists By Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, January 16, 2023

t the beginning of 2023, the US Department of Defense maintained an estimated stockpile of approximately 3,708 nuclear warheads for delivery by ballistic missiles and aircraft. Most of the warheads in the stockpile are not deployed but rather stored for potential upload onto missiles and aircraft as necessary. We estimate that approximately 1,770 warheads are currently deployed, of which roughly 1,370 strategic warheads are deployed on ballistic missiles and another 300 at strategic bomber bases in the United States. An additional 100 tactical bombs are deployed at air bases in Europe. The remaining warheads — approximately 1,938 — are in storage as a so-called hedge against technical or geopolitical surprises. Several hundred of those warheads are scheduled to be retired before 2030. (See Table 1. on original)

In addition to the warheads in the Department of Defense stockpile, approximately 1,536 retired — but still intact — warheads are stored under the custody of the Department of Energy and are awaiting dismantlement, giving a total US inventory of an estimated 5,244 warheads. Between 2010 and 2018, the US government publicly disclosed the size of the nuclear weapons stockpile; however, in 2019 and 2020, the Trump administration rejected requests from the Federation of American Scientists to declassify the latest stockpile numbers (Aftergood 2019; Kristensen 2019a, 2020d). In 2021, the Biden administration restored the United States’ previous transparency levels by declassifying both numbers for the entire history of the US nuclear arsenal until September 2020 — including the missing years of the Trump administration.

 This effort revealed that the United States’ nuclear stockpile consisted of 3,750 warheads in September 2020 — only 72 warheads fewer than the last number made available in September 2017 before the Trump administration reduced the US government’s transparency efforts (US State Department 2021a). We estimate that the stockpile will continue to decline over the next decade-and-a-half as modernization programs consolidate the remaining warheads.

The Biden administration’s declassification also revealed that the pace of warhead dismantlement has slowed significantly in recent years. While the United States dismantled on average more than 1,000 warheads per year during the 1990s, in 2020 it dismantled only 184 warheads (US State Department 2021a). …………………

In the past, the Obama and Biden administrations often declassified the warhead stockpile and dismantlement numbers around the time of major arms control conferences. That did not happen in 2022, however, and the Biden administration has so far not acted on requests from the Federation of American Scientists to disclose the numbers for 2021 or 2022. A decision to no longer declassify these numbers would not only contradict the Biden administration’s own practice from 2020, but also represent a return to Trump-era levels of nuclear opacity. Such increased nuclear secrecy undermines US calls for Russia and China to increase transparency of their nuclear forces.

The US nuclear weapons are thought to be stored at an estimated 24 geographical locations in 11 US states and five European countries (Kristensen and Korda 2019, 124). The location with the most nuclear weapons by far is the large Kirtland Underground Munitions and Maintenance Storage Complex (KUMMSC) south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Most of the weapons in this location are retired weapons awaiting dismantlement at the Pantex Plant in Texas. The state with the second-largest inventory is Washington, which is home to the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific and the ballistic missile submarines at Naval Submarine Base Kitsap. The submarines operating from this base carry more deployed nuclear weapons than any other base in the United States.

Implementing the New START treaty

The United States appears to be in compliance with the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) limits. ………………………………

If New START expired without a follow-on treaty in place, both the United States and Russia could upload several hundred extra warheads onto their launchers. This means that the treaty has proven useful thus far in keeping a lid on both countries’ deployed strategic forces. Additionally, both countries would lose a critical node of transparency into each other’s nuclear forces. As of December 8, 2022, the United States and Russia had completed a combined 328 on-site inspections and exchanged 25,017 notifications (US State Department 2022b)……………………………….

The Nuclear Posture Review and nuclear modernization…………

Just like previous NPRs, the Biden administration’s NPR rejected policies of nuclear “no-first-use” or “sole purpose,” instead preferring to leave the option open for nuclear weapons to be used under “extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners” (US Department of Defense 2022b, 9)…………………….

The most significant change between the Biden and Trump NPRs was the walking back of two Trump-era commitments — specifically, canceling the new sea-launched cruise missile and retiring the B83-1 gravity bomb……………………………………….

The complete nuclear modernization (and maintenance) program will continue well beyond 2039 and, based on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate, will cost $1.2 trillion over the next three decades. Notably, although the estimate accounts for inflation (Congressional Budget Office 2017), other estimates forecast that the total cost will be closer to $1.7 trillion (Arms Control Association 2017). Whatever the actual price tag will be, it is likely to increase over time, resulting in increased competition with conventional modernization programs planned for the same period. …………

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Department of Defense have also proposed developing several other new nuclear warheads, including the W93 navy warhead. The NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP) of December 2020 doubled the number of new nuclear warhead projects for the next 20 years compared to its 2019 plan (National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) 2020b).

Nuclear planning and nuclear exercises

In addition to the Nuclear Posture Review, the nuclear arsenal and the role it plays is shaped by plans and exercises that create the strike plans and practice how to carry them out…………….

OPLAN 8010–12 consists of “a family of plans” directed against four identified adversaries: Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Known as “Strategic Deterrence and Force Employment,” OPLAN 8010–12 first entered into effect in July 2012 in response to Operations Order Global Citadel signed by the defense secretary. ……………………

OPLAN 8010–12 is a whole-of-government plan that includes the full spectrum of national power to affect potential adversaries. ……………………………..

This year’s Global Thunder exercise was delayed but will probably happen in early-2023.

These exercises coincide with steadily increasing US bomber operations in Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022…………………………………………….

the mission of the Bomber Task Force is to move a fully combat-ready bomber force into the European theater. “It’s no longer just to go partner with our NATO allies or to go over and have a visible presence of American air power,” according to the commander of the 2nd Bomb Wing. “That’s part of it, but we are also there to drop weapons if called to do so” (Wrightsman 2019). These changes are evident in the types of increasingly provocative bombers operations over Europe, in some cases very close to the Russian border (Kristensen 2022a)……………………………..

The close integration of nuclear and conventional bombers into the same task force can have significant implications for crisis stability, misunderstandings, and the risk of nuclear escalation because it could result in misperceptions about what is being signaled and result in overreactions…………………………………

Land-based ballistic missiles

The US Air Force operates a force of 400 silo-based Minuteman III ICBMs split across three wings: the 90th Missile Wing at F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming; the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota; and the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana………………………………

The Minuteman III missiles completed a multibillion-dollar, decade-long modernization program in 2015 to extend their service life until 2030. Although the United States did not officially deploy a new ICBM, the upgraded Minuteman III missiles “are basically new missiles except for the shell,” according to Air Force personnel (Pampe 2012)………………………………………………………………….

To produce the new W87-1 warhead in time to meet the Sentinel’s planned deployment schedule, the NNSA has set an extremely ambitious production rate of at least 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030. 

In October 2019, Lockheed Martin was awarded a $138 million contract to integrate the Mk21 reentry vehicle into the Sentinel, beating out rivals Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Orbital ATK (which Northrop Grumman now owns and has been renamed to Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems) (Lockheed Martin 2019

………………………………………………….. In May 2021, the US Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of acquiring and maintaining the Sentinel would total approximately $82 billion over the 2021–2030 period — approximately $20 billion more than the Congressional Budget Office had previously estimated for the 2019–2028 period (Congressional Budget Office 2021, 2019)……………………………………

Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines

The US Navy operates a fleet of 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), of which eight operate in the Pacific from their base near Bangor, Washington, and six operate in the Atlantic from their base at Kings Bay,…………………………………………………….

Design of the next generation of ballistic missile submarines, known as the Columbia-class, is well under way……………………………………

Strategic bombers

The US Air Force currently operates a fleet of 20 B-2A bombers (all of which are nuclear-capable) and 87 B-52H bombers (46 of which are nuclear-capable)……………………

Each B-2 can carry up to 16 nuclear bombs (the B61-7, B61-11, and B83-1 gravity bombs), and each B-52 H can carry up to 20 air-launched cruise missiles (the AGM-86B)……………………..

The United States is modernizing its nuclear bomber force by upgrading nuclear command-and-control capabilities on existing bombers, developing improved nuclear weapons (the B61-12 and the new AGM-181 Long-Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO), and designing a new heavy bomber (the B-21 Raider).

Upgrades to the nuclear command-and-control systems that the bombers use to plan and conduct nuclear strikes include the Global Aircrew Strategic Network Terminal. This is a new, high-altitude, electromagnetic pulse-hardened network of fixed and mobile nuclear command-and-control terminals………………

Another command-and-control upgrade involves a program known as Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals, which replaces existing terminals designed to communicate with the MILSTAR military satellite constellation operated by the US Space Force. …………………………………………….

The missile itself is expected to be entirely new, with significantly improved military capabilities compared with the air-launched cruise missile, including longer range, greater accuracy, and enhanced stealth (Young 2016). This violates the 2010 White House pledge (White House 2010) that the “United States will not … pursue … new capabilities for nuclear weapons,” though the 2018 NPR and 2022 NPR eliminated such constraints……………………..

Upgrades to the nuclear command-and-control systems that the bombers use to plan and conduct nuclear strikes include the Global Aircrew Strategic Network Terminal. This is a new, high-altitude, electromagnetic pulse-hardened network of fixed and mobile nuclear command-and-control terminals. ………..

Another command-and-control upgrade involves a program known as Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals, which replaces existing terminals designed to communicate with the MILSTAR military satellite constellation operated by the US Space Force. ……………….

The heavy bombers are also being upgraded with improved nuclear weapons. This effort includes development of the first guided, standoff nuclear gravity bomb, known as the B61-12, which is ultimately intended to replace all existing gravity bombs……………………………… The Air Force is also developing a new nuclear air-launched cruise missile known as the AGM-181 Long-Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO).

……………………………………………………… The conversion of the non-nuclear B-1 host bases to receive the nuclear B-21 bomber will increase the overall number of bomber bases with nuclear weapons storage facilities from two bases today (Minot AFB and Whiteman AFB) to five bases by the 2030s (Barksdale AFB will also regain nuclear storage capability) (Kristensen 2020c).

Nonstrategic nuclear weapons

The United States has only one type of nonstrategic nuclear weapon in its stockpile: the B61 gravity bomb……………………

The Belgian, Dutch, German, and Italian air forces are currently assigned an active nuclear strike role with US nuclear weapons……………………………….

NATO is working on a broad modernization of the nuclear posture in Europe that involves upgrading bombs, aircraft, and the weapons storage system (Kristensen 2022c)……………………………

NATO is life-extending the weapons storage security system, which involves upgrading command and control, as well as security, at the six active bases (Aviano, Büchel, Ghedi, Kleine Brogel, Incirlik, and Volkel) and one training base (Ramstein). ………………………  it appears that an air base in the United Kingdom — believed to be RAF Lakenheath — has been quietly added to the list of bases receiving nuclear weapon storage site upgrades (US Department of Defense 2022e). …………………………….. more https://thebulletin.org/premium/2023-01/nuclear-notebook-united-states-nuclear-weapons-2023/

January 16, 2023 Posted by | Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Ukraine War Should Alert Us to The Need to Ban Nuclear Weapons

It is not entirely the Pentagon’s fault. The web of civilian experts that stretches from inside the bureaucracy to the Senate to the universities to the specialist think tanks to the arms manufacturers to the leading news media produces a hardened force of opinion, almost immune to any counterstrike.

There is no rational argument for their possession apart from some vaguely thought-out military philosophy about the benign use of deterrence. Frankly, we don’t know if deterrence works. It only works until the moment it doesn’t

In Depth News, Viewpoint by Jonathan Power 15 Jan 23

LUND, Sweden (IDN) — In the year 2000, President Vladimir Putin, having just won his first election, made his own contribution to solving the nuclear weapons imbroglio. He said in a speech that Moscow was prepared to drastically reduce its stockpile of nuclear missiles. Putin’s call was not just for further cuts than the US suggested ceiling of 2,500 for each side but for reductions far below Moscow’s previous target of 1,500. (At present, Russia has around 6,000 warheads and the US 5,400.)

Indeed, from the way Putin put it and the terms and phrases he used, commentators at the time suggested that Putin may well have had in mind the same kind of deal that Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan hatched at their summit in Reykjavik back in 1986—a stockpile approaching zero.

That momentous unconsummated plan at Reykjavik was Reagan’s brainchild—he foresaw a world with perfect missile defences (the so-called Star Wars concept), side by side with the abolition of nuclear weapons by the superpowers.

But the moment Reagan’s advisors got wind of what he was spontaneously hatching with Gorbachev, they moved to squelch it, arguing its lack of feasibility and rubbishing its practicality, as they did- and still do—regularly with any creative proposal that has wound its way through the labyrinth of inter-agency review.

The only time a major initiative of a unilateral nature did win through was when President George Bush, very strongly placed after the demise of the Cold War, secretly hatched a plan to take US nuclear bombers off alert and remove tactical nuclear weapons from service. No one in the bureaucracy or the Senate had time to try and outmanoeuvre him.

According to George Perkovich, writing in an issue of Foreign Affairs, 1961 was the last time that the US government—led then by John F. Kennedy—took nuclear disarmament seriously enough to explore how to make it feasible.

Although the Clinton Administration called for a “fundamental re-examination” of nuclear doctrine, the initiative suffered from presidential inattention and Clinton’s “reluctance to challenge Washington’s odd couple of Pentagon bureaucrats and myopic and doctrinaire senators”. Indeed, Clinton went the other way by provocatively initiating the expansion of NATO towards Russia’s boundaries.

It is not entirely the Pentagon’s fault. The web of civilian experts that stretches from inside the bureaucracy to the Senate to the universities to the specialist think tanks to the arms manufacturers to the leading news media produces a hardened force of opinion, almost immune to any counterstrike.

As General Eugene Habiger, a retired commander in chief of all US strategic nuclear forces, put it, “We have reached the point where the senior military generals responsible for nuclear forces are advocating more vocally, more vehemently, than our politicians to get down to lower and lower weapons”.

His predecessor General George Lee Butler has gone even further both in wanting to totally eliminate nuclear weapons and in highlighting the savage tactics used by the pro-nuclear lobby to publicly destroy the image and credibility of any high-profile anti-nuclear campaigner.

Public opinion throughout the western world appears to be in a state of serendipity when it comes to nuclear weapons. Something will come along from somewhere and make the world safe from nuclear war. But the reality is far different. Russian nuclear weapons are being flaunted by Putin. There is always the chance of an unauthorised or mistaken launch. There have been well-documented, unchallenged cases of near launches.

The Chinese-Taiwan situation could sometime in the next few years erupt into a major military crisis, pushing the U.S. to confront China, a situation that could lead to two nuclear-armed powers firing missiles at each other.

Nuclear proliferation is becoming more and more likely, and Kashmir and the Middle East remain nuclear tinderboxes. The president of South Korea has already talked about his country building tactical nuclear weapons. (US tactical nuclear weapons were removed from South Korea by President Jimmy Carter.) As for North Korea, the regime continues to push forward, testing ever more sophisticated rockets…………………………………………….

During every minute of 2021, the world spent $156,841 on nuclear weapons, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). In just one year, nine nuclear-armed nations—China, the US, Russia, the UK, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel and France- spent a total of $82.4 billion on upgrading and maintaining their estimated total of around 13,000 nuclear weapons. (Russia and the US hold 90%.)

The world, by and large, is not short of money. It is a question of how it spends it. With a different outlook, money could easily be found to fund what is needed for climate control, aid for Africa’s development, malaria eradication, medical research for cancer, diabetes and dementia and poverty elimination wherever it is needed. Why should we be investing in weapons that are too dangerous to use?

There is no rational argument for their possession apart from some vaguely thought-out military philosophy about the benign use of deterrence. Frankly, we don’t know if deterrence works. It only works until the moment it doesn’t. As Putin, the erstwhile nuclear bomb cutter, has reminded us, they can be used by Russia if NATO missteps in Ukraine. Moreover, we are as much beholden to mistakes and accidents as we have always been, and the longer things go on, the likelier it is that a mistake or accident will happen.

Somewhere, deep in Putin’s brain, he knows this. So does Biden, who knows he could not avoid the testing teachings of his Catholic faith if his military and national security staff were putting him on the spot by advising him to use them.

So, what is the point of pushing things to that point?  

Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump did a terrible job in pulling the US out of important nuclear arms control agreements. Putin, when Biden was elected, quickly moved his and the now more forward-thinking American side to renew the big arms-cutting initiative of the Obama and Medvedev years. The cuts took the two sides’ long-range intercontinental warheads down to 1,550 each.

Maybe the messy Ukrainian war will go on for months more, even years. But there is nothing to stop the two biggest nuclear powers from initiating some bold steps towards to elimination of nuclear weapons right now. Otherwise, the unthinkable might happen because we have not been thinking. [IDN-InDepthNews — 15 January 2023]

Jonathan Power was for 17 years a foreign affairs columnist and commentator for the International Herald Tribune, now the New York Times. He has also written dozens of columns for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. He is the European who has appeared most on the opinion pages of these papers. https://indepthnews.net/index.php/opinion/5874-the-ukraine-war-should-alert-us-to-the-need-to-ban-nuclear-weapons

January 15, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Savannah River Site, Los Alamos plutonium pit production plan could cost over $30 billion

Matthew Christian, Aiken Standard, S.C. Sat, January 14, 2023 https://news.yahoo.com/savannah-river-los-alamos-plutonium-005900374.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADJqdcGm_qX6CdNLQ8_g7p81OistELVP4KvAUR1PfQl-0Q2SBtdSRa8GwdKyTIcwvX8aofXxou_a1DmL9axGTUu9S4o5f35bRYrwMTXGG5ZaoooE2PgjQaFWi5uLyJbf3gg8EShjtVi5A26UqvyJcSYMPWp9GQCX2T9NlsjflzJW

Jan. 13—It could cost over $30 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration to reestablish plutonium pit production, according to recently released report.

Allison Bawden, director of natural resources and environment at the Government Accountability Office, wrote Thursday the Government Accounting Office has identified between $18-$24 billion in potential costs to begin production of 80 plutonium pits per year by 2036 at the Savannah River Site and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Plutonium pits are the core of a nuclear weapon into which a neutron is injected to begin an uncontrolled reaction.

The United States has been without a permanent capability for plutonium pit production since 1989 after a combination of environmental mismanagement — the EPA and the FBI raided the facility in 1989 after receiving reports of numerous environmental violations from employees — and the end of the Cold War stopped pit production at the Rocky Flats facility in Colorado.

From 2007-2012, around 10 pits per year were made at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Trying to restart plutonium pit production and modernizing the Los Alamos National Laboratory for production has cost $8.6 billion since 2005 according to the report.

NNSA plans to produce 50 pits per year at the Savannah River Site beginning in 2036 and 30 pit per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory beginning in 2027.

At the Savannah River Site, the plans call for the failed Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility to be converted into the Savannah River Plutonium Production Facility.

Bawden says the NNSA estimates through 2035 a cost of between $6.9-$11.1 billion to make the conversion, which is in three steps: getting the main building ready, providing utilities and other infrastructure to the area and constructing an administration building, security facilities and a training area.

Other costs include $6.94 billion for plutonium modernization program at the Savannah River Site and the Los Alamos National Laboratory .

At the Savannah River Site, Bawden says costs include preparing employees to produce pits and learning from the Los Alamos National Laboratory how to produce pits more efficiently. She says at Los Alamos the costs include designing a pit production line, getting equipment, hiring and training staff and making sure the production line is working and checking the quality of the produced pits.

She adds other costs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory include between $4.17-$5.61 billion for capital projects, $240-244 million for support buildings and $45-46 million for maintenance and recapitalization.

Bawden spends a few pages in the 84-page report discussing activities at other Department of Energy-owned sites that are not included in the NNSA cost estimates.

Those activities include design of a warhead at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the lab making sure the produced pits meet the specifications of the warhead, experimental facilities at the Nevada National Security Site, production of non-nuclear pit components at the Kansas City National Security Campus, disassembling pits at the Pantex Plant in Texas and storing produced waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

Including these costs and developing more thorough estimates of the costs at the Savannah River Site and Los Alamos is one of two recommendations the GAO makes in the report.

The other is for the NNSA to develop a more complete schedule of activities and when they’re supposed to happen.

Bawden notes NNSA decision-makers said both recommendations will be implemented later in the process when firm construction plans for the Savannah River Plutonium Production Facility are set in 2024 or 2025. She adds the NNSA decision-makers said they are hesitant to make more thorough cost estimates because of a concern of making an estimate, then paying a higher cost and having the public concerned about rising costs for the project.

January 15, 2023 Posted by | - plutonium, business and costs, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

In a first, South Korea declares nuclear weapons a policy option

Japan Times, BY CHOE SANG-HUN, THE NEW YORK TIMES 13 Jan 23,

SEOUL – South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said for the first time Wednesday that if North Korea’s nuclear threat grows, South Korea would consider building nuclear weapons of its own or ask the United States to redeploy them on the Korean Peninsula.

Speaking during a joint policy briefing by his defense and foreign ministries Wednesday, Yoon was quick to add that building nuclear weapons was not yet an official policy. He stressed that South Korea would for now deal with North Korea’s nuclear threat by strengthening its alliance with the United States………………….

“It’s possible that the problem gets worse and our country will introduce tactical nuclear weapons or build them on our own,” said Yoon, according to a transcript of his comments released by his office. “If that’s the case, we can have our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly, given our scientific and technological capabilities.”

South Korea is a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, which bans the country from seeking nuclear weapons. It also signed a joint declaration with North Korea in 1991 in which both Koreas agreed not to “test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.”

But North Korea has reneged on the agreement by conducting six nuclear tests since 2006. …………………………………..

“If South Korea ​possesses ​nuclear weapons, the United States will not need to ask whether it should use its ​own ​nuclear weapons to defend its ally​,​ and the alliance will never be put to a test,” said Cheong Seong-chang,​ a senior analyst at the Sejong Institute in South Korea. “If South Korea owns nuclear weapons, the U.S. will actually become safer.”……………………….

South Korea would need to quit the NPT to build its own arsenal. Analysts said that quitting the NPT would be too risky for the South​ because it could trigger international sanctions​. ​

Some lawmakers affiliated with Yoon’s party and analysts like Cheon want the United States to reintroduce U.S. nuclear weapons​ to the South and forge a nuclear-sharing agreement with Seoul, similar to the one in which NATO aircraft would be allowed to carry U.S. nuclear weapons in wartime……………………………….

more https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/01/13/asia-pacific/south-korea-nuclear-weapons-policy/—

January 13, 2023 Posted by | South Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The U.S. Can’t Make Enough Plutonium Triggers for Its Nuclear Warheads

The Pentagon wants 80 new plutonium pits per year by 2030. It doesn’t look like that’s possible.

VICE, By Matthew Gault 13 Jan 23,

American power relies on the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. One of the reasons the U.S. military is so powerful is that the country is sitting on more than 5,000 potential world-ending nuclear weapons. But those nukes are aging and America hasn’t been building more. The Pentagon’s goal is to spin up production and make 80 plutonium pits—the trigger mechanism for nukes—a year by 2030. A new report from federal investigators said that’s a pipe dream.

A nuclear pit is a hollow ball of plutonium. On a basic level, nuclear weapons work by surrounding one of these balls with high explosives. When the high explosives go off, they apply uniform pressure to the plutonium pit and cause a nuclear explosion. They are a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, but America hasn’t made a new one since 1989.

America’s nuclear infrastructure is crumbling and in desperate need of modernization, according to the Pentagon. To keep America’s nukes running, the Pentagon wants to start production again. According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), it’s not going well.

This isn’t shocking. The National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) warned Congress in 2022 that the official plan to meet a deadline of 80 pits produced per year by 2030 wasn’t going to happen. According to the GAO, the NNSA doesn’t even know how much it will cost to create the infrastructure to build these pits, what resources it will need, or how long the project will take. “According to officials, such a life cycle cost estimate has not been completed because of concerns about releasing preliminary or uncertain information,” the report said.

For a brief period after the end of the Cold War it seemed like broad nuclear disarmament might be possible. That didn’t happen and now the U.S. is falling behind on modernization goals it set for itself. …………………….

America has pushed to modernize its nuclear forces. The U.S. Air Force is building a new intercontinental-ballistic missile and revealed a new stealth bomber last year with the fanfare of a Super Bowl halftime show. But these fancy new weapons require plutonium cores, and it doesn’t look like the U.S. can build them fast enough. https://www.vice.com/en/article/88qp5k/the-us-cant-make-enough-plutonium-triggers-for-its-nuclear-warheads

January 13, 2023 Posted by | - plutonium, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden Administration Tramples on Japan’s Post-World War II Pacifist Constitution By Pushing Country’s Rearmament

Covert Action magazine, By Sara Flounders, January 9, 2023 

Main target is China in dangerously provocative policy that faces no visible domestic opposition in the U.S.

On December 16, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced a new defense strategy that doubled Japan’s military spending by 2027. Japan further agreed to acquire offensive weapons and reshape its military command structure for its expanded armed forces.

On December 23, the draft budget was approved by Kishida’s cabinet.

Japan’s dangerous military expansion should set off international alarm bells. This major escalation is taking place based on intense U.S. imperialist pressure. It is the next step in the “Pivot to Asia,” aimed at threatening and surrounding China and attempting to reassert U.S. dominance in the Asia Pacific. 

The movements opposing endless U.S. wars must begin to prepare material and draw mass attention to this ominous threat.

The plan to double military spending will add $315 billion to Japan’s defense budget over the next five years and make Japan’s military the world’s third largest, after the U.S. and China. Defense spending will escalate to 2% of gross domestic product, equal to the goal the U.S. sets for its NATO allies. Japan’s economy is the world’s third largest. 

The Japanese government plans to buy up to 500 Lockheed Martin Tomahawk missiles and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM), procure more naval vessels and fighter aircraft, increase cyber-warfare capabilities, manufacture its own hypersonic guided missiles and produce its own advanced fighter jets, along with other weapons. The plan shifts from relying solely on missile defense to also embracing “counter strike” capabilities. 

………………………………………………… Although the U.S. occupation force, after defeating Japan’s military in World War II, imposed a “pacifist” constitution on Japan, for decades U.S. strategists have pressured Japan’s government to aggressively rearm, to buy U.S.-made weapons, and to act as a junior partner to U.S. efforts to dominate the Asia-Pacific region. 

Article 9 of the imposed Japanese constitution prohibits Japan from maintaining an army, navy and air force. To get around this, the “Japanese Self-Defense Forces” (JSDF) have since 1952 been treated as a legal extension of the police and prison system. The U.S. occupiers considered the JSDF an essential repressive tool defending capitalist property relations against the workers’ movement.

The decision for aggressive military expansion is in open violation of Japan’s supposedly pacifist constitution………………………………………….

The present doubling of the defense budget will be funded by raising taxes. A huge military budget will inevitably mean severe cuts to the country’s limited social spending. ………………….

Targeting China

Japan’s military expansion fits in with Washington’s aggression aimed at China, the DPRK and Russia. U.S. strategists’ goal is to use the U.S. alliance with Japan, South Korea and Australia, just as it uses the U.S.-led NATO alliance in Europe……………………………..

China is Japan’s largest trading partner in both imports and exports. Previous National Strategy Documents said Japan was seeking a “mutually beneficial strategic partnership” with China. Suddenly Japanese strategists started labeling China “the greatest strategic challenge in ensuring the peace and security of Japan.” (U.S. Institute of Peace, December 19)………….,………

A U.S.-Japan alliance is now defined as a “cornerstone” of Japan’s security policy. (Japan Times, December 17)

U.S. Praise of Japan’s Rising Militarism

The U.S. media praised Japan’s new security strategy document as a “bold and historic step.” U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan praised the defense spending hike, which “will strengthen and modernize the U.S.-Japan alliance.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Japan an “indispensable partner” and cheered that the changed security documents reshape the ability to “protect the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.” (quotes, whitehouse.gov, December 16)

U.S. corporate power is the immediate beneficiary of this sharp turn in policy, built on military threats and economic sanctions. …………………………………………………… more https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/01/09/biden-administration-tramples-on-japans-post-world-war-ii-pacifist-constitution-by-pushing-countrys-rearmament/?mc_cid=8da2f4a668&mc_eid=65917fb94b

January 13, 2023 Posted by | Japan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Gordon M. Hahn:  The West has been reckless with Vladimir Putin 

 10 DÉCEMBRE 2022 Interview by Mohsen Abdelmoumen, Algérie Résistance, le blog de Mohsen Abdelmoumen

Mohsen Abdelmoumen: You are an expert in geostrategy, what is your view on the current conflict in Ukraine?

Gordon M. Hahn: The war in Ukraine is best called the Russian-NATO Ukrainian war. It is a war over whether or not NATO will be allowed to expand to Ukraine and elsewhere along Russia’s borders, but mostly over Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO. NATO expansion drove democracy-promotion efforts in Ukraine and elsewhere, the 2004 Orange Revolution, and the February 2014 Maidan overthrow of the Yanukovych government.

For Russian national security, Ukraine is Geostrategically pivotal. If there is a hostile regime in Kiev backed by the West militarily, then Russia has no virtually no national security other than the resort to nuclear weapons.

Western military assistance makes Ukraine a de facto NATO member on Russia’s border and emboldens Kiev to favor a military solution over a negotiated one to the Donbass conflict it started as well as to seek a return of Crimea.

The widespread Western belief that Putin is politically weak and Russians are bursting to establish a democratic republic and free market economy (things the West itself is abandoning gradually in favor of the Great Reset, Wokism, and AI) led to a lack of caution in dealing with Putin, thinking he would balk at a war or be overthrown if he started one. This is precisely the situation with which the West confronted Russia no later than the Maidan coup and certainly by January 2022; hence, Putin’s decision to invade……………………………………………………………..

In your opinion, who would benefit from the fall of Russia?

Given the security risks of a Russian dissolution noted above, there might be no beneficiaries and quite a few victims in the event. Certainly, the West, China, and perhaps others such as Kazakhstan and India could benefit from territorial acquisition or greater access to Russian territory’s natural resources.  

With the amount of weapons that the West has sent to the Ukrainian government, is there not a risk that these weapons will fall into the hands of various jihadist groups?

There is indeed some risk that weapons sold to Ukraine will end up in jihadis’ hands. First, Ukrainian weapons have long been on the black market. Second, reports of corruption and re-sale of Western weapons sent since the war began are legion. Third, there are Chechen elements fighting on both sides in the war, and those on the Ukrainian side might be interested in sending weapons to ISIS allies in the North Caucasus or Turkey.

In your last article “The Russian Winter Offensive”, you talked about the « shock and awe » strategy that begins with winter. What can you tell us about this new step of the Russian offensive planned for this winter?

A Russian offensive this winter is most likely because by January all the 300,000 mobilized recruits plus a wave of another 50,000 volunteers will be ready for combat on the front. The recent strategy of destroying Ukraine’s electricity, fuel, and rail transportation infrastructure is setting the stage for the offensive by degrading these infrastructures making it difficult for Ukraine to move and supply its forces. This degrading will peak when those new forces are ready. Then Moscow will have at least four directions from which to choose for conducting offensives:……………………………….

Moscow may be forced to attack on all of these fronts as it is all now along the southeastern fronts from northern Luhansk to Zaporozhe but more robustly thanks to the coming reinforcements. Then if progress is enough to severely weaken the Ukrainian army a final push on Kiev could come.

This may be the plan Moscow ill eventually settle upon. With Ukrainian energy and transport debilitated, this strategy could force Zelenskiy to enter ceasefire or peace talks or others to remove him from power in order to begin negotiations.    

Isn’t the defeat of the Ukrainian army a defeat for NATO against Russia?

It would be a political defeat but obviously not a military defeat. NATO forces are not directly involved on the ground officially or in any great numbers unofficially  (Polish and Rumanian soldiers serving as ‘volunteers’). NATO equipment is being used but it is second and third tier stuff and used by Ukrainians unfamiliar with them. If NATO were directly involved on the ground, the war we see now would be a picnic by comparison.

But if Russia wins, it will be a catastrophic political defeat for the US, Europe and NATO and a boon to Russia, China, and the alternative order they are beginning to construct. Other states will join their emerging system in greater numbers and speed than currently, though the growing participation of India and Turkey indicates where things are going. And NATO expansion will difficult to do anywhere on post-Soviet lands from then forward.

If Russia loses the war and Ukraine becomes a NATO member, then the dynamic will be the very reverse. The Putin regime will be under constant threat of destabilization, NATO expansion can continue in places like Georgia and Moldova (despite the latter’s constitutional mandate of neutrality), and the Sino-Russian Eurasian and global network of international organizations (BRICS, SCO, the EEU) will be challenged.


Is it not in the interest of the Westerners who wanted this war to push Ukraine to negotiate?

Right now, it is not. Who in the West wanted this war? The US, NATO, and Western arms dealers. The Biden administration benefits by the war, it thinks, by deploying the Russian bogey man to maintain support among its base and the hope of peeling off moderate Republican security hawks during the election campaign. It can boost defense spending to maintain support of the defense industry. The CIA, FBI and other intel and security agencies also benefit in terms of budget items and institutional profile. NATO supports the war for now because it can use the war to study Russian warfighting and weaponry performance and consolidate its members and other support in the West around the ‘Russian threat’ it itself created. The interest of Western arms dealers needs little elaboration………………………………………..

How far can the West continue to support Kiev?

Until Ukraine is seen as losing the war in a major way with no prospect of rebounding without prohibitively large Western assistance to bolster, the state, regime, and military. This could happen next year.

Hasn’t Zelensky become a burden for everyone? Hasn’t he become an embarrassment, including to the Westerners who support him?

Zelenskiy has both weaknesses and strengths, the latter of which make or can make him a burden to his allies at home and abroad. It must be said that Zelenskiy’s decision to remain in Kiev when Russian forces began to move on Kiev from Belarus in February speaks of a certain courage – perhaps of the kind found in the aphorism ‘there is a fine line between bravery and stupidity’ – and this has certainly rallied many in Ukrainian government and society to his side, when at the war’s beginning his popularity ratings were disastrous. 

He is also an effective post-modernist PR conman. But in the desperation of the war’s difficulties, he has repeatedly overreached in producing false propaganda stories, for which he finally was exposed during the recent Ukrainian missile hit on Poland.

On the other hand, he is still being protected by growing Western media censorship and propaganda of the authoritarian kind, which have refused to report on Kiev’s numerous fake ‘Russian atrocities’ and the like. Chief of the Ukrainian General Staff may be running out of patience, but we simply cannot be sure just how tense the Zelenskiy-Zalyuzhniy relationship is. Zelenskiy continues to make himself useful to Ukraine’s powerful neofascist/ultranationalist element, cracking down on Russian language, the former Russian Orthodox Church affiliate in Ukraine, and pro-Russian media.

 For Westerners, Zelenskiy is still a beneficiary of the West’s propaganda, which even its propagandists have imbibed and are invested in. Threats to his continuing support are: more exposed lies like the missile hit on Poland episode; massive corruption that is impinging on the effectiveness of Western military assistance; and growing military failure and general staff and/or common soldier dissent in Ukraine regarding the war. This year we are likely to see at home and abroad a serious decline in the popularity of Time’s and Financial Times’ 2022 ‘Man of the Year’. https://mohsenabdelmoumen.wordpress.com/2022/12/10/gordon-m-hahn-the-west-has-been-reckless-with-vladimir-putin/

January 13, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukraine legalizes foreigners in AZOV neo-Nazi regiment

 https://www.rt.com/russia/569816-ukraine-legalizes-foreigners-azov/ 13 Jan 23, Citizens of other nations who join the Azov unit will receive benefits on par with regular service members under a new law.

The Ukrainian parliament on Thursday passed a new law that expands perks offered to foreigners who sign up to serve in the country’s military. Sponsors of the bill specifically singled out the controversial Azov regiment as an intended beneficiary of the measure. 

Azov originated as a group of far-right volunteers who in 2014 took up arms against Donbass forces with Kiev’s blessing. The unit was incorporated into the National Guard, a structure separate from the army, in November of that year.

The new legislation has added the wording “and other military units” to several laws that previously only covered the main Ukrainian armed forces. A formal justification of the bill said that there are many foreign nationals serving in Azov, but that the existing legal framework makes their presence in Ukraine illegal and does not allow them to request Ukrainian citizenship. The new law is meant to change that. 

Azov is arguably the best known internationally of the Ukrainian nationalist units. Before the conflict between Moscow and Kiev escalated into open hostilities last February, Western officials and media outlets acknowledged that many of the unit’s members espoused problematic ideology and that some were neo-Nazis. 

An expose published by Time magazine in 2021 called Azov the focal point of “a network of extremist groups stretching from California across Europe to New Zealand.” Over the years, it managed to recruit an estimated 17,000 foreign fighters from 50 nations, the report claimed, before describing the dominant role the Azov extremists play in the movement. 

January 13, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | 3 Comments

NATO to train hundreds of Ukrainian troops in US and Germany, in operating Patriot missile system

WSWS Andre Damon @Andre__Damon 11 Jan 23,

The United States and Germany have announced they will expand their training of Ukrainian troops inside their own borders, further embroiling them in a war with Russia.

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it will train Ukrainian troops at Fort Sill, Oklahoma on how to operate the Patriot missile system, the most advanced weapon sent to Ukraine to date………………………….

The Pentagon official also confirmed that the US aims to train approximately 500 troops at a time at a US military facility in Germany on “combined arms warfare”…………………………..

The Pentagon’s announcement comes after US President Joe Biden announced a $3 billion arms shipment to Ukraine—the largest to date—and after Congress passed a bill allocating another $50 billion to the war. The latest weapons package included the deployment of dozens of Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, which essentially function as small tanks.

Even as they pour unprecedented amounts of weapons into Ukraine, the NATO powers are preparing to even further escalate their involvement in the war.

………………… Poland and Lithuania have announced that they plan to send Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, but that this would require Germany’s permission, as these country signed export agreements as a condition of receiving the tanks.

……………………………….. Expressing the reality of the growing involvement by NATO in the war, Nikolai Patrushev, a security adviser to Russian president Vladimir Putin, said the conflict is “not a clash between Moscow and Kyiv,” but a “military confrontation between NATO, and above all the United States and England, with Russia.”   https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/01/11/eywi-j11.html

January 13, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear weapons proliferation really just keeps on going

 Nuclear proliferation has hardly slowed in the last decade. India,
Pakistan, China, and the United Kingdom have increased their nuclear
weapons stockpiles, while leaders in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and
Iran have all voiced an interest in militarizing their nuclear programs.

The United States, meanwhile, has been schizophrenic in its control of its
civilian nuclear exports. Washington has tightened restraints on exports to
the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Taiwan, China, and Russia and relaxed
conditions on nuclear transfers to Vietnam, India, and Saudi Arabia.

It has also articulated ambiguous security assurances to insecure states,
including Libya, Taiwan, and Ukraine, that gave up their nuclear weapons
programs or nuclear weapons based on their soil only later to be
overthrown, threatened with invasion, or invaded.

None of this has strengthened nuclear non-proliferation. Just the reverse. In a series of
firsts, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif; Saudi Arabia’s
crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman; and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan, have all publicly threatened to leave the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

 American Bar Association 6th Jan 2023

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_national_security/publications/aba-standing-committee-on-law-and-national-security-60-th-anniversary-an-anthology/nuclear-non-proliferation-if-you-can-keep-it/

January 13, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The One-Person Monopoly of Nuclear Launches

European Leadership Network. Tarja Cronberg |Former Member of the European Parliament, Distinguished Associate Fellow at SIPRI and Member of the Executive Board of the European Leadership Network 12 Jan 23

The international discussion on nuclear weapons, during the war in Ukraine, has focused on one question: Will Putin use nuclear weapons? The thought that nuclear weapons might be used in the Ukraine war, is no longer an abstract fear. A nuclear war may be closer than ever. In this new reality there is a risk seldom talked about, but which is built into our command and control systems: one person is able to decide the fate of the earth. The fundamental question for the nuclear order is not about whether or not Putin, or any other president or dictator, might rely on nuclear weapons as the last choice. The question to be posed is: Do we really want to maintain a nuclear order, where one person is formally able to decide the fate of us all?

The international discussion on nuclear weapons, during the war in Ukraine, has focused on one question: Will Putin use nuclear weapons? The thought that nuclear weapons might be used in the Ukraine war, is no longer an abstract fear. A nuclear war may be closer than ever. In this new reality there is a risk seldom talked about, but which is built into our command and control systems: one person is able to decide the fate of the earth. The fundamental question for the nuclear order is not about whether or not Putin, or any other president or dictator, might rely on nuclear weapons as the last choice. The question to be posed is:

Do we really want to maintain a nuclear order, where one person is formally able to decide the fate of us all? Tarja Cronberg

Traditionally there has been a nuclear “taboo”: nuclear weapons could be threatened but not used.  They were only for deterrence, to prevent a nuclear attack, not to be used to win a war. The famous Reagan-Gorbachev statement made clear that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”. There was also empirical evidence. The weapons have not been used after Hiroshima, although there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons during the Cold War. It is easy to argue that nuclear deterrence has guaranteed peace and prosperity for more than 70 years. Nevertheless, there was always a small exception to this near-total trust in deterrence…………………………………………………

The situation leaves the world in a dangerous place. The Gaddafis and the Husseins could be destroyed by military interventions and regime change before any catastrophe occurred. This is not the case for the Trumps and the Putins. As leaders of the world´s superpowers there is no external power able to intervene, although there may have been plans to kill Putin. The nuclear superpower leaders are more or less democratically elected and their removal will take place according to the laws and politics of the superpower in question. Where does this leave us?…………………………….

Without any solid management system to avoid a nuclear catastrophe, world survival is in the hands of the leaders of its superpowers. Although the decision- making process may involve consultations, the decision is ultimately, even in the case of Russia today, in the hands of one person. Today, given that the world is threatened by a nuclear war, there should be a serious discussion on how the risks of this “one-person nuclear command” could be avoided or at least minimised. The discussion could take at least three different directions…………..

there is an urgent need for a stronger international institutional responsibility for the governance of national decisions on nuclear threats and use. Firstly, there is a need for an international transparency survey on how the nuclear weapon states have defined their first-or second strike launch responsibility. A second phase would seek to establish some international guidelines for national procedures in order to avoid ad hoc, illegal measures in a concrete crisis. So far we have been lucky, but ”luck is not a strategy” as was so ably pointed out by the Secretary-General of the United Nations at the 2022 NPT Review Conference.  https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/the-one-person-monopoly-of-nuclear-launches/

January 12, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

NATO member sending banned cluster bombs to Ukraine – media

 https://www.rt.com/news/569679-ukraine-t%C3%BCrkiye-cluster-munitions/ 11 Jan 23, Türkiye has been supplying Kiev with weapons that are banned in many countries, sources told Foreign Policy magazine

Ukraine has been receiving consignments of controversial cluster munitions from Türkiye, Foreign Policy magazine has reported. Kiev had been asking Washington for the Cold-War-era weapons for months.

The shipments have been taking place since November, current and former US and European officials told the outlet. It was unclear how many of the munitions had been received, or whether they had yet been used on the battlefield.

The weapons in question are called dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, or DPICMs. They were designed during the Cold War era, when NATO was planning to deploy them against a large-scale Soviet invasion of Europe. The rounds are filled with dozens of submunitions, intended to strike personnel and light-armored targets, scattering over a large area for increased lethality.

Like many other cluster munitions, DPICMs tend to produce long-lasting hazards, as some submunitions can fail to detonate and have the potential to maim or kill somebody years after being deployed.

US law prohibits the exportation of any cluster weapons with a failure rate over a certain threshold. The same regulations require guarantees that cluster munitions will not be used in areas where civilians may be present. Washington has repeatedly rejected requests from Kiev for the supply of DPICMs.

Most European NATO members are signatories of the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), which bans this type of weapons. Türkiye is not one of them, but has observer status in the Geneva-based organization that oversees the implementation of the treaty. It has indicated that it abides by the rules, though it’s not obliged to.

According to Foreign Policy, the weapons supplied to Ukraine were manufactured during the Cold War under a co-production agreement with the US. Turkish companies made 155mm and 122mm cluster artillery rounds, the magazine claimed.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the CCM, and both have reportedly used their Soviet-made cluster munitions in their armed conflict. In March, a Tochka-U missile with a cluster payload killed more than 20 people and injured dozens more in the city of Donetsk. Moscow blamed Kiev for the attack, but this was denied. International watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) later stated that it could not investigate the incident.

“Ukraine already has a massive problem on its hands, and it’s only magnifying it by introducing this weapon,” Mark Hiznay, a senior researcher in the Arms Division for HRW, told Foreign Policy, commenting on Kiev’s effort to get more cluster weapons.

January 12, 2023 Posted by | Turkey, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The C-17A Has Been Cleared To Transport B61-12 Nuclear Bomb To Europe

By Hans Kristensen • January 9, 2023  https://fas.org/blogs/security/2023/01/c17-cleared-to-transport-b61-12/

In November 2022, the Air Force updated its safety rules for airlift of nuclear weapons to allow the C-17A Globemaster III aircraft to transport the new B61-12 nuclear bomb.

The update, accompanied by training and certification of the aircraft and crews, cleared the C-17A to transport the newest U.S. nuclear weapon to bases in the United States and Europe.

The C-17As of the 62nd Airlift Wing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord serve as the Prime Nuclear Airlift Force (PNAF), the only airlift wing that is authorized to transport the Air Force’s nuclear warheads.

The updated Air Force instruction does not, as inaccurately suggested by some, confirm that shipping of the weapons began in December. But it documents some of the preparations needed to do so.

Politico reported in October last year that the US had accelerated deployment of the B61-12 from Spring 2023 to December 2022. Two unnamed US officials said the US told NATO about the schedule in October.

But a senior Pentagon official subsequently dismissed the Politico report, saying “nothing has changed on the timeline. There is no speeding up because of any Ukraine crisis, the B61-12 is on the same schedule it’s always been on.”

Although the DOD official denied there had been a change in the schedule, he did not deny that transport would begin in December.

The B61-12 production scheduled had slipped repeatedly. Initially, the plan was to begin full-scale production in early-2019. By September 2022, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was still awaiting approval to begin full-scale production. Finally, in October 2022, NNSA confirmed to FAS that the B61-12 was in full-scale production.

The B61-12 is intended as an upgrade and eventual replacement for all current nuclear gravity bombs, including the B61-3, -4, -7, and probably eventually also the B61-11 and B83-1. To that end, it combines and improves upon various aspects of existing bombs: it uses a modified version of the B61-4 warhead with several lower- and medium-yield options (0.3-50 kilotons). It compensates for its smaller explosive yield (relative to the maximum yields of the B61-7 and -11) by including a guided tail-kit to increase accuracy, as well as a limited earth-penetration capability.

At this point in time, it is unknown if B61-12 shipments to Europe have begun. If not, it appears to be imminent. That said, deployment will probably not happen in one move but gradually spread to more and more bases depending on certification and construction at each base.

There are currently six active bases in five European countries with about 100 B61 bombs present in underground Weapons Storage and Security Systems (WS3) inside aircraft shelters. A seventh site in Germany (Ramstein Air Base) is active without weapons present and an eighth site – RAF Lakenheath – has recently been added to the list of WS3 sites being modernized. The revitalization of Lakenheath’s nuclear storage bunkers does not necessarily indicate that US nuclear weapons will return to UK soil, especially since as recently as December 2021, NATO’s Secretary General stated that “we have no plans of stationing any nuclear weapons in any other countries than we already have . . . ” However, the upgrade could be intended to increase NATO’s ability to redistribute the B61 bombs in times of heightened tensions, or to potentially move them out of Turkey in the future. In addition, four other sites have inactive (possibly mothballed) vaults (see map above).

This research was carried out with generous contributions from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the New-Land Foundation, the Ploughshares Fund, the Prospect Hill Foundation, the FTX Future Fund and Longview Philanthropy, the Stewart R. Mott Foundation, the Future of Life Institute, Open Philanthropy, and individual donors.

January 11, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Ukraine on ‘NATO mission’ – defense minister

 https://www.rt.com/russia/569500-reznikov-ukraine-nato-mission/ 9 Jan 23

Aleksey Reznikov has argued that Kiev is shedding blood for the military bloc and expects weapons in return.

Kiev is shedding blood to carry out the mission NATO set for itself and expects the “civilized West” to provide weapons and ammunition in return, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov has said in an interview for a domestic TV channel.

Appearing on the 1+1 network’s TSN channel on Thursday evening, Reznikov pointed out that at the Madrid summit last summer, NATO declared Russia the greatest threat to the US-led bloc.  

“Today, Ukraine is addressing that threat. We’re carrying out NATO’s mission today, without shedding their blood. We shed our blood, so we expect them to provide weapons,” he said.

Reznikov also claimed that his NATO colleagues have told him, both in conversations and via text messages, that Ukraine is the “shield of civilization” and “defending the entire civilized world, the entire West.”

Ukrainian officials, from President Vladimir Zelensky down, routinely make public appeals for tanks, missiles, artillery and ammunition. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told the General Staff in December that Moscow was de facto fighting the collective West. By his estimates, the government in Kiev has received almost $100 billion worth of weapons, ammunition and other supplies in 2022 alone.

Reznikov has led that effort, boasting to the US outlet Politico in October that he had figured out the Pentagon’s political process. His goal, he said, was to keep raising the bar until Ukraine received main battle tanks. 

While that particular threshold has yet to be crossed, on Friday Washington announced the delivery of 50 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, the most modern armor sent to Kiev so far, as part of a $3 billion weapons package. Earlier this week, France pledged a number of wheeled ‘light tanks’ as well.

These shipments are intended to replace Ukraine’s battlefield losses. Last month, Kiev’s top general Valery Zaluzhny told The Economist he would need 300 more tanks, up to 700 infantry fighting vehicles, and 500 howitzers to conduct offensive operations. This is more than the number of such vehicles in British or German inventory.

Moscow insists that Western weapon deliveries only serve to prolong the conflict, and has repeatedly warned Ukraine’s backers that this could result in an all-out military confrontation between Russia and NATO.

January 9, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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