Military action against North Korea ‘an option’, warns Rex Tillerson
US secretary of state says policy of strategic patience has ended due to threat posed by Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme, Guardian, Justin McCurry , 17 Mar 17 , A pre-emptive US military strike against North Korea may be necessary if the threat posed by its nuclear weapons programme reaches a level that “requires action”, the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has warned.
Speaking in Seoul on the second day of a visit to the Asia-Pacific region, Tillerson said Washington’s policy of “strategic patience” towards the regime in Pyongyang had ended.
In his strongest comments yet on concerns that North Korea is moving closer towards developing a nuclear strike capability that could threaten the US mainland, Tillerson said “all options are on the table”.
“Certainly we do not want to, for things to get to military conflict,” he said at a joint press conference with South Korea’s foreign minister, Yun Byung-se.
“If they elevate the threat of their weapons programme to a level that we believe requires action, then that option’s on the table. “Let me be very clear: the policy of strategic patience has ended. We are exploring a new range of security and diplomatic measures.”
Those words hint at a departure from the North Korea policy pursued by the Obama administration, which sought to use multilateral sanctions to pressure the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, into agreeing to denuclearisation in exchange for aid and investment…….
Aside from repeating that Washington’s policy options remain open, Tillerson has not offered details of how the Trump administrationplans to address the rising threat from North Korean nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles…….
Trump budget: An extra billion dollars for nuclear weapons, Salon.com, 17 Mar 17 His draft 2018 budget would boost the budget for nuclear weapons production by 11 percentPATRICK MALONE AND R. JEFFERY SMITH, THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITYPresident Donald Trump has proposed to boost federal spending on the production of nuclear weapons by more than $1 billion in 2018 while slashing or eliminating spending on many federal programs related to diplomacy, foreign aid, and social needs, in a budget proposal that reflects the first tangible expression of his defense priorities.
The $1.4 billion budget increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration amounts to just a small fraction of the overall $54 billion boost he requested over the military’s roughly $639 billion 2017 budget, but it is a proportionally higher increase (11 percent) than the Defense Department itself would get (8 percent), signaling that he and his advisers feel the U.S. nuclear weapons program deserves special treatment.
The 64-page budget document released by the White House on March 16 — and entitled “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again” — contained only a few sentences about the proposal, which would give the NNSA a total of $14.3 billion in fiscal year 2018. But the blueprint said the new spending would support “the goals of moving toward a responsive nuclear infrastructure and advancing the existing program of record for warhead life extension programs.”
That language refers to an existing effort to modernize three types of warheads, so they can be deployed with bombers, submarine-launched missiles, and land-based missiles, some of which will themselves be modernized in years to come. That warhead work is well under way, although the budget document suggested it had been slowed by Obama-era defense spending caps. Some independent experts have cautioned, however, that the speed of the work is limited mostly by its sheer complexity, rather than by fund shortages, and expressed doubt that it could be accelerated.
Trump’s budget proposal also says the additional NNSA funds would address its “critical infrastructure maintenance” needs — which is Washington-speak for everything from laboratories and test tracks to office buildings — which NNSA director Frank Klotz has pegged in public statements at roughly $3.7 billion. That tally includes both nuclear weapons-related work and nonnuclear work related to the cleanup of wastes from past weapons production activities……..
Many in Washington say that Congress is unlikely to approve Trump’s budget. Nonetheless, the special status Trump has assigned to nuclear weapons work is exemplified by the fact that even as the NNSA’s budget would expand under his proposal, the rest of the Energy Department’s budget would decline by around 20 percent, or $1.7 billion.
Gone would be the department’s weatherization, gas mileage, and clean energy programs. The Office of Science, which supports research into new technologies and basic physics as well as climate change, would be cut by nearly twenty percent. Elsewhere in the government, the State Department would get a 28 percent budget cut, funds for U.N. peacekeeping would be scaled back, humanitarian aid would be focused on fewer nations, and all federal spending for the U.S. Institute of Peace would disappear.
The current U.S. nuclear weapons modernization program, which was initiated and strongly supported by former President Barack Obama, was already estimated to cost $1 trillion or more over the next three decades. But Trump, in a Dec. 22 tweet, said “the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability” — implying that this should be beyond what Obama had set in motion.
As if to hammer that point home, Trump on March 16 also announced the appointment to the position of Pentagon policy chief of a defense analyst who helped write a new U.S. nuclear policy in 2001 that supported research on new types of nuclear warheads. The policy, overseen in part by Trump nominee David J. Trachtenberg, a former Pentagon deputy assistant secretary under President George W. Bush, also downplayed the significance of arms control, and supported an expansion of U.S. ballistic missile defense programs……..http://www.salon.com/2017/03/17/trump-budget-an-extra-billion-dollars-for-nuclear-weapons_partner/
NUCLEAR TURKEY? Imam close to Erdogan calls for weapons NOW amid tensions with EU, Express UK, 17 Mar 17 TURKEY should ignore rules set by ‘the West’ and build its own NUCLEAR WEAPONS – an Imam close to president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has advised – as the fallout between Brussels and Ankara deepens. By ZOIE O’BRIEN, Mar 16, 2017 The worrying advice has been called weeks ahead of a Turkish referendum aimed at giving more power to President Erdogan – and in the midst of a keeping fallout between Ankara and EU leaders.
Hayrettin Karaman, the Turkish AK Party’s go-to religious leader, attacked ‘the West’ in a letter which insisted Erdogan should immediately invest in weapons of mass destruction.
In the online post the imam accused Christian countries in the West of egotism and racism – stating the bad attitude towards Turkey has been “accelerated”.
President Erdogan is in the midst of a deep fall out with European nations including Germany and the Netherlands after both countries banned rallies and kicked out his ministers who had sworn to campaign for his referendum. Mr Erdogan retaliated by comparing them to Nazis and protests were held outside the Dutch embassy in Ankara.
The fallout threatens the £5billion one-for-one migrant deal.
US anticipates new round of missile, nuclear testing by North KoreaBy Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent, March 16, 2017 Story highlights
There are growing intelligence indicators of fresh and concerning activity inside North Korea
The Trump administration is reviewing whether there are fresh options for dealing with North Korea
CNN)The US intelligence community and the Defense Department are increasingly anticipating that North Korea will soon undertake a new round of testing of its missile and nuclear program, according to half a dozen US officials.
The officials are closely watching the regime’s programs and there are growing intelligence indicators of fresh and concerning activity inside North Korea. The major source of that intelligence for the US is spy satellites that survey the regime from overhead, so there is little ability to fully understand what leader Kim Jung Un may decide to do.
At the same time, these officials said, North Korea is taking fresh steps to disguise its activities, knowing satellites are overhead watching. There is intelligence indicating the regime is moving equipment to areas they have not used before, believing the US cannot track them there. As always, the regime sometimes moves vehicles, launchers and personnel around without any launches or tests, simply hoping to confuse the US, officials say.
In an unusually detailed public acknowledgment of what may be coming, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a statement after he spoke to his South Korean counterpart, Gen. Sun Jin Lee, on Tuesday.
Dunford said the two “assessed changes in North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat” but then went on to say the two “discussed response options.”
Dunford’s statement also said the two “recognized the possibility that North Korea could conduct provocative actions” during ongoing US-South Korean military exercises or during upcoming celebration periods in North Korea.
The latest indicators, US officials told CNN, is that North Korea has moved some launch equipment that is associated with an intercontinental ballistic missile launch.
The equipment has been observed near parade grounds, but the concern is it could quickly become part of an actual launch. The US does not believe a North Korean ICBM could currently reach the US, but any launch of a missile with that potential range would be very provocative, one US official said……
All of this comes as the Trump administration is reviewing whether there are fresh options for dealing with North Korea, a situation that the Trump and Obama administrations have agreed is extremely difficult to manage.
Privately, US military commanders have said any pre-emptive strikes by the US would likely result in a North Korean attack on Seoul, leading to disastrous consequences.
On an overseas trip to Asia, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged in Tokyo, “I think it’s important to recognize that the diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of denuclearization have failed.”
The lab is reanalyzing the footage to improve the data “for future physicists,” nuclear weapons physicist Greg Spriggs said in an interview published by Livermore on Wednesday.
But making the decades-old clips available to the public serves a different purpose. They can remind us “of the immense energy that is produced with a nuclear detonation and hopefully that nobody will ever want to use these things or attack the United States,” Spriggs told KGO. “I don’t think they want to have the retaliation of one of these nuclear weapons being dropped on their country.”
Other bomb tests have popped up elsewhere on the internet but it’s always good to have our collective memory jogged about nuclear weapons’ catastrophic potential.
UN nuclear disarmament talks: UK Government not attending discussions labelled ‘reckless and irresponsible’ ‘I don’t think it’s taking nuclear disarmament seriously,’ Green Party leader Caroline Lucas tells The Independent Harriet Agerholm@HarrietAgerholm 15 Mar 17The Government has been called “reckless and irresponsible” after it refused to send a single representative to United Nations (UN) talks about a ban on nuclear weapons.
The Foreign Office revealed that no one from the UK attended a February meeting ahead of the negotiations and no one would go to the discussions when they take place later this month.
It was responding to a parliamentary question by Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas, who told The Independent that it showed the Government was being “massively hypocritical” and failing in its commitment to working towards a world without nuclear weapons. …..
“The Government has said it’s committed to multilateral nuclear disarmament,” Ms Lucas said, adding that whenever ministers are asked to get rid of Trident – the UK’s nuclear weapons system – they “always say we’re not going to because it’s unilateral.”
The Brighton MP said: “Now there’s opportunity to have a multinational set of negotiations and they’re not even bothering to turn up. I just think it’s mind blowing.”
Although the talks may not immediately agree on an outright ban, Ms Lucas said they were an important step towards reducing nuclear weapons internationally.
“Essentially what such a major global moment does is to help delegitimize the weapons,” she said, “that can’t be underestimated.
“So although clearly we’re not going to have the nuclear weapons states signing up by June, the very existence of that treaty will make it more likely that those countries that have them will begin to negotiate to get rid of them.”
It would kill millions (perhaps billions) of people, leave many more seriously injured, coat the planet in radioactive fallout and destroy the ecosystem. The Doomsday clock, which measures how close we are to apocalypse, has been moved from five to three minutes to midnight. Time is short – but the UK is not ready.
The reason the UK is so poorly prepared can be traced back to fairly recent times. In May 1980, the government created a series of public information films, radio broadcasts and the booklet Protect and Survive, which has now been reissued by The Imperial War museum. (The museum has said this is not in response to the current political situation, but as part of the first major exhibition on the anti-war movement.)
Protect and Survive was widely mocked for its advice, which included painting windows with white emulsion to reflect the heat flash from a nuclear explosion, storing water in toilet cisterns, and guidance on how to bury and label the dead. In response, the BBC showed a bleak film called Threads which showed how useless the advice would have been for most city dwellers. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament produced a version called Protest and Survive.
Protect & Survive – 1970’s UK Public infommercials On Nuclear War Preparation
The failure of Protect and Survive is the reason the UK doesn’t have public information on how to prepare for a nuclear war today.
My research reveals that the Home Office repeatedly attempted to resurrect Protect and Survive throughout the 1980s. It was hoped that a new and improved public information campaign would include the use of deep nuclear shelters, make provision for vulnerable people, and promote collective planning for a nuclear attack. The Home Office even employed an advertising agency which surreptitiously attended CND meetings to keep an eye on the opposition.
The planned new version of Protect and Survive would also cover advice on preparing for a chemical or biological attack. The Home Office’s failed aim was to produce a fresh public information package, including as many as 20 new television films to be produced by 1987.
But there are three reasons why it never happened. First, other government departments, particularly the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, did not want the population to be reminded that Britain was the base for a new range of US nuclear weapons. In 1982, the Home Defence committee considered that fear of embarrassing the US military would be a good reason not to issue new guidance on protection against nuclear attack. It stated in a secret memo:
In the light of experience at Greenham Common, the United States might be concerned about the further focusing of public attention on their UK installations.
Second, new psychological studies had appeared which suggested that people might not be willing to follow any government advice in the event of a nuclear war. A Home Office report, “Population response to war”, written in 1982, decided that the social and economic burden on the UK might be such that the country would never recover.
Faced with social collapse on such a massive scale, it was predicted that the population would simply not follow official advice. People would try and escape rather than staying at home and hoarding food, in line with government guidelines. It was also predicted that the majority of the population would suffer from clinical depression after a nuclear attack and be mentally unable to follow instructions.
Finally, there was deep and vocal opposition to civil defence in the United Kingdom. The advertising agency commissioned by the Home Office considered the general public to be apathetic and fatalistic with regard to their prospects for survival. Some local authorities declared themselves “nuclear free zones” and refused to consider civil defence measures. Even though a proportion of the population would have welcomed some form of advice, the critics made it difficult to produce any information that would not be immediately rejected in the media.
Ignorance is bliss
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the pressing need to create a civil defence campaign disappeared along with the Cold War. Apart from some generic information on national emergencies, it is currently almost impossible to find out what we should do in the event of a nuclear attack. In some ways, this is what the government intended even before Protect and Survive, which was originally supposed to be released only if the prospect of a nuclear war looked likely.
Indeed there are good reasons for keeping us unaware. Releasing guidance may cause anxiety and even make other countries suspicious that our preparations are a sign that we intend to strike first.
On the other hand, if the government does intend to issue information at the last minute then it is taking a huge risk as to whether it can get the advice out in time. If an accidental launch, or an unexpected first strike, occurs then there may be no time. Maybe now is the right time to buy that reprinted copy of Protect and Survive – just in case.
Draw the curtains, bury the dead: Cold War advice for nuclear attack, By Judith Vonberg, CNN March 16, 2017
Story highlights
Don’t forget can opener and toilet paper, booklet recommends, and cover dead bodies securely
The guide was satirized by anti-nuclear campaigners who called the advice futile
A stark guide to surviving a nuclear blast that was first published during the dark days of the Cold War is being reissued by the Imperial War Museum in London.
The 1980 pamphlet opens with this warning: “Read this booklet with care. Your life and the lives of your family may depend on it.” Its republication coincides with a new exhibition exploring 100 years of the anti-war movement, the first of its kind at the museum.
“Even the safest room in your house is not safe enough,” the “Protect and Survive” guide warns in the opening pages, before explaining how to create a fall-out room and inner refuge using bricks, boxes or bags of earth, pieces of furniture and even books and clothing…….
As Matt Brosnan, senior curator at the Imperial War Museum, explains in the foreword to the reissued booklet, in 1980 “the possibility of a nuclear war was as high as at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.”….
the UK government produced “Protect and Survive.” Officials intended to distribute it publicly only in the event of a crisis, Brosnan told CNN, but the guide was leaked to the press, forcing the government to make it available to the public.
“That sort of information could have a big impact on the country’s mood,” said Brosnan, suggesting this as a reason why the pamphlet wasn’t made public immediately. “The advice in it was very similar to that given in the 1950s and 1960s, but the relative strength of nuclear weapons had increased.”……http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/16/europe/cold-war-nuclear-guide/
KIM Jong-un could send the US back to the Stone Age by unleashing a devastating Cold War-style attack on its power grid, a former CIA boss has warned. By Jamie Micklethwaite/Published 14th March 2017 North Korea and the US have been at loggerheads recently, with the tubby tyrant threatening to launch a devastating nuclear assault on US heartland.
Donald Trump has responded by promising repercussions for the hermit state and deploying anti-missile systems on their border.
But a former head of the country’s intelligence agency has warned The Donald that Kim could detonate a nuclear missile into the atmosphere, unleashing a terrifying “electromagnetic pulse” attack.
This would knock out the US’ energy infrastructure, unleashing a doomsday apocalypse scenario.
Former CIA chief chief James Woolsey said: “I think this is the principal, the most important and dangerous, threat to the United States.
“If you look at the electric grid and what it’s susceptible to, we would be moving into a world with no food delivery, no water purification, no banking, no telecommunications, no medicine.
“All of these things depend on electricity in one way or another.”
EMPs can naturally occur – but can also be created with nuclear weapons in the atmosphere.
During the Cold War, the US experimented with this, exploding a nuclear weapon above the Pacific, that knocked out lights and telephone wires in Hawaii. Ex-CIA worker Peter Vincent Pry revealed even a small nuclear bomb could cause a devastating EMP attack.
He said: “One of the myths out there is that you need a high-yield weapon to do an EMP attack.
“Even a low-yield, primitive weapon like the bomb used in Hiroshima will produce a potentially catastrophic EMP field because it’s simply attacking things that are not hardened.”
Terror expert Scott Stewart added that the US grid was very vulnerable, and any EMP attack could trigger a nuclear war.
He said: “Nuclear weapons give (Kim) a deterrent.
“That you can draw a nuke on Seoul very easily is far more of a deterrent than an EMP strike against the United States. “Nothing would take his government down quicker than an actual war against the US.”
Why Our Nuclear Weapons Can Be Hacked https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/opinion/why-our-nuclear-weapons-can-be-hacked.html?_r=0By BRUCE G. BLAIRMARCH 14, 2017 It is tempting for the United States to exploit its superiority in cyberwarfareto hobble the nuclear forces of North Korea or other opponents. As a new form of missile defense, cyberwarfare seems to offer the possibility of preventing nuclear strikes without the firing of a single nuclear warhead.
Nuclear core was unarmed, but 6,000 pounds of explosives detonated
WYFF News 4 Mar 13, 2017, Mars Bluff SC – This weekend was the 59th anniversary of an event many people don’t know happened in South Carolina. On March 11, 1958, a nuclear bomb was accidentally dropped on a small community near Florence.
A U.S. Air Force Boeing Stratojet that was flying out of Hunter Air Force Base took off at about 4:30 p.m. headed for the United Kingdom and then on to Africa. The aircraft was carrying nuclear weapons as a precaution in case war broke out with the Soviet Union.
The captain of the aircraft accidentally pulled an emergency release pin in response to a fault light in the cabin, and a Mark 4 nuclear bomb, weighing more than 7,000 pounds, dropped, forcing the bomb bay doors open. The bomb, which lacked an armed nuclear core, plunged 15,000 feet to the ground below…..http://www.wyff4.com/article/moose-on-the-loose-animal-races-to-catch-up-to-snowboarder/9131703
The former defense secretary is spending his twilight years sounding the alarm with his 29-year-old granddaughter.
“When my kids were getting under desks at their school and going through nuclear drills — the danger today is actually greater. We’re just not aware of it,” says Perry.
At 89, he works with granddaughter to prevent nuclear doom
Before Forever Changes
MARCH 11, 2017, BY CNN WIREPicture a nondescript packing crate labeled “agricultural equipment” being loaded onto a delivery truck, which drives along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., until it stops midway between the White House and the Capitol.
The nuclear bomb explodes with the power of 15 kilotons. There are more than 80,000 deaths, from the highest ranking members of government to the youngest schoolchildren. All major news outlets then report receiving an identical claim: that five more nuclear bombs are hidden in five major cities.
Such is the nightmare nuclear scenario that former US Defense Secretary William Perry says may seem remote, but the consequences, if realized, would be disastrous.
“I do not like to be a prophet of doom,” says Perry, 89, with the gentle grace of a decadeslong diplomat who has negotiated with countries both hostile and friendly to US interests. Then he bluntly gets to the point. “What we’re talking about is no less than the end of civilization.”
Perry doesn’t believe an intentional terrorist attack or all-out nuclear war is the greatest risk — he fears a “blunder” that plunges the globe into a nuclear conflict.
Perry says with a more aggressive Russia, and a brash and at times unpredictable President Donald Trump, “the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe is probably greater than it has ever been, greater than any time in the Cold War.”
CNN reached out to the White House for comment on Perry’s statements. It did not respond.
While he’s long been out of government, Perry’s uses his extensive policy chops and background to engage the public — through speeches, presentations and online courses.
He worries that tensions between the Koreas, and possibly Japan, could turn into a conventional conflict that could go nuclear. A bellicose and expansion-minded Russia could draw the United States into a situation that could escalate, Perry says. And the District of Columbia scenario shows how devastation can result from a crude bomb.
“When my kids were getting under desks at their school and going through nuclear drills — the danger today is actually greater. We’re just not aware of it,” says Perry.
The former defense secretary is spending his twilight years sounding the alarm with his 29-year-old granddaughter. They’re trying to awaken a new audience on social media with the William J. Perry Project, an advocacy group dedicated to helping end the nuclear threat.
“We’re really just out there trying to reach a generation that isn’t really engaged on this issue right now,” says Lisa Perry, the digital communications manager for the project. “It’s something we learned in history class. There was no conversation about what’s happening now.”
“The dangers will never go away as long as we have nuclear weapons,” William Perry explains. “But we should take every action to lower the dangers and I think it can be done.”
A lifetime dealing with the nuclear threat
Perry served three years under President Bill Clinton, a time when more than 8,000 nuclear weapons were dismantled. His nuclear knowledge traces back to his days as a CIA analyst working with the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was tapped to evaluate photos showing Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and recalls it as one of the scariest times in his life.
“We made miscalculations,” recalls Perry about those anxious two weeks. “It’s a miracle they did not lead to war.”
Perry lists the risks: US-Russia hostilities. A nuclear terror attack. A regional crisis.
On a regional conflict, Perry sees North Korea as an unpredictable nuclear threat. The regime’s growing arsenal and history of bold actions, Perry says, could be met by an escalated response by South Korea or even the United States. Not necessarily a deliberate attack, says Perry, but he fears a “blunder” that plunges the globe into a nuclear conflict.
“When a crisis reaches a boiling point then you have a possibility of a miscalculation,” warns Perry.
Stockpiles of nuclear weapons around the world – in data, Guardian 11 Mar 17 This week saw more atomic sabre-rattling by North Korea, but it is estimated that the global total of nuclear weapons has shrunk by a third in the last half-decade “…….It is estimated that North Korea now has 10 nuclear weapons, up from six or eight in 2013. This increase is in contrast to an overall decrease in the number of nuclear weapons worldwide. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an independent resource on global security, has estimated that the number has fallen by almost a third, from 22,600 in 2010 to around 15,395 last year. That said, SIPRI also states that both the US and Russia are going through extensive modernising programmes for their remaining weapons.
The main factor in this reduction is the diminishing numbers of warheads held by the US (which dropped from around 9,600 to 7,000 in that period) and Russia (which went from 12,000 to 7,290). The UK figure also dropped, from 225 to 215.
But some countries’ arsenals have grown: China was thought to have 260 warheads in early 2016, compared with 240 in 2010. India and Pakistan have also seen their figures creep up in recent years: India is thought to have between 100 and 120 nuclear weapons now, compared with between 60 and 80 in 2010, while Pakistan may have as many as 130, up from 70-90. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/11/stockpiles-of-nuclear-weapons-around-the-world-in-data
Now US military chiefs are reportedly planning to fly in B-1 and B-52 bombers – built to carry nuclear bombs – to show America has had enough.
South Korea and the US have also started their annual Foal Eagle military exercise sending a strong warning to North Korea over its actions.
A military official said 300,000 South Korean troops and 15,000 US personnel are taking part in the operation.
Secretary of Defence James Mattis said the US “remains steadfast in its commitment” to the defence of the South, according to Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt Jeff Davis.
Capt David said: “He further emphasised that any attack on the United States or its allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons will be met with a response that is effective and overwhelming.”
Washington is also expected to deploy a series of strategic assets from the US as well as from military bases in Guam and Japan, reports the Korea Times
The USS Carl Vinson, a Nimitz-class supercarrier, will join the Foal Eagle exercise after departing from San Diego.
The nuke-powered aircraft carrier will carry dozens of fighter jets, early warning aircraft and anti-sub craft.
It will be accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain (CG-57) and two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers.
From the US Marine Corps in Japan, F-35B stealth fighters will be deployed to the peninsula for the first time.
“An F-35B is capable of evading anti-aircraft radar and making preemptive strikes,” a military official said.
North Korea repeatedly protests that both Foal Eagle and Key Resolve are rehearsals for invasion.
Pyongyang’s Korea Central News Agency reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has stressed “a need for preparation for a fight”.
He listed guidelines to strike South Korea and the US “mercilessly”.
More serious than the inefficiencies in moving so many parts is the vulnerability inherent in placing nuclear bombs on the highways, several experts said.
“Transportation is the Achilles heel of nuclear security and everyone knows that,” said Bruce Blair, a retired Air Force missile officer, Princeton University researcher and founder of Global Zero, a nonprofit group that seeks elimination of nuclear weapons.
The danger is not a traffic accident — even a fiery crash is not supposed to explode a warhead — but a heist.
“In an age of terrorism, you’re taking a big risk any time you decide to move nuclear material into the public space over long distances via ground transport,” Blair said. “Bad things happen.”
The unmarked 18-wheelers ply the nation’s interstates and two-lane highways, logging 3 million miles a year hauling the most lethal cargo there is: nuclear bombs.
The covert fleet, which shuttles warheads from missile silos, bomber bases and submarine docks to nuclear weapons labs across the country, is operated by the Office of Secure Transportation, a troubled agency within the U.S. Department of Energy so cloaked in secrecy that few people outside the government know it exists.
The $237-million-a-year agency operates a fleet of 42 tractor-trailers, staffed by highly armed couriers, many of them veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, responsible for making sure nuclear weapons and components pass through foggy mountain passes and urban traffic jams without incident.
The transportation office is about to become more crucial than ever as the U.S. embarks on a $1-trillion upgrade of the nuclear arsenal that will require thousands of additional warhead shipments over the next 15 years.
The increased workload will hit an agency already struggling with problems of forced overtime, high driver turnover, old trucks and poor worker morale — raising questions about its ability to keep nuclear shipments safe from attack in an era of more sophisticated terrorism.
“We are going to be having an increase in the movements of weapons in coming years and we should be worried,” said Robert Alvarez, a former deputy assistant Energy secretary who now focuses on nuclear and energy issues for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. “We always have to assume the worst-case scenario when we are hauling nuclear weapons around the country.”
That worst case would be a terrorist group hijacking a truck and obtaining a multi-kiloton hydrogen bomb.
“The terror threat is significant,” said one high-level Energy Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the program publicly. “If you are in one of the communities along the route, you have something to worry about.”
The Times reviewed government documents dating back two decades and interviewed dozens of government officials, former military officers and arms control advocates to examine the agency. The picture that emerges is an organization hampered by an insular management, a crisis of morale among the rank-and-file and outdated equipment.
Among the findings of the Times investigation:
The agency is 48 agents short of its planned staffing of 370, a result of budget cuts. Weapons and tactics classes were canceled in 2011 and 2012 for lack of money.
More than a third of the workforce has been putting in more than 900 hours a year of overtime, which former couriers and Energy Department officials say has contributed to a breakdown in morale and rapid turnover.
In 2010, an inquiry by the Energy Department’s inspector general inquiry found widespread alcohol problems. It cited 16 alcohol-related incidents over a three-year period, including an agent on a 2007 mission who was arrested for public intoxication and two agents on a 2009 mission who were handcuffed and detained by police after a fight at a bar.
In 2014, the commander of the agency’s operation at the Y12 National Security Complex in Tennessee threatened to kill an employee in an altercation, but no disciplinary action was taken.
The agency’s top executive in 2009 was charged with drunk driving after police found him parked on a sidewalk with an open bottle of beer and a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.15%, nearly twice the legal limit, according to New Mexico court records.
The agency’s truck fleet is antiquated by commercial standards and well past its operational life even under the department’s own guidelines. About half the tractors are more than 15 years old. The high-security trailers used by the agency are even older, designed before the current era of terrorist threats.
How the agency wound up in this state is a story of neglect that begins at the end of the Cold War…….
‘Transportation is the Achilles heel of nuclear security’
The United States has 4,018 nuclear warheads.
About 450 are in underground silos in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota. An additional 1,000 or so are on submarines, which dock at bases in Washington and Georgia. Hundreds more bombs are assigned to the U.S. strategic bomber fleet, which is based in Louisiana, North Dakota and Missouri. And a reserve stockpile sits in bunkers near the transportation office headquarters at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
Each weapon — a complex physics machine that contains as many as 6,000 parts, including tanks of gas, wheels and gears, batteries, wiring, plastic-type explosives and radioactive materials — requires routine inspection, testing and maintenance.
The workers who perform those services don’t travel to the weapons. The weapons go to them.
They are picked up by the transportation office and driven to the government’s sole plant for working on live nuclear warheads, the Pantex Plant outside Amarillo in the Texas panhandle.
From there, various pieces are parceled out to government plants and laboratories across the country. Uranium assemblies travel to Tennessee, plutonium parts to New Mexico, radioactive gas canisters to South Carolina, non-nuclear classified parts to California and firing mechanisms to Kansas.
Those parts are then returned to Texas so the warheads can be reassembled and trucked back to their silos or military bases.
The system dates back to the 1950s and the rapid buildup of nuclear arms that accompanied the Cold War. Weapons were spread across the nation to ensure that a significant number could not be destroyed in a focused missile strike.
The same went for the facilities that service those weapons. But exactly where they wound up — and where they are today — largely came down to politics, as members of Congress schemed to bring high-paying jobs to their districts.
The result is an unwieldy system that requires some of the most dangerous and vulnerable components of the nation’s defense system to be routinely shipped on long-distance journeys from one end of the country to the other — and the shipments, with the coming modernization effort, are only expected to multiply…….
More serious than the inefficiencies in moving so many parts is the vulnerability inherent in placing nuclear bombs on the highways, several experts said.
“Transportation is the Achilles heel of nuclear security and everyone knows that,” said Bruce Blair, a retired Air Force missile officer, Princeton University researcher and founder of Global Zero, a nonprofit group that seeks elimination of nuclear weapons.
The danger is not a traffic accident — even a fiery crash is not supposed to explode a warhead — but a heist.
“In an age of terrorism, you’re taking a big risk any time you decide to move nuclear material into the public space over long distances via ground transport,” Blair said. “Bad things happen.”
The high-security trailers that carry the weapons present potential intruders with formidable obstacles, including shock-delivering systems, thick walls that ooze immobilizing foam, and axles designed to explode to prevent a trailer from being towed away, according to independent nuclear weapons experts.
“The trucks will kill you,” a scientist involved in the matter said.
The Energy Department recruits ex-soldiers and special operations commandos for its courier jobs, usually veterans of U.S. wars. Incoming agents train for 21 months at Ft. Chafee in Arkansas, focusing on how to counter a roadsideattack by terrorists set on stealing a weapon. The couriers must pass yearly psychological and medical assessments……..
‘Ominous symptoms’ of structural problems
The agency has been the target of worker complaints for years………
After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government turned its attention to the nation’s most critical vulnerabilities and concluded that more needed to be done to prevent terrorists from obtaining a nuclear bomb.
In a 2005 letter to Congress, then-Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman called the transportation office a “top priority” and asked Congress for money for more agents, special weapons, tougher armored vehicles and improved tactics.
The goal was to increase staffing from about 290to 420 couriers by 2008. But the agency never never reached that level, as lawmakers rejected most of the funding request. Today it aims to employ 370 agents but has 322.
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
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