Satellite photos have revealed what appears to be a significant expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities.
Among other things, it also points toward an increasing production of Plutonium, Pakistan’s arsenal is currently HEU, which, unlike Uranium, could be use for thermonuclear warheads.
A country on the hairy edge expanding its nuclear facilities…..Delightful.
The economic press is touting the fact that consumer confidence hit an 8 month high.
More accurately, they are touting that the jump from 40.8 to 54.9, is the biggest in 6 years….Only, of course, the index is bench marked such that 1985=100, so the number is still crappy.
It’s the same as the Chicago Bank of the Federal Reserve’s April National Activity Index, which is up (Yay!), but this does not mean expansion, it means contraction, just not quite so fast (Awww!).
You know, maybe we can wait to call a recovery until we have a month where the year over year Case-Shiller housing price index does not fall by 18.7%.
Consumers will not spend under these circumstances, and the economy, which is/was 70%+ consumer spending, will not recover.
In any case, be glad we aren’t German, and not just because that means that we aren’t German, because Germany’s GDP fell by 3.8% for the quarter and 6.7% year-over-year, as their export driven economy sputtered.
Meanwhile, in energy and currency land, oil was up on the consumer confidence figures, and the dollar rose as people freaked over the DPRK conducting another nuke test.
If I could predict the actions of the North Koreans, I would make a killing on the futures markets.
Or at least that is what they are claiming, it could be another fizzle, but I’m inclined to agree, as the tremor on this one is 4.7 on the Richter scale, which makes it something on the order of 3 times as powerful as the last test.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the JCS, has testified that Pakistan is expanding its arsenal to Congress: “WASHINGTON — Members of Congress have been told in confidential briefings that .
While his response in public testimony did not contain any detail, we are talking at a significant increase in capability, including the creation of new reactors which can create bomb grade plutonium, which would allow for significantly more compact and weaponizable bombs.
The Danger Room has a satellite pic showing the expansion of its facilities.
Seriously, we have a borderline failed state, a civilian government that is failed by most criteria, and they are building more nukes….Delightful.
The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration has requested no funds for the reliable replacement warhead program, which means that Barack Obama has largely eschewed a reeplenishment and update of the US nuclear arsenal.
They are seeking $143 to develop advanced validation methods of existing warheads, but one of the promises inherent in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was that the nuclear powers would gradually denuclearize themselves, and it appears that this is a big step towards this.
One hopes that this translates into significant reductions in nuclear stockpiles for both the US and Russia, though I have my doubts.
So, I’m on the Stellar Parthenon BBS, and we are discussing the rapidly deteriorating state of governance in Pakistan, and I’m a part of the following exchange:
Me: (Furiously calling up Wiki) Pakistan has somewhere around 40 throughly weaponized and deliverable nuclear warheads….
CZ: That many? F@#$.
UM: Don’t worry, they’re all pointed at India.
I think they could probably wipe out about 5% of India’s total population.Me: As long as they are pointed at whoever does tech support for Dell…..
DC: Let me provide the coordinates.
CZ: Win!
So, North Korea made another attempt at orbiting a satellite, and it ended up in the drink again, the first stage fell in the Sea of Japan, as intended, but the second stage and payload flew over Japan and then landed in the Pacific Ocean….OOPS!!!
*What can I say, I make sure to watch all the shows that my kids do, so I know the show…..I actually find it amusing.
This may be a negotiating ploy because while they have announced plans to activate regiment of RS-24 missiles with MIRVs, they are also saying that they want to negotiate a new arms control agreement.
Not sure how much is solid plans, and how much is gamesmanship.
It appears that someone neglected to properly record how to make a super-secret, and highly toxic, substance called “Fogbank”, which is thought to be a, “thought by some weapons experts to be a foam used between the fission and fusion stages,” of the warhead.
Not only was the old facility to make Fogbank demolished, but, “Vital information on how Fogbank was actually made had somehow been mislaid”, or perhaps never recorded, because the stuff is so super-secret.
Un-dirtyword-believable.
We have reports that the Russians are offering not to deploy missiles on the Polish border, but we also have official Russian denials of those reports.
My guess is that the truth is somewhere in between, with the leak intended as to jump start negotiations on the matter.
The Mach 2.8 290 km missile missed the target, though the rest of the flight profile was successful.
It was originally developed for naval use, and the terminal guidance would be the biggest change.
There are reports that part of this test was to validate it carrying a nuclear warhead, just in case you were wondering if real peace were in danger of breaking out between India and Pakistan.
We now have analysts saying that Pakistan and India simply cannot afford a war.
They are saying that a war would be too costly for both nations.
This was also what was said in 1913, and in 1938. War was just too damn expensive in an interconnected world where the opponents are too linked.
Here is a news flash: war is always too damn expensive, but it happens just the same.
We are now hearing rumblings that Russia may be putting a nuclear missile installation in Belarus, specifically, the mobile strategic missile the Topol, though it’s unclear from the report as to whether it is the RT-2PM Topol (SS-25 Sickle), or the more advanced RT-2UTTH (SS-27 Sickle B).
In either case, I’m not sure whether this intended to make the strategic missiles targeting the US less vulnerable to the interceptors, or to imply that these could be launched on a depressed trajectory against the European BMD sites, though I would lean toward the latter.
Belarus borders Poland, and so I would think that interception of missiles launched toward the US would be relatively straightforward, though the kinematics of the missiles in question and the intercept solutions are above my pay grade.
Also, we have reports that the Russian military is looking at commissioning 70 new nuclear missiles over the next 3 years, though reports of a failure in the most recent test of the Bulava SLBM (see also here) might throw a monkey wrench into what seems to be a very aggressive timetable.
I understand that the political appointees in the State Department may wish it otherwise, but the rest of the world understands that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are lame ducks, and they want no part of any of initiatives.
Case in point, the latest IAEA runing on the Syrian nuclear program:
The U.N. atomic agency approved a contested Syrian bid for nuclear aid on Wednesday, overcoming U.S.-led resistance to the project while Damascus is under investigation for covert activity that could lead to atom bombs.
The United States, Canada and Australia mounted last minute objections to a compromise deal on the project but finally joined a consensus in favor since they could not have won if they forced a rare vote by International Atomic Energy Agency governors, diplomats in the closed meeting said.
(emphasis mine)
They matter very little now. On January 20, they do not matter at all.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed ElBaradei does say that Syria is not being as cooperative as he would like but that at this point he does not have sufficient evidence to report undeclared nuclear activity by the Damascus government.
Remember the stolen laptop that had “slam dunk” evidence of the Iranians having an active and aggressive nuclear weapons program?
Probably a forgery.
Son of Curveball.
Well, it now appears that the IAEA found traces of enriched Uranium at the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor site.
It appears that I was wrong, I figured that it was beyond their level of nuclear infrastructure to even try.
On a related note, officials at the IAEA are seriously pissed off at whoever leaked the above data, because they see it as, “an effort to prejudge the agency’s conclusions.”
Basically, it appears that the source of the contamination is not clear:
The particles retrieved from some environmental swipe samples were of processed uranium — which could include the enriched version that in large quantities would fuel power plants or bombs, not of raw uranium ore, they said.
Such traces, they said, could have been carried to the site inadvertently on scientists or workers or on equipment trucked in. Syria has one declared atomic site, a research reactor.
A remote source could resemble a finding made in a long IAEA investigation of Iran’s secretive nuclear program.
Bomb-grade uranium particles found by IAEA sleuths there were assessed to have come with used equipment obtained from Pakistan, not from any undeclared domestic production facility.
China has signed a deal to build two nuke plants for Pakistan.
It was foreseeable and inevitable that once India got its deal from the US, a deal driven by the quest for nuclear power profits, not good policy, that someone could do the same for Pakistan.
We have doubled or tripled the amount of fissile material on both sides of the line of control.
This is just lovely, yet another way that India and Pakistan can destroy us all.
