Russia and China Nuclear Arsenal Expand (Daniel 7)

Russia, China aggressively expanding nuclear arsenal
U.S. woefully unprepared for war with 'aging' system left in shambles by Obama
Leo Hohmann
About | Email | Archive Leo Hohmann is a news editor for WND. He has been a reporter and editor at several suburban newspapers in the Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, areas and also served as managing editor of Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh, North Carolina. His latest book is "Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration And Resettlement Jihad."
WND Exclusive
A sobering new report warns of growing nuclear threats to U.S. national security posed by the deterioration of the nation’s own nuclear arsenal just as Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are all upgrading their arsenals.
The report documents how Russia and China are aggressively implementing nuclear force modernization, “likely made possible with covert and low-yield nuclear testing.”
Russia and China are now deploying new nuclear ICBMs, new nuclear air-launched cruise missiles, new nuclear submarine-launched ballistic missiles and new ballistic missile submarines. Both are developing still newer versions of these systems, along with bombers, including stealth bombers.
Dr. Mark Schneider, author of the report for the Center for Security Policy and a longtime Pentagon official with expertise in strategic forces, describes the huge increase in numbers and sophistication of the Russian and Chinese missile arsenals and compares this with the deterioration of America’s nuclear arsenal.
Russia is aggressively building up its nuclear forces and is expected to have 8,000 warheads deployed by 2026 along with modernizing deep underground bunkers.
These new warheads will include large strategic warheads and thousands of low-yield and very low-yield warheads to circumvent arms treaty limits and support Moscow’s new doctrine of using nuclear arms early in any conflict.
Russia is also fortifying underground facilities for command and control during a nuclear conflict.
In contrast to Russia’s vastly upgraded position, most of the U.S. systems date back to the Reagan era with some going as far back as the Eisenhower administration.
“The advanced ages of U.S. deterrent systems at their planned replacement dates create the possibility of the loss of critical capability if there are unexpected problems within systems or delays with existing systems,” Schneider writes.
His report notes that the U.S. no longer has the capability to produce tritium, a vital nuclear weapons ingredient. He explains that the average age of a U.S. nuclear weapon – 35 years – represents a serious threat to the U.S. nuclear arsenal because the estimated life span of the nuclear fuel in these weapons is 45 to 60 years.
Schneider also discusses how modernization plans for U.S. bombers and ICBMs are years behind schedule and face far more advanced Russian and Chinese air defense and missile defense systems.
Dr. Peter Pry, executive director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the United States Nuclear Strategy Forum, which is an advisory board to Congress, said he agrees wholeheartedly with the findings of the report.
“I agree completely with Mark Schneider’s excellent analysis,” Pry told WND. “In addition to the aged condition of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, it is technologically obsolete compared to new generations of Russian nuclear weapons based on new designs.”
The U.S. stopped designing new nuclear weapons more than 25 years ago, and has been patching-up weapons designed three decades ago or more, he said.
“Russia and China never stopped improving their nuclear weapons. Russia has Super-EMP weapons, mini-neutron warheads that are ‘clean,’ meaning they produce no fallout for battlefield use, and other new generation nuclear weapons – at least some of which may be unknown to us,” Pry explained.
“We face the prospect of nuclear technological surprise by our potential adversaries that may embolden them to aggression,” Pry added. “Indeed, Russia and China are already aggressors, against Ukraine and in the South China Sea, no doubt because the U.S. nuclear deterrent is no longer what it used to be.”
Dr. Schneider’s article is especially timely given President Trump’s statement that he wants “modernization and total rehabilitation” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and his administration’s Nuclear Posture Review which is expected to be completed in early 2018. This review is expected to present a strategy to rebuild America’s nuclear deterrent and reverse the damage done to it by the Obama administration’s naïve and neglectful national security policies.
Frank Gaffney, president of CSP, said Dr. Schneider’s paper has produced a vital analysis of “a dire threat to our national security that the mainstream media and the foreign policy establishment refuses to discuss: how America’s nuclear weapons, strategic bombers and ICBMs are in urgent need of revitalization just as the nuclear programs of Russia and China are surging and we are facing new nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran.”
Gaffney said he urges White House officials and Congress to read carefully Dr. Schneider’s analysis as they consider crucial decisions over the next few months on how to rebuild the U.S. nuclear deterrent that is so vital to national defense.
The Center for Security Policy, Drs. Schneider and Pry are not the only ones sounding an alarm.
In March, Foreign Policy magazine put out a similar warning. In an article titled America’s Nuclear Weapons Infrastructure Is Crumbling
The magazine warned that the infrastructure that supports the nation’s nuclear arsenal is “crumbling” to “alarming levels.” President Trump inherited an arsenal that has a backlog of $3.7 million in deferred essential repairs.
Much of the infrastructure that supports the U.S. nuclear weapons programs, including labs, production facilities, and weapons storage complexes themselves were built six decades ago. “Leaky roofs, faulty ventilation, and encounters with snakes and rodents are par for the course at U.S. nuclear weapon facilities,” FP reported.
As far back as 2012 the Washington Post reported that the U.S. nuclear arsenal was “ready for an overhaul.” But under the Obama administration, that never happened.

The New Cold War (Daniel 7)

Cold War hots up as Russia deploys new ICMB and US starts missile development | World | News

Simon Osborne

General Sir Mike Jackson: Putin is trying to rebuild Soviet Union

Washington warned it would start developing new weapons if the Kremlin continued to flout the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.

Russia in turn threatened to equip its military with “more powerful weapons within a very short time” if the US abandoned the 1987 accord signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
US officials said Mr Trump wanted to remain in the INF but could not tolerate Russia’s continuing failure to comply.
One official said: “What we have decided to do is take the middle-ground option - that they have enjoyed to have their cake and to eat it - off the table.”
Washington has accused the Kremlin of breaching the INF treaty, which bans the possession, production or flight testing of nuclear-armed cruise and land-based nuclear ballistic missiles with a 300-mile to 3,400-mile range.

GETTY

Russia has been violating a weapons treaty limiting the development of nuclear missile systems

GETTY

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sign the INF treaty in 1987

The possibility of the treaty falling apart is inherent in the approach that we’re taking

US official

General Paul Selva, the vice-chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, told Congress back in March that Russia had deployed a new cruise missile that contravened the INF.Mr Trump’s national security team decided at the time not to take any action that would see the US in breach of the INF deal.
But it is understood the Pentagon is now researching modifications to existing weapons and developing new systems.
The official stressed Mr Trump wanted to save the treaty and would reverse the measures as soon as Russia returned to compliance.
He said: “The possibility of the treaty falling apart is inherent in the approach that we’re taking.
“We do not intend to remain bound, if they refuse to be bound, but our sincere hope is that we end up both being bound.”
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov rejected the US claims and branded them “absolutely unsubstantiated”.
He said Moscow was “ready to engage in a non-politicised, professional dialogue” but warned attempts to impose “ultimatums or to put military and political pressure on Russia through sanctions were unacceptable”.
Moscow said US missile defence systems in Romania — which are also scheduled for deployment in Poland next year — could be used to launch Tomahawk medium-range missiles and therefore breached the INF.
Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Federation Council, said the Aegis Ashore system was “in gross violation of the INF treaty”.

Russia displays show of strength during latest military exercise

Wed, October 18, 2017

A second US official said Aegis Ashore did not violate the treaty because it was “not capable of launching a cruise missile”.

He also rejected ​Russian claims that rocket tests for​ missile defence systems​ and the use of armed drones b​reached the treaty​ b​ecause they were explicitly permitted.

Viktor Bondarev, chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s defence committee, said Russia would equip its military with “more powerful weapons within a very short time” if the US abandoned the INF.
Arms control experts have long warned of the potential for exactly that kind of dangerous escalation.
Douglas Barrie, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said if the US developed a ground-based cruise missile, and Russia continued to deny a breach, “it would provide Russian president Vladimir Putin a propaganda victory and a ‘legitimate’ reason to blame the US for the collapse of the INF Treaty”.
Moscow said a collapse of the treaty would greatly raise international security threats and spell doom for an extension of the new Start treaty due next year

Babylon the Great Modernizes Her Nukes

Special Report - In modernising nuclear arsenal, U.S. stokes new arms race | Article [AMP] | Reuters

Scot Paltrow

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama rode into office in 2009 with promises to work toward a nuclear-free world. His vow helped win him the Nobel Peace Prize that year.
The next year, while warning that Washington would retain the ability to retaliate against a nuclear strike, he promised that America would develop no new types of atomic weapons. Within 16 months of his inauguration, the United States and Russia negotiated the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START, meant to build trust and cut the risk of nuclear war. It limited each side to what the treaty counts as 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads.
By the time Obama left office in January 2017, the risk of Armageddon hadn’t receded. Instead, Washington was well along in a modernization programme that is making nearly all of its nuclear weapons more accurate and deadly.
And Russia was doing the same: Its weapons badly degraded from neglect after the Cold War, Moscow had begun its own modernization years earlier under President Vladimir Putin. It built new, more powerful ICBMs, and developed a series of tactical nuclear weapons.
The United States under Obama transformed its main hydrogen bomb into a guided smart weapon, made its submarine-launched nuclear missiles five times more accurate, and gave its land-based long-range missiles so many added features that the Air Force in 2012 described them as “basically new.” To deliver these more lethal weapons, military contractors are building fleets of new heavy bombers and submarines.
President Donald Trump has worked hard to undo much of Obama’s legacy, but he has embraced the modernization programme enthusiastically. Trump has ordered the Defence Department to complete a review of the U.S. nuclear arsenal by the end of this year.
Reuters reported in February that in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump denounced the New START treaty and rejected Putin’s suggestion that talks begin about extending it once it expires in 2021.
Some former senior U.S. government officials, legislators and arms-control specialists – many of whom once backed a strong nuclear arsenal -- are now warning that the modernization push poses grave dangers.

"REALLY DANGEROUS THINKING"

They argue that the upgrades contradict the rationales for New START - to ratchet down the level of mistrust and reduce risk of intentional or accidental nuclear war. The latest improvements, they say, make the U.S. and Russian arsenals both more destructive and more tempting to deploy. The United States, for instance, has a “dial down” bomb that can be adjusted to act like a tactical weapon, and others are planned.
“The idea that we could somehow fine tune a nuclear conflict is really dangerous thinking,” says Kingston Reif, director of disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based think tank.
One leader of this group, William Perry, who served as defence secretary under President Bill Clinton, said recently in a Q&A on YouTube that “the danger of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War.”
Perry told Reuters that both the United States and Russia have upgraded their arsenals in ways that make the use of nuclear weapons likelier. The U.S. upgrade, he said, has occurred almost exclusively behind closed doors. “It is happening without any basic public discussion,” he said. “We’re just doing it.”
The cause of arms control got a publicity boost in October when the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a Geneva organization, won the Nobel Peace Prize for its role in getting the United Nations General Assembly in July to adopt a nuclear prohibition treaty. The United States, Russia and other nuclear powers boycotted the treaty negotiations.
The U.S. modernization programme has many supporters in addition to Trump, however. There is little or no pressure in Congress to scale it back. Backers argue that for the most part the United States is merely tweaking old weapons, not developing new ones.
Some say that beefed up weapons are a more effective deterrent, reducing the chance of war. Cherry Murray served until January as a top official at the Energy Department, which runs the U.S. warhead inventory. She said the reduction in nuclear weapon stockpiles under New START makes it imperative that Washington improve its arsenal.
During the Cold War, Murray said in an interview, the United States had so many missiles that if one didn’t work, the military could simply discard it. With the new limit of 1,550 warheads, every one counts, she said.
“When you get down to that number we better make sure they work,” she said. “And we better make sure our adversaries believe they work.”
An Obama spokesman said the former president would not comment for this story. The Russian embassy in Washington did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Asked about Trump’s view on the modernization programme, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council said the president’s goal is to create a nuclear force that is “modern, robust, flexible, resilient, ready, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats and reassure our allies.”

A BUDGET BUSTER?

The U.S. modernization effort is not coming cheap. This year the Congressional Budget Office estimated the programme will cost at least $1.25 trillion over 30 years. The amount could grow significantly, as the Pentagon has a history of major cost overruns on large acquisition projects.
As defence secretary under Obama, Leon Panetta backed modernization. Now he questions the price tag.
“We are in a new chapter of the Cold War with Putin,” he told Reuters in an interview, blaming the struggle’s resumption on the Russian president. Panetta says he doubts the United States will be able to fund the modernization programme. “We have defence, entitlements and taxes to deal with at the same time there are record deficits,” he said.
New START is leading to significant reductions in the two rival arsenals, a process that began with the disintegration of the USSR. But reduced numbers do not necessarily mean reduced danger.
In 1990, the year before the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States had more than 12,000 warheads and the Soviets just over 11,000, an August 2017 Congressional Research Service report says. Soon the two countries made precipitous cuts. The 1991 START treaty limited each to somewhat more than 6,000 warheads. By 2009 the number was down to about 2,200 deployed warheads.
Tom Collina, policy director of the Ploughshares Fund, an arms control group, says that both Moscow and Washington are on track to meet the 1,550 limit by the treaty’s 2018 deadline. The treaty, however, allows for fudging.
At Russia’s insistence, each bomber is counted as a single warhead, no matter how many nuclear bombs it carries or has ready for use. As a result, the real limit for each side is about 2,000. Collina says the United States currently has 1,740 deployed warheads, and Russia is believed to have a similar number. Each side also has thousands of warheads in storage and retired bombs and missiles awaiting dismantlement.
The declining inventories mask the technological improvements the two sides are making. There is a new arms race, based this time not on number of weapons but on increasing lethality, says William Potter, director of nonproliferation studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.
“We are in a situation in which technological advances are outstripping arms control,” Potter says.
One example of an old weapon transformed into a more dangerous new one is America’s main hydrogen bomb. The Air Force has deployed the B61 bomb on heavy bombers since the mid-1960s. Until recently, the B61 was an old-fashioned gravity bomb, dropped by a plane and free-falling to its target.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE BOMB EVER

Now, the Air Force has transformed it into a controllable smart bomb. The new model has adjustable tail fins and a guidance system which lets bomber crews direct it to its target. Recent models of the bomb had already incorporated a unique “dial-down capacity”: The Air Force can adjust the explosion. The bomb can be set to use against enemy troops, with a 0.3 kiloton detonation, a tiny fraction of the Hiroshima bomb, or it can level cities with a 340-kiloton blast with 23 times the force of Hiroshima’s. Similar controls are planned for new cruise missiles.
The new B61 is the most expensive bomb ever built. At $20.8 million per bomb, each costs nearly one-third more than its weight in 24 karat gold. The estimated price of the planned total of 480 bombs is almost $10 billion.
Congress also has approved initial funding of $1.8 billion to build a completely new weapon, the “Long Range Stand-Off” cruise missile, at an estimated $17 billion total cost. The cruise missiles, too, will be launched from aircraft. But in contrast to stealth bombers dropping the new B61s directly over land, the cruise missiles will let bombers fly far out of range of enemy air defences and fire the missiles deep into enemy territory.
Obama’s nuclear modernization began diverging from his original vision early on, when Republican senators resisted his arms reduction strategy.
Former White House officials say Obama was determined to get the New START treaty ratified quickly. Aside from hoping to ratchet down nuclear tensions, he considered it vital to assure continued Russian cooperation in talks taking place at the time with Iran over that country’s nuclear programme. Obama also feared that if the Senate didn’t act by the end of its 2010 session, the accord might never pass, according to Gary Samore, who served four years as the Obama White House’s coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction.
Obama hit resistance from then-Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona. Kyl, the Senate’s minority whip, assembled enough Republicans to kill the treaty.
In e-mailed answers to questions, Kyl said he opposed the accord because Russia “cheats” on treaties and the United States lacks the means to verify and enforce compliance. Moscow’s deployment of new tactical weapons since 2014, he said, was a violation of the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. (Russia denies violating the treaty.) Kyl also faulted New START for omitting Russia’s large arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons for use on battlefields, a subject the Russians have refused to discuss.
But Kyl proved willing to let the treaty pass – for a price. In exchange for ratification, the White House would have to agree to massive modernization of the remaining U.S. weapons. Obama agreed, and the Senate passed the treaty on the last day of the 2010 session.
Samore, the former White House arms control coordinator, says Obama did not oppose taking steps to refurbish superannuated weapons. He just did not plan the costly decision to do it all at once, Samore said.

DESTABILISING THE STATUS QUO

While the number of warheads and launch vehicles is limited by the treaty, nothing in it forbids upgrading the weaponry or replacing older arms with completely new and deadlier ones. Details of the modernized weapons show that both are happening.
The upshot, according to former Obama advisers and outside arms-control specialists, is that the modernization destabilised the U.S.-Russia status quo, setting off a new arms race. Jon Wolfsthal, a former top advisor to Obama on arms control, said it is possible to have potentially devastating arms race even with a relatively small number of weapons.
The New START treaty limits the number of warheads and launch vehicles. But it says nothing about the design of the “delivery” methods – land- and submarine-based ballistic missiles, hydrogen bombs and cruise missiles. Thus both sides are increasing exponentially the killing power of these weapons, upgrading the delivery vehicles so that they are bigger, more accurate and equipped with dangerous new features – without increasing the number of warheads or vehicles.
The United States, according to an article in the March 1 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has roughly tripled the “killing power” of its existing ballistic missile force.
The article’s lead author, Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, said in an e-mail that he knows of no comparable estimate for Russia. He noted, however, that Russia is making its own extensive enhancements, including larger missiles and new launch vehicles. He said Russia also is devoting much effort to countering U.S. missile defence systems.
The U.S. modernization programme “has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the U.S. ballistic missile arsenal,” Kristensen wrote in the article. “This increase in capability is astonishing.”
Kristensen says the most alarming change is America’s newly refitted submarine-launched Trident II missiles. These have new “fuzing” devices, which use sensors to tell the warheads when to detonate. Kristensen says that for decades, Tridents had inaccurate fuzes. The missiles could make a direct hit on only about 20 percent of targets. With the new fuzes, “they all do,” he says.
Under New START, 14 of America’s Ohio Class subs carry 20 Tridents. Each Trident can be loaded with up to 12 warheads. (The United States has four additional Ohio subs that carry only conventional weapons.) The Trident II’s official range is 7,456 miles, nearly one-third the Earth’s circumference. Outside experts say the real range almost certainly is greater. Each of its main type of warhead produces a 475-kiloton blast, almost 32 times that of Hiroshima.

RUSSIA'S DIRTY DRONE

Russia, too, is hard at work making deadlier strategic weapons. Ploughshares estimates that both sides are working on at least two dozen new or enhanced strategic weapons.
Russia is building new ground-based missiles, including a super ICBM, the RS-28 Sarmat. The Russian missile has room for at least 10 warheads that can be aimed at separate targets. Russian state media has said that the missile could destroy areas as large as Texas or France. U.S. analysts say this is unlikely, but the weapon is nonetheless devastatingly powerful.
Russia’s new ICBMs have room to add additional warheads, in case the New START treaty expires or either side abrogates it. The United States by its own decision currently has only a single warhead in each of its ICBMS, but these too have room for more.
Russia has phased in a more accurate submarine-launched missile, the RSM-56 Bulava. While it is less precise than the new U.S. Tridents, it marks a significant improvement in reliability and accuracy over Russia’s previous sub-based missiles.
A Russian military official in 2015 disclosed a sort of doomsday weapon, taking the idea of a “dirty bomb” to a new level. Many U.S. analysts believe the disclosure was a bluff; others say they believe the weapon has been deployed.
The purported device is an unmanned submarine drone, able to cruise at a fast 56 knots and travel 6,200 miles. The concept of a dirty bomb, never used to date, is that terrorists would spread harmful radioactive material by detonating a conventional explosive such as dynamite. In the case of the Russian drone, a big amount of deadly radioactive material would be dispersed by a nuclear bomb.
The bomb would be heavily “salted” with radioactive cobalt, which emits deadly gamma rays for years. The explosion and wind would spread the cobalt for hundreds of miles, making much of the U.S. East Coast uninhabitable.
A documentary shown on Russian state TV said the drone is meant to create “areas of wide radioactive contamination that would be unsuitable for military, economic, or other activity for long periods of time.”
Reif of the Arms Control Association says that even if the concept is only on the drawing board, the device represents “really outlandish thinking” by the Russian government. “It makes no sense strategically,” he said, “and reflects a really egregiously twisted conception about what’s necessary for nuclear deterrence.”
(Reported by Scot Paltrow; edited by Michael Williams)

The New Nuclear Race (Revelation 15)

In modernizing nuclear arsenal, world powers stoke new arms race

 

President Barack Obama rode into office in 2009 with promises to work toward a nuclear-free world. His vow helped win him the Nobel Peace Prize that year.

The next year, while warning that Washington would retain the ability to retaliate against a nuclear strike, he promised that America would develop no new types of atomic weapons.
Within 16 months of his inauguration, the United States and Russia negotiated the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START, meant to build trust and cut the risk of nuclear war.
It limited each side to what the treaty counts as 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads.
By the time Obama left office in January 2017, the risk of Armageddon hadn’t receded.
Instead, Washington was well along in a modernization program that is making nearly all of its nuclear weapons more accurate and deadly. And Russia was doing the same:
Its weapons badly degraded from neglect after the Cold War, Moscow had begun its own modernization years earlier under President Vladimir Putin.
It built new, more powerful ICBMs, and developed a series of tactical nuclear weapons.
The United States under Obama transformed its main hydrogen bomb into a guided smart weapon, made its submarine-launched nuclear missiles five times more accurate, and gave its land-based long-range missiles so many added features that the Air Force in 2012 described them as “basically new.”
To deliver these more lethal weapons, military contractors are building fleets of new heavy bombers and submarines.
President Donald Trump has worked hard to undo much of Obama’s legacy, but he has embraced the modernization program enthusiastically.
Trump has ordered the Defense Department to complete a review of the US nuclear arsenal by the end of this year.
Reuters reported in February that in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump denounced the New START treaty and rejected Putin’s suggestion that talks begin about extending it once it expires in 2021.
Some former senior US government officials, legislators and arms-control specialists – many of whom once backed a strong nuclear arsenal – are now warning that the modernization push poses grave dangers.
They argue that the upgrades contradict the rationales for New START – to ratchet down the level of mistrust and reduce risk of intentional or accidental nuclear war.
The latest improvements, they say, make the US and Russian arsenals both more destructive and more tempting to deploy.
“The idea that we could somehow fine tune a nuclear conflict is really dangerous thinking,” says Kingston Reif, director of disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based think tank.
One leader of this group, William Perry, who served as defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, said recently in a Q&A on YouTube that “the danger of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War.”
Perry told Reuters that both the United States and Russia have upgraded their arsenals in ways that make the use of nuclear weapons likelier.
The US upgrade, he said, has occurred almost exclusively behind closed doors.
“It is happening without any basic public discussion,” he said. “We’re just doing it.”
The cause of arms control got a publicity boost in October when the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a Geneva organization, won the Nobel Peace Prize for its role in getting the United Nations General Assembly in July to adopt a nuclear prohibition treaty.
The United States, Russia and other nuclear powers boycotted the treaty negotiations.
The US modernization program has many supporters in addition to Trump, however. There is little or no pressure in Congress to scale it back.
Backers argue that for the most part the United States is merely tweaking old weapons, not developing new ones. Some say that beefed up weapons are a more effective deterrent, reducing the chance of war.
Cherry Murray served until January as a top official at the Energy Department, which runs the US warhead inventory. She said the reduction in nuclear weapon stockpiles under New START makes it imperative that Washington improve its arsenal.

Babylon the Great Seeks More Nukes

US Air Force Wants to Get New Nuclear Weapons Faster
MARCUS WEISGERBER
Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force CMSgt. Kaleth O. Wright visit Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M.— Design work is barely underway for the U.S. Air Force’s new ICBMs and nuclear cruise missiles, and already the service’s top general is looking for ways to speed up the process.
Less than three months after the Pentagon awarded contracts to begin designing crucial cutting-edge components for the proposed weapons, Gen. David Goldfein said he’s “comfortable with the technology I’m seeing,” but “not as comfortable with the schedule.” The new ICBMs and cruise missile are expected to be battle-ready in the late 2020s — if Congress and the White House approve the acquisitions, whose cost is expected to approach $100 billion.
“My sense is that we’re in a good place right now in terms of how we’re working with industry going forward,” the Air Force chief of staff said in an interview. “The question I’ll continue to have is: How to I move it left. How do we get this capability earlier. Because if you can actually get it faster, you can get it cheaper sometimes.”
In August, the Air Force chose Boeing and Northrop Grumman to work on the new ICBM, a project called the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. It is meant to replace the Minuteman IIIs that sit ready in silos spread across Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota.
Over the next three years, the two companies will collectively build about 20 different prototypes of components for the new ICBM, according to officials at the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center here who are overseeing the project. The Air Force will then evaluate the two firms’ work and — and, if Congress and the Pentagon give the go-ahead — choose one of them to build more than 400 new ICBMs.
When Goldfein asked officials here whether it would be possible to speed things up, Maj. Gen. Shaun Morris, the commander of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, said, “We’re looking at that.”
As for the new cruise missile — called the Long-Range Standoff weapon — the Air Force has hired Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to develop technology and make parts over the next five years before choosing a winner. The missile is intended to replace the Air-Launched Cruise Missile, which is carried by the B-52 bomber.
Goldfein said the fundamental role of the two new nuclear weapons will not change significantly from their predecessors.
“What changes is the operating environment that they’re going to execute their missions in,” he said.
The Long-Range Standoff is being designed to fly in an anti-access, area-denial environment, the military term for a region where an enemy has air defenses that can detect, shoot down or electronically jam non-stealthy aircraft and weapons.
As for the new ICBM, it “will operate in an environment where cyber vulnerabilities are different than what the Minuteman faced [and] has far more congestion in space than what Minuteman faced,” Goldfein said.
Then there’s the cost. Just last month, the Congressional Budget Office said it could cost $1.2 trillion to operate, maintain and upgrade the Pentagon’s nuclear forces over the next 30 years. That includes buying new stealth bombers, Navy submarines, and command-and-control infrastructure. The Pentagon has said the new ICBM could cost $85 billion. The Air Force is planning to buy about 1,000 new nuclear cruise missile, estimating a price tag of about $10 billion. Experts have questioned whether all of the new weapons are affordable.
The size of the nuclear force and new types of new nuclear weapons are being looked at as the Trump administration conducts a Nuclear Posture Review, which is expected to wrap up as soon as next month or early next year.

Time For Babylon the Great to Prepare Her Nukes

It's time for America to resume nuclear testing

Robert Monroe, opinion contributor

America must resume underground nuclear testing, and we must do it immediately. Our lives depend upon it. The very existence of the United States may well depend upon it.
During World War II, we developed nuclear weapons through testing, and they enabled us to save many millions of lives in ending that conflict. During the half-century of Cold War we tested nuclear weapons as needed. We won that war because the testing enabled us to gain and hold a supremacy in nuclear technology and weapons that the Soviet Union could not match.
But in 1992, our president unwisely declared — voluntarily and unilaterally — a U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing. Today, a quarter-century later, we are risking everything by mindlessly continuing to observe this moratorium. We don’t question it. We don’t debate it. We don’t think about it. The reasons we entered into it no longer exists, and we don’t even recognize it. Like lemmings, we continue to race toward the edge of the cliff.

It's time for America to wake up.

From the moment we created nuclear weapons, the U.S. has led the international effort to control them, to enable the world to live comfortably with nuclear weapons. We led all the early nonproliferation efforts. The U.S was the foremost creator of the landmark Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970 – the greatest arms control treaty in existence.
For the past five decades America has been the world’s strongest nonproliferation activist, creating more programs, finding more efforts, and supporting more non-governmental organizations than any other nation. Finally, for the past eight years our President Obama has made “a world with nuclear weapons” America’s paramount national objective, backing it up with deep cutbacks of all types in the U.S. nuclear weapons capability.
What is the result of these decades of intense nonproliferation effort? Total failure internationally; and grave nuclear weakness and vulnerability for America.
The world has given passive nonproliferation a good try, and it simply doesn’t work. Nuclear threats have increased immensely — technologically, geographically, and numerically — particularly during the Obama years.
Now, two rogue states, North Korea and Iran, are creating such a global cascade of proliferation (in self-defense) such that nuclear weapons will soon be commonplace, uncounted, many uncontrolled, and frequently used. Imagine demolished, radioactive cites, large and small, dotting the globe in a world of nuclear horror and chaos. The only way to prevent that scenario is through active nonproliferation.
The NPT gave this forceful answer a strong start by creating two tiers of states: the five approved nuclear weapons states (permanent members of the United Nations Security Council), and establishing all others (currently 185) as non-nuclear weapons states. Clearly, the long-term solution is to charge these five with the responsibility for enforcing nonproliferation, individually or collectively, on behalf of the world. To ensure they have the capability as well as the responsibility, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty must be inapplicable to them. This must be America’s global diplomatic crusade for the next decade, as soon as we have denuclearized the two rogues, with military force, if necessary.
Unfortunately, since the Cold War ended in 1991 America’s misguided emphasis on passive nonproliferation, has degraded our nuclear weapons capability beyond belief. We were in a nuclear freeze for almost two decades, followed by Obama’s active dismantlement. Here’s how we stand today. No U.S. nuke has been tested for a quarter-century; we cannot be sure they will work. Every weapon is years beyond the end of its design life. Designed for massive destruction, our arsenal is unable to deter most of today’s nuclear threats. We have no capability to produce plutonium pits (the heart of nuclear weapons); recovery will take a decade.
We’ve done no research whatsoever in advanced nuclear technologies; our adversaries are decades ahead of us. Our scientists, designers, engineers, and production managers have no experience in their professions. Our testing facilities, and knowledge, are virtually non-existent; recovery will take years.
All of these capabilities must be recovered in full — as rapidly as possible — and the key to everything is nuclear testing. We must resume underground nuclear testing as soon as possible.
For the Energy Department, the highest priority (existential) need is testing the principal deployed warheads of our strategic deterrent (W76, W78, B61 and so on.) to ensure their reliability. Almost as urgent is the need to conduct exploratory testing of advanced, low-yield (10-100 ton) warheads. Russia is decades ahead. Exploratory work maximizing fusion rather than fission output is vital, possibly leading to pure fusion warheads. Other exploratory testing is essential if we are to avoid technological surprise.
The Defense Department’s underground testing in the essential military science of “nuclear weapons effects” is in even worse shape, as their national lab for this purpose (Defense Nuclear Agency) was terminated twenty years ago.
Of broad, overreaching importance is bringing the “scientific method” (which centers on testing) back into all our nuclear weapons laboratories.
The nation’s top nuclear strategists and experts are within weeks or months of producing the Nuclear Posture Review, which will establish the nuclear weapons policies of the Trump presidency. Indications are they will shrink from nuclear test resumption, as have our indifferent leaders for 25 years. If they do, America may cease to exist before there’s another chance. We must bite the bullet. Announce nuclear test resumption as the central element of the Nuclear Posture Review, and then work round-the-clock to detonate the highest priority test within three to five years.
Robert R. Monroe, vice admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.), is former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency.

Russia Prepares for Nuclear War

Russia Is Preparing for a Nuclear or Chemical Attack as Tensions With NATO Build

By Damien Sharkov On 11/13/17 at 8:31 AM

Russian troops near the Black Sea coast have carried out drills for a scenario in which Russia was attacked by a chemical or nuclear weapon, the country's military has revealed.
Spread across three Russian regions between the Black and Caspian seas, the drills involved more than 5,000 troops, the Ministry of Defense announced in a statement Monday.
Preparing for a scenario in which Russia was attacked by “weapons of mass destruction by a hypothetical enemy,” soldiers were deployed in hazmat suits and gas masks.
Units specializing in chemical weapons were deployed in the Krasnodar and Stavropol regions, while at least 100 personnel in the neighboring Rostov region launched a parallel decontamination drill on Monday. It followed similar exercises held by Russian overseas troops in nearby Armenia over the weekend.
  Cadets wear gas masks as they take part in exercises at Serpukhov Military Institute of Rocket Forces in Serpukhov town, 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Moscow, on April 6, 2010. Denis Sinyakov/Reuters
Also deployed were mobile laboratories and radioactive- and chemical-tracing reconnaissance vehicles capable of quarantining, assessing and potentially eliminating a chemical or nuclear theat.
In recent weeks, Russia’s nuclear-capable forces practiced missile launches and flyovers in apparent offensive measures for a conflict scenario. The military has pledged to test its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile system before the end of the year.
Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu has alleged that NATO is developing use of nuclear arms near Russia’s western borders last week, but has not provided evidence for the claims.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned of the dangers of a nuclear conflict, mostly in response to the growing rift between the West and his government.
Russia's annexation of Crimea, backing of separatist insurgents in Ukraine's east and its military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been the major sticking points that have worsened ties with the U.S. and European states.
Recent allegations that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election last year have halted Trump's campaign initiative to reach out to Putin and improve relations.
While a handful of officials have made a habit of speaking about hypothetical massive and possibly nuclear conflict, opinion polls show the majority of Russians are wary to believe such a scenario is likely, despite the rift with the West.
According to state pollster WCIOM, 63 percent of Russians felt that war with the U.S. or NATO was impossible or unlikely in April. Although North Korea enjoys a better relationship with Russia than with most countries, the country’s nuclear weapons program was viewed as a threat by 67 percent of Russians. A total of 39 percent believed North Korea directly threatened Russia.

Russia and America Prepare for Nuclear War (Daniel 7)

Russia and America Are Conducting Massive Nuclear Exercises (and No One Cares)

Lyle J. Goldstein

Nuclear weapons exercises in both Russia and the United States go mysteriously unreported in leading American newspapers.

Both Russia and the United States undertook major tests of their respective nuclear forces at the end of October 2017. Oddly, that was not sufficiently newsworthy and no coverage appeared in America’s leading newspapers. It’s particularly strange—and even ironic—because the steady drip of articles alleging every type of Russian conspiracy, from manipulation of social media to meetings with senior Trump administration officials to the supposed attempted penetration of voting systems, has been front-page news every day, playing no small part in accelerating the downward spiral in U.S.-Russia relations.
One half expects a spate of new revelations detailing the current administration leaders' unexplained fondness for borsht and pelmeni. All joking aside, a simple miscalculation in this most crucial bilateral strategic relationship could rather quickly destroy both nations and end life on earth. As long as American media outlets do not cover these nuclear exercises, which are ominous developments, they seemingly can escape any culpability for bringing on the “new Cold War,” its catastrophic risks and the related consequences.
Some would prefer to suggest that cyber tensions, election-interference allegations, accusations regarding nefarious activities in crises from Syria to Afghanistan to North Korea—not to mention the escalating proxy war in East Ukraine—are all discreet and complex issues demanding U.S. strategic attention, that will not, however, cumulatively lead to a U.S.-Russia nuclear showdown. But that all too tenuous assumption is belied by high-level assessments from the Pentagon, as well as these recent nuclear weapons exercises that admittedly have become quite commonplace. Even if the actual chance of military conflict remains thankfully low, it is extremely disturbing, and wholly contrary to the national interest. The stoking of further tensions with Moscow will cost Americans trillions of taxpayer dollars—a fool’s errand if there ever was one.
At one level, this is just a case of bad journalism—the failure to distinguish the titillating (e.g. the Steele dossier) from the truly important (e.g. nuclear force modernization and crisis doctrines). How poorly informed the U.S. political establishment is by such bad choices made regularly in the country’s newsrooms is suggested, for example, by the somewhat remarkable fact that neither the New York Times, nor the Washington Post, bothered to report on President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Iran on November 1 either. If Washington’s so-called “adversaries” are coalescing against it, America, so it seems, will remain blissfully ignorant. The newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta provided significant space to discussing both nuclear exercises. As I have done for years with my Dragon Eye column in sharing insights from Chinese press and academic writings, here I will endeavor in a new column called Bear Cave, to impart some perspective on Russian strategic viewpoints in the hopes of contributing in a small way to deescalating bilateral tensions, which now genuinely threaten world peace and stability.
The title of the Nezavisimaya Gazeta piece may itself convey some frustration with the pointlessness of the mutual show of force: “Moscow and Washington Frightened One Another with Nuclear Might.” In a rare bit of Russian optimism, the article observes that U.S. Strategic Command had actually informed the Russian Ministry of Defense regarding the nuclear exercises in advance in conformity to the START-3 Agreement. As a seeming point of pride regarding Russian status, the article observes pointedly that Beijing was not so informed, since it is not a party to such agreements. Dismissing any “politically correct blather” of antiterrorism doctrines for nuclear forces, this analysis suggests that “in fact, both Washington and Moscow were training for an exchange of nuclear blows against one another.”
The Russian analysis concedes that the Global Thunder exercise organized by U.S. Strategic Command “looks like a saber-rattling by the Americans of a nuclear cudgel in response to Russian training and combat launches of ballistic and cruise missiles last week.” In the Russian exercise, according to the article, four intercontinental ballistic missiles were apparently launched. Lest anyone be confused regarding the payload, the article explains these missiles are “intended to carry nuclear warhead payloads.” Three missiles were launched from submarines (both Northern and Pacific fleets), while the fourth was a Topol rocket fired from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. The exercise also involved a sortie of Russian bombers of several types and so the “entire nuclear triad of Russia was tested.” This exercise was undertaken with the direct participation of the supreme commander of the Russian armed forces President Vladimir Putin, according to the article, as if to underline that he is the only world leader who could likely reduce nearly the entire U.S. homeland to glowing rubble well inside of an hour.
Happily, the article does mention some additional context for the recent U.S. nuclear tests, including the ongoing North Korea crisis, which the Nezavisimya Gazeta article states was “provoked by Pyongyang.” And yet the next sentence states quite unequivocally that Moscow is “extremely nervous” regarding the continuous buildup of U.S. forces in Northeast Asia. That point raises yet another cost of the new Cold War. In addition to the risk of catastrophic war and enormous resources wasted on military rivalry, we may add the further escalation of regional conflicts, whether in the Middle East or Northeast Asia, that have resulted from deepening mistrust among the great powers, which now seem more interested in the concept of “relative gains,” vice genuine conflict management.

Babylon the Great's Nuclear Arsenal (Daniel 7)

U.S. nuclear arsenal to cost $1.2 trillion over next 30 years: CBO
(Reuters) - Modernizing and maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years will cost more than $1.2 trillion, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office.
The report said current plans for the modernization of the aging planes, ships and missile silos that make up the U.S. nuclear arsenal would cost 50 percent more than if the U.S. only operated and maintained its current equipment in the field.
The CBO study reviewed the Obama’s Administration’s plans for modernization of the nuclear arsenal. President Donald Trump in January directed Secretary of Defense James Mattis to conduct his own review the U.S. nuclear forces. The results could be published in the coming months.
U.S. House Armed Services Committee member Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington, said of the Obama-era plan: “Congress still doesn’t seem to have any answers as to how we will pay for this effort, or what the trade-offs with other national security efforts will be.”
The report said costs would rise from $29 billion in 2017 to $47 billion in 2027, before peaking at around $50 billion a year through the early 2030s.
Trump has said he wants to ensure the U.S. nuclear arsenal is at the “top of the pack,” saying the United States has fallen behind in its weapons capacity.
U.S. officials have noted that America’s nuclear modernization is lagging behind Russia’s upgrade of its own nuclear triad.
General Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in August he believed Moscow was already two-thirds of the way through its nuclear modernization process.
In August, the U.S. Air Force awarded Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp separate contracts to continue development work on the replacement of the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile system one leg of the nuclear triad.
Days later the Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin Corp and Raytheon Co separate $900 million contracts to continue work on a replacement for the AGM-86B air-launched nuclear cruise missile. That detailed development contract allows the companies to continue work on the long range standoff weapon yet another leg of the triad.
Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington, additional reporting by Idrees Ali; editing by Chris Sanders

Russia and the US Prepare for Nuclear War

Russia AND the US send nuclear bombers to North Korea as Kim Jong-un tensions soar

By Sam Webb

 

 

BOTH Russia and the US have flown nuclear bombers near North Korea as tensions grow over tyrant Kim Jong-un’s atomic threats.

 

President Donald Trump sent a nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on a long-range mission to the Pacific this weekend.
And the Russian Defence Ministry today announced that US and Japanese jets escorted Russia’s missile-carrying Tupolev-95MS strategic bombers during flights over the Sea of Japan and the Pacific.

• A spokesman said: "Two strategic bombers Tupolev-95MS of Russia’s Aerospace Force have carried out routine flights over international waters of the Sea of Japan and the western part of the Pacific "At certain sections of the route the Tupolev-95MS crews were accompanied by a pair of F-18 fighters (of the US Air Force), and a pair of F-15, F-4 and F-2A fighters (of the Japanese Air Force)."

The threat of nuclear missile attack by North Korea is accelerating, US defence secretary Jim Mattis warned at the weekend.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis says he cannot see America accepting North Korea as a new nuclear superpower

Mattis made his remarks as he accused the North’s leader Kim Jong-un of "illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear programmes".
Speaking in Seoul alongside South Korean defence minister Song Young-moo, he warned: "North Korea has accelerated the threat that it poses to its neighbours and the world."
Because of this, he said, military collaboration between the US and South Korea had taken on "a new urgency".
Mattis added: "Any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response."
The news came shortly before reports emerged of a tunnel collapse at an underground nuclear test site, prompting fears of a radioactive leak.
The North says it needs nuclear weapons to counter US efforts to strangle its economy and overthrow the Kim government.

US bombers and fighter jets sent ​close to North Korea​n borders​ in show of force

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg called North Korea a "global threat" today and said he backed tighter sanctions against it during a visit to Japan, which has been targeted by Pyongyang’s provocations.
Stoltenberg is in Tokyo to meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other senior officials including defence minister Itsunori Onodera later in the day.

The Nuclear Reach of Babylon the Great (Daniel 7:7)

US has 150 nuclear weapons in five NATO countries: Turkish Parliament report

 

ANKARA

The United States has a total of 150 nuclear weapons in five NATO member countries, including Turkey, according to a report on worldwide nuclear arms prepared by the Turkish Parliament.
The report, titled “Data on Nuclear Weapons,” said there were around 15,000 nuclear weapons at 107 sites in 14 countries as of July this year, daily Milliyet reported on Oct. 31.
“Nearly 9,400 of these weapons are in arsenals for military use and the rest are standing idle to be destroyed,” the report read.
It added that some 4,150 of the weapons in arsenals are ready to be used at any minute, while 1,800 are in “high alarm” status, which means they can be prepared for use in a short period of time.
According to the report, 93 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons belong to Russia and the U.S.
The report also said that nuclear weapons belonging to the U.S. are present in five NATO countries that do not themselves have nuclear weapons.
Saying there are nuclear weapons belonging to the U.S. in five NATO countries that do not have nuclear weapons.
“There are nearly 150 U.S. nuclear weapons in six air bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey, which are NATO countries that don’t themselves own nuclear weapons,” it added.
The U.S., China, Russia, France and Britain are nuclear-armed state parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, while India, Pakistan and Israel never became parties even though they own nuclear weapons.
According to the data in parliament’s report, Russia has 7,000 nuclear weapons, the U.S. has 6,800, France has 300, China has 260, Britain has 215, Pakistan has 130, India has 120, Israel has 80 and North Korea has 10 nuclear weapons.
During the Cold War, the U.S. placed nuclear weapons in NATO countries, including Turkey, as part of the organization’s nuclear sharing program. Some of the nuclear weapons placed in the 1960s are still in Turkey today.
At the time, negotiations were carried out between Ankara and Washington in the 1950s and they were concluded at the beginning of the 1960s.
Among those weapons, B61 type bombs are still in the İncirlik air base in the southern Turkish province of Adana. Nuclear warhead Jupiter missiles that were sent to the country during the same time period were only kept in the country between 1961 and 1963.
According to data from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), the number of B61s in Turkey is estimated to be nearly 50.

Babylon the Great Prepares for Nuclear War (Revelation 15)

Washington Resumes Talking About Nuclear War

Uri Friedman

 

On an unseasonably warm October day recently, Donald Trump’s CIA director and national-security adviser appeared one after another at a conference in the nation’s capital. They soberly assessed the world’s greatest threats below the gentle light of chandeliers in a hotel ballroom. In between their remarks, D.C.’s cognoscenti spilled into an adjoining courtyard to conduct their own threat assessments over wraps and caesar salad. All was normal in Washington—except that two of the president’s top aides were signaling, with deadly seriousness, that conflict could soon erupt between two nuclear-weapons powers.

Talk of nuclear war—of the “general and universal physical fear” of being “blown up” at any moment, as William Faulkner once put it—subsided with the end of the Cold War. Americans instead cited “fear of the greenhouse effect, the ozone layer, and Chernobyl as dangers to the future,” a psychoanalyst told The New York Times in 1992, when George Bush and Boris Yeltsin officially concluded the rivalry between the nuclear superpowers. Just a few years ago, former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was observing that while it was good that “our children don’t know what the threat of nuclear war really feels like,” this generational divide made it more challenging to convey the urgency of ridding the world of its deadliest weapons.

But as North Korea’s nuclear program has rapidly advanced, and as the Trump administration has sounded the alarms about that progress, such talk is creeping back into public discourse in Washington and beyond. The president and his advisers have avoided explicit discussion of nuclear war. Yet they’ve spoken increasingly openly—and with remarkable stoicism—about the potentially catastrophic toll of a U.S.-North Korean conflict, not only because both countries possess nuclear weapons but because North Korea has formidable non-nuclear arms and shares a heavily militarized peninsula with South Korea.

At the October conference, which was organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, CIA chief Mike Pompeo noted that North Korea may be just months away from developing the capacity to place a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile that can reach the United States. The North Koreans are so close, in fact, that U.S. policymakers should “behave as if we are on the cusp of them achieving that objective,” he said. As for what behavior he had in mind, Pompeo stressed that Trump would rather use peaceful tactics—economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure—to deny North Korea this capability. But the president is determined to keep Kim Jong Un from holding America hostage with nukes, he added, even if that requires taking military action against the North Korean leader.
Next, National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster spoke to the relative probability of peace and war, and the timeline in which one could give way to the other. It is “unacceptable” to “accept and deter” a North Korean government that can threaten the United States with nuclear weapons, he said, even though America has for decades successfully deterred Russian and Chinese governments that can threaten the United States with nuclear weapons. He stated that the Trump administration would only enter into negotiations if North Korea agreed to take initial steps toward dismantling its nuclear-weapons arsenal, even though North Korean officials claim this precondition is a nonstarter.

In banking on a long-shot diplomatic outcome and refusing to tolerate any lesser result, McMaster was hinting that military conflict is a distinct possibility—and not a distant one. He did more than drop hints. “We are in a race to resolve this short of military action,” McMaster acknowledged. As one U.S. official told NBC News, in reference to why U.S.-North Korean diplomatic channels are breaking down, the Trump administration’s message to North Korea appears to be “‘surrender without a fight or surrender with a fight.’”

Trump, for his part, has threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea with a show of force that “this world has never seen before” in order to protect America or its allies. U.S. military action against North Korea isn’t “unimaginable,” Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued earlier this year, even though “anyone who has been alive since World War II has never seen the loss of life that could occur if there’s a conflict on the Korean peninsula.” What’s unimaginable, he continued “is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver, Colorado.”Nuclear-weapons powers have very rarely engaged in direct military conflict; setting aside the many U.S.-Soviet proxy battles during the Cold War, the only precedent is brief, non-nuclear war clashes between China and Russia in 1969 and India and Pakistan in 1999. A nuclear war—in the sense of an exchange of nuclear weapons between countries—has never been fought. History is thus of limited help in understanding the stakes of the current standoff between the United States and North Korea. As a result, nobody’s quite sure what to make of the Trump administration’s rhetoric, let alone the Kim government’s blustery warnings of imminent nuclear armageddon.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, for instance, says his diplomatic campaign to counter North Korea “will continue until the first bomb drops,” while the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, accuses Tillerson’s boss of leading the United States toward “world war.” On Twitter, speculation churns about U.S. military preparations in East Asia and whispers of war around D.C. Some analysts argue that even if the Trump administration conducts limited strikes against North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure, Kim Jong Un’s government, following a kind of “use it or lose it” logic, might deploy its nuclear weapons early in the conflict to compensate for its relative military weakness. Others assert that if the Trump administration is intent on eliminating North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and minimizing North Korean retaliation, the United States would likely be the first to use nuclear weapons—in a massive surprise attack. News outlets simultaneously reassure us that “We Shouldn’t Worry About Nuclear War With North Korea Right Now” and warn us that “A Nuclear War Between America and North Korea Is Very Possible.” Journalists are now asking their sources in Washington to estimate the odds of nuclear war with North Korea (10 percent, according to one retired Navy admiral, with a 20 to 30 percent chance of a non-nuclear military conflict); to weigh in on whether the president can be trusted with the nuclear codes (Corker has his doubts); to clear up whether Trump’s military advisers can “tackle him” or “lock him in a room” to prevent him from ordering a nuclear strike (the answer, from a legal perspective, is probably no).

Most of all, however, people are struggling to once again confront the specter of war with unimaginably destructive weapons. In a recent iterview with Terry Gross of NPR, the New Yorker reporter Dexter Filkins recounted a conversation he’d had with “a very senior person” about how the U.S. military could use a nuclear weapon to wipe out North Korea’s leaders. “It’s terrifying,” Filkins admitted. “It’s just not even something that you want to think about.” Gross was mystified. “How do you use a nuclear weapon to decapitate the regime?” she asked. “God if I know. I don’t know. I mean, because—I don’t know,” Filkins responded. “I think that the idea, at least in the discussion that I had, was that that would be the only way that you could guarantee that you would basically obliterate the leadership, wherever it was. The problem with that, obviously, is that you’re going to end up obliterating a lot of other things as well.” Gross cut to a commercial break.

Babylon the Great Prepares for Nuclear War

US Air Force readying B-52s for nuclear attack

By Yaron Steinbuch

 

Amid rising tensions with North Korea, the US Air Force is preparing to put its nuclear-armed B-52 bombers back on 24-hour alert — a status not seen since the end of the Cold War in 1991, according to a report.
A return to a 24-hour alert would mean the venerable bombers would once again park at the long-dormant pads of Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana — dubbed the “Christmas tree” for their angular markings, Defense One reported.
“This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Air Force chief of staff Gen. David Goldfein told the industry publication during his tour of Barksdale and other bases that support the nuclear mission.
“I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward,” he said.
Goldfein and other top defense officials stressed that the alert order had not been given — just that preparations were under way in case it might be.
Such a decision would be made by Gen. John Hyten, head of US Strategic Command, or Gen. Lori Robinson, head of US Northern Command, according to Defense One.
STRATCOM is in charge of the military’s nuclear forces and NORTHCOM is in charge of defending North America.
Goldfein said that in a world where “we’ve got folks that are talking openly about use of nuclear weapons,” it’s important to be vigilant and proactive.
“It’s no longer a bipolar world where it’s just us and the Soviet Union. We’ve got other players out there who have nuclear capability. It’s never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right,” Goldfein said, Fox News reported.
Barksdale Air Force Base, home of the 2nd Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command, which manages the service’s nuclear services, is being renovated so the B-52s would be ready to “take off at a moment’s notice,” according to the publication.
The B-52 — also called the Stratofortress — can fly up to about 50,000 feet and release a variety of weapons, including cluster bombs, gravity bombs and precision guided missiles.
According to Defense One, two nuclear command planes, the E-4B Nightwatch and E-6B Mercury, will be deployed to Barksdale. During a nuclear war, they would serve as flying command posts of the defense secretary.
Putting the fleet back on alert is one of many decisions facing the Air Force as the US military responds to the hermit kingdom’s nuclear tests and President Trump’s combative approach to Pyongyang.
Tensions have skyrocketed on the peninsula after a series of weapons tests by the rogue regime and increasingly bellicose exchanges between Trump and despot Kim Jong Un.
Recently, Trump cryptically warned about the “calm before the storm” after a White House meeting with US military leaders.

The Nuclear Bombs of Babylon the Great (Daniel 8)

America just tested ‘the most dangerous nuclear bomb ever made’
Rob WaughRob Waugh for Metro.co.uk
Wednesday 30 Aug 2017 11:17 am
As nuclear tensions rise on the Korean peninsula, America is busy at home – testing the B61-12 nuclear weapon, described as ‘the most dangerous ever’.
No ‘decisive progress’ has been made in recent Brexit talks, says EU official
The gravity bomb has been described as uniquely dangerous not because of its payload – which is equivalent to 50,000 kilotons of TNT – but because it’s accurate to around 90 feet.
The accuracy means it’s far more lethal, according to military experts – despite the relatively small yield.
The bomb tested this week was not armed, of course (that would violate nuclear treaties) – but non-nuclear test assemblies were dropped from an F-15E based at Nellis Air Force Base.
The test evaluated the weapon’s non-nuclear functions and the aircraft’s capability to deliver the weapon.
Donald Trump has previously spoken out about his desire to modernise America’s nuclear arsenal.
‘The B61-12 life extension program is progressing on schedule to meet national security requirements,’ said Phil Calbos, acting NNSA deputy administrator for Defense Programs.
The B61-12 consolidates and replaces four B61 bomb variants in the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
The first production unit is scheduled to be completed by March 2020.

Trump Prepares to Upgrade Babylon the Great (Daniel 8:8)

Trump Forges Ahead on Costly Nuclear Overhaul, Sweeping Aside Doubts

The New York Times

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD 6 hrs ago

© Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency An unarmed Minuteman missile at a launch facility near Wall, S.D. The Air Force has announced new contracts to begin replacing the aging Minuteman fleet.

During his speech last week about Afghanistan, President Trump slipped in a line that had little to do with fighting the Taliban: “Vast amounts” are being spent on “our nuclear arsenal and missile defense,” he said, as the administration builds up the military.
The president is doing exactly that. Last week, the Air Force announced major new contracts for an overhaul of the American nuclear force: $1.8 billion for initial development of a highly stealthy nuclear cruise missile, and nearly $700 million to begin replacing the 40-year-old Minuteman missiles in silos across the United States.
While both programs were developed during the Obama years, the Trump administration has seized on them, with only passing nods to the debate about whether either is necessary or wise. They are the first steps in a broader remaking of the nuclear arsenal — and the bombers, submarines and missiles that deliver the weapons — that the government estimated during Mr. Obama’s tenure would ultimately cost $1 trillion or more.
Even as his administration nurtured the programs, Mr. Obama argued that by making nuclear weapons safer and more reliable, their numbers could be reduced, setting the world on a path to one day eliminating them. Some of Mr. Obama’s national security aides, believing that Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election, expected deep cutbacks in the $1 trillion plan.
Mr. Trump has not spoken of any such reduction, in the number of weapons or the scope of the overhaul, and his warning to North Korea a few weeks ago that he would meet any challenge with “fire and fury” suggested that he may not subscribe to the view of most past presidents that the United States would never use such weapons in a first strike.
“We’re at a dead end for arms control,” said Gary Samore, who was a top nuclear adviser to Mr. Obama.
While Mr. Trump is moving full speed ahead on the nuclear overhaul — even before a review of American nuclear strategy, due at the end of the year, is completed — critics are warning of the risk of a new arms race and billions of dollars squandered.
The critics of the cruise missile, led by a former defense secretary, William J. Perry, have argued that the new weapon will be so accurate and so stealthy that it will be destabilizing, forcing the Russians and the Chinese to accelerate their own programs. And the rebuilding of the ground-based missile fleet essentially commits the United States to keeping the most vulnerable leg of its “nuclear triad” — a mix of submarine-launched, bomber-launched and ground-launched weapons. Some arms control experts have argued that the ground force should be eliminated.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress in June that he was open to reconsidering the need for both systems. But in remarks to sailors in Washington State almost three weeks ago, he hinted at where a nuclear review was going to come out.

© Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A new nuclear cruise missile would extend the life of America’s aging fleet of B-2 bombers. “I think we’re going to keep all three legs of the deterrent,” he told the sailors.
The contracts, and Mr. Mattis’s hints about the ultimate nuclear strategy, suggest that Mr. Obama’s agreement in 2010 to spend $80 billion to “modernize” the nuclear arsenal — the price he paid for getting the Senate to ratify the New Start arms control agreement with Russia — will have paved the way for expansions of the nuclear arsenal under Mr. Trump.
“It’s been clear for years now that the Russians are only willing to reduce numbers if we put limits on missile defense, and with the North Korean threat, we can’t do that,” said Mr. Samore, who is now at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “I think we are pretty much doomed to modernize the triad.”
At issue in the debate over the cruise missile and the rebuilding of the land-based fleet is an argument over nuclear deterrence — the kind of debate that gripped American national security experts in the 1950s and ’60s, and again during the Reagan era.
Cruise missiles are low-flying weapons with stubby wings. Dropped from a bomber, they hug the ground to avoid enemy radars and air defenses. Their computerized brains compare internal maps of the terrain with what their sensors report.
The Air Force’s issuing last week of the contract for the advanced nuclear-tipped missile — to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Missile Systems — starts a 12-year effort to replace an older model. The updated weapon is to eventually fly on a yet-undeveloped new nuclear bomber.
The plan is to produce 1,000 of the new missiles, which are stealthier and more precise than the ones they will replace, and to place revitalized nuclear warheads on half of them. The other half would be kept for flight tests and for spares. The total cost of the program is estimated to be $25 billion.
“This weapon will modernize the air-based leg of the nuclear triad,” the Air Force secretary, Heather Wilson, said in a statement. “Deterrence works if our adversaries know that we can hold at risk things they value. This weapon will enhance our ability to do so.”
The most vivid argument in favor of the new weapon came in testimony to the Senate from Franklin C. Miller, a longtime Pentagon official who helped design President George W. Bush’s nuclear strategy and is a consultant at the Pentagon under Mr. Mattis. The new weapon, he said last summer, would extend the life of America’s aging fleet of B-52 and B-2 bombers, as Russian and Chinese “air defenses evolve to a point where” the planes are “are unable to penetrate to their targets.”
Critics argue that the cruise missile’s high precision and reduced impact on nearby civilians could tempt a future president to contemplate “limited nuclear war.” Worse, they say, is that adversaries might overreact to the launching of the cruise missiles because they come in nuclear as well as nonnuclear varieties.
Mr. Miller dismisses that fear, saying the new weapon is no more destabilizing than the one it replaces.
Some former members of the Obama administration are among the most prominent critics of the weapon, even though Mr. Obama’s Pentagon pressed for it. Andrew C. Weber, who was an assistant defense secretary and the director of the Nuclear Weapons Council, an interagency body that oversees the nation’s arsenal, argued that the weapon was unneeded, unaffordable and provocative.
He said it was “shocking” that the Trump administration was signing contracts to build these weapons before it completed its own strategic review on nuclear arms. And he called the new cruise missile “a destabilizing system designed for nuclear war fighting,” rather than for deterrence.
The other contracts the Pentagon announced last week are for replacements for the 400 aging Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles housed in underground silos. The winners of $677 million in contracts — Boeing and Northrop Grumman — will develop plans for a replacement force.
During Mr. Obama’s second term, the ground-based force came under withering criticism over the training of its crews — who work long, boring hours underground — and the decrepit state of the silos and weapons. Some of the systems still used eight-inch floppy disks. Internal Pentagon reports expressed worries about the vulnerability of the ground-based systems to cyberattack.
Mr. Perry, who was defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, has argued that the United States can safely phase out its land-based force, calling the missiles a costly relic of the Cold War.
But the Trump administration appears determined to hold on to the ground-based system, and to invest heavily in it. The cost of replacing the Minuteman missiles and remaking the command-and-control system is estimated at roughly $100 billion.