"How many programs were expanded or created from thin air after 9-11? Their rationale for spending untracked millions & billions of dollars was to detect or thwart a terrorist attack."

Actually, this is not a good definition of the problem, as there really weren't many programs created from thin air after 9/11 to deal with the problem of "nuclear terrorism." From my perspective, the biggest problem with spending on nuclear terrorism, is that it has diverted money and attention from the basic programs to secure nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and materials in the former Soviet Union. We were spending about $1 billion per year on these before 9/11, we are spending about $1 billion per year on them now, and a small but growing portion of the money is moving away from programs that are designed to secure weapons and materials at the source and towards programs that are designed to protect borders and transit routes (true of DOE and State programs, not so much DOD programs.) The problem is that the budget has not grown, and nuclear terrorism has been used as the excuse to shift the funds. This is essentially the source of the debate between Mike and Matt, is this a cost-effective shift or not. There's also the question of whether the entire budget be made larger. Now, most of the NGOs working this issue agree that the budget should be made larger, but there is a lot less agreement on where to put the added money.

But its not fair to say that billion dollar programs have been created on the excuse of nuclear terrorism -- the reverse is true, nuclear terrorism has been used as a rhetorical explanation for programs that existed, for other good reasons, before 9/11, and this rhetoric matters because the money has started to shift in response.

Posted at December 9, 2007 6:43 AM in response to Agreed points: a real threat, urgent action required

I don't know where to start here, and I don't know how to make sure I cover the critical points I want to make, but I'll try and paint a bit of a picture here. I'm one of the experts that you so disdain, here, and, on the spectrum of thought, I fall to the side where I don't think nuclear terrorism deserves the volume of press it gets (I will always defer to Matt on the facts, he really does know them better than anyone, I just draw different conclusions), but I think it is a real (i.e. probability greater than zero) problem. Its just that I view the problem as a link chain, and, if you break any link, the chain falls apart, unless and until you build a workaround. In nuclear terrorism, the weak link is access to weapons-usable fissile material. If you can keep that away from terrorists, you've made the rest of your problem so much more manageable. Problem is that there is lots of this stuff out there, in countries other than the United States, and in countries where the "nuclear protocols" are not what we would like to see.

This is not a ghost story. When U.S. officials first went to facilities where Russia stores nuclear materials (not full-up warheads, those are far less of a concern), they were shocked to see the poor or non-existent conditions of perimeter fencing, locks, alarms, accounting systems, etc. We jumped right in and helped, but we haven't yet gotten to all the facilities where Russia stores the stuff. There were several reasons for Russia's lack of security. The first and foremost, during the 1990s, was a lack of money. The second was that the Soviet Union had organized against and external threat (give the guards side-arms), but not an internal threat (what happens if the guards steal the stuff or try to sell it?) and they were going very low-tech and high on the people-factor in their accounting systems. But people can be unrealiable when they don't have food for their families and their paychecks are years overdue.

Also, Russia is not the only source of the materials. Consider Pakistan. We know that Pakistani nuclear scientists met with Al Queda leaders before 9/11. We know that the chief Pakistani nuclear scientists sold his knowledge to all-comers. We don't know much of anything about Pakistani controls over its nuclear materials.

So, there is a real threat, and there are real things we can do to reduce the threat, even if the use of the word "terrorism" has hyped the threat in the name of expanding the budget (this is my personal pet peeve, as I watch CTR funding diverted to "nuclear terrorism" programs).

Posted at December 8, 2007 11:53 AM in response to Agreed points: a real threat, urgent action required

"If two countries decide it is in their mutual interest to reduce stocks, they will. One state will rarely decide such on its own, absent the other state doing so."

This is still not a true statement, and can be proven empirically. In the mid 1980s, NATO reduced the number of nuclear weapons deployed in Europe by the thousands (the Montebello decision), this was not matched, conditioned, or even considered on whether the Soviet Union would do something similar. It was based on modernization plans. In 1991, the United States decided to sharply cut the number of deployed non-strategic weapons. When the President announced this decision, he said he would do it whether or not the Russians did so. (The Russians followed suit, but we still did not require a formal agreement to do it.) In 2002, Bush announced that the United States would reduce its operationally deployed forces to 1,700-2,200 warheads. This was the result of the NPR, not the result of any treaty. The subsequent Treaty negotiations existed because Russia was (a) trying to get the U.S. to reduce even further, to 1,500 warheads (they failed, we had no interest in going that low), and (b) because Russia still wanted the political benes of looking like a strategic partner. We would not have reduced if we had not wanted to and we did not need a treaty to require the reductions. Both the British and the French have reduced their numbers of deployed weapons without any treaties (or even presumed treaty partners).

The only time we did reduce weapons after signing a treaty was INF (which required much smaller reductions than the unilateral moves before and after the treaty) and START. SALT I does not count because it froze increases to a level we were already planning on and SALT II does not count because the reductions it would have required numbered in the 10s of warheads (it was a build up to a build down), and it never entered into force.

Put simply, nations will not reduce if they do not want to, and if they want to, they won't need treaties to do it. The "treaty" model assumes a numerical relationship between the two sides forces; this was a weak assumption during the Cold War and is absolutely not true now.

Posted at December 7, 2007 7:28 AM in response to It’s Worse Than You Think

"But looking at our own stocks, it isn't hard to believe that if we had only six warheads for the Advanced Cruise Missile we would know where they were."

Sorry, missed this line in my first reply. Its not true, either.

The only way your comment could be true is if we only had six cruise missiles in storage facility, and they were removed without a valid order, and someone noticed that the bunker was empty. You could argue that, with hundreds of missiles in the bunker, it would be harder to notice if six had been removed without a valid order.

In the real world these missiles were moved under a valid order. The crew just took the wrong pylon, and it was the failure of accounting produres, not the existence of the missiles that caused the problem. (By the way, the warheads never went missing, they were on the missiles, and the missiles never went missing, the crews knew there were 12 cruise missiles on a B-52 bound for Barksdale, they just didn't know that six of them had live warheads.)

If we only had six cruise missiles, and we had lousy security and accounting procedures, then we may not know where they are. If we have 6,000 and they are cared for under pristine security and accounting procedures, then we'd know where all of them are. The problem at Minot had nothing to do with the number of missiles in the bunker, but with the procedures for securing and accounting for them.

Posted at December 7, 2007 7:17 AM in response to It’s Worse Than You Think

"The more assembled weapons that exist the harder to secure all of them. We lost track of a few recently. So the best defense against nuclear terrorism is to reduce the active stockpile as well as the materials stockpile. This means arms reduction agreements."

Every statement in this paragraph is not true.

The ability to secure assembled weapons is not dependent on the number of assembled weapons, but on the number of secure facilities. If you put all your weapons in one very high security facility, it would not matter whether there were one or 1000 in that facility, each weapon would be equally secure. If you had only ten weapons, and each was placed, by itself, in an insecure facility, then each would be equally insecure. The problem with the cruise missiles at Minot was not related to the number of missiles in the storage bunker, but to the procedures at the single storage facility.

Second, reducing the active stockpile of weapons is not the best way to guard against nuclear terrorism, unless you are only worried about terrorists stealing full-up nuclear weapons. Around the world, there are a far greater number of storage facilties for nuclear materials than there are storage facilities for nuclear weapons, and the security is much, much, higher at facilities for weapons than it is at facilities for materials (even though some improvements are still possible.) But, if you're looking at allocating fixed resources, you'll get far more "bang for your buck" by increasing security at materials storage facilities than weapons storage facilities. Numbers are higher, security is lower, and, therefore, risks are higher.

Arms reductions agreements are neither necessary nor sufficient for reducing assmebled weapons, and they are either irrelivent to the threat of nuclear terrorism, or more likely, they would make the threat worse. On my first point, nations can and will reduce their assmebled weapons if they decide it is in their national security interest to do so; they don't need a bilateral or mulitlateral agreement to make that decision. And, if they decide it is not in their interest to do, no formal agreement can convince them or force them to do so. They just won't sign.

Second, it may seem odd, but the safest place for a nuclear warhead, if you are worried about the terrorist threat, is on a missile in a silo. These things were built to withstand nuclear war, and the security is as good as it gets. Once you take them off the missiles, start moving them around, start breaking down the pieces and parts, and try to store the materials in a greater number of sites, the points of access go up and the security goes down. So this is not the best way to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism.

The best way, as both Michael and Matt would probably agree, is to secure weapons-grade material at its source. The dispute seems to be over what to do next....

Posted at December 7, 2007 5:58 AM in response to It’s Worse Than You Think

There's actually a non-sequitor in the article/quote. Charlie Curtis is right, we store nuclear and conventional weapons separately. That's so someone does not accidently grab a nuke when they want to shoot a conventional weapon, but also, probably more because the security and monitoring requirements are more involved for nukes, and you don't need to devote those resources to the protection of conventional weapons.

But that's not relevant here because there are no conventional ACMs. All the ACMs are nuclear-armed, or they can be nuclear armed but are only carrying dummy warheads. There's no chance that a nuke would be grabbed by accident, because no one would be looking for conventional weapons in an ACM igloo. So co-storage is an issue, because it seems to be the source of the problem, but its not an issue because suddenly we are storing nukes and conventional weapons together. The dummies are not conventional weapons.

Posted at September 28, 2007 7:11 AM in response to Simple Error My Ass

Its the missiles, not the warheads, that are due to be retired. There's no reason to return the missiles to Minot if they will get sent back to Barksdale in the next year or two for deactivation. The warheads, as Howard notes, could end up in any number of places, depending on whether they are to be retired, stored, or redeployed on ALCMs. In the meantime, Barksdale has the ability to remove them from the missiles and store them. But their transport, if they are ever moved, would be by DOE, not DOD, as DOE owns the warheads, and they would be transported by truck, with lots and lots of visible security, as that is how we always transport warheads.

I don't think there's any need for a public announcement on what's happening to the errant missiles and their warheads, as we don't publicize these things anyway. A little logic will tell you exactly what I've told you. DOD isn't going to tell you they are not going to Iran, since there was never any plan to send them to Iran.

Posted at September 26, 2007 10:06 AM in response to Simple Error My Ass

"ICBMs, obviously, have nuclear weapons, at five operational bases: Minot, Hill Air Force Base, Utah; Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana; F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming (very big area that is in several states)"

Small correction for you -- we only have three operational ICBM bases -- Minot, Malmstrom, and F.E. Warren. Hill is a depot/maintenance base, so ICBMs there are not operational (and I'm not sure they take their warheads with them when they go there.) You never listed a fifth base, but that's fine, because we don't have one anymore.

Posted at September 26, 2007 8:15 AM in response to Simple Error My Ass

Given that all the ACMs are due to be retired, there is probably no reason to return the ones with live warheads to Minot. Barksdale has warhead storage and handling capabilities (it is an active B-52 base, which means it already has nuclear weapons), so the warheads can simply be removed in Barksdale, and the missiles added to the deactivation pile. If Barksdale is missing personnel with the required skill sets, the Air Force would move those personnel to Barksdale rather than move the missiles back to Minot.

Posted at September 26, 2007 6:11 AM in response to Simple Error My Ass

Unfortunately, your logic train does not match with the reality of how cruise missiles are stored and how the crews train to load them. First, you need to recognize that the storage/loading procedures are designed to allow everything to happen very quickly, if the national emergency calling for their deployment occured. Until 1991, bombers sat alert on their runways, that meant they were fully loaded with their weapons, and their crews sat in an alert facility just off the runways, waiting for the bells to go off. Bombers were pulled off alert in 1991; this was designed to reduce the costs (primarily manpower and security), and to reflect the changed international security environment. What it did, essentially, was increase the amount of time it would take to get the bombers into the air. But that time is not infinite; the ACMs were stored with warheads attached and in sets ready for loading, so that, when the bell went off, they could be loaded quickly (in hours.)

Now, once the decision to retire the ACMs came down, the process was developed whereby they would be shipped, on pylons, to Barksdale. The Air Force already had procedures to remove the active warheads and replace them with dummies because they use dummy warheads in training. So, this operation happens relatively frequently, and independently of the bomber loading procedures. So, when the crew picked up the missiles, they expected to see fully loaded pylons in the igloo, and they were supposed to make sure they picked up sets with dummy warheads, not real warheads. Also, if you look at the pics, you can see that they really had to pick up two sets of missiles, since each pylon holds six missiles. Here's the screw-up. One of the sets came from the side of the igloo with active warheads, instead of the side with dummy warheads. Why? That's the question (also there's the question of why both types were in the same igloo, but I've addressed that before, probably due to cost/consolidation of manpower). Why, though did they take the wrong missiles? Did their orders send them to the wrong "pile" of missiles, or were active warheads put in the wrong pile earlier in the process? Who knows, but this is the first key question, followed quickly by the second, Why didn't anyone notice the active warheads on the missiles when they were on their way out of the igloo.

All the surmising in the world won't answer the questions unless you know what the real process and real procedures are.

Posted at September 25, 2007 6:22 AM in response to Simple Error My Ass