nuclear

Cost of B61 bomb escalating, radioactive smuggling, cyber threats and much more.

From the Blogs

• USAF Drones May Conduct  “Incidental” Domestic Surveillance: U.S. Air Force policy permits the incidental collection of domestic imagery by unmanned aerial systems (drones), but ordinarily would not allow targeted surveillance of a U.S. person.  The Air Force policy was restated in a newly reissued instruction on oversight of Air Force intelligence. Legally valid requirements for domestic imagery include surveillance of natural disasters, environmental studies, system testing and training, and also counterintelligence and security-related vulnerability assessments. Air Force units are authorized to acquire domestic commercial imagery for such validated purposes.

• B61 Nuclear Bomb Costs Escalating: The expected cost of the B61 Life-Extension Program (LEP) has increased by 50 percent to $6 billion dollars, according to U.S. government sources. The escalating cost of the program – and concern that NNSA does not have an effective plan for managing it – has caused Congress to cap spending on the B61 LEP by 60 percent in 2012 and 100 percent in 2013.

• What is a National Security “Partnership” and More from CRS: Secrecy News has obtained recently released CRS reports on topics such as U.S. nuclear cooperation with India, Japan-U.S. relations and same sex marriage.

• What is a Cyber Threat?: In order to establish a common vocabulary for discussing cyber threats, and thereby to enable an appropriate response, authors of a new report released by Sandia National Laboratories propose a variety of attributes that can be used to characterize cyber threats in a standardized and consistent way.

New report on non-strategic nuclear weapons, missing classified document, U.S. nuclear forces and much more.

New Report on Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons

• Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons: A new FAS Special Report written by Hans M. Kristensen comes three weeks before 28 NATO member countries convene in Chicago on May 20-21 to approve the conclusions of a year-long Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR). Among other issues, the review will determine the number and role of the U.S. non-strategic nuclear weapons deployed in Europe and how NATO might work to reduce its nuclear posture.

From the Blogs

• Counterintelligence Surveillance Under FISA Grew in 2011: In a new report to Congress from the Department of Justice, in 2011 the U.S. Government submitted 1,745 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for authorization to conduct electronic surveillance or physical searches under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The report states that of that number, there were 1,676 requests for authority to perform electronic surveillance. In 2010, there were 1,579 such applications (including 1,511 for electronic surveillance).

• Classified Records Said to be Missing from National Archives: A three-year investigation by the Inspector General found that more than a thousand boxes of classified government records are believed to be missing from the Washington National Records Center (WNRC) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). But there are no indications of theft or espionage, an official said.

• Admin Presses for Renewal of FISA Surveillance Authority: The Obama Administration is urging Congress to renew provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act that are set to expire at the end of this year. One of the key provisions of the act would permit the electronic surveillance of entire categories of non-U.S. persons who are located abroad “without the need for a court order for each individual target.”

Investigation into leak prosecutions, nuclear forensics, new CRS reports and much more.

From the Blogs

• Senate Review of CIA Interrogation Program “Nearing Completion”: The Senate Intelligence Committee has been reviewing the post-9/11 detention and interrogation practices of the Central Intelligence Agency for four years and is still not finished.  But the end appears to be in sight. Committee staff are said to have reviewed millions of pages of classified documents pertaining to the CIA program.

• Govt Appeals Court-Ordered Release of Classified Document: On April 29,  government attorneys said that they would appeal an extraordinary judicial ruling that required the release of a classified document in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The document in question is a one-page position paper produced by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) concerning the U.S. negotiating position in free trade negotiations.  It was classified Confidential and was not supposed to be disclosed before 2013.

• Nuclear Forensics: A terrorist attack using an improvised nuclear device would be hugely destructive. During the Cold War, nuclear weapons had a ‘return address’ since the U.S. could trace the trajectory back to the point of origin. Dr. Y investigates the background of nuclear forensics in a new post on the ScienceWonk Blog.

• Patent Office Weighs Patent Secrecy for “Economic Security”: Steven Aftergood writes that in response to congressional direction, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is considering whether to expand the scope of patent secrecy orders — which prohibit the publication of affected patent applications — in order to enhance “economic security” and to protect newly developed inventions against exploitation by foreign competitors. Currently, patent secrecy orders are applied only to patent applications whose disclosure could be “detrimental to national security” as prescribed by the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951.

FAS Roundup: February 27, 2012

Status of China’s nuclear forces, strides in DoD classification reform, photos and video from FAS Awards Ceremony and much more.

From the Blogs

• Pentagon Defends Record on Secrecy Reform: The Department of Defense has done a better job of complying with changes in national security classification policy than it has gotten credit for, Pentagon officials told a Senate Committee.  The number of classification guides that are up to date has increased from 30% to over 70%, the officials said, and a new four-volume information security guide that has been under development since 2009 is in final coordination.

• Media Orgs File Amicus Brief in Sterling Leak Case: Dozens of major news media organizations joined together to defend the notion of a reporter’s privilege to protect the identity of a confidential against compulsory disclosure. The brief is an emphatic chorus of support for James Risen (the New York Times reporter who has been subpoenaed to testify in the case of Jeffrey Sterling, the former CIA officer who is accused of leaking classified information to Mr. Risen), and it offers a clear statement that the public interest in free press is at stake in this case. One thing it does not do, however, is simplify the matter for the appeals court or help to devise some kind of resolution of the conflict between the parties.

• Chinese Nuclear Modernization-Smaller and Later: Last week, Congress received its annual threat assessment from the U.S. intelligence community. Hans Kristensen writes that China’s nuclear arsenal is at a size that makes comparison with U.S. nuclear force level meaningless – even at the lowest level feared by the critics. The threat assessment showed that China’s nuclear force modernization has been slower than predicted during the Bush administration.

• DoD Reports “Impressive Strides” in Updating Classification: Steven Aftergood writes that the Department of Defense says it has cancelled more than 300 of its 1800 classification guides as a result of the ongoing Fundamental Classification Guidance Review (mandated by President Obama’s 2009 executive order to identify and eliminate inappropriate classification requirements).  The defunct guides can no longer be used to authorize the classification of national security information.

Goodbye to the B53, mystery behind the 1969 nuclear alert, new START data, advice for Washington regarding Iran and much more.

From the Blogs

• New CRS reports, including casualty figures from the war in Afghanistan and more.

• Mystery of the 1969 Nuclear Alert: In October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert for two weeks. Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found.  Even with full access to the classified record, State Department historians said in a new volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series that they were unable to provide a definitive account of the event.

• FRUS Leads Declassification, but Sometimes Lags Behind: Steven Aftergood writes about the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, which serves as a driver of declassification, propelling it farther and faster than it would otherwise go.  But it’s not always at its best.

• End of the B53 Era; Continuation of the Spin Era: On Tuesday, October 27, one of the largest weapons in the United States nuclear weapons arsenal, the B53, was dismantled in Amarillo, Texas. Retired from the arsenal in 1997, the dismantlement of the B53 marks the end of the era of large, multi-megaton bombs, a hallmark of the Cold War. “We certainly congratulate the administration on finally dismantling the old B53, but one should not over-spin the achievement. The B53 dismantlement involves less than 50 warheads; the U.S. has approximately 8,500 intact warheads (counting those in the stockpile and dismantlement queue)”, said Hans M. Kristensen, Director, Nuclear Information Project.

• Army Weapons Systems: Steven Aftergood writes about the 2012 edition of the U.S. Army Weapon Systems handbook which provides a concise description of dozens of Army weapon systems and programs.